My friends, the Parasangs, both died last week. Mr. Parasang was carried off by a slight attack of pneumonia as dust is wiped away by a cloth, and Mrs. Parasang followed him within three days. He was in life a rather energetic man, and she always lagged a little behind him when they went abroad walking together, keeping pretty close to him, notwithstanding. So it was in death. It was the shock of the thing, they say, that killed her, she lacking any great strength; but to me it seems to have been chiefly force of habit and the effect of what romantic people call being in love. She was in love with her husband, as he had been with her. And what was the use of staying here, he gone?
They were buried together, and I was one of the pall-bearers at the double funeral; indeed, I was the directing spirit, having been so connected with the Parasangs that I was their close friend, and the person to whom every one naturally turned in the adjustment of matters concerning them. When Mr. Parasang died, the first instinct of his wife was to tell them to send for me, and when I reached their home—for I was absent from the city—I found that she had clung to and followed him as usual, as he liked it to be. It was what he lived for as long as he could live at all.
They had ordered a fine coffin for Parasang, and when I came he was lying in it. Mrs. Parasang was lying where she had died, in bed. And they had ordered another fine coffin for her. (Of course, when I refer to the bodies as Mr. and Mrs. Parasang it must be understood that I consider only the earthly tenements, for I am a religious man.) I did not like it. I went to the undertaker and asked him if he could not make a coffin for two. He answered that it was somewhat of an unusual order, that there were styles and fashions in coffins just as there are in shoes and hats and things of that sort, and that it would be a difficult work for him to accomplish, in addition to being most expensive. I did not argue with him at all, for I knew be had the advantage of me. I am not an expert in coffins, and, of course, could not meet him upon his own ground. If it had been the purchase of a horse or gun or dog, or a new typewriting machine, it would have been an altogether different thing.
I simply told the undertaker to go ahead and make such a coffin as I had ordered, regardless of expense. I wanted it softly cushioned, and I told him not to make it unnecessarily wide. I wanted them side by side, with their faces turned upward, of course, so that we could all have a fair last look at them, but I wanted them so close together that they would be touching from head to foot. I wanted it so that when they became dust and bone all would be mingled, and that even the hair, which does not decay for some centuries, which grows, you know, after death, would be all twined together.
The undertaker followed my instructions, for undertakers get to be as mechanical as shoemakers or ticket-sellers; but the relations of the Parasangs and close friends at home thought it an odd thing to have done. I overrode them and had things all my own way, for I knew I was right. I knew the Parasangs better than any one else. I knew what they would have me do were communications between us still possible.
There was something so odd about the love story of the Parasangs that it always interested me. It made me laugh, but I was in full sympathy with them, though sympathy was something of which they were not in need. The queer thing about it was their age.
Mr. Parasang and I were cronies. We were cronies despite the number of years which had elapsed since our respective births. He was seventy-eight. Mrs. Parasang was seventy-five. And they had been married but two years. I knew Mr. Parasang before the wedding, and it was because of my close intimacy with him that I came to know the relations between the two and the story of it. I was just forty years his junior.
I can't understand why the man died so easily. He was such a vigorous-looking person for his age, and seemed in such perfect health. He was one of your apparently strong, gray-mustached old men, and did not look to be more than sixty-five at most. His wife, I think, was really stronger than he, though she did not appear so young. It is often that way with women. The attack of pneumonia which came upon Parasang was not, the doctors told me, vicious enough to overthrow an ordinary man. I suppose it was merely that this man's life capital had run out. There is a great deal in heredity. Sometimes I think that each child is born with just such a capital and vitality, something which could be represented in figures if we knew how to do it; and that, though it is affected to an extent by ways of living, the amount of capital determines, within certain limits, to a certainty how long its possessor will do business on this round lump of earth. I think Parasang's time for liquidation had come. That is all. As for Mrs. Parasang, I think she could have stayed a little longer if she had cared to do so, but she went away because he had gone. One can just lie down and die sometimes.
I have drifted away from what I was going to say—this problem of dying always attracts—but I will try to get back to the subject proper. I was going to tell of the odd love story of the Parasangs, or at least what struck me as odd, because, as I have said, of their ages. There is nothing in it particular aside from that.
A little less than fifty years ago—that must have been about when Taylor was President—Parasang was engaged to marry a girl of whom he was very fond, and who was very fond of him. Well, these two, much in love, and just suited to each other, must needs have a difference of the sort known as a lovers' quarrel. That in itself was nothing to speak of, for most lovers, being young and fools, do the same thing. But it so happened that these two, being also high-spirited, carried the difference farther than is usual with smitten, callow males and females, and let the breach widen until they separated, as they thought, finally. And she married in course of time, and so did he. It's a way people have; a way more or less good or bad, according to circumstances. She lived with a commonplace husband until he died and left her a widow, aged sixty or thereabout. Mr. Parasang's wife died about the same time. What sort of a woman she was I do not know. I remember the old gentleman told me once that she was an excellent housekeeper and had the gift of talking late o' nights. I could not always tell what Parasang meant when he said things. He was one of the sort of old gentlemen who leave much to be inferred.