Sister Carrie: A Novel
congratulate Carrie as a friend. Nevertheless, the man mastered
himself, and it was a triumph. He almost jerked the old subtle light to
his eyes.
“I thought,” he said, looking at Carrie, “I would come around and tell
you how well you did, Mrs. Drouet. It was delightful.”
Carrie took the cue, and replied:
“Oh, thank you.”
“I was just telling her,” put in Drouet, now delighted with his
possession, “that I thought she did fine.”
“Indeed you did,” said Hurstwood, turning upon Carrie eyes in which she
read more than the words.
Carrie laughed luxuriantly.
“If you do as well in the rest of the play, you will make us all think
you are a born actress.”
Carrie smiled again. She felt the acuteness of Hurstwood’s position,
and wished deeply that she could be alone with him, but she did not
understand the change in Drouet. Hurstwood found that he could not
talk, repressed as he was, and grudging Drouet every moment of his
presence, he bowed himself out with the elegance of a Faust. Outside he
set his teeth with envy.
“Damn it!” he said, “is he always going to be in the way?” He was moody
when he got back to the box, and could not talk for thinking of his
wretched situation.
As the curtain for the next act arose, Drouet came back. He was very
much enlivened in temper and inclined to whisper, but Hurstwood
pretended interest. He fixed his eyes on the stage, although Carrie was
not there, a short bit of melodramatic comedy preceding her entrance.
He did not see what was going on, however. He was thinking his own
thoughts, and they were wretched.
The progress of the play did not improve matters for him. Carrie, from
now on, was easily the centre of interest. The audience, which had been
inclined to feel that nothing could be good after the first gloomy
impression, now went to the other extreme and saw power where it was
not. The general feeling reacted on Carrie. She presented her part with
some felicity, though nothing like the intensity which had aroused the
feeling at the end of the long first act.
Both Hurstwood and Drouet viewed her pretty figure with rising
feelings. The fact that such ability should reveal itself in her, that
they should see it set forth under such effective circumstances, framed
almost in massy gold and shone upon by the appropriate lights of
sentiment and personality, heightened her charm for them. She was more
than the old Carrie to Drouet. He longed to be at home with her until
he could tell her. He awaited impatiently the end, when they should go
home alone.
Hurstwood, on the contrary, saw in the strength of her new
attractiveness his miserable predicament. He could have cursed the man
beside him. By the Lord, he could not even applaud feelingly as he
would. For once he must simulate when it left a taste in his mouth.
It was in the last act that Carrie’s fascination for her lovers assumed
its most effective character.
Hurstwood listened to its progress, wondering when Carrie would come
on. He had not long to wait. The author had used the artifice of
sending all the merry company for a drive, and now Carrie came in
alone. It was the first time that Hurstwood had had a chance to see her
facing the audience quite alone, for nowhere else had she been without
a foil of some sort. He suddenly felt, as she entered, that her old
strength—the power that had grasped him at the end of the first act—had
come back. She seemed to be gaining feeling, now that the play was
drawing to a close and the opportunity for great action was passing.
“Poor Pearl,” she said, speaking with natural pathos. “It is a sad
thing to want for happiness, but it is a terrible thing to see another
groping about blindly for it, when it is almost within the grasp.”
She was gazing now sadly out upon the open sea, her arm resting
listlessly upon the polished door-post.
Hurstwood began to feel a deep sympathy for her and for himself. He
could almost feel that she was talking to him. He was, by a combination
of feelings and entanglements, almost deluded by that quality of voice
and manner which, like a pathetic strain of music, seems ever a
personal and intimate thing. Pathos has this quality, that it seems
ever addressed to one alone.
“And yet, she can be very happy with him,” went on the little actress.
“Her sunny temper, her joyous face will brighten any home.”
She turned slowly toward the audience without seeing. There was so much
simplicity in her movements that she seemed wholly alone. Then she
found a seat by a table, and turned over some books, devoting a thought
to them.
“With no longings for what I may not have,” she breathed in
conclusion—and it was almost a sigh—“my existence hidden from all save
two in the wide world, and making my joy out of the joy of that
innocent girl who will soon be his wife.”
Hurstwood was sorry when a character, known as Peach Blossom,
interrupted her. He stirred irritably, for he wished her to go on. He
was charmed by the pale face, the lissome figure, draped in pearl grey,
with a coiled string of pearls at the throat. Carrie had the air of one
who was weary and in need of protection, and, under the fascinating
make-believe of the moment, he rose in feeling until he was ready in
spirit to go to her and ease her out of her misery by adding to his own
delight.
In a moment Carrie was alone again, and was saying, with animation:
“I must return to the city, no matter what dangers may lurk here. I
must go, secretly if I can; openly, if I must.”
There was a sound of horses’ hoofs outside, and then Ray’s voice
saying: “No, I shall not ride again. Put him up.”
He entered, and then began a scene which had as much to do with the
creation of the tragedy of affection in Hurstwood as anything in his
peculiar and involved career. For Carrie had resolved to make something
of this scene, and, now that the cue had come, it began to take a
feeling hold upon her. Both Hurstwood and Drouet noted the rising
sentiment as she proceeded.
“I thought you had gone with Pearl,” she said to her lover.
“I did go part of the way, but I left the party a mile down the road.”
“You and Pearl had no disagreement?”
“No—yes; that is, we always have. Our social barometers always stand at
‘cloudy’ and ‘overcast.’”
“And whose fault is that?” she said, easily.
“Not mine,” he answered, pettishly. “I know I do all I can—I say all I
can—but she——”
This was rather awkwardly put by Patton, but Carrie redeemed it with a
grace which was inspiring.
“But she is your wife,” she said, fixing her whole attention upon the
stilled actor, and softening the quality of her voice until it was
again low and musical. “Ray, my friend, courtship is the text from
which the whole sermon of married life takes its theme. Do not let
yours be discontented and unhappy.”
She put her two little hands together and pressed them appealingly.
Hurstwood gazed with slightly parted lips. Drouet was fidgeting with
satisfaction.
“To be my wife, yes,” went on the actor in a manner which was weak by
comparison, but which could not now spoil the tender atmosphere which
Carrie had created and maintained. She did not seem to feel that he was
wretched. She would have done nearly as well with a block of wood. The
accessories she needed were within her own imagination. The acting of
others could not affect them.
“And you repent already?” she said, slowly.
“I lost you,” he said, seizing her little hand, “and I was at the mercy
of any flirt who chose to give me an inviting look. It was your
fault—you know it was—why did you leave me?”
Carrie turned slowly away, and seemed to be mastering some impulse in
silence. Then she turned back.
“Ray,” she said, “the greatest happiness I have ever felt has been the
thought that all your affection was forever bestowed upon a virtuous
woman, your equal in family, fortune, and accomplishments. What a
revelation do you make to me now! What is it makes you continually war
with your happiness?”
The last question was asked so simply that it came to the audience and
the lover as a personal thing.
At last it came to the part where the lover exclaimed, “Be to me as you
used to be.”
Carrie answered, with affecting sweetness, “I cannot be that to you,
but I can speak in the spirit of the Laura who is dead to you forever.”
“Be it as you will,” said Patton.
Hurstwood leaned forward. The whole audience was silent and intent.
“Let the woman you look upon be wise or vain,” said Carrie, her eyes
bent sadly upon the lover, who had sunk into a seat, “beautiful or
homely, rich or poor, she has but one thing she can really give or
refuse—her heart.”
Drouet felt a scratch in his throat.
“Her beauty, her wit, her accomplishments, she may sell to you; but her
love is the treasure without money and without price.”
The manager suffered this as a personal appeal. It came to him as if
they were alone, and he could hardly restrain the tears for sorrow over
the hopeless, pathetic, and yet dainty and appealing woman whom he
loved. Drouet also was beside himself. He was resolving that he would
be to Carrie what he had never been before. He would marry her, by
George! She was worth it.
“She asks only in return,” said Carrie, scarcely hearing the small,
scheduled reply of her lover, and putting herself even more in harmony
with the plaintive melody now issuing from the orchestra, “that when
you look upon her your eyes shall speak devotion; that when you address
her your voice shall be gentle, loving, and kind; that you shall not
despise her because she cannot understand all at once your vigorous
thoughts and ambitious designs; for, when misfortune and evil have
defeated your greatest purposes, her love remains to console you. You
look to the trees,” she continued, while Hurstwood restrained his
feelings only by the grimmest repression, “for strength and grandeur;
do not despise the flowers because their fragrance is all they have to
give. Remember,” she concluded, tenderly, “love is all a woman has to
give,” and she laid a strange, sweet accent on the all, “but it is the
only thing which God permits us to carry beyond the grave.”
The two men were in the most harrowed state of affection. They scarcely
heard the few remaining words with which the scene concluded. They only
saw their idol, moving about with appealing grace, continuing a power
which to them was a revelation.
Hurstwood resolved a thousands things, Drouet as well. They joined
equally in the burst of applause which called Carrie out. Drouet
pounded his hands until they ached. Then he jumped up again and started
out. As he went, Carrie came out, and, seeing an immense basket of
flowers being hurried down the aisle toward her, she waited. They were
Hurstwood’s. She looked toward the manager’s box for a moment, caught
his eye, and smiled. He could have leaped out of the box to enfold her.
He forgot the need of circumspectness which his married state enforced.
He almost forgot that he had with him in the box those who knew him. By
the Lord, he would have that lovely girl if it took his all. He would
act at once. This should be the end of Drouet, and don’t you forget it.
He would not wait another day. The drummer should not have her.
He was so excited that he could not stay in the box. He went into the
lobby, and then into the street, thinking. Drouet did not return. In a
few minutes the last act was over, and he was crazy to have Carrie
alone. He cursed the luck that could keep him smiling, bowing,
shamming, when he wanted to tell her that he loved her, when he wanted
to whisper to her alone. He groaned as he saw that his hopes were
futile. He must even take her to supper, shamming. He finally went
about and asked how she was getting along. The actors were all