Youth and Catastrophe

‘BUT,’ the grown woman protested, ‘I remember it as if it were yesterday.’

She did not, of course, do anything of the sort. Really, she hardly remembered it at all. Instead, she only remembered what other people remembered and what she had been told she would never forget. But, after a great many discussions, finally there did come back to her vividly and completely her own sensations during those tumultuous twenty-four hours and the true sequence in which the events of those hours had presented themselves to her childish consciousness. These exhumed realities were very different from the acquired memories that had for thirty years represented them. That was to be expected. She was slightly chagrined by such imperfections. Quite sincerely she had believed that she ‘ remembered it all as if it were yesterday.’

But she was much more than chagrined by the sensations themselves. She was shocked by them, even a little horrified. Had she really felt like that? Undeniably she had. Whereupon she referred to herself as a little beast.

This violence was because the memories concerned a catastrophe, and a very real one, a fire which had destroyed the most valuable part of a great city, bringing with it the usual consequences of ruin and death and misery. And she had lived all the while as close to it as one could get and live, and she had behaved as follows.

I

The fire had started — this is the beginning of the revised sequence, of course — when she was in church. She and her sister, with a Mama prudently placed between them, were seated in the same pew, a pew from which there was singularly little of interest to be seen. The clergyman was busy with the first lesson. He was wearing a gray and beautifully embroidered stole and was reading about Jeroboam and Rehoboam when suddenly there came a tremendous ‘boom!’ It seemed to start very far away and roll on enormous rollers up into the church and over it and beyond. But some of it seemed to get inside and roamed round under the vaulted stone roof as if it were trying to get out again. Everything in the church shook, even the flowers on the altar and the long book markers hanging down from the lectern— everything, that is, except the voice of the clergyman. That went on evenly about Jeroboam and Rehoboam. And the reader never even looked up from the page. But every other man in the church got up and went out except one gentleman who was so religious that he would never even get married.

Both the little girls tried to get out with the gentlemen, but the Mama between held their arms and said, ‘Sh-shF

They said, ‘What is it?’

She whispered, ‘It’s nothing.’

This from so great an authority profoundly discouraged both the little girls. They had had high hopes that it might be a great deal because the noise was so prolonged and so heavy. Indeed, this particular one of the two, whose recollections these are, had cherished giddy anticipations of the Day of Judgment. Church seemed an appropriate setting for that event. But her mother went on steadily looking up at the Rector and he went on steadily with Rehoboam and Jeroboam, and hopes faded. It was only the first lesson; barring the Judgment Day, no intervention seemed possible.

And none came. The very religious gentleman took up the collection all alone. The choir filed out as slowly as usual. The last verse of the Recessional rolled back into the church. The little girl, she says, had almost forgotten about the ‘boom!’ It was only another one of these splendid opportunities missed by a sodden, incomprehensible humanity. She never even mentioned it to her sister as they followed their guide down the aisle toward the sunlight in the opened doors. They were habituated to these disappointments. Many even finer promises they had seen languish and die without fulfillment. Instead, they conversed about Huckleberry Finn, whose history was being read aloud to them by all at home who could be persuaded.

Outside, however, there came an unexpected recrudescence of the almostforgotten ‘nothing.’ On the sidewalk, people were talking about ‘fire,’ and there was an interesting smell in the air. They did n’t listen to the conversation very much, but they smelled a good deal — so much so that their mother looked around once and directed an imperative glance at their pocket handkerchiefs. And there was a strangely large number of people in the street. Usually, at that hour of Sunday, there was nobody in the street except the congregation and a few policemen. These happy people were plainly going to the fire. They themselves were not going. It was utterly useless to ask. On the w hole it was a dreary walk back from church to the house.

II

At home, however, things changed for the better. This was due to the efforts of Duncan, who opened the door. He was full of the spirit of the occasion. He had seen the fire. Anybody could see it from the third story back. It looked, he thought, ‘like the whole world was going to burn up.’ This promise, the little girls thought from what they could see when they got up to the third floor back, was rather extravagant. There was nothing but a black cloud of smoke downtown. Fortunately Duncan had come upstairs too and he explained that this cloud hid flames of enormous height and uncomfortable redness. In a little while they would see — if, of course, it did n’t rain; and there was no sign, he pointed out, of rain, no cloud anywhere except the smoke cloud. Under a bright blue February sky the great city lay helplessly burning to ashes. Duncan was so confident of good weather, so certain of the immensity of the conflagration, that their pessimistic conviction that Mama could prevent any calamity was shaken. And, some current of air blowing on the smoke, they did for an instant see the flames triumphantly waving in the sky. Duncan’s eyes looked entirely white in his black face and he went downstairs to start his lunch.

Up to that day of their lives the relations of the two little girls with Duncan had apparently not been of the best. They had found him cross and stingy and unreliable as an ally. But that day he revealed himself as both a sympathetic spirit and a gay companion. They followed him downstairs and he described to them, while he set the table, some of the great fires of the world as viewed by his friends and relatives. And during lunch itself he condescended once, when there came another explosion like the one in church, to wink at them.

There was an unusually large number of people at lunch that day; other people who were not at lunch actually came into the dining room and sat about on chairs. And the telephone rang frequently and people had to get up from the table, and there was perfectly plain understandable talk about what would happen if the fire got into the block below. The Preventer of Calamities, sitting at the head of the table, looked thoughtful and did n’t count helpings.

On the whole it was one of the pleasantest Sunday lunches they had ever known. Afterward they went to the nursery and settled down to Huckleberry Finn, read aloud by Margaret. The fire was visible out of the windows. It was a little blacker, a little nearer, but it was so slow. They counted on finishing Huckleberry Finn ‘first.’

Asked what, exactly, that ‘first’ meant, the lady whose recollections these are said she did n’t know. It was the way she had felt at the time. Something immense was going to happen presently, but it was necessary to while away the interval and there seemed to be just enough Huck left for that. It is pretty poor stuff, that part of Huckleberry, and they yawned a good deal and looked several times out of the windows, where the fire seemed to be getting on pretty well. Their mother came into the room twice, but always went out without saying anything. The Preventer of Calamities was obviously ‘ on the job ’ as usual, but they had not observed any effects on the fire so far. It seemed to resist her splendidly; you could even smell smoke in the room a little — not coal smoke, but outdoors smoke. And General Shafter, the bullfinch, began to scratch his dinner out on to the floor. Margaret finished Huck Finn, muffled General Shafter, brushed their hair, and sent them downstairs to tea.

III

That hour, tea hour, in February, was probably the most dramatic of the twenty-four. Not the pleasantest, but the most dramatic. The house was more than full; it was crowded. And almost all the people were strange and some of them looked dirty, which, the day being Sunday, seemed almost impossible. To get and remain dirty on Sunday had always seemed, somehow, an impossible achievement for anyone. And out of this foreign, restless, smokestained crowd the great fact leaped at them. No one person spoke it, no single sentences expressed it. It came through the air, out of the crowd. They had got into the library, where the tea table usually stood, and were looking curiously at their aunt, who had their mother’s place behind the kettle, when simultaneously they both comprehended that the house was going to burn up. Not the city. That fact they had learned from Duncan and accepted hours before. Not only the city, but their own house. That was indeed catastrophe triumphant.

Nobody paid any attention to the two little girls. Duncan had turned cross and unfriendly again. They emptied the cake basket and went into a corner to think it all out together. From that corner they could see into the little sitting room. Their mother was in there, standing on the hearthrug facing a man who somebody in some way had informed them was the Mayor.

The two were arguing — disputing some matter, and disputing angrily. The Mayor sometimes made gestures; their mother only shook her head. They knew exactly what the matter in dispute was. It was the fire. The Mayor was standing up for it. The mother was demanding that it be tied up instantly or taken somewhere else or put out entirely. Now you could see the fire out of all the windows. It was still muffled in smoke, but the smoke was on fire, too; and along the street outside, before the light wind that had sprung up since noon, was blown a light snow of red ashes.

The little red sparks blowing softly through the dusk looked like fireflies in the springtime. They ate slowly, looking at the sparks, followed the argument of the two on the hearthrug, and planned.

Duncan came by and began to draw the curtains.

‘Don’t do that,’they begged. ‘It keeps out the fire.’

‘There ain’t no curtains made kin keep that fire out of this house,’ said Duncan and went rudely on.

‘Do you really think so, Duncan? Do you know much about fires?’ they asked.

He did n’t even answer, He had lost all charm. They went on planning. If the Mayor won the argument — which he did n’t seem to be doing — they would have to have, of course, an entirely new house. That was something they had never even imagined coming to pass. An entirely new house! And entirely new furniture, and carpets and pictures and china. The Preventer of Calamities would, of course, save something, but not much. How much? They tried to calculate, starting from the fact that it took her a month to pack up for Bar Harbor. That was four trunks. Perhaps she would save one trunkful if she hurried. And all the rest of their worldly goods would have to be new.

The Mayor raised his arm and his voice: ‘I give you until seven o’clock, madam, and then we blow up the whole block.’

Then he started to come out. The little girls slipped into the embrasure of the window behind the curtain and watched him pass. He was evidently a great man. Outside, the street was bright and cheerful as it sometimes looked at Christmas. In the cathedral close, a tree was burning softly like a Christmas tree. Even as they looked, a priest came out and climbed up it and began to beat out the smouldering branches with a rug. A priest up a tree! It was so funny it was aweinspiring, and it was prophetic, too, of other immense combinations the immediate future probably held. They stared, enthralled, at the symbolic figure.

He was, like their mother, against the fire, because he was putting it out, but he was somehow, too, an incarnation of the fire. He was all that the fire held of the bold and the joyous and the untrammeled. They pulled the curtains tight behind them so that nobody in the library could see him and go out and make him come down.

In the end the priest got down by himself and disappeared. They crept cautiously out of the curtains. There were more people than ever in the library and more talk. And an old gentleman came up and put his arms around them. They knew him intimately and hated him. He was the doctor.

‘Do you know what is going to happen to two little girls to-night?’ he asked. ‘You are going to spend the night with Granny. Won’t that be fun?’

‘We would rather stay,’ they explained, ‘and watch them blow up the house.’

‘ Blow up the house! ’ said the doctor. ‘Nonsense. Nobody is going to blow up little girls’ houses. Who ever heard of such a thing! You are going to your dear grandmother’s because there is smoke around here and smoke is very bad for little girls.’

They looked at each other in silence until they remembered that the doctor was the biggest liar they knew. He practically never told the truth. And this time, too, he was true to type. He had hardly finished that sentence about smoke when Duncan came in and, going up to their mother, announced in his regular party voice: —

‘Miss Harriet, the gentleman with the dynamite.’

They were standing too near the door when they heard that, and Margaret’s arm caught them from the hall. They went unprotestingly because they, too, had to pack.

For there were things, after all, which should not be left to be burned up or even blown up, things without which life would be too intolerably dull.

As they followed Margaret up the stairs they made the inventory of these spiritual and physical necessities. First was General Shafter. He was a remarkable bird, anyway, and then he had been caught wild by a man they knew, which made him incomparable. General Shafter, and a china cow. And a picture of Joan of Arc with short hair and pants on, and a horse — an incarnation of human felicity. That was a good deal of luggage, fully as much as they could be sure of getting away with. The silver hairbrushes which, being Christmas presents, still had the charm of novelty were to be sacrificed until they thought of hiding them in General Shafter’s cage. That was wrapped up for the night and so was a perfectly safe place. There were other pleasant things, but they were not necessities, or at least they were not irreplaceable necessities. No house, however new, was worth the sacrifice of the necessities. They walked very carefully down the stairs carrying these things which a misstep would have imperiled, and held them tight while they waited in the hall for the carriage.

It was very gay and lively in the hall — except for one grown-up young lady who, at the sight of them thus equipped, burst into tears. Questioned, she said it was General Shafter that made her cry. They would have unwrapped the General to let her see he was really all right if they had not remembered the hairbrushes in the nick of time. It was only then, when the carriage came, that they learned that their mother was not coming too. Until that moment they had believed it was all arranged. Everybody was going to Granny’s and at seven o’clock precisely the house was going to blow up just as the Mayor had promised. Now, it seemed, the affair was not so certain. It was not yet seven, and Mama had not by any means surrendered. She had a full hour yet to prevent things in, and they knew from the expression of her face that she was in her most invincibly preventive humor. She might still succeed. The result was that in the end they left their childhood home in rather low spirits.

IV

The drive to their place of refuge was magnificent. There were fire engines everywhere, and more policemen than they had ever seen at one time in their lives. They had to drive right past the fire engines, close enough to feel the heat, and sometimes firemen in helmets swore at them and policemen took hold of the horses. They stood up in the carriage all the way, and, although Margaret stopped their bowing, she could not prevent their feeling that they were at last, in a circus parade, because she did n’t know how they felt.

At their grandmother’s things were mixed. The start was good. The very first thing they were asked if they were hungry. But they only got bread and jam and they had to eat that in bed. Then their grandfather was discouraging about the Mayor. He said the Mayor was a Republican. They had put great confidence in the Mayor’s promise: he was so big and had talked so loud. Now to find out he was a Republican — that is, a man who never did what he promised — was a shock. Then their grandmother, who was always exacting in such matters, suggested they add to prayers a petition for the ‘safety’ of their house. That was a difficult situation — even worse than the one of their hairbrushes. Fortunately the grandfather asked, ‘What about other people’s houses? ’ and in the ensuing argument the petition of special dispensation was gladly overlooked by everybody.

After so much dispute it was pleasant to lie quietly in bed and imagine what a brand-new house would look like. That made the night rather like Christmas Eve and they were a long time getting to sleep. But it had been a long day full of ups and downs, and suddenly they did, just exactly as always happened on Christmas Eve.

V

Alas, the awakening was not in the least like Christmas.

Their mother was already in the room. They asked what had happened. She said the wind had changed. She was come to take them back home.

‘What home?’

Their home. It was safe. She said it was a miracle. They remembered the forgotten prayer and shook their heads. It could n’t be a miracle. No, it was fate, and possibly the incurable Republicanism of the Mayor. But chiefly it was fate. In the bottom of their hearts they had known all along how it would end. She would always win. With their clothes they put on the sad conviction of her utter invincibility.

After breakfast, with no carriages and horses, no fire engines, no policemen, with only Margaret walking stolidly between them, they returned through empty streets among everyday people to the well-known front steps. And the steps had been washed!

It was almost incredible how little had happened. The front hall rug was up, but that often happened anyway. What was slightly more interesting, somebody had emptied a sugar bowl into the card tray on the hall table. There it was, empty of cards, and piled up with lumps. They asked who had done it. Nobody seemed to know. It had just happened ‘in the confusion.’

What ‘confusion’? A few rugs up, a few pictures down, a few tables out of place — in all not as much as happened every June anyway. It was obviously just one more victory for Mama.

They climbed the stairs, undid General Shafter, got out the brushes, put in the General’s bathtub. It was a crushing victory. They had n’t the heart even to rehang Joan of Arc, but laid her sadly face-down on the bureau. When somebody knocked on the door they knew what it was. They did n’t answer.

It was Duncan, evidently in his most unfriendly mood. His voice oozed a vicious enjoyment as he announced through the panels, ‘Young ladies, Miss McGuire is awaiting in the liberry.’

’The old devil,’ someone muttered.

The butler was that? Or the governess?

Neither. That simple expression of despite was directed at no human being, man or woman, white or black. It was aimed straight at the immutability of the Universe. And it was at the time the worst word they knew.

However, there at the very end something had happened, though they did not anticipate it when informed of Miss McGuire’s presence bclow. They sat on awhile — to watch General Shafter bathe. Generally this was a sudden joyous ceremony. But that morning it did not begin at all. The General looked at the tub and climbed to the roof of his cage, as if he were scared. They poked the tub, and sprinkled the bird, but he only shivered and clung to the roof. Fascinated by such inexplicable and unanticipated novelty, they forgot Miss McGuire.

They forgot the conflagration still burning fiercely a half mile away. They forgot the devilish immutability of the Universe.

VI

The grown woman shook her head. She had rather the look of a medium after an unusually successful séance. Yes, that was how it had really been. She admitted it. The discovery seemed to give her pain. The bird, she explained, never bathed again. He became in time famous for the peculiarity, a sort of monument to the Catastrophe — alas, the only one. The bird, as she expressed it, had that much heart.

‘Could I,’ she demanded, ‘have been really such a little beast?’

‘But you were such a very little girl.’

‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘ but I was older than the bird.’