You Can't Go Home Again (40 page)

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 the charities with a celebrated whore.

Meanwhile the crowd continued to watch curiously the labours 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 towards it. A murmur ran through the crowd, and all eyes were turned upwards searchingly to one of the top-floor apartments in the darkened wing. There, through an open window four floors directly above the Jack’s apartment, wisps of smoke could be seen curling upwards.

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 coloured luridly by the sinister and unmistakable glow of fire.

Mrs. Jack gazed upwards 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 forever more 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 ardour 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 round 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 towards Mrs. Jack, in answer to her whispered question, he murmured in a bored tone:

“Strange?...Um…yes. An interesting revelation of the native
moeurs
.”

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 marvellous 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 towards 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!
”

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 criss-crossed 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 pavements, 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 neighbourhood. Others, tired of standing round, went to hotels to wait or to spend the night. But most of the people hung on, curious and eager to 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 onwards 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.

For in the well-ordered world in which these people lived, something had gone suddenly wrong. Things had got out of control. They were the lords and masters of the earth, vested with authority and accustomed to command, but now the control had been taken from them. So they felt strangely helpless, no longer able to command the situation, no longer able even to find out what was happening.

But, in ways remote from their blind and troubled kenning, events had been moving to their inexorable conclusion.

• • • • *
        

In one of the smoky corridors of that enormous hive, two men in boots and helmets had met in earnest communion.

“Did you find it?”

“Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“It’s in the basement, chief. It’s not on the roof at all—a draught is taking it up a vent. But it’s down there.” He pointed with his thumb.

“Well, then, go get it. You know what to do.”

“It looks bad, chief. It’s going to be hard to get.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“If we flood the basement, we’ll also flood two levels of railroad tracks. You know what that means.”

For a moment their eyes held each other steadily. Then the older man jerked his head and started for the stairs.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going down.”

Down in the bowels of the earth there was a room where lights were burning and it was always night.

There, now, a telephone rang, and a man with a green eyeshade seated at a desk answered it.

“Hello…Oh, hello, Mike.”

He listened carefully for a moment, suddenly jerked forward taut with interest, and pulled the cigarette out of his mouth.

“The hell you say!...Where? Over track thirty-two?...They’re going to flood it!...Hell!”