by Thomas Wolfe
“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Logan cheerfully, “but fire?” he said, in a puzzled tone, “What fire? Is there a fire?”
“I think the building is on fire,” said Ernie smoothly, but with an edge of heavy irony, “so perhaps we’d better all get out—that is, unless you prefer to stay.”
“On no,” said Mr. Logan cheerfully, and clumsily getting to his feet, “I am quite ready, thank you, except for changing to my clothes—”
“I think that had better wait,” said Ernie.
“Oh those girls!” cried Mrs. Jack suddenly, and snapping the ring on and off her finger, she walked quickly toward the dining room. “Molly—Janie—Lily! Girls! We’re going to have to get out—there’s a fire somewhere in the building. You’ll have to get out until we find out where it is!”
“Fire, Mrs. Jack?” said Molly rather stupidly, staring at her mistress, and Mrs. Jack, glancing quickly at her, saw her dull eye, and her flushed face, and thought: “Oh, she’s been at it again!”
“Yes, Molly, fire” she said, and impatiently, “Get all the girls together and tell them they’ll have to come along with us—and Oh! Cook!—” she cried quickly—“Where is Cookie? Go get her someone. Tell her she’ll have to come too!”
The news obviously confused and upset the girls. They looked helplessly at one another then they began to move aimlessly around, as if no longer certain what to do.
“Shall we take our things, Mrs. Jack?” said Molly, looking at her stupidly. “Will we have time to pack?”
“Oh, of course not, Molly!” cried Mrs. Jack impatiently. “We’re not going anywhere! No one is moving out! We’re simply getting out till we find out where the fire is and how bad it is!—And Molly, please get Cook and bring her with you! You know how rattled and confused she gets!”
“Yes’m,” said Molly, and staring at her helplessly, “and is that all?”
“Yes, Molly, of course, and do please hurry! We’ll be waiting for you here!”
“Yes’m,” said Molly as before, hesitated a little, then said—“And will that be all, mum?—I mean,” and gulped, “will we need anything?”
“Oh, Molly, no, in heaven’s name!” cried Mrs. Jack, beginning to slip the ring on and off her nervous hand. “Nothing except your coats. Tell all the girls and Cook to wear their coats!”
“Yes’m,” said Molly, dumbly, hesitated, and in a moment, looking fuddled and confused, she went uncertainly through the dining room to the kitchen.
Ernie meanwhile had gone out into the hall and was ringing the elevator bell. The others joined him there. He rang persistently and presently the voice of John, the elevator man, was heard shouting up the shaft from a floor or two below: “All right! All right! I’ll be right up, folks, as soon as I take down this load!”
The sound of people’s voices, excited, chattering, could be heard down the shaft on the floor below, and presently the elevator door closed and the elevator went away.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Jack, her family and her guests, waited in the hall. The smell of smoke in the hallway was now quite pronounced and although no one was seriously alarmed all of them were conscious of the nervous tension. Presently the sound of the elevator could be heard again as it came up. It mounted and then suddenly paused somewhere half a flight or two below them. The elevator man could be heard working his lever and fooling with the door. There was no response. Ernie rang again impatiently and hammered on the door, and in a moment more the man shouted up so clearly that all of them could hear him very plainly: “Mr. Jack, will you all please use the service entrance? The elevator’s out of order: I can’t go any farther.”
The people gathered in the hall now looked at one another with an air of bewildered and rather troubled surprise. In a moment, Ernie said: “Well, that’s that. I suppose that means we’ll have to walk down.”
He and his father put on derby hats, donned overcoats, and without another word started down the hall.
At this moment all the lights went out. The place was plunged in inky blackness. There was just a brief, a rather terrifying moment, when the women caught their breaths sharply. In the darkness the smell of the smoke was perceptively stronger, more acrid and biting than it had ever been. Molly moaned a little and the maids began to mill around like stricken cattle. But they quieted down when they heard the comforting assurance of Ernie’s quiet voice speaking in the dark: “Mother, we’ll have to light candles. Can you tell me where they are?”
She told him. He reached into a table drawer, pulled out a flashlight, and went back through the dining room into the kitchen. In a few moments he reappeared with a box of tallow candles. He gave everyone a candle and lighted them. The procession was really now a somewhat ghostly one. The women lifted their candles and looked at each other with an air of bewildered surmise. Mrs. Jack, deeply excited, but still retaining her customary interest in events, held up her candle and turned questioningly to the young man who was her lover. “Isn’t it strange?” she whispered—“Isn’t it the strangest thing? I mean the party—all the people—and then this”—And holding up her candle she looked about her at that ghostly company and suddenly he was filled with love and tenderness for her, because he knew the woman like himself had the mystery and strangeness of all life, all love in her heart.
In the steady flame of their upheld candles the faces of the maids and Cookie showed dazed, bewildered, and somewhat frightened. Cookie grinned confusedly and muttered jargon to herself. Mr. Jack and Ernie, their derby hats fixed firmly now on top of their well-kept heads, raised their candles and led the way. The women followed after, and the young man came last of all. Mrs. Jack, just in front of her young lover, was bringing up the end of the procession behind her guests and had reached the door that opened out to the service landing when she noticed a confusion in the line and glanced back along the hallway, and saw two teetering candles disappearing in the general direction of the kitchen. It was Cook and Molly.
“Oh Lord!” cried Mrs. Jack with an accent of exasperation and despair. “What on earth are they trying to do? Oh, Molly!” She raised her voice sharply. Cook had already disappeared but Molly heard her and turned in a bewildered way. “Oh, Molly, in God’s name, where are you going?” cried Mrs. Jack impatiently.
“Why—why, mum,—I just thought I’d go back here and get some things,” said Molly in a confused and thickened tone.
“No, you’re not either!” cried Mrs. Jack furiously thinking bitterly at the same moment, “she probably thought she’d sneak back there and get a drink.” “You don’t need any things.” She lifted her voice sharply again. “You come right along with us! And where is Cook?” she cried in an exasperated tone, then seeing the two bewildered looking girls, Lily and Janie, milling around her helplessly, she seized them impatiently and gave them a little push towards the door: “Oh, you girls get out!” she cried. “What are you gawking at?”
Then she came fuming back along the hall in the direction of her lover, who had gone after the bewildered Molly, herded her down the hall, and was now going into the kitchen to find Cook. Mrs. Jack followed him into the kitchen with her candle in her hand, said anxiously, “Are you there, darling?” And then raising her voice sharply: “Oh, Cook! Cook! Where are you?”
Suddenly, like a spectral visitant, still holding her candle, and flitting from room to room down the narrow hallway of the servant’s quarters Cook appeared. Mrs. Jack cried out angrily: “Oh, Cookie! What in the name of God are you doing!” At the same time she thought to herself again, as she had thought so many times before, “She’s probably an old miser, I suppose she’s got her wad hoarded away back there somewhere. That’s why she hates to leave.”
“Cook!” she cried again sharply with peremptory command. “You’ve simply got to come on now? We’re waiting on you.” Cook glided away down the hallway with spectral stealth and disappeared into her room. After another fuming silence Mrs. Jack turned to the young man, they regarded each other for a moment in that strange light and circu
mstance with perplexed and troubled faces and suddenly both laughed explosively.
“My God!” cried Mrs. Jack. “Isn’t it the damnedest—”
At this moment Cook, flitting like a phantom, appeared again; they yelled at her as she flitted away and followed her into one of the maids’ bedrooms and caught her in the act of locking herself away into a bathroom. “Cook!” cried Mrs. Jack, angrily.
“You’ve simply got to come on now!”
Cook goggled at her and sneered infuriatingly, and then muttered some incomprehensible jargon, in an ingratiating tone.
“Do you hear, Cook?” Mrs. Jack cried furiously. “You’ve got to come now! You can’t stay here any longer.”
“Augenblick! Augenblick!” muttered Cook cajolingly—In a moment she reappeared again, thrusting something into her bosom, and still looking unwillingly behind her, she was still obviously unwilling to leave, but allowed herself to be prodded, herded, pushed, and propelled down the servants’ hallway and out into the main part of the apartment.
When Mrs. Jack got out into the broad front corridor again she found to her consternation that although the others had gone out, Molly had not yet made her departure and that the other two maids had sidled back into the hallway and were huddled together talking in dazed whispers. When they saw Mrs. Jack and Cook they began to sidle toward their mistress as if attracted by a magnet.
“Oh, no, you’re not either!” she cried furiously. “You girls are not coming back in here! You get out now—this instant!”
And herding Cook before her, and shooing the others along as if she were mothering a flock of silly chickens, she drove them down the hall and through the door on to the service landing.
The others were now gathered here, waiting while Ernie tested the bell of the service elevator. There was no response in reply to his repeated efforts and in a few moments he remarked: “Well, I suppose there’s nothing for us to do now except to walk down.”
Mr. Jack had apparently reached this conclusion on his own account and had started down the nine flights of concrete stairs that led to the ground floor and safety. In a moment all the others followed him.
THE FIRE
• • •
THE OUTPOURING OF THE HONEYCOMB
• • •
The electric lights in the service hallways were still burning dimly. But the smell of smoke had noticeably increased. The smoke, in fact, had now become quite dense and filled the air with floating filaments and shifting plumes that made breathing acrid and uncomfortable.
And the service stairs from top to bottom was providing an astounding spectacle. Doors were opening now on every floor and other tenants of the building, and their servants and their guests, were coming out to swell the tide of refugees which now marched steadily downstairs.
It was an extraordinary and bizarre conglomeration—a parade of such fantastic quality as had never been witnessed in the world before. And it was a composite of classes, types, and characters that could have been found no where else in the world at the time save in such a building as this. It is probable that most of these people had never seen their neighbors before now. But now, because excitement and their need for communication had broken through the walls of their reserve, they all showed a spirit of fellowship, of friendliness, and of help which that enormous honeycomb of life had never seen before.
It was an astounding aggregation. There were people fully attired for the evening in splendid evening dress, and beautiful women blazing with jewels and wearing costly wraps. There were other people who had apparently gone to bed when the fire alarm had sounded, and who were now attired in pajamas, slippers, dressing gowns, kimonos, or whatever easy and convenient garment they could snatch up in the stress and excitement of the moment. There were young people and there were old people. There were people of every kind and quality and age and physical variation.
And in addition to these there was a babel of strange tongues, the excited jargons of a dozen races. There were German cooks and there were French maids. There were English chauffeurs and there were Irish serving girls. There were Swedes and Danes and Italians and Norwegians, with a sprinkling of white Russians. There were Poles and Czechs and Austrians, Negroes, and Hungarians; and all of these poured out on the landing stages of the service stairway helter-skelter, were poured out in a noisy, chattering gesticulating tide to join in with their lords and masters, united now in seeking refuge, their interests all united now in their common pursuit of safety.
As the refugees neared the ground floor, helmeted and coated firemen began to come up the stairs. A few policemen came up after them and these men tried in various ways to allay any panic or alarm that anyone may have felt.
“It’s all right, folks! Everything’s okay!” one glib policeman cried cheerfully as he came up past the members of Mrs. Jack’s party. “The fire’s over now.”
These words, spoken really for the sake of quieting confusion and alarm and of expediting the orderly progress of the tenants in the building, had an opposite effect from the one which the big policeman wanted to produce. One of the male members of Mrs. Jack’s party, the young man, who was bringing up the end of the procession, paused upon hearing the policeman’s reassuring words, spoke to the others and turned, about to retrace his way upstairs again.
As he did so, he saw that the effect upon the policeman had been alarming. The man was stationed half a flight above him on the landing, and as he started to mount the stairs again, he saw the policeman was making frantic gestures to him and looking at him with an agonized face, the whole effect of which was silently and desperately to entreat him not to come back any further or to encourage any of the others to come back, but to leave the building as quickly as possible.
So warned and so exhorted, the refugee turned again and hastened down the stairs. As he did so, he could hear some tapping and hammering noises from the service elevator shaft. He paused and listened for a moment: the tapping began, then stopped—began again—and stopped again.
The space outside the great apartment building, or rather between it—for the tremendous building was constructed in the shape of a hollow square—was now a wonderful spectacle. No more imposing stage for the amazing scene could have been provided. This great central court or hollow was covered for the most part with loose gravel and there was also two or three terraces or earthy beds of flowers and plants built up above the general level, and surrounded by low walls.
The sides of the tremendous building the whole way around were flanked by a broad brick pavement on which opened at evenly spaced intervals the entrances into the big apartment house and by arches which also ran the whole way around and flanked the walk. The effect of this arrangement was to give the whole place, court and all, something of the appearance of an enormous cloister—a cloister different, vaster, and more modern than any other one which had been seen, a cloister whose mighty walls soared fourteen flights into the air, and whose beetling sides were still blazing with all the thrilling evocation of night lights, one thousand radiant squares of warmth, of wealth, of passion, beauty, and of love, one thousand cells still burning with all the huge deposit of their still-recent, just-departed life, with a whole universe of flesh, and blood, a world incarnate with all the ecstasy, anguish, hatred, joy, and vexed intrigue that life could know, or that the heat and hunger of man’s high enfamished soul could ever compass—with all the magic, all the loveliness and grace, the whole sky-flung faery of the marvelous, the nocturnal, the unceasing everlasting city.
And this great cloistered space was now filled surely with one of the strangest companies of the devout which any cloister had ever seen—a company of all sizes, kinds, and ages, dressed variously in costumes that went all the way from full evening dress to simply pajamas, from the bare back and sleeveless arms of a lady’s splendid gown to the modest uniform of a maid, and from white ties and full tails to a chauffeur’s livery. Here, around the four sides of their great cloister, pouring out of two dozen entr
y ways in a milling and gesticulating stream, adding constantly to the shuffling, bewildered, motley crowd that packed the gravel court, the babel of their own tumultuous tongues, a horde of people were now constantly flooding out of the huge honeycomb and adding their numbers to the assembled crowd.
Seen so, the tremendous pageantry of the scene was overwhelming in the range, the power, the variety, and the miraculous compression of its reality and beauty, and, like every high and ultimate reality, the scene had in it something of the nearness, the intensity of a vision, a nearness and intensity that was so wonderful, so real, that it attained an almost supernatural, unbelievable quality. Anyone looking at that scene would feel instantly, and with a still wonder in the heart, that he would never see such a thing again—that here, miraculously compressed, was assembled before him the whole theatre of human life—a universe such as few people ever see in a whole life time, and which can be brought before them only by the tremendous vision, the combining genius of a Shakespeare or a Brueghel.
It was really like the scene of an appalling shipwreck—one of those great shipwrecks of modern times, where a great liner, still ablaze with lights along the whole stern’s sweep of her superhuman length, her life gored out upon an iceberg, keeling slowly to the racing slant of her proud funnels with her whole great company of people—the crew, the passengers, the rich, the poor, the mighty and the lowly—all the huge honeycomb of life that goes down to the bottom of a great ship’s hollowed depths—assembled now, at this last hour of peril, in a living fellowship—the whole family of earth, and all its classes, at length united on these slanting decks.
This scene here now in this great cloister was like this—except that the ship was this enfabled rock beneath their feet, the ship’s company the whole company of life, of earth, and of the swarming and unceasing city.