by Thomas Wolfe
Such, indefinably and yet plainly, were the markings of these men—the legend written on their persons that spoke so clearly that it did not need to speak. It was as if the world’s coarse thumb which had so soiled them with its grimy touch, had also left upon them some of its warm earthiness, the redeeming virtues of its rich experience, its humor, wit, and understanding, the homely fellowship of all its pungent speech. Seen so, their presence here was an engaging one: people looked at them, and smiled, and felt a strange familiarity as if they had known all of them for years, and so knowing them, and what they were, were not afraid of them.
Two or three of them now approached the soda counter where Mrs. Jack and various other people were seated and began to interview some of the people there. The questions of these men seemed ludicrously inappropriate. They approached some of the younger, more attractive girls, found out if they lived in the building and immediately asked them—with a kind of naive eagerness, for, strangely, naiveté was also a characteristic of this cynical breed—if they were “in the Social Register.” If any of the girls admitted that she was in the Social Register, the Press would immediately demand her name and address, details of her parentage, and so on.
Many of the younger girls, excited at the prospect of having their names and pictures in the tabloid press, readily admitted, when asked, that they were in the Social Register, even though it was almost ludicrously apparent, from their beak-nosed physiognomies, that they could not have been. Meanwhile, one of the representatives of the Press, a rather battered looking gentleman with a bulbous red nose and infrequent teeth, had called the City Desk on the telephone, and was now engaged in reporting his findings to the man at the other end:
“—Sure, that’s what I’m tellin’ yuh—The police have arrived,” he went on in a rather important tone of voice that showed he was probably as much fascinated by his own journalese as any reader could be—“the police have arrived and thrown a cordon round the building—”
There was a moment’s pause at the conclusion of this item, but in a moment more the red nosed man rasped out irritably. “No—No—No!—Not a squadron! A cordon!—What’s’at? Cordon—I say!—C-o-r-d-o-n—cordon—For pete’s sake!” he went on presently, in a somewhat aggrieved tone of voice, “How long have you been workin’ on a newspaper, anyway?—Didn’t you ever hear of a cordon before?—Now, get this: Lissen—” he went on in a careful voice, glancing at some scrawled notes upon a piece of paper in his hand, “—Among the residents are included the names of many Social Registerites and others prominent among the younger set—What?—How’s that?” he said abruptly, rather puzzled—“Oh!—” He looked around briefly to see if he was being overheard, then lowered his voice and he spoke again: “Oh, sure!—Two!—Nah, there was only two—that other story was all wrong—Yeh—both of them were elevator men—” He lowered his voice a little more, then looking at the notes upon his piece of dirty paper, he read carefully, in lowered voice: “John Enborg- -age 64—married—three children—Lives in Jamaica, Queens—You got that?” he said quietly in a moment, then proceeded, “—and Herbert Anderson—aged 25, unmarried, lives with his mother, 841 Southern Boulevard, the Bronx—Have yuh got it?—Sure. Oh, sure!” Quietly after a moment’s pause, he looked around briefly again, then lowered his voice before he spoke again, “—No, they couldn’t get them out—They were on the elevators and they were goin’ up to get the tenants when the current was shut off—Sure: That’s the idea—They got caught between the floors—They just got Enborg out,” his voice sank lower, “They had to use axes to get in through the top—Sure—Sure.” He nodded quietly into the mouthpiece, “That’s it—smoke: Too late when they got to him—no, that’s all—just those two—no, they don’t know about it yet—the management wants to keep it quiet if they can—no, none of the tenants know it—what’s that? Heh? Speak louder, can’t yuh—you’re mumblin’ at me!—” He spoke sharply, irritably, then listened attentively for a moment—“Oh!—Yes, it’s almost over—Sure, it was tough—They had trouble gettin’ at it—It started in the basement, then it went up a flue and out at top—Sure, I know,” he nodded—“That’s what made it so tough!—The tracks are right below it—they were afraid to flood the basement, if they did, they’d flood two tunnels and four sets of tracks—They were afraid to risk it—Sure, they tried to get at it with chemicals—It’s going down now, but it’s been tough—Okay, Mac—Shall I hang around?—Okay,” he said at length, and hung up.
* * * * *
Mr. Jack and Ernie came back presently and rejoined the people in the drug store. They had met some old friends at the Ritz and had left Alma and two or three of her companions with them. The two men looked cheerful and were in good spirits: Their manner showed mildly and pleasantly that they had partaken of some refreshment on the way. Ernie greeted his mother with his customary bland and heavy “Oh Hello.” He was carrying a woman’s coat upon his arm and he now slipped it around her shoulders, saying: “Mrs. Feldman sent this to you, Mother. She said you could send it back tomorrow.”
“But how sweet of her!” cried Mrs. Jack, her little face beginning to glow and sparkle again with friendly warmth as she felt how good and kind and thoughtful everyone was in a time of hardship and of stress. “Aren’t people just the most—” she began very earnestly, but failed to finish, feeling a little inadequate—feeling hospitably, anyway, that people were “the most”—well, “the most something” anyway.
They went out on to the street again. People were beginning to straggle out of the store, watching and waiting on the corner. They were still held back by the police, but there were already unmistakable signs that the fire was under control, was, in fact, almost extinguished. The firemen had hauled in the great lines of hose and packed them away in the trucks. Most of the big fire machines had already gone and two or three more were now throbbing powerfully and in a moment more roared away with a sense of finality in their departure. In a very short time the street was clear. The remaining firemen were coming out of all sides of the building, packing up their equipment, and one by one the great trucks were thundering away. Presently the police on duty got the signal to allow the tenants to go back into the house again.
AFTER THE FIRE
• • •
THESE TWO TOGETHER
• • •
The fire was over. The people began to stream back across the street and through the arch-like entrances into the court, collecting servants, maids, cooks, chauffeurs, the scattered personnel of their establishments, as they did so. An air of authority and order had already been re-established. One could hear masters and mistresses giving orders to their servants, the cloister-like arcades were again filled with streams of shuffling people going back into their entrances.
But now the people were more orderly and assured. The confusion, bewilderment and excitement that had marked their first pell mell outpouring from the building had now disappeared. Indeed, the informality and friendliness of their first appearance seemed now to have vanished. A kind of ordered formality, a sense of cold restraint even, had come upon them. It was almost as if they were now a little ashamed of the emotions of excitement and danger which had betrayed them into injudicious cordialities, unwonted neighborliness. Each little group, master and mistress, servants and members of the family, had now collected somewhat frigidly into their own separate entity and were filing back to their cells in the enormous hive.
Mrs. Jack collected her own maids and Cook around her and gave them some instructions. Then, accompanied by her husband, Ernie, Miss Mandell, and the young man, she went in at her entrance. There was still a faint smell of smoke, slightly stale and acrid, but the power had been restored, the elevator was running again. She noticed with casual surprise that the doorman, Henry, took them up, and she asked him if Herbert had gone. He paused just perceptibly, and then said quietly: “Yes, Mrs. Jack.”
“You all must be simply worn out!” she said quickly, warmly, with her instant sympathy. “Hasn’t i
t been a thrilling evening?” she went on quickly, eagerly: “In all your life did you even know of such excitement, such confusion as we had tonight?”
Again, the man said: “Yes, Ma’am” in a tone so curiously unyielding, formal, that she felt stopped and baffled by it, as she had many times before. “What a strange man he is!” she thought. “And what a difference between people! How different he is from Herbert. Herbert is so warm, so jolly, so—so—human. You can talk to him. And this one—he’s—he’s so stiff, so formal: you can never get inside of him. And if you try to speak to him he snubs you—puts you in your place as if he doesn’t want to have to talk to you. How unfriendly!”
And for a moment she felt almost angry, wounded and rebuffed: She was herself a friendly person, and she liked people around her, even servants, to be friendly, too. But already her active and constantly inquiring mind was working loosely on the curious enigma of the doorman’s personality: “I wonder what is wrong with him,” she thought. “He seems always so unhappy, so disgruntled, nursing some secret grievance all the time. I wonder what has done it to him—how he got this way—Oh, well, poor thing, I suppose the life he leads is enough to turn anyone sour:—opening doors and calling cabs and helping people in and out of cars and answering questions all day long—But then Herbert has to do these things also, and he’s always so sweet and so obliging about everything!—”
And, giving partial utterance to her thoughts, she said: “I suppose Herbert will be back upon the job tomorrow?”
He made no answer whatever. He simply seemed not to have heard her. He had halted the elevator and opened the door at her own landing, and after a moment he said quietly: “This is your floor, Mrs. Jack.”
She was so annoyed for a moment after he had gone, that she halted in the little vestibule, turned to her family and guests with flaming cheeks, and said angrily:
“Honestly, that fellow makes me tired! He’s such a grouch. And he’s getting worse every day. It’s got so now he won’t even answer when you speak to him.”
“Well, Mother, maybe he’s tired out tonight with all the excitement of the fire,” suggested Ernie, more pacifically.
“Maybe it’s all our fault?” said Mrs. Jack ironically, then with a sudden flare of her quick and jolly humor, she shrugged comically and said: “Vell, ve should have a fire sale!”—which restored her to good humor, and a full-throated appreciation of her own wit.
They opened the door then and went in. Everything was curiously unchanged—curiously, because it seemed to Mrs. Jack so much had happened since their excited departure. The place smelled close and stale and there was still an acrid scent of smoke. But by this time the maids were streaming in from the service entrance at the back and Mrs. Jack directed them to throw up the windows.
The big living room also now had a curiously stale, disordered look: the chaos of Mr. Logan’s performance had never been cleared away, and now it rather startled her. So much had happened, it seemed, since Mr. Logan and his celebrated circus of wire dolls. Mrs. Jack stopped short and bit her lip, then turned away with a sharp feeling of vexation and distaste.
She called out sharply to the girls and ordered them to clean up the mess; then feeling rather angry with herself and Mr. Logan and with the general state of the living room—she could not quite say why—she turned and walked rapidly away toward her own room.
There things were better. Her pleasant room had not changed a bit. It still had its customary appearance of chaste austerity. The windows, according to her instructions, had been thrown up and the stale smoke-acrid air, with its unpleasant reminders of an extinguished fire, was becoming cool and sweet again. She took off her coat and hung it up in the closet, and carefully brushed and adjusted her somewhat disordered hair. When she walked out into the hall again everything was looking better. The air was clearing out: it seemed fresher and more clean. The girls had tidied up the living room and were now, in the full process of interrupted routine, busy cleaning up the dining room. Lily Mandell who had gone into the guest room for her wraps, now came out wearing her splendid cape and said goodbye.
“Darling, it has been too marvelous,” she said throatily, with weary arrogance. “Fire, smoke, Piggy Logan, everything—I’ve simply adored it!” she said while Mrs. Jack shook with laughter. “Your parties are too wonderful!” she said. “You never know what’s going to happen next.” Turning to the young man, she extended a limp hand, and murmured: “So nice to have seen you again—I’m staying at the Chatham. Couldn’t you come in sometime for a drink: I should so like to talk to you.”
Then she turned and said good-bye to Mr. Jack and Ernie, who were still attentively awake but obviously ready for their beds.
There was an air of finality about everything. The party was over, the fire was over, the remaining guests were ready to depart, and the men were waiting to go to bed. Miss Mandell kissed Mrs. Jack goodbye affectionately and in a moment more was taken down in the elevator.
Ernie kissed his mother goodnight and went off to bed. In a moment Mr. Jack, also kissing his wife formally and lightly upon her rosy cheek, said goodnight casually to her lover, and departed. Lovers could come, and lovers could go, but Mr. Jack was going to get his sleep. The young man was also going now, but she, taking him by the hand, said quickly, coaxingly, “Don’t go yet. Stay a few minutes, dear, and talk to me.”
For a moment she looked around her with an air of thoughtful appraisal. Everything was just the same. The place looked just the same as it had looked when she had first examined it that evening before the people came, before Mr. Logan and his horrible performance, before the fire, all the excitement, all the confusion. Now, it was just the same. If anyone came in here now he would never dream that anything had happened.
And wasn’t everything so strange? Wasn’t everything so strange—and yet so—so—kind of simple? And wasn’t that what made everything in life so thrilling?
Well!—This thought was uppermost in her mind when she turned to him again:
“Wasn’t it all so strange?—And wonderful?” she said. “Don’t you think it was a wonderful party? And that everybody had a good time?—And the fire! Wasn’t the fire the strangest thing!—I mean, the way it happened”—again her tone had grown a little vague and puzzled as if there was something she could not quite express—“I don’t know, but the way we were all sitting here, after Mr. Logan’s performance—Then all of a sudden the fire alarms, and then the big trucks going past in the street—I don’t know,” again her tone was vague and puzzled. “There was something so—sort of strange—about it—The fire was right here in our building—And for a long time we didn’t know about it—We thought the trucks were going somewhere else—I mean it’s all so strange—It shows!” Her low brow furrowed with a look of difficulty and again her tone was vague and puzzled as if she were trying to find words to express the emotion she had defined as “strange”—“I don’t know—but it sort of frightens you, doesn’t it?—No, not the fire!” she spoke quickly—“That didn’t amount to anything. No one got hurt—it was terribly exciting, really—I think everyone was thrilled!—What I mean,” again her brow was furrowed with a look of vagueness and of puzzled difficulty as she sought for words—“When you think of how sort of big—things have got—I mean the way people live nowadays—these big buildings where they live—And how a fire can break out in the same building where you live and you won’t even know about it—I mean, there’s something sort of terrible about it, isn’t there?—And God!” she burst out suddenly with a kind of sudden exclamatory eagerness that was so warmly, naturally a part of her—“In all your life, did you ever see the likes of them? I mean the people in this house!—The kind of people who live here—The way they all looked—The way they looked, pouring out into the court—Have you ever dreamed—” Her excitement and eagerness as she spoke these words were almost comical, she actually gesticulated with her hand in order to give her meaning emphasis—“Well, it was the most astonishing—the queerest—
I mean, in all your days you’d never dream that there were people like this—I mean,” she said confusedly—“it’s—it’s—”
She paused, holding his hand, and looking at him tenderly, then, with a rapt look on her face, like an enchanted child, she whispered:
“—Just you and I—That’s all that matters—They’re all gone now—the whole world’s gone—There’s no one left but you and I—Do you know,” she said in a quiet tone, “that I think about you all the time? All that I do is think about you all the time. When I wake up in the morning the first thought that comes into my head is you—and I. And from that moment on I carry you around inside me all day long. I carry you around inside me—here,” she laid her hand upon her breast and looked at him like a good child who believes religiously its own fable, “I carry you inside me all the time,” she went on in a kind of rapt whisper. “I have an angel that I carry around inside me here,”—again she laid her hand upon her breast—“and the angel that I carry around in me is—you. You fill my life, my heart, my spirit, body, and my being,” the woman cried. “Qh, do you ever think that there was ever since the world began another love like this—two other people who ever loved each other as you and I? If I could play I’d make of it great music! If I could sing I’d make of it a great song! If I could write I’d make of it a great story—but when I try to play or write or try to sing, I can think of nothing else but you and I—Did you know that once I tried to write a story?” Smiling, she inclined her rosy little face towards his, and put her hand up to her ear and said: “Did I ever tell you the time I tried to write a story? And I was sure that it would make a wonderful story. It seemed to fill me up. I was ready to burst with it. But when I tried to write it all that I could say was ‘Long, long into the night I lay, thinking of how I should tell my story.’”—She laughed suddenly, richly—“And that’s as far as I could get. But wasn’t that a grand beginning for a story? And now at night when I try to go to sleep, that old line of the story that I could not write, comes back to me and haunts me, and keeps ringing in my ears: ‘Long, long into the night I lay—thinking about you all the time.’ For that’s the story.” She came closer to him, and lifted her rose face to him—“Ah, dearest, that’s the story. I keep thinking of you all the time. And that’s the story. In the whole world there’s nothing more.”