Tom Beauling/Chapter 4
DEATH is too difficult. Even the corpse of a house-fly must be disposed of by a good housekeeper. How pleasant if bodies vanished as utterly as entities!
The death of humans is no bursting of soap-bubbles; as surely the colors and the life go out, but the dirt remains. The crematory is far, the grave to be digged; the buzzard more horrible than the worm. Furthermore, between these ultimates and the clay bulks the cunctating law with inquiry and jury of Fabian coroners, crawls the undertaker's black delivery wagon, intrudes his office,—an infant's casket, white but shop-worn, in the window,—his smug indifference, his catalogue and lists of prices. Looms, beyond these unavoidables, the church, the great slow sentences, the delaying sweetness of Chopin and Mendelssohn, the lyric voices of little boys, flowers—so sweet that you close your eyes and believe yourself at a wedding; and last the grave, and the cynical "Dust to dust," or the furnace and the undoing heat.
O Lord, make of me a conjurer's coin! Now you see it—now you don't.
Something like this went through Judge Tyler's mind when he had lifted Harmony from the floor, and found that she was really dead. Had she been an unknown, he could hardly have felt the responsibility to be more heavy and unjust. Mingled with pity and the proper feelings that go with all hearts was a righteous resentment against her for dying. But his predominating, first, middle, and last thought was of the little boy waiting in the dining-room for his mother's call.
Judge Tyler was a brave man, but he paused for a moment and looked upward at his duty, as one wearied with climbing looks upward to the mountain-top. He was strongly armored, but the present crisis struck through a weak place in the harness and pierced him. He hated the thought of telling that child what he had to tell. And, worse, he hated the growing probability that the child would tire of the dining-room and come to find his mother. So, after a moment's reflection, he compromised with his duty and put it off. He stepped into the hall, locked the study door behind him, and put the key in his pocket. Then he went into the dining-room.
"Tom," he said, "I am going to take you to visit two little children up the street. And see, we'll take all these nuts and raisins, and you can play at dinner parties till I come for you." He held out his hand, and little Beauling slid off his chair and took it.
First they crossed the road, and Judge Tyler left little Beauling in the front yard of the house opposite. He himself went in and spoke to the doctor, whose house it was, giving him the key to the study door and asking him to go and look after the dead woman. Then Judge Tyler resumed his tutelary hold of little Beauling's hand, and led him quite a long way up the village street, under the greening elms, until they came to another house. Here they rang the bell. And a woman with a tired, girlish face, clothes that were dark and not pretty, and dark hair done as plainly as possible, came to the door. Judge Tyler called her "Dorothy," and asked her if she would do him the favor of letting his little friend Tom Beauling play with her children for a while. But the woman called Dorothy said that her children were doing their lessons. Then Judge Tyler said, "On such a bright afternoon!" and he went on and told the woman that she must let little Beauling play with her children that afternoon, and that he would tell her the reason why, later; and that she herself must come with him to his house, for it was more important than all other things. So the woman reluctantly consented, and having called her children, two grave, tiny, male and female nonentities, she turned little Beauling over to their mercies and enjoined goodness upon all three. Then she got her hat—not a great, beautiful picture-hat of soft colors, like Beauling's mother's, but a hard little, tight little thing, that could not have been forced from one side to the other—and went with Judge Tyler. Beauling handed over the nuts and raisins to his grave little cousins, and they, having certain traits of ungravity still left in them, turned at once into charming mice, and joyous things were entered upon, for the cat was away.
When Judge Tyler and Dorothy had walked a certain way, Judge Tyler cleared his throat and said:
"About an hour ago Harmony came to my house, Dorothy—your sister Harmony. She left her little boy with me."
Dorothy wrinkled her unlined brow.
"I never heard of her marriage," she said.
"I may as well tell you at once, Dorothy," said Judge Tyler, "that Harmony was not married."
Dorothy's tired, girlish face burned a bright, peony red. Although she had borne children, she would have blushed to have heard her own husband make the same statement about a total stranger.
"Oh!" she gasped.
"Out in the world," said Judge Tyler, "these things are better understood than we understand them here. Her story was to me most pitiful. I heard what she had to tell, and she was greatly to be pitied."
Suddenly Dorothy stopped stock still.
"Do you mean to tell me, Judge Tyler, that you brought a child that was not honestly come by to play with my children?"
Judge Tyler was so taken aback by this attack that he gasped.
"Why, Dorothy," he said presently, "what earthly harm can any little child do?"
"It's the idea," she said; "the idea is—it's—nauseating."
That was strong language for Dorothy. It had a peculiar effect upon Judge Tyler. He began to quiver and get white in the face.
"Nauseating!" he said—"Nauseating! Then it's you that are nauseating, young woman—you and your kind. You needn't come any further. I do not need you. Your poor sister is dead in my house—but I will look after that. Go back to your children—God help them, and may God help such women as you not to have children!—but don't you speak or look a word at Tom Beauling! You understand me? I will come and take him out of your house as soon as I can."
"I did not know that Harmony was dead," said Dorothy, with feeling. "I shall have to go on now."
"If you are coming, come," said Judge Tyler; "but if you have anything to say about your sister or the boy, I beg you to remember that there is such a thing as decency."
Judge Tyler pushed open the gate of his yard, and held it back with old-fashioned courtesy.