Darkwater by W. E. B. Du Bois

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On the other hand, Ugliness to me is eternal, not in the essence but in
its incompleteness; but its eternity does not daunt me, for its eternal
unfulfilment is a cause of joy. There is in it nothing new or
unexpected; it is the old evil stretching out and ever seeking the end
it cannot find; it may coil and writhe and recur in endless battle to
days without end, but it is the same human ill and bitter hurt. But
Beauty is fulfilment. It satisfies. It is always new and strange. It is
the reasonable thing. Its end is Death--the sweet silence of perfection,
the calm and balance of utter music. Therein is the triumph of Beauty.

So strong is the spell of beauty that there are those who, contradicting
their own knowledge and experience, try to say that all is beauty. They
are called optimists, and they lie. All is not beauty. Ugliness and hate
and ill are here with all their contradiction and illogic; they will
always be here--perhaps, God send, with lessened volume and force, but
here and eternal, while beauty triumphs in its great completion--Death.
We cannot conjure the end of all ugliness in eternal beauty, for beauty
by its very being and definition has in each definition its ends and
limits; but while beauty lies implicit and revealed in its end, ugliness
writhes on in darkness forever. So the ugliness of continual birth
fulfils itself and conquers gloriously only in the beautiful end, Death.

* * * * *

At last to us all comes happiness, there in the Court of Peace, where
the dead lie so still and calm and good. If we were not dead we would
lie and listen to the flowers grow. We would hear the birds sing and see
how the rain rises and blushes and burns and pales and dies in beauty.
We would see spring, summer, and the red riot of autumn, and then in
winter, beneath the soft white snow, sleep and dream of dreams. But we
know that being dead, our Happiness is a fine and finished thing and
that ten, a hundred, and a thousand years, we shall lie at rest, unhurt
in the Court of Peace.

_The Prayers of God_

Name of God's Name!
Red murder reigns;
All hell is loose;
On gold autumnal air
Walk grinning devils, barbed and hoofed;
While high on hills of hate,
Black-blossomed, crimson-sky'd,
Thou sittest, dumb.

Father Almighty!
This earth is mad!
Palsied, our cunning hands;
Rotten, our gold;
Our argosies reel and stagger
Over empty seas;
All the long aisles
Of Thy Great Temples, God,
Stink with the entrails
Of our souls.
And Thou art dumb.

Above the thunder of Thy Thunders, Lord,
Lightening Thy Lightnings,
Rings and roars
The dark damnation
Of this hell of war.
Red piles the pulp of hearts and heads
And little children's hands.

Allah!
Elohim!
Very God of God!

Death is here!
Dead are the living; deep--dead the dead.
Dying are earth's unborn--
The babes' wide eyes of genius and of joy,
Poems and prayers, sun-glows and earth-songs,
Great-pictured dreams,
Enmarbled phantasies,
High hymning heavens--all
In this dread night
Writhe and shriek and choke and die
This long ghost-night--
While Thou art dumb.

Have mercy!
Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!
Stand forth, unveil Thy Face,
Pour down the light
That seethes above Thy Throne,
And blaze this devil's dance to darkness!
Hear!
Speak!
In Christ's Great Name--

I hear!
Forgive me, God!
Above the thunder I hearkened;
Beneath the silence, now,--
I hear!

(Wait, God, a little space.
It is so strange to talk with Thee--
Alone!)

This gold?
I took it.
Is it Thine?
Forgive; I did not know.

Blood? Is it wet with blood?
'Tis from my brother's hands.
(I know; his hands are mine.)
It flowed for Thee, O Lord.

War? Not so; not war--
Dominion, Lord, and over black, not white;
Black, brown, and fawn,
And not Thy Chosen Brood, O God,
We murdered.
To build Thy Kingdom,
To drape our wives and little ones,
And set their souls a-glitter--
For this we killed these lesser breeds
And civilized their dead,
Raping red rubber, diamonds, cocoa, gold!

For this, too, once, and in Thy Name,
I lynched a Nigger--

(He raved and writhed,
I heard him cry,
I felt the life-light leap and lie,
I saw him crackle there, on high,
I watched him wither!)

_Thou?_
_Thee?_
_I lynched Thee?_

Awake me, God! I sleep!
What was that awful word Thou saidst?
That black and riven thing--was it Thee?
That gasp--was it Thine?
This pain--is it Thine?
Are, then, these bullets piercing Thee?
Have all the wars of all the world,
Down all dim time, drawn blood from Thee?
Have all the lies and thefts and hates--
Is this Thy Crucifixion, God,
And not that funny, little cross,
With vinegar and thorns?
Is this Thy kingdom here, not there,
This stone and stucco drift of dreams?

Help!
I sense that low and awful cry--

Who cries?
Who weeps?
With silent sob that rends and tears--
Can God sob?

Who prays?
I hear strong prayers throng by,
Like mighty winds on dusky moors--
Can God pray?

Prayest Thou, Lord, and to me?
_Thou_ needest me?
Thou _needest_ me?
Thou needest _me_?
Poor, wounded soul!
Of this I never dreamed. I thought--

_Courage, God,
I come!_

X

THE COMET

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--"nothing!" as he said
bitterly. Bits of the words of the walkers came to him.

"The comet?"

"The comet----"

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

"Well, Jim, are you scared?"

"No," said the messenger shortly.

"I thought we'd journeyed through the comet's tail once," broke in the
junior clerk affably.

"Oh, that was Halley's," said the president; "this is a new comet, quite
a stranger, they say--wonderful, wonderful! I saw it last night. Oh, by
the way, Jim," turning again to the messenger, "I want you to go down
into the lower vaults today."

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

"Everything of value has been moved out since the water began to seep
in," said the president; "but we miss two volumes of old records.
Suppose you nose around down there,--it isn't very pleasant, I suppose."

"Not very," said the messenger, as he walked out.

"Well, Jim, the tail of the new comet hits us at noon this time," said
the vault clerk, 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 incrusted 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!

"Boom!"

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, pushed, 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!
"Robbery and murder," 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, and 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--but 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 gases expected.
Close doors and windows. Seek the cellar." The messenger read and
staggered on. Far out from a window above, a girl lay with gasping face
and sleevelets on her arms. 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.

"Yesterday, they would not have served me," he whispered, 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 the
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.

"Hello--hello--help, in God's name!" wailed the woman. "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----" 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 scarcely have 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 without rushed in and they started toward each other.

"What has happened?" she cried. "Tell me! Nothing stirs. All is silence!
I see the dead strewn before my window as winnowed by the breath of
God,--and see----" She dragged him through 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.

"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?" she cried again.

He answered slowly:

"Something--comet or devil--swept across the earth this morning
and--many are dead!"

"Many? Very many?"

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

She gasped and they stared at each other.

"My--father!" she whispered.

"Where is he?"

"He started for the office."

"Where is it?"

"In the Metropolitan Tower."

"Leave a note for him here and come."

Then he stopped.

"No," he said firmly--"first, we must go--to Harlem."

"Harlem!" she cried. Then she understood. She tapped her foot at first
impatiently. She looked back and shuddered. Then she came resolutely
down the steps.

"There's a swifter car in the garage in the court," she said.

"I don't know how to drive it," he said.

"I do," she answered.

In ten minutes they were flying to Harlem on the wind. The Stutz 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. She
did not look, but said:

"You have lost--somebody?"

"I have lost--everybody," he said, simply--"unless----"

He ran back and was gone several minutes--hours they seemed to her.

"Everybody," he said, and he walked slowly back with something film-like
in his hand which he stuffed into his pocket.

"I'm afraid I was selfish," he said. But already the car was moving
toward the park among the dark and lined dead of Harlem--the brown,
still faces, the knotted hands, the homely garments, and the
silence--the wild and haunting silence. 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:

Dear Daughter:

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.

"Come," she cried nervously. "We must search the city."

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. He sniffed the
air. An odor--a smell--and with the shifting breeze a sickening stench
filled their nostrils and brought its awful warning. The girl settled
back helplessly in her seat.

"What can we do?" she cried.

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

"The long distance telephone--the telegraph and the cable--night rockets
and then--flight!"

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. She looked at the mouthpiece. She had never
looked at one so closely before. It was wide and black, pimpled with
usage; inert; dead; almost sarcastic in its unfeeling curves. It
looked--she beat back the thought--but it looked,--it persisted in
looking like--she turned her head and found herself alone. One moment
she was terrified; then she thanked him silently for his delicacy and
turned resolutely, with a quick intaking of breath.

"Hello!" she called in low tones. She was calling to the world. The
world _must_ answer. Would the world _answer_? Was the world----

Silence!

She had spoken too low.

"Hello!" she cried, full-voiced.

She listened. Silence! Her heart beat quickly. She cried in clear,
distinct, loud tones: "Hello--hello--hello!"

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 into the
black and sarcastic mouthpiece, and the thought came again. Hope lay
dead within her. Yes, the cable and the rockets 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 sidehall. 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
handed her into the car. Her voice caught as she whispered:

"Not--that."

And he answered slowly: "No--not that!"

They climbed 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,--not dead. They moved in
quiet reverence, lest somehow they wake these sleeping forms who had, at
last, found peace. They moved in some solemn, world-wide _Friedhof_,
above which 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.

Great, dark coils of wire came up from the earth and down from the sun
and entered this low lair of witchery. The gathered lightnings of the
world centered here, binding with beams of light the ends of the earth.
The doors gaped on the gloom within. He paused on the threshold.

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