Morticians' Journal Tells Of Unfortunate Romance

Editor's Note. The Dodge Chemical Company, a leading manufacturer of embalming chemicals, publishes a monthly trade journal, the DE-CE-CO Magazine, which contains news of interest to members of the funeral profession and technical articles for embalmers. A regular feature of each issue is the column "This I Remember" by Jerome Burke. Each month Mr. Burke reminisces about persons who, through one misfortune or another have come under his professional cure. In the February, 1964, DE-CE-CO Magazine, Mr. Burke's memories concerned the sad demise of a Harvard man and a Radcliffe girl; the column is reprinted here with the kind permission of the Dodge Chemical Company. The cartoons accompanying the text were drawn by Henry Schwartz and did not appear with the original article--A.T.W.

I first saw Alice Holmes and Eric Atwood when they were playing the leading roles in the Spring play at Fairview High School. Monica and I had fifth row center seats in the school auditorium and, as we've done from the beginning, held hands from the moment the lights went down. The play was nothing much, a revival of an old Broadway comedy based on the tried and true formula of boy - meets - girl - boy - loses - girl - boy - gets - girl. But it was a delight to see how earnestly the youngsters threw themselves into their parts.

Alice was a pretty thing, with blond hair verging on copper tones. There was a sort of fairylike fragility about her arching, slender neck and delicately cut profile, and though she was not really small she seemed so, for she was slender and small-boned, not like a Watteau shepherdess, but like a little girl, and every move she made was graceful and unhurried as grain bending in the wind. Eric was not really handsome, but he had a clean-cut youthfulness, sleek hair, clear eyes and skin, and a certain litheness in his movements that bespoke the practiced athlete.

"Och, Jerry avick," Monica whispered as the lights went up between the second and third acts, "those children are so much in love it almost hurts me to watch them."

As usual, Monica was right. From the first kiss they'd exchanged there had been an obvious enthusiasm in their caresses; the near-impersonality of the typical theatre kiss was wholly lacking. When their lips met they clung together in a kiss with none of the essentials of a kiss left out.

It's wonderful to be young and in love," I told her.

Monica squeezed my hand. "It's wonderful to be in love, period," she corrected.

***

Spring ripened into summer. Alice and Eric received their diplomas and made plans for college. Eric had been accepted by Harvard, and despite her parents' desire that she go to Vassar, Alice insisted on Radcliffe. A fairly competent baseball pitcher can throw a stone from Radcliffe's campus to the Harvard Yard.

Eric's father had given him a Volks-wagen convertible as a graduation present, and the shiny little red vehicle became an integral part of the city's traffic, always with the same two passengers.

One evening Eric failed to come home for dinner. "I'm worried," Mrs. Atwood confessed. "Eric's a good driver, but there are so many careless youngsters behind steering wheels these days..."

"Probably over at the Holmes's for dinner," her husband cut in. "He's seeing too much of Alice, if you ask me. College is a serious business--a fulltime job--and if they keep on as they're going now he'll get a chuck-ticket from the School. Love's grand, as the feller says, but love and serious study just don't mix.

Mrs. Atwood made no answer. Instead she called the Holmes house on the 'phone.

"No, Alice hasn't come home either, yet," Mrs. Holmes answered. "I'm beginning to be worried."

Seven o'clock came, then eight, finally nine. When it was almost ten, the Atwood and Holmes' phones rang nearly simultaneously, and Mr. Atwood and Mr. Holmes received identical messages: "Dad, we're going to be married right away."

"You're going to do no such dam' thing;" Mr. Atwood told his son.

I'll beat the stuffing out o' you if you don't come home this minute!" Mr. Holmes threatened his daughter.

Alice and Eric emerged from the adjoining 'phone booths from which they'd called their respective homes.

"How'd they take it?" Alice asked.

"Not too happily," Eric answered.

"How'd your dad receive the glad news?"

Alice giggled. "He promised to beat me."

However, the youngsters found that deciding to get married and carrying out the decision were very different things.

When they applied to a rural justice of the peace he gave them a shrewd, cynical look. "How old are you?" he asked.

"I'm twenty-one and the young lady is nineteen," Eric lied.

"Yeah? And I'm the President of France," the justice answered. Now get going and don't try any tricks on any other J.P. Don't you know it's perjury to misstate your age when applying for a marriage license?

The youngsters were president, and every squire to whom they applied refused them. By the time they made their third attempt the first justice had reported them, and a police lookout had been set up.

The third justice to whom they applied invited them to wait a few minutes while he filled out the necessary forms, slipped out of the room, and telephoned the nearest police station. Alice and Eric suffered the indignity of waiting under guard at the police barracks until their fathers came for them.

***

"You're not going to Radcliffe," Mr. Holmes told Alice next day. "I've made arrangements with a convent school over at Waterville. The sisters will see that you behave yourself."

"Son, I'd hoped to sing Fair Harvard at your graduation and greet you as a fellow alumnus," Mr. Atwood told Eric, "but in the circumstances I think it best you matriculate at UCLA." He broke off with a chuckle. "There are scads of pretty girls in Los Angeles. Before the first semester's over you'll have forgotten there ever was an Alice Holmes."

***

Alice and Eric were virtual prisoners for the next two weeks. If Eric telephoned Alice he was curtly told she wasn't home. If she called him, she received the same treatment. They wrote each other, and their letters were intercepted.

But finally, just as September had begun to tint the dogwood leaves, they managed a meeting. A little after nine o'clock that evening their father received identical telegrams:

"YOU WILL FIND IT HARDER TO FOLLOW US THIS TIME."

A highway patrolman brought the news to the Atwood and Holmes houses and broke it as tactfully as possible. Somewhere Eric had procured some photographic developer, a compound more than fifty per cent potas. sium cyanide. The children had been found dead in Eric's parked car, and there was ample evidence that, in their case, at least, the popular belief that cyanide of potassium causes quick and painless death was untrue.

***

It was pure chance that brought the the Holmes and Atwood families to my place at the same time. For a moment they glared at each other, then in the twinkling of an eye the two women were in each other's arms, sobbing heart-brokenly. The two men exchanged a silent handclasp.

"Will it be possible--can you make it possible for them to be seen?" Mrs. Holmes asked me through her tears.

"Of course," I promised. "There will be no trace of what the poor child suffered to be seen."

"Oh, thank you Mr. Burke," she sobbed.

At the door of the display room the bereaved parents paused for a whispered conference, then Mr. Atwood told me. "We've decided to have a joint funeral with identical caskets, Mr. Burke."

A rosewood case attracted Mrs. Holmes, but I dissuaded her. "I believe blond mahogany would be preferable," I told her. "It would not be too effeminate for Eric nor too masculine for Alice." And so it was agreed.

***

The funeral was one of the most largely attended we had ever conducted. But the turn-out did not mislead me. The dramatic manner of the youngsters' going and the way the press played it up brought out a horde of morbid curiosity-seekers none of whom knew either Alice or Eric by sight in life.

As the strains of the organ died away and the mourning party prepared to enter the waiting cars, Mr. Atwood held out his hand to Mr. Holmes. "Bill," he said, and his voice trembled, "we played this thing all wrong. We should have let them have each other. We've been two old fools."

'Two damned old fools," Mr. Holmes agreed."

Copyright 1964 by the Dodge Chemical Company, Boston, Mass