The Comet

By W.E.B. Du Bois

NARRATOR. He stood a moment on the steps of the bank, watching the human river that swirled down Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed him save in a way that stung. He was outside the world–

JIM. Nothing!

NARRATOR. …Jim said bitterly. Bits of the words of the walkers came to him.

JUNIOR CLERK. The comet?

PASSERBY 1: The comet.

NARRATOR. Everybody was talking of it. Even the bank president, as he entered, smiled patronizingly at Jim, and asked:

THE BANK PRESIDENT. Well, Jim, are you scared?

JIM. No.

JUNIOR CLERK. I thought we'd journeyed through the comet's tail once,

NARRATOR. …Broke in the junior clerk affably.

THE BANK PRESIDENT. Oh, that was Halley’s. This, this is a new comet, quite a stranger, they say— wonderful, wonderful! I saw it last night. Oh, by the way, Jim, I want you to go down into the lower vaults today.

NARRATOR. The messenger followed the bank president silently. Of course, they wanted him to go down to the lower vaults. It was too dangerous for more valuable men. Jim smiled grimly and listened.

THE BANK PRESIDENT. Everything of value has been moved out since the water began to seep in. But we miss two volumes of old records. Suppose you nose around down there— it isn't very pleasant, I suppose.

JIM. Not very,

NARRATOR. …said the messenger, as he walked out.

THE BANK PRESIDENT. Well, Jim, the tail of the new comet hits us at noon this time,

NARRATOR. …said the president, as he passed over the keys; but the messenger passed silently down the stairs. Down he went beneath Broadway, where the dim light filtered through the feet of hurrying men; down to the dark basement beneath; down into the blackness and silence beneath that lowest cavern. Here with his dark lantern he groped in the bowels of the earth, under the world.

He drew a long breath as he threw back the last great iron door and stepped into the fetid slime within. Here at last was peace, and he groped moodily forward. A great rat leaped past him and cobwebs crept across his face. He felt carefully around the room, shelf by shelf, on the muddied floor, and in crevice and corner. Nothing. Then he went back to the far end, where somehow the wall felt different. He sounded and pushed and pried. Nothing. He started away. Then something brought him back. He was sounding and working again when suddenly the whole black wall swung as on mighty hinges, and blackness yawned beyond.

He peered in; it was evidently a secret vault— some hiding place of the old bank— unknown in newer times. He entered hesitatingly. It was a long, narrow room with shelves, and at the far end, an old iron chest. On a high shelf lay the two missing volumes of records, and others. He put them carefully aside and stepped to the chest. It was old, strong, and rusty. He looked at the vast and old-fashioned lock and flashed his light on the hinges. They were deeply encrusted with rust. Looking about, he found a bit of iron and began to pry. The rust had eaten a hundred years, and it had gone deep. Slowly, wearily, the old lid lifted, and with a last, low groan lay bare its treasure: and he saw the dull sheen of gold!

A low, grinding, reverberating crash struck upon his ear. He started up and looked about. All was black and still. He groped for his light and swung it about him. Then he knew! The great stone door had swung to. He forgot the gold and looked death squarely in the face. Then with a sigh he went methodically to work. The cold sweat stood on his forehead; but he searched, pounded, and worked until after what seemed endless hours his hand struck a cold bit of metal and the great door swung again harshly on its hinges, and then, striking against something soft and heavy, stopped. He had just room to squeeze through. There lay the body of the vault clerk, cold and stiff. He stared at it, and then felt sick and nauseated. The air seemed unaccountably foul, with a strong, peculiar odor. He stepped forward, clutched at the air, and fell fainting across the corpse.

He awoke with a sense of horror, leaped from the body, and groped up the stairs, calling to the guard. The watchman sat as if asleep, with the gate swinging free. With one glance at him the messenger hurried up to the sub-vault. In vain he called to the guards. His voice echoed and re-echoed weirdly. Up into the great basement he rushed. Here another guard lay prostrate on his face, cold and still. A fear arose in the messenger's heart. He dashed up to the cellar floor, up into the bank. The stillness of death lay everywhere and everywhere bowed, bent, and stretched the silent forms of men. The messenger paused and glanced about. He was not a man easily moved; but the sight was appalling!

JIM. Robbery and murder,

NARRATOR. …he whispered slowly to himself as he saw the twisted, oozing mouth of the president where he lay half-buried on his desk. Then a new thought seized him: If they found him here alone— with all this money and all these dead men— what would his life be worth? He glanced about, tiptoed cautiously to a side door, and again looked behind. Quietly he turned the latch and stepped out into Wall Street.

How silent the street was! Not a soul was stirring, and yet it was high noon. Wall Street? Broadway? He glanced almost wildly up and down, then across the street, as he looked, a sickening horror froze in his limbs. With a choking cry of utter fright he lunged, leaned giddily against the cold building, and stared helplessly at the sight.

In the great stone doorway a hundred men and women and children lay crushed and twisted and jammed, forced into that great, gaping doorway like refuse in a can— as if in one wild, frantic rush to safety, they had rushed and ground themselves to death.

Slowly the messenger crept along the walls, wetting his parched mouth and trying to comprehend, stilling the tremor in his limbs and the rising terror in his heart. He met a business man, silk-hatted and frock-coated, who had crept, too, along that smooth wall and stood now stone dead with wonder written on his lips. The messenger turned his eyes hastily away and sought the curb. A woman leaned wearily against the signpost, her head bowed motionless on her lace and silken bosom. Before her stood a street car, silent, and within... the messenger but glanced and hurried on.

A grimy newsboy sat in the gutter with the "last edition" in his uplifted hand: "Danger!" screamed its black headlines. "Warnings wired around the world. The Comet's tail sweeps past us at noon. Deadly gasses expected. Close doors and windows. Seek the cellar." The messenger read and staggered on. On a store step sat a little, sweet-faced girl looking upward toward the skies, and in the carriage by her lay... but the messenger looked no longer.

The cords gave way— the terror burst in his veins, and with one great, gasping cry he sprang desperately forward and ran— ran as only the frightened run, shrieking and fighting the air until with one last wail of pain he sank on the grass of Madison Square and lay prone and still.

When he rose, he gave no glance at the still and silent forms on the benches, but, going to a fountain, bathed his face; then hiding himself in a corner away from the drama of death, he quietly gripped himself and thought the thing through: The comet had swept the earth and this was the end. Was everybody dead? He must search and see.

He knew that he must steady himself and keep calm, or he would go insane. First, he must go to a restaurant. He walked up Fifth Avenue to a famous hostelry and entered its gorgeous, ghost-haunted halls. He beat back the nausea, and, seizing a tray from dead hands, hurried into the street and ate ravenously, hiding to keep out the sights, as he forced the food down. Then he started up the street, looking, peering, telephoning, ringing alarms; silent. Silent all. Was nobody— nobody... he dared not think the thought and hurried on.

Suddenly he stopped still. He had forgotten. My God! How could he have forgotten? He must rush to the subway—then he almost laughed. No— a car; if he could find a Ford. He saw one. Gently he lifted off its burden, and took his place on the seat. He tested the throttle. There was gas. He glided off, shivering, and drove up the street. Everywhere stood, leaned, lounged, and lay the dead, in grim and awful silence. On he ran past an automobile, wrecked and overturned; past another, filled with a gay party whose smiles yet lingered on their death-struck lips; on past crowds and groups of cars, pausing by dead policemen; at 42nd Street he had to detour to Park Avenue to avoid the dead congestion. He came back on Fifth Avenue at 57th and flew past The Plaza and by Central Park with its hushed babies and silent throng, until as he was rushing past 72nd Street he heard a sharp cry, and saw a living form leaning wildly out an upper window. He gasped. The human voice sounded in his ears like the voice of God.

JULIA. Hello— hello! Help, in God's name! There's a dead girl in here and a man and— and see yonder dead men lying in the street and dead horses— for the love of God go and bring the officers——

NARRATOR. …And the words trailed off into hysterical tears. He wheeled the car in a sudden circle, running over the still body of a child and leaping on the curb. Then he rushed up the steps and tried the door and rang violently. There was a long pause, but at last the heavy door swung back. They stared a moment in silence. She had not noticed before that he was a Negro. He had not thought of her as white. She was a woman of perhaps twenty-five—rarely beautiful and richly gowned, with darkly-golden hair, and jewels. Yesterday, he thought with bitterness, she would have scarcely looked at him twice; he would have been dirt beneath her silken feet.

She stared at him. Of all the sorts of men she had pictured as coming to her rescue she had not dreamed of one like him. Not that he was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far from hers, so infinitely far, that he seldom even entered her thought. Yet as she looked at him curiously he seemed quite commonplace and usual. He was a tall, dark workingman of the better class, with a sensitive face trained to stolidity and a poor man's clothes and hands. His face was soft and slow and his manner at once cold and nervous, like fires long banked, but not out.

So a moment each paused and gauged the other; then the thought of the dead world rushed in and they started toward each other.

JULIA. What has happened? Tell me! Nothing stirs. All is silence! I see the dead strewn before my window as winnowed by the breath of God— and see:

NARRATOR. She dragged him through the great, silken hangings to where, beneath the sheen of mahogany and silver, a little French maid lay stretched in quiet, everlasting sleep, and near her a butler lay prone in his livery. The tears streamed down the woman's cheeks and she clung to his arm until the perfume of her breath swept his face and he felt the tremors racing through her body.

JULIA. I had been shut up in my dark room developing pictures of the comet which I took last night; when I came out— I saw the dead! What has happened?!

NARRATOR. …she cried again. He answered slowly:

JIM. Something— comet or devil— swept across the earth this morning and… many are dead!

JULIA. Many? Very many?

JIM. I have searched and I have seen no other living soul but you.

JULIA. My father!

JIM. Where is he?

JULIA. In the Metropolitan Tower.

JIM. Leave a note for him here and come.

NARRATOR. Then he stopped.

JIM. No, first we must go to Harlem.

JULIA. Harlem!?

NARRATOR. Then she understood. She looked back and shuddered. Then she came resolutely down the steps.

JULIA. There's a swifter car in the garage in the court.

JIM. I don't know how to drive it.

JULIA. I do.

NARRATOR. In ten minutes they were flying to Harlem on the wind. The Stutz Racer rose and raced like an airplane. They took the turn at 110th Street on two wheels and slipped with a shriek into 135th.

He was gone but a moment. Then he returned, and his face was gray.

JULIA. You have lost somebody?

JIM. I have lost… everybody.

NARRATOR. Out of the park, and down Fifth Avenue they whirled. In and out among the dead they slipped and quivered, needing no sound of bell or horn, until the great, square Metropolitan Tower hove in sight. Gently he laid the dead elevator boy aside; the car shot upward. The door of the office stood open. On the threshold lay the stenographer, and, staring at her, sat the dead clerk. The inner office was empty, but a note lay on the desk, folded and addressed but unsent:

JULIA’S FATHER.

I've gone for a hundred-mile spin in Fred's new Mercedes. Shall not be back before dinner. I'll bring Fred with me.

J.B.H.

JULIA. Come! We must search the city!

NARRATOR. Up and down, over and across, back again— on went that ghostly search. Everywhere was silence and death— death and silence! They hunted from Madison Square to Spuyten Duyvel; they rushed across the Williamsburg Bridge; they swept over Brooklyn; from the Battery and Morningside Heights they scanned the river. Silence, silence everywhere, and no human sign. Haggard and bedraggled they puffed a third time slowly down Broadway, under the broiling sun, and at last stopped. Jim sniffed the air. An odor— a smell— and with the shifting breeze a sickening stench filled their nostrils and brought its awful warning. Julia settled back helplessly in her seat.

JULIA. What can we do?

NARRATOR. It was his turn now to take the lead, and he did it quickly.

JIM. The long-distance telephone— the telegraph and the cable.

NARRATOR. She looked at him now with strength and confidence. He did not look like men, as she had always pictured men; but he acted like one and she was content. In fifteen minutes, they were at the central telephone exchange. As they came to the door he stepped quickly before her and pressed her gently back as he closed it. She heard him moving to and fro, and knew his burdens—the poor, little burdens he bore. When she entered, he was alone in the room. The grim switchboard flashed its metallic face in cryptic, sphinx-like immobility.

She seated herself on a stool and donned the bright earpiece. One moment she was terrified; then she thanked him silently for his delicacy and turned resolutely, with a quick intaking of breath.

JULIA. Hello!?

NARRATOR. …she called in low tones. She was calling to the world. The world must answer. Would the world answer? Was the world… Silence!

JULIA. Hello?

NARRATOR. She had spoken too low.

JULIA. HELLO!? HELLO!? HELLO!?

NARRATOR. She listened. Silence! Her heart beat quickly. What was that whirring? Surely... no. Was it the click of a receiver?

She bent close, she moved the pegs in the holes, and called and called, until her voice rose almost to a shriek, and her heart hammered. It was as if she had heard the last flicker of creation, and the evil was silence. Her voice dropped to a sob. She sat stupidly staring at the black and sarcastic mouthpiece, and the thought came again. Hope lay dead within her. Yes, the cable and the flares remained; but the world— she could not frame the thought or say the word. It was too mighty—too terrible!

She turned toward the door with a new fear in her heart. For the first time she seemed to realize that she was alone in the world with a stranger, with something more than a stranger— with a man alien in blood and culture— unknown, perhaps unknowable. It was awful! She must escape— she must fly; he must not see her again. Who knew what awful thoughts...

She gathered her silken skirts deftly about her young, smooth limbs— listened, and glided into a side hall. A moment she shrank back: the hall lay filled with dead women; then she leaped to the door and tore at it, with bleeding fingers, until it swung wide. She looked out. He was standing at the top of the alley— silhouetted, tall and black; motionless. Was he looking at her or away? She did not know— she did not care. She simply leaped and ran— ran until she found herself alone amid the dead and the tall ramparts of towering buildings.

She stopped. She was alone. Alone! Alone on the streets— alone in the city— perhaps alone in the world! There crept in upon her the sense of deception— of creeping hands behind her back— of silent, moving things she could not see— of voices hushed in fearsome conspiracy. She looked behind and sideways, started at strange sounds and heard still stranger, until every nerve within her stood sharp and quivering, stretched to scream at the barest touch. She whirled and flew back, whimpering like a child, until she found that narrow alley again and the dark, silent figure silhouetted at the top. She stopped and rested; then she walked silently toward him, looked at him timidly; but he said nothing as he helped her into the car.

She bent forward on the wheel and sobbed, with great, dry, quivering sobs, as they flew toward the cable office on the east side, leaving the world of wealth and prosperity for the world of poverty and work. In the world behind them were death and silence, grave and grim, almost cynical, but always decent; here it was hideous. It clothed itself in every ghastly form of terror, struggle, hate, and suffering. It lay wreathed in crime and squalor, greed and lust. Only in its dread and awful silence was it like to death everywhere.

Yet as the two, flying and alone, looked upon the horror of the world, slowly, gradually, the sense of all-enveloping death deserted them. They seemed to move in a world silent and asleep— as if from above some mighty arm had waved its magic wand. All nature slept until— until, and quick with the same startling thought, they looked into each other's eyes— he, ashen, and she, crimson, with unspoken thought. To both, the vision of a mighty beauty—of vast, unspoken things, swelled in their souls; but they put it away.

She heard the lapping of the waters far below— the dark and restless waters— the cold and luring waters, as they called. Slowly she walked to the wall, where the water called below, and stood and waited. Long she waited, and he did not come. Then with a start she saw him, too, standing beside the black waters. Slowly he removed his coat and stood there silently. She walked quickly to him and laid her hand on his arm. He did not start or look. The waters lapped on in luring, deadly rhythm. He pointed down to the waters, and said quietly:

JIM. The world lies beneath the waters now. May I go?

NARRATOR. She looked into his stricken, tired face, and a great pity surged within her heart. She answered in a voice clear and calm:

JULIA. No.

NARRATOR. Upward they turned toward life again, and he seized the wheel. The world was darkening to twilight, and a great, gray pall was falling mercifully and gently on the sleeping dead. The ghastly glare of reality seemed replaced with the dream of some vast romance. Julia lay silently back, as the motor whizzed along. She forgot to wonder at the quickness with which Jim had learned to drive her car. It seemed natural. And then as they whirled and swung into Madison Square and at the door of the Metropolitan Tower she gave a low cry, and her eyes were great!

Jim led her to the elevator of the tower and deftly they ascended. In her father's office they gathered rugs and chairs, and he wrote a note and laid it on the desk; then they ascended to the roof and he made her comfortable. For a while she rested and sank to dreamy somnolence, watching the worlds above and wondering. Below lay the dark shadows of the city and afar was the shining of the sea. She glanced at him timidly as he set food before her and took a shawl and wound her in it, touching her reverently, yet tenderly. She looked at him with thankfulness in her eyes, eating what he served. He watched the city. She watched him. He seemed very human, very near now.

JULIA. Have you had to work hard?

JIM. Always

JULIA. I have always been idle. …I was rich.

JIM. I was poor.

JULIA. The rich and the poor are met together,

NARRATOR. …she began, and he finished:

JIM. The Lord is the Maker of them all.

JULIA. Yes, and how foolish our human distinctions seem, now,

JIM. Yes. I was not… human yesterday.

JULIA. And your people were not my people. But today…

NARRATOR. She paused. He was a man, no more; but he was in some larger sense a gentleman, sensitive, kindly, chivalrous, everything save his hands and… his face. Yet yesterday—

JIM. Death, the leveler.

JULIA. And the revealer.

NARRATOR. …she whispered gently, rising to her feet with great eyes. He turned away, and after fumbling a moment sent a flare into the darkening air. It arose, shrieked, and flew up, a slim path of light, and scattering its stars abroad, dropped on the city below. She scarcely noticed it. A vision of the world had risen before her. Slowly the mighty prophecy of her destiny overwhelmed her.

She looked upon the man beside her and forgot all else but his manhood, his sorrow and sacrifice. She saw him glorified. He was no longer a thing apart, a creature below, a strange outcast of another clime and blood, but her Brother Humanity incarnate.

He did not glimpse the glory in her eyes, but stood looking outward toward the sea and sending flare after flare into the un-answering darkness. Dark purple clouds lay banked and billowed in the west. Behind them and all around, the heavens glowed in dim, weird radiance that suffused the darkening world and made almost a minor music.

In fascinated silence Jim gazed at the heavens and dropped his flares to the floor. Memories of memories stirred to life in the dead recesses of his mind. The shackles seemed to rattle and fall from his soul. He arose with power in his eyes. He turned and looked upon the lady, and found her gazing straight at him.

Silently, immovably, they saw each other face to face— eye to eye. Their souls lay naked to the night. It was not lust; it was not love— it was some vaster, mightier thing that needed neither touch of body nor thrill of soul. It was a thought divine, splendid.

Slowly, noiselessly, they moved toward each other—the heavens above, the seas around, the city grim and dead below. He loomed from out the velvet shadows vast and dark. Pearl-white and slender, she shone beneath the stars. She stretched her jeweled hands abroad. He lifted up his mighty arms, and——

Hoarse and sharp the cry of a motor drifted clearly up from the silence below. They started backward with a cry and gazed upon each other with eyes that faltered and fell, with blood that boiled.

…Came the mad cry again, and almost from their feet a flare blazed into the air and scattered its stars upon them. She covered her eyes with her hands, and her shoulders heaved. He dropped and bowed, groped blindly on his knees about the floor. A blue flame spluttered lazily after an age, and she heard the scream of an answering flare as it flew. Then they stood still as death, looking to opposite ends of the earth.

The roar and ring of swift elevators shooting upward from below made the great tower tremble. A murmur and babel of voices swept in upon the night. All over the once dead city the lights blinked, flickered, and flamed; and then with a sudden clanging of doors the entrance to the platform was filled with men, and one with white and flying hair rushed to the girl and lifted her to his breast.

JULIA’S FATHER. Julia!

NARRATOR. Behind him hurried a younger, comelier man, carefully clad in motor costume, who bent above the girl with passionate solicitude and gazed into her staring eyes until they narrowed and dropped and her face flushed deeper and deeper crimson.

FRED. Julia, my darling. I thought you were gone forever.

JULIA. Fred. Is the world… gone?

FRED. Only New York. It is terrible. You know… but you, how did you escape— how have you endured this horror? Are you well? Unharmed?

JULIA. Unharmed.

FRED. And this man here?

NARRATOR. …he asked, encircling her drooping form with one arm and turning toward the Negro. Suddenly he stiffened and his hand flew to his hip.

FRED. Why! It’s a nigger! Julia. Has he- has he dared!?—

JULIA. —He has dared all, to rescue me, and I thank him much.

NARRATOR. But she did not look at him again. As the couple turned away, the father drew a roll of bills from his pockets.

JULIA’S FATHER. Here, my good fellow: take that. What’s your name?

JIM. Jim Davis.

JULIA’S FATHER. Well Jim, I thank you. I’ve always liked your people. If you ever want a job, call on me.

NARRATOR. And they were gone. The crowd poured up and out of the elevators, talking and whispering.

VOICE 1. Who was it?

VOICE 2. Are they alive?

VOICE 3. How many?

VOICE 4. Two!

VOICE 5. Who was saved?

VOICE 6. A white girl and a nigger— there she goes.

VOICE 7. A nigger? Where is he? Let's lynch the damned——

VOICE 8. Shut up—he's all right-he saved her.

VOICE 9. Saved hell! He had no business——

VOICE 10. Here he comes.

NARRATOR. Into the glare of the electric lights the colored man moved slowly, with the eyes of those that walk and sleep.

VOICE 11. Well, what do you think of that?

NARRATOR. …Cried a bystander.

VOICE 11. Of all New York, just a white girl and a nigger!

NARRATOR. The colored man heard nothing. He stood silently beneath the glare of the light, gazing at the money in his hand and shrinking as he gazed. A woman mounted to the platform and looked about, shading her eyes. She was brown, small, and toil-worn. The crowd parted and her eyes fell on the colored man; with a cry she tottered toward him.

JIM’S WIFE. Jim!!!!

NARRATOR. He whirled, and with a sob of joy, caught his wife in his arms.