Every one knew that Jarlsen was stone-deaf since the blast, and Emma spoke of his hearing the—in one sense—post-mortem eulogies from a desire to combat the idea. Perhaps Jeremy feared she might appeal to him for encouragement on this point, for he hurried on to the next.
“Since the beloved lips is silent, I expect I’m the first singer in the city. He had a way of doing gargles on the upper notes that would beat a seraph singing. But I’m goin’ to organize as notional a rite as I can, bringing forty years of experience, man and boy, to bear on this one sad occasion. It’ll be the blasted best blast rite ever you saw. It’s queer they can’t cover them blasts or get the men off in time, or so’s they won’t touch the torch to it before the word’s given! I’ve had some corpses in two years from blasts, and all jest es ragged and singed es could be, let alone the blasts that’s lying deaf and blind round the city yet!”
The day of the mock-death service dawned clear and bright, which was held to be bad by the weather-weird-wise, as the Scotch among them said. Quarry had rum in his tea as early as 6 A. M. He was always up early on rum days, but he beat his own precedent this morning.
He insisted upon setting the house in readiness. He had formed a habit of talking to himself since he had grown fearful of committing himself with talking to the other men, for Quarry had many things to hide, and knew his limitations as regarded discretion. His main thought was that he would rather spend money on what was only an approach to Jarlsen’s corpse than hoard it. Besides that, he had the cosy consciousness that it had looked friendly when he and Emma had issued together from her room on the night when Jarlsen came singed to his wedding dance.
“The greatest thing happened me since my first drink,” he kept saying like a refrain, as he cut long festoons of coloured paper to hang about the mantel and the thinly gilt picture frames. He went By the Bridge to Jarlsen’s old room, which was still in some confusion, with his working clothes tossed aside by Wavering Jim. Jarlsen had folded them neatly when he had donned his wedding suit to go pay off the men. It was Jarlsen’s portrait in crayon that Quarry had come for. He tied it up with a lank bow-knot of cheap crêpe, and laughed in real mirth.
“Now, Jarlsen,” he said in banter, “I do seem to see myself somehow in the glass over your portrait. Funny, ain’t it?”
By the Bridge he purchased five sticks of pretzels, for in Soot City long sticks are run by venders through these open-work wares.
When all was ready at the Buttes’s, he helped lift the big Swede from Emma’s cot to the kitchen table. He was dressed, of course, in what was to have been his wedding suit, and the odd lengths of hair that were left him were brushed out on either side of his head to make a good show. His beard had not grown on one cheek, and Quarry surveyed him with great satisfaction. “Seems they’ve kind o’ singed them right-hand glands where the hair starts out,” he said. “It’s real hard to keep your complexion right here.”
Emma had been sleeping on a couple of ironing boards laid on the hard clay of the lean-to where the pans and scant house-tackle were kept. The thought of hardship had not occurred to her. She had saved her heartbroken minutes for the sordid privacy of the chill lean-to. The place had for her the charm of liberty, which, we are told, is the charm of paradise itself.
Her behaviour was not very agonized. She crouched on the blanketed boards and courted the slow tears that crept from her eyes and were healing to her hurt. They alone relieved her; and sometimes, when they would not come, she would grip the scant old skirt that covered her and pray in a loud whisper, with the vital faith of the poor.