The Place of Darkness

WHEN the melancholy old factory bell had started beating out the call for another day of work, and the still drowsy operatives, trooping from the tenement blocks into the half light of a dull blue November morning, came shuffling silently along the damp sidewalks toward the factory gate, it began to be known that a man had been found dead in the Irish tenements. Later they heard his name. It was Jerry the Priest. The oddest of all the odd forms of the factory town — the wretch who would have been a priest — would be seen no more upon their streets. Never again would the children follow him as he wandered down the sidewalk, a wavering, uncertain collection of rusty black clothes, or the boys jeer him from the street corners, or the young girls turn and call their shrill taunts after him. He had shuffled into the dingy door of his father’s tenement, and disappeared forever.

Old Bart Sullivan had waked at the earliest rising bell and stepped unsteadily out into the living-room of the tenement. The place was sick with the odor of a burnt-out lamp. By the first slaty light of the early morning from the windows he had seen the dark figure of his son, fallen face downward on his arms on the white oilcloth-covered table. He was not drunk this time, but dead. His hands and face were already cold. Beside him on the table lay a little empty vial.

In the Polish section men die as they have lived, like animals; in the French quarters dying is a passing event. But here, in the crowded Irish tenements, where life seems so sordid and monotonous and commonplace, death arrives in all its majesty and terror and impressiveness. In the mind of the Irish peasantry, huddled together in this little space, the most solemn ceremonials of their ancient church, the half-heathen customs of a warlike and passionate past, — the wake, the candles, the semibarbaric wailing of the women, traditions sent down in the blood from the childhood of the race, — all cluster about the end of life, and demand an honorable death for every individual, no matter how valueless his living.

Old Bart Sullivan tottered down the street to the undertaker’s, muttering to himself. He was arguing against what they had told him at the house, — that an official must be called in before the boy could be buried, a doctor required by law, who should decide whether his boy had committed suicide. But every one could see at a glance it had all been accidental. What was the use of such fooling ?

The undertaker sat lolling back in his chair when the old man entered. He was a tall, slender Irishman, dressed in the perennial garments of his profession, — a long, limp, black Prince Albert coat, left unbuttoned and hanging loosely from his shoulders, and a soiled and carelessly tied white lawn tie. Beneath his coat-skirts, after the manner of a person partly dressed for a masquerade, showed his coarse brown striped trousers and a pair of light yellow shoes.

“I’ve come to get you to bury the bye,” said the caller monotonously. “He died this mornin’ from takin’ poison.”

“They was just tellin’ me, Bart,” said the undertaker sympathetically. “I’m sorry for you. It ’s hard for yourself and the wife.”

“It is. He was a good, koind bye. We ’ll be wantin’ you to give him a good funeral. Will you come right over ? ” asked the father, a little anxiously.

“Yes; I ’ll be there later.”

“What ’s the rayson you can’t come now ? ” asked the old man suspiciously.

“We ’ll have to wait for the medical examiner, you know.”

“What ’s this about a midical examiner? What must we be waitin’ for him for ? ”

“So ’s to be sure he did n’t kill himself.”

“Kill himself! ” repeated the father excitedly. “Who’s been tellin’ you he’s killed himself? ”

“Nobody has. Only the examiner’s got to see him. It ’s the law.”

“Kill himself? ” argued the other. “ Why should he kill himself, — a young mon loike thot ? You know better than thot, Dan Healey.”

At last, after the undertaker had repeatedly explained the matter, he went away, still muttering to himself. He had gone but a few steps when he returned.

“I’ve always been good frinds with ye, Dan Healey ”

“You have.”

“Yis, and yer father before ye. I’ve known ye, Dan, since ye was a little lod, no higher than me knee. If the mon should ask ye,” he pleaded, “ye ’ll say a good word for us. Ye ’ll tell him he didn’t kill himself, won’t ye, now? ’T is all foolishness, ye know thot. Ye ’ll say so, won’t ye, Dan? ”

“I will,” said the undertaker.

He stood in his doorway as the infirm figure shuffled away. Across on the outer edge of the sidewalk was Tim Mahoney, the tall, angular town policeman, lazily twirling his stick.

“The old man takes it hard,” volunteered the officer.

The undertaker nodded. The two men watched the old figure passing slowly down the street.

“I saw Jerry last night,” announced the policeman. “I was just comin’ on the beat at twelve o’clock, when he come pokin’ up the street. I says to meself then, ‘ We ’ll be haulin’ you out o’ the canal one of these nights, me boy.’ ”

“You don’t think he killed himself, do you? ” asked the undertaker.

“No, I guess ’t was accidental, all right. I was down there this mornin’, and I guess prob’ly he took it by mistake. ”

“He was a queer boy, Jerry.”

“You ’re right, he was. To see him comin’ up the street, mumblin’ that Latin stufi’ to himself, you ’d think he was n’t in his senses.”

“But really, if you ’d speak to him, he was all right. He ’d been a smart feller if he could only ’a’ left it alone.”

“When you think about it, he did have a kind of look like a priest, after all.”

“Yes, he did.”

“Kind o’ silent and dignified like, in spite of everything. He could n’t ever give the idea of it up, either. You remember when he first come back, disgraced for life, you might say, he must get a job at Father Murphy’s just so’s to be near the church. Then, after that, they had him in the church as janitor till that night he got drunk and come near blowin’ up the steam heatin’ boiler, and they had to let him go. Ever since then he ’s been tryin’ to get the job again, just the same. And every Sunday mornin’ and evenin’ you’d see him goin’ to church. Along toward the last of it, specially, you ’d never go there but you’d see him sittin’ there in one of the back seats. He was a good, pious feller when he was sober. And they say he could read Latin like a priest. ”

“That’s what he could; and speak it, too. I’ve seen him down to Ash’s gettin’ it off in great shape. The gang down there used to get him to give it to ’em for the beer. He ’d do anything you ’d ask him for a drink. I remember one time they had him goin’ through the mass for ’em. You must ’a’ heard of it. ’T was along in the evenin’, and they was all of ’em pretty well loaded. They had him dressed up in one of them oilcloth covers for a billiard table, and given him one of them patent heer bottles for a censer, and he was swingin’ that and goin’ through it in great shape. Just then Father Murphy goes along by the door and sees him. Say, you ought to been there that time. He don’t wait a minute ; he walks right into the place and hauls the cover off him right there. Say, but he was fierce. And it was that next Sunday ” —

“Here he comes now, ” said the undertaker. “I ’ll bet he’s goin’ down there.”

The two men went silent as the portly figure of the priest approached. “ Goodmornin’, sir,” they said, touching their hats reverently as he passed composedly along.

“He’s a strict man,” said the policeman, when the clergyman was out of hearing. “ If he made up his mind ’t was a suicide, the old man won’t be havin’ his funeral.”

“Well, I ’ll be goin’ along up to the station, ” he continued, with a yawn. “It’s time I was gettin’ to bed.”

The medical examiner himself was away; the active, sharp-faced young physician who took his place got the call for the case just before his breakfast. He ate his meal leisurely, then jumped into his waiting buggy, and drove briskly toward the factory town. Within half an hour more he stopped at the police station beneath the town hall, and entered the black walnut railing of the inclosure of the chief of police.

“Good-mornin’, doctor,” said the official, rising.

“Good-morning. You ’ve got a suicide case here, haven’t you? ”

“Suicide or accident; they think now it was an accident.”

“How ’d it happen? ”

“Well, it seems this feller, Jerry Sullivan, come along late last night after the saloons closed, with more or less drink in him, and tins mornin’, when the family got up, they found him dead in the kitchen, lyin’ up against the table. He must ’a’ taken this poison at night and died there. But not one of ’em heard a thing all night. Now, the way they say it happened is like this: here were two bottles on a shelf, — one of ’em he had to gargle his throat with, and the other was some poison for a cat. And as far ’s they can see, he just reached up when he was a little muddled with drink and got the wrong bottle. I had a man see the druggist where he got the stuff, and he says he sold it to him three days ago. So, if he ’d really meant to kill himself, he ’d done it before he did. That ’s the way we look at it.”

“What was he, a laboring man ? ”

“No, one of these fellers ’round town. Half the time we ’d have him here for drunkenness, and the other half he ’d be bangin’ ’round Tim Ash’s place. Jerry the Priest, they called him. You must have seen him ’round here, — a little, thin feller, with a black derby hat on the back of his head and his chin down into his coat-collar; walked kind of loose and bent over, a feller about thirty-five, I should say. They trained him first for the priesthood, and then he took to drinkin’, and ever since then he’s been hangin’ ’round here makin’ trouble for us. He was quite high educated, too. He knew his Latin as well as anybody. When he was down at the jail they say he used to help the jailer’s daughter with her lessons right along.”

The doctor started to go.

“When you go along down, ” said the chief, having directed him, “you might stop at Healey’s, the undertaker. He knows the family pretty well; he might tell you something more about it.”

The undertaker, standing in front of his place, greeted the physician with indolent deference. He had little to add to the circumstances.

“I guess it was accidental,” he said. “Everybody seems to think so. But even if there was a little chance of it, I’d give ’em the benefit of the doubt. They ’re pretty good clean kind of people, and that thing means a good deal to us Catholics, you know.”

The young doctor did not know, but he did not consider it worth while to say so. He nodded and drove on.

As he approached the tenement of Bart Sullivan two small boys were playing before it.

“Come on away from here, Jimmy,” the older one was saying; “ there ’s a feller dead in there. We must n’t play here to-day.”

“Who’s dead ? ” asked the other lagging behind.

“Jerry the Priest; he’s took poison.”

“What for ? ” asked the younger one blankly.

“He’s killed himself.”

“I wouldn’t like to be him,” added the elder in a hoarse and instructive whisper, “ if he really meant to. He won’t never go to heaven. That’s what my mother says. Oh, here’s the doctor that’s come to see him now,” he said, looking up and scampering toward the curbstone.

The two dirty children, forgetting their awe-stricken consideration of the suicide’s fate, stood absorbed in the magnificence of the shining Goddard and the sleek-haunehed bay while the doctor alighted.

As the physician approached the tenement there was the sound of some one leaving inside the doorway.

“Very well, if it is as you say, ” said an imperative voice, “there will be no trouble about it. Good-morning.”

“God bliss you, your riverence, ” said another voice.

A large man, with a broad, severe face, dressed in the neat black garments of the priest, appeared in the doorway of the sordid hall, and walked deliberately down the outside steps of the block.

He accosted the doctor with urbane politeness. “Are you the medical examiner, sir ? ”

“I’m acting as such to-day.”

“Oh yes.” He paused a minute. “Well, sir, I am the priest of this parish. I ’m pleased to meet you, sir. In regard to the case of this young man here, there is some reason to believe he has taken his own life intentionally. Yet, on the whole, I am inclined to think his death was accidental. Now, will you do me a favor, sir ? When you make your decision, will you be so kind as to leave it with Mr. Healey, the undertaker, as you ’re going by ? It would be a great accommodation. You will? Thank you very much, sir. Good-morning. ”

The priest waved his hand in a dignified gesture of farewell, and passed on; the doctor entered the tenement.

A slight old man with a small and patient face and a pleasant-featured girl greeted him at the door. Beyond, ranged stiffly along the wall, were three large women with shawls about their heads.

“I am the medical examiner,” the doctor stated simply.

“Oh, sor, will ye be sated,” said the man, with the deep and instinctive courtesy of the Irish peasant. “Norah, take the gintleman’s hat.”

The shawled women rose together and silently and awkwardly filed out of the room,

“You ’re come to see the bye, I suppose, sor, ” said the old man when they were gone. “Ah, he was a foine bye, doctor. Always koind and plisant to his mother and me. Ah, sor, and the learnin’ and education of him. This accidint thot ’s killed him’s a bitter blow for us.”

“Tell me how it happened.”

“You see, to tell ye the truth, sor, the bye was a drinkin’ mon. ’T was somethin’ thot come on him, sor, and he could n’t help. But last noight he ’d been havin’ more ’n he should. And whin he come home, here stood the two bottles on the shelf, — wan of them was Something he ’d been takin’ for his throat, sor, and the other was somethin’ he ’d got to kill a cat we had. And I suppose, sor, bein’ muddled with the drink, and bein’ in the dark so, he takes from the wrong bottle; and we never hears from him till we finds him in the mornin’, lyin’ there with his face to the tayble.”

“Did he ever speak of killing himself? ”

“Why should he spake of it, sor, if he niver felt loike it. ”

“Then you don’t think he could possibly have meant to take it ? ”

“To kill himself, ye mane? Aw, no, sor, what rayson would he have to do thot ? He was young and strong and full of loife loike yerself. You would n’t be wantin’ to kill yerself, would ye? True for you, ye would not. ’T was the same with him, sor. How old will you be, sor? Thirty-wan? Ah, now think of thot. Ye ’re both the same age. Ah, yer father and mother are after bein’ proud of ye, sor. Ye know thot, yerself. ’T was the same way with us.

“The bye was a grand student; ’t was in him, sor. He had an oncle in the old country thot was a praste before him. From the toime he was a little lod, he had the look of the praste on him. He was so quiet and dignified loike. So thin we sint him to school to study for the prastehood. Ah, sor, we was thot proud of him. Whin he ’ d come home from the school with his black suit and his foine hat, he was the admiraytion and invy of ivery wan in the tiniments. There was others had their byes studyin’ to be lawyers and tachers, and the loike of thot, but none thot would be studyin’ for the prastehood. And thin, sor, he took to the drink, as I told ye, and they had to sind him home. But whin he come back, sor, still he w’as the same — always radin’ and recitin’ in the Latin, loike the rale prastes at the altar. He niver gave up all hopes of it.

“Ye’re a scholar, yerself, sor. I want to show ye somethin’ so ye ’ll see for yerself.” The old man, rummaging around in his pockets, produced a piece of cheap, coarse, blue-lined letter paper. “Here it is, sor,” he said, handing it to the doctor.

“Oh, father! ” said the girl, rising quickly from her chair.

“Oh, don’t be fussin’, Norah; lit the doctor rade it. Maybe he might till us what it says.

“Ye see, sor,” he continued, with a childish pride, “we found this on the tayble by him. ’T is somethin’ he would be writin’ whin the shtuff overcome him. Ye see, sor, what a scholar he was. ’T is in Latin he wrote it.”

Across the top of the soiled and crumpled paper, sprawled in the large and broken hand of a man shaken with dissipation and despair, ran the writer’s farewell, the last hoarse cry of a ruined life: —

“Miserere mei, Deus, miserere mei: quoniam in te confidit anima mea. ”

The doctor, reading it, knitted his brows and hesitated before he spoke.

“What does it say, sor? ” asked the old man.

“It means something like this: ‘ Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me: for my soul trusteth in thee.'舡

The quick-witted Irish girl, catching its significance immediately, bent down and started sobbing, with her face hidden in her apron. Her father stood dazed.

“Would ye be so koind, sor, as to say thot again ? ” he asked.

The doctor did so.

“I think I see, sor, ” said the father at last. “It manes he took the shtuff on purpose. And I showed ye the paper, meself! ”

“I suppose, sor,” he went on, after a strained silence, “you ’ll have to be reportin’ thot he killed himself ? ”

The physician nodded.

“But after all, sor,” argued the other, rallying a little from the blow, “it don’t prove it, does it? Ye can’t tell, sor. He might have been only writin’, just as any other man — just for practice, sor.”

The doctor shook his head.

“Ah, sor, but even if it did,” pleaded the other, “why must you rayport it? What difference does it make to you, sor? ”

The young doctor started to get up.

“Ah, sor, wan moment — sit down just wan moment. We ’ll not be askin’ you to do anything you can’t rightly do; we ’ll not be wantin’ you to be actin’ dishonorable to your duty. But ye can’t be goin’ to lave us this way, sor. Think of the bye, just your own age. Ye know how your own mother ’d feel with you a suicide, and your grave in The Place of Darkness.”

“The place of darkness ? ”

“And sure and you ’ll know of thot ? ”

“You ’ll forgive my father, ” said the girl; “he forgets you ’re not Irish like himself. ’T is the unconsecrated ground he manes, sor, — the part that ’s just beyond the holy ground in the cimetry. It’s there they bury the lost, sor, — the poor little children that was never baptized, and them that left the holy church while livin’, and them that killed themselves. The place of darkness they call it. For them that ’ll be laid there will niver see the light. It ’ll be only darkness for them forever, sor. For they ’ll be buried in their sins.”

“’T is a pitiful place, sor, ” broke in the old man, “behint a little hill, — a poor, dismal place, without gravestones mostly, or ony of the daeincies of dyin’; nothin’ but the drear graves of the little small children, and the poor did souls thot ’ll niver be at rist. ”

“’T is specially hard for my mother, sor.”

“Ah, sor, ’t would not be so bad but for thot. Years ago, whin we were first in this country, our little baaby died, just wan or two days after it was born. And she bein’ sick and me foolish, ’t was niver baptized, and they put it there. Ah, sor, she’s niver forgot thot day.

“And thin the bye came, — a foine, bright lod he was. From the first she was plannin’ for him. She ’d niver be satisfied till she saw him a praste, sayin’ the mass at the altar. She would be workin’ for him all the wake and prayin’ for him all the Sundays. And now he ’s lyin’ there, and they ’ll be puttin’ him beside the baaby — and ’t will kill her, unliss — unliss you ’ll help us, sor. ”

The young doctor, with the weight of his delegated duty heavy upon him, rose abruptly from his chair.

“You ought not to have shown me this, ” he said.

“I know it, sor. ’T is all my fault. But now it’s done, sor, can’t you help us ? It’s for the wife I ask it.”

“It’d break her heart, sor,” broke in the girl.

“She’s in there with the bye, now, ” continued the old man, “sittin’ in a daze loike. She don’t understand really what killed him. If you don’t rayport it, sor, she ’ll niver know.”

“Ah, doctor,” sobbed the daughter, “’t is disgrace and dishonor and sorrow for us, ye hold in yer hand. Destroy it, sor, for the love of God.”

“The woife is old and fayble, now; she’s worked herself to dith for the bye, sor. Ye won’t rayport it, sor ; ye ’ll say ye won’t ? ”

“God bliss you, sor,” said the girl, “you couldn’t do it; you couldn’t do it.”

“Has any one but me seen the paper ? ” asked the doctor in a dry voice.

“No, sor,” said both eagerly.

“Before I do anything I must see him,” said the physician.

He passed out into the other room. An old woman, seamed and bent, grotesquely ugly even in her grief, rocked to and fro by the body of her son.

The examiner gazed a moment at the dead face; the cause of death was written plainly there. Then he returned into the other room and closed the door behind him.

He stood silent for a moment in the centre of the room, then reached his hand out toward the girl.

“ Here is the paper, ” he said abruptly; “ destroy it. ”

She took it eagerly and went into the other room; in a few moments she reappeared.

“What did you do with it? ” he demanded.

“I burned it up, sor, in the kitchen foire; it ’s destroyed entirely.”

“All this,” said the physician impressively, “ must never go outside this room.”

“No, sor, niver,” both answered earnestly.

“And not one word about this paper — ever.”

“Niver wan word, sor; so God hilp us.”

The visitor started to go.

“And you’ll not rayport it? ” faltered the old man, making himself doubly sure.

“No.”

“ God bliss you, sor; God bliss you; God bliss you.”

The girl, relieved of the strain, broke out again into hysterical weeping; the old man caught eagerly at the doctor’s hand.

He drew it away, hurried down the stairs, and drove quickly from the place, — from the sight of the mute old man in the doorway and the rosette of cheap crape beside him and the weeping of the girl inside. When he passed the undertaker’s he signaled for him to come out.

“I ’ve given them the benefit of the doubt,” he said sharply. “Tell the priest I think it ’s all right. Goodday.”

On his way home he noticed he was passing by the Catholic cemetery. Urged by a sombre curiosity he drove inside. Before him, across an open space, lay the great democracy of the deed, — a few ugly, pretentious granite monuments in front, but behind them, in thick-sown squares, the simple resting places of the common people.

Beyond these, on the brow of a little declivity, white wooden crosses stretched their appealing arms over the graves of the very poor. Over their surface, irregularly disposed, appeared thick glasses, and broken pitchers, bowls and saucers of coarse white ware, full of withered remembrances of flowers; and occasionally a glass crucifix, leaning up against the wooden head-board, — the crude, cheap offerings of poverty living to poverty dead.

From here the side-hill dropped down to a damp corner of a little piece of woods. It was “The Place of Darkness.” Halfway down the barren slope huddled in a little colony the outcasts of heaven and of earth, — poor, pathetic little graves of unnamed children, so small as scarcely to be seen; and beside and above them the great uncouth mounds of the unknown and wretched dead, who had outraged the kindness of God beyond forgiveness. No grass or flower had been planted in this place; only the melancholy succession of mounds appeared, with the naked earth upon them pitted and channeled and broken with the rain. There were no tokens of remembrance for these dead. At head and feet was their only claim to individual memory, — two wooden pegs stereotyped with a number. Over all the neglected place — the great graves and the small — brooded the monotony of hopelessness and the terror of a nameless death. Only, at the further end of the lines, one little mound of the fresh, yellow soil had been raised, evidently since the morning, and patted into an odd regularity with the spade, and at its top lay a meagre bunch of violets.

As he turned to go, his eye swept again across the resting places of the more fortunate dead, — the well-remembered grounds, the flowers on the graves, the tiny flags above the soldiers, the host of little marble stones with their chiseled hopes of immortality. Here was peace and honor and hope. He turned once more to look down on the unconsecrated hillside, — there, dishonor and remorse and hopelessness. The wicked and unfortunate must not be punished in their life alone. Here the great, inscrutable, irresistible religious power reached out beyond the close of life and visited its judgments of banishment and terror and despair upon the offending dead before the fearful vision of the living. He felt the influence himself. What a place for a despairing woman to leave her dead!

He called to his horse and drove along. As he passed slowly down the sandy road, musing on the events of the morning and the part he had taken in them, he nodded in silent self-approval. Then he straightened up, tucked the lap-robe around him, and drove sharply toward his office.

George Kibbe Turner.