第107章

"Lorny," cried old Tom, "you take mother and Etta to the escape." And he rushed at his powerful, stupid son and began to strike him in the face with his one good fist, shrieking, "Shut up, you damn fool! Shut up!"Dragging Etta and pushing Mrs.Brashear, Susan moved toward the end of the hall where the fire escape passed their windows.All the way down, the landings were littered with bedding, pots, pans, drying clothes, fire wood, boxes, all manner of rubbish, the overflow of the crowded little flats.Over these obstructions and down the ladders were falling and stumbling men, women, children, babies, in all degrees of nudity--for many of the big families that slept in one room with windows tight shut so that the stove heat would not escape and be wasted when fuel was so dear, slept stark naked.Susan contrived to get Etta and the old woman to the street; not far behind them came Tom and Ashbel, the son's face bleeding from the blows his father had struck to quiet him.

It was a penetrating cold night, with an icy drizzle falling.

The street was filled with engines, hose, all manner of ruined household effects, firemen shouting, the tenement people huddling this way and that, barefooted, nearly or quite naked, silent, stupefied.Nobody had saved anything worth while.The entire block was ablaze, was burning as if it had been saturated with coal oil.

"The owner's done this," said old Tom."I heard he was in trouble.But though he's a church member and what they call a philanthropist, I hardly thought he'd stoop to hirin' this done.If anybody's caught, it'll be some fellow that don't know who he did it for."About a hundred families were homeless in the street.Half a dozen patrol wagons and five ambulances were taking the people away to shelter, women and babies first.It was an hour--an hour of standing in the street, with bare feet on the ice, under the ankledeep slush--before old Tom and his wife got their turn to be taken.Then Susan and Etta and Ashbel, escorted by a policeman, set out for the station house.As they walked along, someone called out to the policeman:

"Anybody killed at the fire, officer?"

"Six jumped and was smashed," replied the policeman."I seen three dead babies.But they won't know for several days how many it'll total."And all her life long, whenever Susan Lenox heard the clang of a fire engine, there arose before her the memory picture of that fire, in all the horror of detail.A fire bell to her meant wretched families flung into the night, shrieks of mangled and dying, moans of babies with life oozing from their blue lips, columns of smoke ascending through icy, soaking air, and a vast glare of wicked light with flame demons leaping for joy in the measureless woe over which they were presiding.As the little party was passing the fire lines, Ashbel's foot slipped on a freezing ooze of blood and slush, and he fell sprawling upon a human body battered and trampled until it was like an overturned basket of butcher's odds and ends.

The station house was eleven long squares away.But before they started for it they were already at the lowest depth of physical wretchedness which human nerves can register; thus, they arrived simply a little more numb.The big room, heated by a huge, red-hot stove to the point where the sweat starts, was crowded with abject and pitiful human specimens.Even Susan, the most sensitive person there, gazed about with stolid eyes.The nakedness of unsightly bodies, gross with fat or wasted to emaciation, the dirtiness of limbs and torsos long, long unwashed, the foul steam from it all and from the water-soaked rags, the groans of some, the silent, staring misery of others, and, most horrible of all, the laughter of those who yielded like animals to the momentary sense of physical well-being as the heat thawed them out--these sights and sounds together made up a truly infernal picture.And, like all the tragedies of abject poverty, it was wholly devoid of that dignity which is necessary to excite the deep pity of respect, was sordid and squalid, moved the sensitive to turn away in loathing rather than to advance with brotherly sympathy and love.

Ashbel, his animal instinct roused by the sight of the stove, thrust the throng aside rudely as he pushed straight for the radiating center.Etta and Susan followed in his wake.The fierce heat soon roused them to the sense of their plight.

Ashbel began to curse, Etta to weep.Susan's mind was staring, without hope but also without despair, at the walls of the trap in which they were all caught--was seeking the spot where they could begin to burrow through and escape.

Beds and covers were gathered in by the police from everywhere in that district, were ranged upon the floor of the four rooms.

The men were put in the cells downstairs; the women and the children got the cots.Susan and Etta lay upon the same mattress, a horse blanket over them.Etta slept; Susan, wide awake, lived in brain and nerves the heart-breaking scenes through which she had passed numb and stolid.

About six o'clock a breakfast of coffee, milk and bread was served.It was evident that the police did not know what to do with these outcasts who had nothing and no place to go--for practically all were out of work when the blow came.Ashbel demanded shoes, pants and a coat.

"I've got to get to my job," shouted he, "or else I'll lose it.

Then where in the hell'd we be!"