Thomas Wolfe, page 300
The scene of which they were a part was an amazing one. As if it had been produced by the combining genius of a Shakespeare or a Breughel, the whole theatre of human life was in it, so real and so miraculously compressed that it had the nearness and the intensity of a vision. The great hollow square formed by the towering walls of the building was filled with people in every conceivable variety of dress and undress. And from two dozen entry ways within the arched cloisters that ran around the court on all four sides, new hordes of people were now constantly flooding out of the huge honeycomb to add their own color and movement and the babel of their own tumultuous tongues to the pageantry and the pandemonium already there. Above this scene, uplifted on the arches of the cloisters, the mighty walls soared fourteen stories to frame the starry heavens. In the wing where Mr. Jack’s apartment was the lights were out and all was dark, but everywhere else those beetling sides were still blazing with their radiant squares of warmth, their many cells still burning with all the huge deposit of their just-departed life.
Except for the smoke that had been in some of the halls and stairways, there was no sign of fire. As yet, few people seemed to comprehend the significance of the event which had so unceremoniously dumped them out of their sleek nests into the open weather. For the most part they were either bewildered and confused or curious and excited. Only an occasional person here and there betrayed any undue alarm over the danger which had touched their lives and fortunes.
Such a one now appeared at a second-floor window on the side of the court directly opposite the Jacks’ entry. He was a man with a bald head and a pink, excited face, and it was instantly apparent that he was on the verge of emotional collapse. He threw open the window and in a tone shaken by incipient hysteria cried out loudly:
“Mary! . . . Mary!” His voice rose almost to a scream as he sought for her below.
A woman in the crowd came forward below the window, looked up, and said quietly:
“Yes, Albert.”
“I can’t find the key!” he cried in a trembling voice. “The door’s locked! I can’t get out!”
“Oh, Albert,” said the woman more quietly and with evident embarrassment, “don’t get so excited, dear. You’re in no danger—and the key is bound to be there somewhere. I’m sure you’ll find it if you look.”
“But I tell you it isn’t here!” he babbled. “I’ve looked, and it’s not here! I can’t find it! . . . Here, you fellows!” he shouted at some firemen who were dragging a heavy hose across the graveled court. “I’m locked in! I want out of here!”
Most of the firemen paid no attention to him at all, but one of them looked up at the man, said briefly: “O.K., chief!”—and then went on about his work.
“Do you hear me?” the man screamed. “You firemen, you! I tell you . . . !
“Dad. . . . Dad—” a young man beside the woman on the ground now spoke up quietly—“don’t get so excited. You’re in no danger there. All the fire is on the other side. They’ll let you out in a minute when they can get to you.”
Across the court, at the very entrance from which the Jacks had issued, a man in evening clothes, accompanied by his chauffeur, had been staggering in and out with great loads of ponderous ledgers. He had already accumulated quite a pile of them, which he was stacking up on the gravel and leaving under the guardianship of his butler. From the beginning this man had been so absorbed in what he was doing that he was completely unconscious of the milling throng around him. Now, as he again prepared to rush into the smoke-filled corridor with his chauffeur, he was stopped by the police.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the policeman said, “but you can’t go in there again. We’ve got orders not to let anybody in.”
“But I’ve got to!” the man shouted. “I’m Philip J. Baer!” At the sound of this potent name, all those within hearing distance instantly recognized him as a wealthy and influential figure in the motion picture industry, and one whose accounts had recently been called into investigation by a board of governmental inquiry. “There are seventy-five millions dollars’ worth of records in my apartment,” he shouted, “and I’ve got to get them out! They’ve got to be saved!”
He tried to push his way in, but the policeman thrust him back.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Baer,” he said obdurately, “but we have our orders. You can’t come in.”
The effect of this refusal was instantaneous and shocking. The one principle of Mr. Baer’s life was that money is the only thing that counts because money can buy anything. That principle had been flouted. So the naked philosophy of tooth and claw, which in moments of security and comfort was veiled beneath a velvet sheath, now became ragingly insistent. A tall, dark man with a rapacious, beak-nosed face, he became now like a wild animal, a beast of prey. He went charging about among the crowds of people, offering everyone fabulous sums if they would save his cherished records. He rushed up to a group of firemen, seizing one of them by the arm and shaking him, shouting:
“I’m Philip J. Baer—I live in there! You’ve got to help me! I’ll give any man here ten thousand dollars if he’ll get my records out!”
The burly fireman turned his weathered face upon the rich man. “On your way, brother!” he said.
“But I tell you!” Mr. Baer shouted. “You don’t know who I am! I’m——”
“I don’t care who you are!” the fireman said. “On your way now! We’ve got work to do!”
And, roughly, he pushed the great man aside.
Most of the crowd behaved very well under the stress of these unusual circumstances. Since there was no actual fire to watch, the people shifted and moved about, taking curious side looks at one another out of the corners of their eyes. Most of them had never even seen their neighbors before, and now for the first time they had an opportunity to appraise one another. And in a little while, as the excitement and their need for communication broke through the walls of their reserve, they began to show a spirit of fellowship such as that enormous beehive of life had never seen before. People who, at other times, had never deigned so much as to nod at each other were soon laughing and talking together with the familiarity of long acquaintance.
A famous courtesan, wearing a chinchilla coat which her aged but wealthy lover had given her, now took off this magnificent garment and, walking over to an elderly woman with a delicate, patrician face, she threw the coat over this woman’s thinly covered shoulders, at the same time saying in a tough but kindly voice:
“You wear this, dearie. You look cold.”
And the older woman, after a startled expression had crossed her proud face, smiled graciously and thanked her tarnished sister in a sweet tone. Then the two women stood talking together like old friends.
A haughty old Bourbon of the Knickerbocker type was seen engaged in cordial conversation with a Tammany politician whose corrupt plunderings were notorious, and whose companionship, in any social sense, the Bourbon would have spurned indignantly an hour before.
Aristocrats of ancient lineage who had always held to a tradition of stiff-necked exclusiveness could be seen chatting familiarly with the plebeian parvenus of the new rich who had got their names and money, both together, only yesterday.
And so it went everywhere one looked. One saw race-proud Gentiles with rich Jews, stately ladies with musical-comedy actresses, a woman famous for her charities with a celebrated whore.
Meanwhile the crowd continued to watch curiously the labors of the firemen. Though no flames were visible, there was plenty of smoke in some of the halls and corridors, and the firemen had dragged in many lengths of great white hose which now made a network across the court in all directions. From time to time squadrons of helmeted men would dash into the smoky entries of the wing where the lights were out and would go upstairs, their progress through the upper floors made evident to the crowd below by the movement of their flashlights at the darkened windows. Others would emerge from the lower regions of basements and subterranean passages, and would confer intimately with their chiefs and leaders.
All at once somebody in the waiting throng noticed something and pointed toward it. A murmur ran through the crowd, and all eyes were turned upward searchingly to one of the top-floor apartments in the darkened wing. There, through an open window four floors directly above the Jacks’ apartment, wisps of smoke could be seen curling upward.
Before very long the wisps increased to clouds, and suddenly a great billowing puff of oily black smoke burst through the open window, accompanied by a dancing shower of sparks. At this the whole crowd drew in its collective breath in a sharp intake of excitement—the strange, wild joy that people always feel when they see fire.
Rapidly the volume of smoke increased. That single room on the top floor was apparently the only one affected, but now the black and oily-looking smoke was billowing out in belching folds, and inside the room the smoke was colored luridly by the sinister and unmistakable glow of fire.
Mrs. Jack gazed upward with a rapt and fascinated expression. She turned to Hook with one hand raised and lightly clenched against her breast, and whispered slowly:
“Steve—isn’t it the strangest—the most—?” She did not finish. With her eyes full of the deep sense of wonder that she was trying to convey, she just stood with her hand loosely clenched and looked at him.
He understood her perfectly—too well, indeed. His heart was sick with fear, with hunger, and with fascinated wonder. For him the whole scene was too strong, too full of terror and overwhelming beauty to be endured. He was sick with it, fainting with it. He wanted to be borne away, to be sealed hermetically somewhere, in some dead and easeful air where he would be free forevermore of this consuming fear that racked his flesh. And yet he could not tear himself away. He looked at everything with sick but fascinated eyes. He was like a man mad with thirst who drinks the waters of the sea and sickens with each drop he drinks, yet cannot leave off drinking because of the wetness and the coolness to his lips. So he looked and loved it all with the desperate ardor of his fear. He saw the wonder of it, the strangeness of it, the beauty and the magic and the nearness of it. And it was so much more real than anything imagination could contrive that the effect was overpowering. The whole thing took on an aura of the incredible.
“It can’t be true,” he thought. “It’s unbelievable. But here it is!”
And there it was. He didn’t miss a thing. And yet he stood there ridiculously, a derby hat upon his head, his hands thrust into the pockets of his overcoat, the velvet collar turned up around his neck, his face, as usual, turned three-quarters away from the whole world, his heavy-lidded, wearily indifferent eyes surveying the scene with Mandarin contempt, as if to say: “Really, what is this curious assembly? Who are these extraordinary creatures that go milling about me? And why is everyone so frightfully eager, so terribly earnest about everything?”
A group of firemen thrust past him with the dripping brass-nozzled end of a great hose. It slid through the gravel like the tough-scaled hide of a giant boa constrictor, and as the firemen passed him, Hook heard their booted feet upon the stones and he saw the crude strength and the simple driving purpose in their coarse faces. And his heart shrank back within him, sick with fear, with wonder, with hunger, and with love at the unconscious power, joy, energy, and violence of life itself.
At the same moment a voice in the crowd—drunken, boisterous, and too near—cut the air about him. It jarred his ears, angered him, and made him timorously hope it would not come closer. Turning slightly toward Mrs. Jack, in answer to her whispered question, he murmured in a bored tone:
“Strange? . . . Um . . . yes. An interesting revelation of the native mœurs.”
Amy Carleton seemed really happy. It was as if, for the first time that evening, she had found what she was looking for. Nothing in her manner or appearance had changed. The quick, impetuous speech, the broken, semi-coherent phrases, the hoarse laugh, the exuberant expletives, and the lovely, dark, crisp-curled head with its snub nose and freckled face were just the same. Still there was something different about her. It was as if all the splintered elements of her personality had now, in the strong and marvelous chemistry of the fire, been brought together into crystalline union. She was just as she had been before, except that her inner torment had somehow been let out, and wholeness let in.
Poor child! It was now instantly apparent to those who knew her that, like so many other “lost” people, she would not have been lost at all—if only there could always be a fire. The girl could not accept getting up in the morning or going to bed at night, or doing any of the accustomed things in their accustomed order. But she could and did accept the fire. It seemed to her wonderful. She was delighted with everything that happened. She threw herself into it, not as a spectator, but as a vital and inspired participant. She seemed to know people everywhere, and could be seen moving about from group to group, her ebony head bobbing through the crowd, her voice eager, hoarse, abrupt, elated. When she returned to her own group she was full of it all.
“I mean! . . . You know!” she burst out. “These firemen here!—” she gestured hurriedly toward three or four helmeted men as they dashed into a smoke-filled entry with a tube of chemicals—“when you think of what they have to know!—of what they have to do!—I went to a big fire once!—” she shot out quickly in explanatory fashion—“a guy in the department was a friend of mine!—I mean!—” she laughed hoarsely, elatedly—“when you think of what they have to——”
At this point there was a splintering crash within. Amy laughed jubilantly and made a quick and sudden little gesture as if this answered everything.
“After all, I mean!” she cried.
While this was going on, a young girl in evening dress had wandered casually up to the group and, with that freedom which the fire had induced among all these people, now addressed herself in the flat, nasal, and almost toneless accents of the Middle West to Stephen Hook:
“You don’t think it’s very bad, do you?” she said, looking up at the smoke and flames that were now belching formidably from the top-floor window. Before anyone had a chance to answer, she went on: “I hope it’s not bad.”
Hook, who was simply terrified at her raw intrusion, had turned away from her and was looking at her sideways with eyes that were almost closed. The girl, getting no answer from him, spoke now to Mrs. Jack:
“It’ll be just too bad if anything is wrong up there, won’t it?”
Mrs. Jack, her face full of friendly reassurance, answered quickly in a gentle voice.
“No, dear,” she said, “I don’t think it’s bad at all.” She looked up with trouble in her eyes at the billowing mass of smoke and flame which now, to tell the truth, looked not only bad but distinctly threatening; then, lowering her perturbed gaze quickly, she said to the girl encouragingly: “I’m sure everything is going to be all right.”
“Well,” said the girl, “I hope you’re right. . . . Because,” she added, apparently as an afterthought as she turned away, “that’s Mama’s room, and if she’s up there it’ll be just too bad, won’t it?—I mean, if it is too bad.”
With this astounding utterance, spoken casually in a flat voice that betrayed no emotion whatever, she moved off into the crowd.
There was dead silence for a moment. Then Mrs. Jack turned to Hook in alarm, as if she were not certain she had heard aright.
“Did you hear—?” she began in a bewildered tone.
“But there you are!” broke in Amy, with a short, exultant laugh. “What I mean is—the whole thing’s there!”
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CHAPTER 20
OUT OF CONTROL
Suddenly all the lights in the building went out, plunging the court in darkness save for the fearful illumination provided by the bursts of flame from the top-floor apartment. There was a deep murmur and a restless stir in the crowd. Several young smart alecks in evening clothes took this opportunity to go about among the dark mass of people, arrogantly throwing the beams of their flashlights into the faces of those they passed.
The police now began to move upon the crowd, and, good-naturedly but firmly, with outstretched arms, started to herd everybody back, out of the court, through the arches, and across the surrounding streets. The streets were laced and crisscrossed everywhere with bewildering skeins of hose, and all normal sounds were lost in the powerful throbbing of the fire engines. Unceremoniously, like driven cattle, the residents of the great building were forced back to the opposite sidewalks, where they had to take their places among the humbler following of the general public.
Some of the ladies, finding themselves too thinly clad in the cold night air, sought refuge in the apartments of friends who lived in the neighborhood. Others, tired of standing around, went to hotels to wait or to spend the night. But most of the people hung on, curious and eager to see what the outcome might be. Mr. Jack took Edith, Alma, Amy, and two or three young people of Amy’s acquaintance to a near-by hotel for drinks. The others stayed and looked on curiously for a while. But presently Mrs. Jack, George Webber, Miss Mandell, and Stephen Hook repaired to a drug store that was close at hand. They sat at the counter, ordered coffee and sandwiches, and engaged in eager chatter with other refugees who now filled the store.
The conversation of all these people was friendly and casual. Some were even gay. But in their talk there was also now a note of perturbation—of something troubled, puzzled, and uncertain. Men of wealth and power had been suddenly dispossessed from their snug nests with their wives, families, and dependents, and now there was nothing they could do but wait, herded homelessly into drug stores and hotel lobbies, or huddled together in their wraps on street corners like shipwrecked voyagers, looking at one another with helpless eyes. Some of them felt, dimly, that they had been caught up by some mysterious and relentless force, and that they were being borne onward as unwitting of the power that ruled them as blind flies fastened to a revolving wheel. To others came the image of a tremendous web in which they felt they had become enmeshed—a web whose ramifications were so vast and complicated that they had not the faintest notion where it began or what its pattern was.
