The transmutation of the emotions or the passions into one another is
among the mysteries of the sphere of morals. In some natures, even the
most sacred grief, the outcome of a child’s death, I have seen capable
of change into anger at a world in which such things are possible.
Susan had loved her sturdy little boy with unreasoning ardor, and
indulged him to the utmost limit their scant means allowed. He had been
like her in face, and this pleased her. He had, too, her masculine
vigor, and seemed more bone of her bone than the two idiots who had gone
early to the grave.
She sat just within the doorway, rocking. The chair creaked at each
strong impulse of her foot. An oblong of sunshine lay at her feet, and
in it a faded crape bonnet, last relic of a day when prosperity could
afford to grief a uniform. It had turned up in her vain search after a
decent garment for the dead. As she continued to rock with violence, the
loose planks of the floor moving, a toy ark, the gift of Dorothy to the
boy, fell from a shelf. Noah and his maimed beasts tumbled out, and lay
on their sides in the sun. She took no note of the scattered menagerie.
The room was in no worse than its usual disarray, with no sign of that
terrible precision which we associate with the death-chamber. At last
she rose quickly, and, pushing the toys and bonnet aside with an
impatient foot, left the rocking-chair in motion, and trod heavily up
and down the room, opening and shutting her hands as she walked. She fed
her rage with each look she cast on her dead boy.
A far gentler woman once said to me that there was for her in her
child’s death the brutality of insult. Some such feeling was now at work
with Susan Colkett.
In her younger life she had lived on a farm in upper Canada, a tall,
pretty, slim girl, quick of tongue, unruly, and with an undeveloped and
sensual liking for luxury and ease. Then she married a man well enough
off to have given her a comfortable life. A certain incapacity to see
consequences, with that form of fearlessness which is without fear until
the results of action or inaction are too evident, led her to be
careless of debts. Then her husband drank, and grew weary of her
tornadoes of unreasoning anger; the idiot children came, and she began
to think of what even yet she might realize for herself if he were dead.
Making no effort to stop him, she let him go his way, seeing without one
restraining word the growth of a deadly habit. Dorothy had said that she
helped his downward course even more actively. His death left her
penniless, but free. Men were unwilling, however, to face her wild
temper, and when, at last, her looks were fast fading, to help the only
things in the world she cared for, she took the stout little man who had
for her from his youth an unchanging affection. Misfortune taught her no
good lessons. Even now she hated work, loved ease, and lacked
imagination to picture consequences. Amidst the animal distress her
child’s death occasioned, she was still capable of entertaining the
thought of crime; in fact, her loss contributed a new impulse in the
storm of fury it evoked. They were close to the end of their resources.
There is in Paris a Place St. Opportune. Who this saint was, I know not.
His biography might be of interest. There is probably a fallen angel of
the same name who makes the paths of virtue slippery. Crime had been
near to this woman for years, and ever nearer since disaster had been a
steady companion. She had lacked opportunity, and that alone. Nor was
this the only time she had cast temptation in the way of her
simple-minded husband.
At last, as, striding to and fro, she went by the doorway, she saw
Dorothy, and with her a thin man in shining, much-worn, black alpaca
clothing.
She knew at once that he was the preacher who had been brought up from
Mackenzie to bury her child.
Upon this she turned back into the room, and stood a moment by the two
chairs on which lay the pine box which Joe had made. The little fellow
within it had been hardly changed by his brief illness. He was fair to
see; white, and strongly modeled; and now he was beautiful with the
double refinements of youth and death. She touched his cheek as if to
test the reality of death, and then kissed him, and, laying over him the
rude cover, turned away.
At the door she met Dorothy and the minister. Dorothy said, “Good
morning, Susan.”
“You’ve been a heap of time comin’.”
Dorothy, glancing at Mrs. Colkett, did not enter, but stepped to one
side and, leaning against the log wall, waited. The little man in the
worn alpaca suit was stopped as he turned to go in by the gaunt form of
his hostess.
“There ain’t no need to go in or to preach,” she said.
Upon this Dorothy plucked at his coat-skirt, and, much embarrassed, he
fell back, saying, “That’s as friends please.”
Then Joe came from the cow-shed and went in past his wife. As he went
by, he nodded cheerfully to Dorothy and to the preacher. “’Most ready;
won’t be long.”
Mrs. Colkett stood looking across the clearing. The preacher, uneasily
moving to and fro, at last approached her again. “My sister,” he said,
“the hand of the Lord has been heavy on this household of his people.”
From her great height Susan Colkett cast her eyes down on the wan little
person below her. “It is fit,” he went on, “that while—”
“Look here,” said Susan; “you’ve come to bury that child, and that’s all
you’re here for. Just set down and wait”; and so saying, she brought out
two crippled chairs.
Dorothy said, “No, I will stand.”
The preacher sat down without a word, and found occupation in keeping
his place, as the chair-legs bored unequally into the soft soil. At
last, greatly troubled, he looked toward Dorothy for consolation, and,
receiving none, at last fell on his knees in deep despair. “Oh, Lord!”
he cried, “move the heart of this woman that she may receive the message
of thy grace!” and on this Dory too knelt in the sunshine, while Susan
turned and went into the house.
Then there arose within the rude noise of loud hammering, and, utterly
confused, the unhappy preacher looked up, and saw that he was alone with
Dorothy.
“What manner of people are these?” he said, as they both arose. “I must
speak to her,” and he moved toward the door.
“I wouldn’t,” said Dorothy, touching his coat. “Not now. Another time.”
He said no more, and the pair stayed without, waiting with no further
words, while the hammering went on. At last it ceased. Joe came out,
wringing a finger. “I kind of mashed it,” he said, in an explanatory
voice. “Susie’s ready.” He went back, and soon came out again with the
white box held in front of him on his two outstretched arms.
The mother followed, looking straight before her—a strange,
high-colored, set face, the tightly shut jaw making hard lines in the
lower cheek-curves. The meager preacher came after with a book in his
hand, and Dorothy followed.
In the woods Joe stumbled once, and a moment after set down his strange
burden and wrung his hurt finger. Then he went on again into the deeper
woodland, and about two hundred yards from the house stopped and set the
box on a level stump. Before them were two crumbled mounds of earth, and
beyond a small open grave, not over-deep.
The clergyman came forward.
“I might put it in?” said Joe, interrogatively.
“Yes,” said Dorothy. “Let me help.” And, taking the coffin at each end,
they let it down, for the grave was shallow.
“Them roots is in the way; they bothered me when I was a-diggin’,” said
Joe.
“Hush!” exclaimed Dorothy. “Hush!”
As they stood up, the minister went on to read his simple burial
service. Susan Colkett paid, or seemed to pay, intense attention. At
last he ceased, and all stood still a moment in the deep wood-shadows,
for the twilight was near at hand. There was a little stir as Dorothy
took from her handkerchief a handful of roses and let them fall into the
open grave. Susan looked at her a moment, and then, turning to the
preacher, said, coldly:
“Is that all of it? I don’t want none left out.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t rich people have no more said than that?”
“No; that is all,” he replied, much astonished. “Wouldn’t you like me to
talk to you at the house!”
“No, I wouldn’t. My man he’ll pay you.” And she walked away. The
minister wiped his brow, and sat down on a stump, while Dorothy waited,
and Joe calmly began to fill up the little grave.
He paused once to give the minister the cost of his journey, and then
went on.
“Come,” said Mrs. Maybrook. “No; don’t go in,” she added, as they passed
the cabin. “Let her alone.”
“The Lord has made my errand hard,” he said.
“No; he hasn’t took a hand in the matter at all,” she said. “It’s the
devil! Come!” And they disappeared in the darkening wood-spaces.
Before Joe had quite done, he was aware of his wife again standing
beside him.
“What’s wrong?” he said. “Best wait in the house. I’ll come. And don’t
bother none for the supper. I’ll cook it.”
“Couldn’t you set a board over the boy?” she said.
“Yes.”
“They’re just buried like dead dogs!”
“I’ll git somethin’.”
“What’s the use, anyhow? If you were any good of a man, there’d be a
decent white stone like them Lyndsays has set.”
“Oh, I’ll find somethin’, Susie! I’ll think about it.” He was anxious to
get through with it all, and somewhere deep in his mind was moved by her
want.
“It ain’t no use thinking,” she said, “when you’ve got no money.” And
so, at last, she went away once more to the wretchedness they called
home, leaving him to complete his task.
It was now dusk. He sat down on a log, and wiped his brow with his
sleeve. There was a little tobacco left in his pouch. He lit a pipe, and
sat awhile in dull rumination, like some slow ox, recalling her words.
At last he took the pipe out of his mouth, and stood up, as one set on
the clear track of an idea. A difficulty occurred to him.
“I’ll do it. No one won’t know. There don’t nobody come here.” A moment
later a new obstacle arose is his mind, and he resumed his pipe and his
seat.
“That’ll do,” he said. “I’ll get Dory to help. She won’t think for to
suspect none.” And so, much cheered by the prospect of pleasing his
wife, he went away to the cow-shed.
His had been a poor, loveless life. An orphan boy, he had never
possessed ability or power to win affection or respect for anything
except his muscles. Yet a canine capacity to love without question was
in him, and the tall, gaunt woman who alone had put out a hand of
apparent trust to him had all of his simple attachment.
Now he extinguished his pipe, knocked it on a tree to shake out the live
ashes, put it in his pocket decisively, and went back to the house.
He had a sense of satisfaction in the notion that he would surprise his
wife with fulfilment of her desires: also he felt surprise, and as much
elation as he was capable of, at his own skill in seeing his way through
this enterprise. What she, the poor hurt mother, wanted was now in
single possession of a mind little able to transact mental business with
more than one importunate creditor at a time.
To take what is not your own is common enough. The higher criminal mind
disposes of the matter with some sophistry as to the right to have a
share in the unjust excess of another’s property. The utterly immoral
nature gives it no thought, save how to act with safety. The lowest type
of man is untroubled as to the ethics of thieving, and as little as to
personal results. The idea that another might suffer in proportion to
what his own wife would gain never passed the threshold of this poor
fellow’s consciousness. What he was about to do seemed to him easy and
safe. He was certain that Susie would like it, and would think him more
of a man. And that was all.