Sister Carrie: A Novel
Hurstwood was arraying himself in one of his perfection vests before
the glass at the time.
“I thought she just bought one,” he said.
“That was just something for evening wear,” returned his wife
complacently.
“It seems to me,” returned Hurstwood, “that she’s spending a good deal
for dresses of late.”
“Well, she’s going out more,” concluded his wife, but the tone of his
voice impressed her as containing something she had not heard there
before.
He was not a man who traveled much, but when he did, he had been
accustomed to take her along. On one occasion recently a local
aldermanic junket had been arranged to visit Philadelphia—a junket that
was to last ten days. Hurstwood had been invited.
“Nobody knows us down there,” said one, a gentleman whose face was a
slight improvement over gross ignorance and sensuality. He always wore
a silk hat of most imposing proportions. “We can have a good time.” His
left eye moved with just the semblance of a wink. “You want to come
along, George.”
The next day Hurstwood announced his intention to his wife.
“I’m going away, Julia,” he said, “for a few days.”
“Where?” she asked, looking up.
“To Philadelphia, on business.”
She looked at him consciously, expecting something else.
“I’ll have to leave you behind this time.”
“All right,” she replied, but he could see that she was thinking that
it was a curious thing. Before he went she asked him a few more
questions, and that irritated him. He began to feel that she was a
disagreeable attachment.
On this trip he enjoyed himself thoroughly, and when it was over he was
sorry to get back. He was not willingly a prevaricator, and hated
thoroughly to make explanations concerning it. The whole incident was
glossed over with general remarks, but Mrs. Hurstwood gave the subject
considerable thought. She drove out more, dressed better, and attended
theatres freely to make up for it.
Such an atmosphere could hardly come under the category of home life.
It ran along by force of habit, by force of conventional opinion. With
the lapse of time it must necessarily become dryer and dryer—must
eventually be tinder, easily lighted and destroyed.
Chapter X. THE COUNSEL OF WINTER: FORTUNE’S AMBASSADOR CALLS
In the light of the world’s attitude toward woman and her duties, the
nature of Carrie’s mental state deserves consideration. Actions such as
hers are measured by an arbitrary scale. Society possesses a
conventional standard whereby it judges all things. All men should be
good, all women virtuous. Wherefore, villain, hast thou failed?
For all the liberal analysis of Spencer and our modern naturalistic
philosophers, we have but an infantile perception of morals. There is
more in the subject than mere conformity to a law of evolution. It is
yet deeper than conformity to things of earth alone. It is more
involved than we, as yet, perceive. Answer, first, why the heart
thrills; explain wherefore some plaintive note goes wandering about the
world, undying; make clear the rose’s subtle alchemy evolving its ruddy
lamp in light and rain. In the essence of these facts lie the first
principles of morals.
“Oh,” thought Drouet, “how delicious is my conquest.”
“Ah,” thought Carrie, with mournful misgivings, “what is it I have
lost?”
Before this world-old proposition we stand, serious, interested,
confused; endeavouring to evolve the true theory of morals—the true
answer to what is right.
In the view of a certain stratum of society, Carrie was comfortably
established—in the eyes of the starveling, beaten by every wind and
gusty sheet of rain, she was safe in a halcyon harbour. Drouet had
taken three rooms, furnished, in Ogden Place, facing Union Park, on the
West Side. That was a little, green-carpeted breathing spot, than
which, to-day, there is nothing more beautiful in Chicago. It afforded
a vista pleasant to contemplate. The best room looked out upon the lawn
of the park, now sear and brown, where a little lake lay sheltered.
Over the bare limbs of the trees, which now swayed in the wintry wind,
rose the steeple of the Union Park Congregational Church, and far off
the towers of several others.
The rooms were comfortably enough furnished. There was a good Brussels
carpet on the floor, rich in dull red and lemon shades, and
representing large jardinières filled with gorgeous, impossible
flowers. There was a large pier-glass mirror between the two windows. A
large, soft, green, plush-covered couch occupied one corner, and
several rocking-chairs were set about. Some pictures, several rugs, a
few small pieces of bric-à-brac, and the tale of contents is told.
In the bedroom, off the front room, was Carrie’s trunk, bought by
Drouet, and in the wardrobe built into the wall quite an array of
clothing—more than she had ever possessed before, and of very becoming
designs. There was a third room for possible use as a kitchen, where
Drouet had Carrie establish a little portable gas stove for the
preparation of small lunches, oysters, Welsh rarebits, and the like, of
which he was exceedingly fond; and, lastly, a bath. The whole place was
cosey, in that it was lighted by gas and heated by furnace registers,
possessing also a small grate, set with an asbestos back, a method of
cheerful warming which was then first coming into use. By her industry
and natural love of order, which now developed, the place maintained an
air pleasing in the extreme.
Here, then, was Carrie, established in a pleasant fashion, free of
certain difficulties which most ominously confronted her, laden with
many new ones which were of a mental order, and altogether so turned
about in all of her earthly relationships that she might well have been
a new and different individual. She looked into her glass and saw a
prettier Carrie than she had seen before; she looked into her mind, a
mirror prepared of her own and the world’s opinions, and saw a worse.
Between these two images she wavered, hesitating which to believe.
“My, but you’re a little beauty,” Drouet was wont to exclaim to her.
She would look at him with large, pleased eyes.
“You know it, don’t you?” he would continue.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she would reply, feeling delight in the fact that
one should think so, hesitating to believe, though she really did, that
she was vain enough to think so much of herself.
Her conscience, however, was not a Drouet, interested to praise. There
she heard a different voice, with which she argued, pleaded, excused.
It was no just and sapient counsellor, in its last analysis. It was
only an average little conscience, a thing which represented the world,
her past environment, habit, convention, in a confused way. With it,
the voice of the people was truly the voice of God.
“Oh, thou failure!” said the voice.
“Why?” she questioned.
“Look at those about,” came the whispered answer. “Look at those who
are good. How would they scorn to do what you have done. Look at the
good girls; how will they draw away from such as you when they know you
have been weak. You had not tried before you failed.”
It was when Carrie was alone, looking out across the park, that she
would be listening to this. It would come infrequently—when something
else did not interfere, when the pleasant side was not too apparent,
when Drouet was not there. It was somewhat clear in utterance at first,
but never wholly convincing. There was always an answer, always the
December days threatened. She was alone; she was desireful; she was
fearful of the whistling wind. The voice of want made answer for her.
Once the bright days of summer pass by, a city takes on that sombre
garb of grey, wrapt in which it goes about its labours during the long
winter. Its endless buildings look grey, its sky and its streets assume
a sombre hue; the scattered, leafless trees and wind-blown dust and
paper but add to the general solemnity of colour. There seems to be
something in the chill breezes which scurry through the long, narrow
thoroughfares productive of rueful thoughts. Not poets alone, nor
artists, nor that superior order of mind which arrogates to itself all
refinement, feel this, but dogs and all men. These feel as much as the
poet, though they have not the same power of expression. The sparrow
upon the wire, the cat in the doorway, the dray horse tugging his weary
load, feel the long, keen breaths of winter. It strikes to the heart of
all life, animate and inanimate. If it were not for the artificial
fires of merriment, the rush of profit-seeking trade, and
pleasure-selling amusements; if the various merchants failed to make
the customary display within and without their establishments; if our
streets were not strung with signs of gorgeous hues and thronged with
hurrying purchasers, we would quickly discover how firmly the chill
hand of winter lays upon the heart; how dispiriting are the days during
which the sun withholds a portion of our allowance of light and warmth.
We are more dependent upon these things than is often thought. We are
insects produced by heat, and pass without it.
In the drag of such a grey day the secret voice would reassert itself,
feebly and more feebly.
Such mental conflict was not always uppermost. Carrie was not by any
means a gloomy soul. More, she had not the mind to get firm hold upon a
definite truth. When she could not find her way out of the labyrinth of
ill-logic which thought upon the subject created, she would turn away
entirely.
Drouet, all the time, was conducting himself in a model way for one of
his sort. He took her about a great deal, spent money upon her, and
when he travelled took her with him. There were times when she would be
alone for two or three days, while he made the shorter circuits of his
business, but, as a rule, she saw a great deal of him.
“Say, Carrie,” he said one morning, shortly after they had so
established themselves, “I’ve invited my friend Hurstwood to come out
some day and spend the evening with us.”
“Who is he?” asked Carrie doubtfully.
“Oh, he’s a nice man. He’s manager of Fitzgerald and Moy’s.”
“What’s that?” said Carrie.
“The finest resort in town. It’s a way-up, swell place.”
Carrie puzzled a moment. She was wondering what Drouet had told him,
what her attitude would be.
“That’s all right,” said Drouet, feeling her thought. “He doesn’t know
anything. You’re Mrs. Drouet now.”
There was something about this which struck Carrie as slightly
inconsiderate. She could see that Drouet did not have the keenest
sensibilities.
“Why don’t we get married?” she inquired, thinking of the voluble
promises he had made.
“Well, we will,” he said, “just as soon as I get this little deal of
mine closed up.”
He was referring to some property which he said he had, and which
required so much attention, adjustment, and what not, that somehow or
other it interfered with his free moral, personal actions.
“Just as soon as I get back from my Denver trip in January we’ll do
it.”
Carrie accepted this as basis for hope—it was a sort of salve to her
conscience, a pleasant way out. Under the circumstances, things would
be righted. Her actions would be justified. She really was not
enamoured of Drouet. She was more clever than he. In a dim way, she was
beginning to see where he lacked. If it had not been for this, if she
had not been able to measure and judge him in a way, she would have
been worse off than she was. She would have adored him. She would have
been utterly wretched in her fear of not gaining his affection, of
losing his interest, of being swept away and left without an anchorage.
As it was, she wavered a little, slightly anxious, at first, to gain
him completely, but later feeling at ease in waiting. She was not
exactly sure what she thought of him—what she wanted to do.