CHAPTER X
MORNING AGAIN
Death has its by-products, and the greatest of these is love. The best of human nature comes from its deep source to the surface; families are reunited; people grow gentle. Someone has vanished from among us. Now we know her as she truly was; the faults are forgotten, the dusty details lost; we see her whole life now, a great human round; we see her soul, miraculous and great. No one will ever fill her niche. Something has gone from us. Something has gone out of our house and our lives.
Now the mystery of life comes home to us. Here is the clay that once was woman. Whither has gone the woman? And to this end each one of us must come; through this strange change each one of us must pass. There will come a moment, real as this present moment, when each of us will meet the event. What next? Whither? Out of life we are born. Who shall say that we do not pass out into life? Who knows but what this mother is real as ever, the life enduring, the form changing? Who knows but what this air and this room are charged with her? Who knows but what, standing here at the coffin, we are steeped in her?
Gentle were the brothers with Edith; full of love and understanding. Gentle was Frank, renewed and purified. Gentle and wholly forgiving was Edith. Why bother about dusty human problems? Beneath all faults there was the divine. These men and this woman looked on each other now as souls--all human, all the same. They forgot the ugly frailties. And so Edith and Frank met heart to heart, soul to soul, and were each glad that the other lived and was near. In the presence of death all life is holy; we understand that the criminal, too, was a human being, that somewhere in him he carried about all miracles.
Mr. Grupp, the good man, spoke a few words at the head of the coffin the next evening. The brothers and Frank and Edith with bowed heads and open hearts stood about him. He spoke simply, and merely because the need was great, as he looked down on the still face:
“She was a good woman. Thirty years I’ve known her. She worked hard; she was very kind to people. She suffered much. Not for herself she worked. For her children, for her husband. Now she is gone. We shall never see her any more. She goes again with her husband. She was the best friend I had. Always I could come here and she was glad to see me. Now she will never be here any more.” The tears trickled and he let them course without shame. “She never thought of herself, but always of her girl and her boys. The best mother was she I knew. But now she is gone; she is dead. Dust to dust!” And then he spoke fervently in Hebrew, “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord!”
Friends and relatives called; Frank’s father and mother came, and the little thin woman took Edith to her heart. Zug slipped in, and wept in a corner. Edith went over to him:
“Mr. Zug, soon Frank and I will marry. You will call on us then?”
“God bless you!” said Zug, and went his way with handkerchief to eyes.
Nell came, too, for a moment, and kissed Edith, and called her a brave girl.
And so the two days passed over the darkened parlor, and the little group followed the body to the City of the Dead; ashes fell and flowers; the first spadeful of gravel, like hail on the heart; and the sweet Earth closed over the sweet Earth.
Then came the first empty night, with its gnawing pain, its sense of loss, its hollowness and vacancy. Spite of cheerful talk at supper, spite of gentleness and good humor, the house was empty. The place at table, the void bedroom, the still parlor, all showed a gash of loss. It was a restless night of heartache. But with morning the world cried out to youth again. Work had to be done; people met; hunger awoke again; the blood took its old stride. The city roared on unconscious of a name lost on the roll-call. The brothers went forth to work; Frank sallied down Grand Street; and Edith was busy with housework. And so all of them were sweetly dustied up with life again; the work in hand loomed large; one after another the divine angels of their natures sank back into the depths; one after another the old imps flew up and broke loose; and human were they, very human again--just people. Yet possibly a streak of something new remained, a new mellowness not quite lost.