The man closed the box as if he had given her time enough to weep, and the wailing woman went out.
“What becomes of the bodies of these poor unfortunates?” asked Penelope, with a catch in her voice.
“Most of ’em we give to the medical colleges as subjects. Yes, men and women, black and white alike. That nigger woman, who wouldn’t tell on the man who gave her a death stab, lying to the other side of the Park mystery girl, will be taken to a college to-night. The bodies not sold are all sent up to Hart’s Island, where they’re buried in a big trench.”
Penelope’s sympathetic nature quivered with pity by reason of what she had seen and heard. She secretly resolved to give the poor unknown girl a respectable burial, and to order some flowers to be strewed in the rough-boxes with the other unfortunates who would be taken to the Potter’s Field to-morrow.
“Death is a horrible thing,” she remarked sadly, as they filed through the iron doors again.
“It is, miss,” the keeper assented. “I’ve had charge of this here Morgue for these twenty years, still if I was to allow myself to think about death and the mystery of the hereafter, I’d go crazy.”
“But the thought of Heaven. It is surely some consolation,” faltered Penelope.
“Twenty years’ work in there,” nodding his head towards the throne where death sits always; where the only noise is the sound of the dripping water; “hasn’t left any fairy tales in my mind about what comes after. We live, and when we’re dead that’s the last of it. You can tell children about the ‘good man’ and ‘bad man’ and Heaven and—beggin’ your pardon—Hell, just the same as you tell them about Santa Claus, but when they grow up if they thinks for themselves they know its fairy tales—all fairy tales. When you’re dead, you’re dead, and that’s the last of it, take my word for that.”
Penelope was not a religious fanatic, but her few pious beliefs experienced a little resentful shock at the man’s outspoken words. She haughtily drew her shoulders up, the kind expression faded from her face, leaving it less attractive, and she was conscious of a little feeling of repulsion for the unbelieving Morgue keeper. Not that the keeper’s ideas were so foreign to those that had visited her own mind. She had many times felt dubious on such subjects herself, but she had always felt it to be her duty to kill doubt and trust in that which was taught her concerning the life hereafter.
Penelope joined her aunt and Richard Treadwell, where they stood under a shade tree opposite the Morgue waiting her.