Sister Carrie: A Novel
dressing, talking, hurrying about. Drouet was palavering himself with
the looseness of excitement and passion. The manager mastered himself
only by a great effort.
“We are going to supper, of course,” he said, with a voice that was a
mockery of his heart.
“Oh, yes,” said Carrie, smiling.
The little actress was in fine feather. She was realising now what it
was to be petted. For once she was the admired, the sought-for. The
independence of success now made its first faint showing. With the
tables turned, she was looking down, rather than up, to her lover. She
did not fully realise that this was so, but there was something in
condescension coming from her which was infinitely sweet. When she was
ready they climbed into the waiting coach and drove down town; once,
only, did she find an opportunity to express her feeling, and that was
when the manager preceded Drouet in the coach and sat beside her.
Before Drouet was fully in she had squeezed Hurstwood’s hand in a
gentle, impulsive manner. The manager was beside himself with
affection. He could have sold his soul to be with her alone. “Ah,” he
thought, “the agony of it.”
Drouet hung on, thinking he was all in all. The dinner was spoiled by
his enthusiasm. Hurstwood went home feeling as if he should die if he
did not find affectionate relief. He whispered “to-morrow” passionately
to Carrie, and she understood. He walked away from the drummer and his
prize at parting feeling as if he could slay him and not regret. Carrie
also felt the misery of it.
“Good-night,” he said, simulating an easy friendliness.
“Good-night,” said the little actress, tenderly.
“The fool!” he said, now hating Drouet. “The idiot! I’ll do him yet,
and that quick! We’ll see to-morrow.”
“Well, if you aren’t a wonder,” Drouet was saying, complacently,
squeezing Carrie’s arm. “You are the dandiest little girl on earth.”
Chapter XX. THE LURE OF THE SPIRIT: THE FLESH IN PURSUIT
Passion in a man of Hurstwood’s nature takes a vigorous form. It is no
musing, dreamy thing. There is none of the tendency to sing outside of
my lady’s window—to languish and repine in the face of difficulties. In
the night he was long getting to sleep because of too much thinking,
and in the morning he was early awake, seizing with alacrity upon the
same dear subject and pursuing it with vigour. He was out of sorts
physically, as well as disordered mentally, for did he not delight in a
new manner in his Carrie, and was not Drouet in the way? Never was man
more harassed than he by the thoughts of his love being held by the
elated, flush-mannered drummer. He would have given anything, it seemed
to him, to have the complication ended—to have Carrie acquiesce to an
arrangement which would dispose of Drouet effectually and forever.
What to do. He dressed thinking. He moved about in the same chamber
with his wife, unmindful of her presence.
At breakfast he found himself without an appetite. The meat to which he
helped himself remained on his plate untouched. His coffee grew cold,
while he scanned the paper indifferently. Here and there he read a
little thing, but remembered nothing. Jessica had not yet come down.
His wife sat at one end of the table revolving thoughts of her own in
silence. A new servant had been recently installed and had forgot the
napkins. On this account the silence was irritably broken by a reproof.
“I’ve told you about this before, Maggie,” said Mrs. Hurstwood. “I’m
not going to tell you again.”
Hurstwood took a glance at his wife. She was frowning. Just now her
manner irritated him excessively. Her next remark was addressed to him.
“Have you made up your mind, George, when you will take your vacation?”
It was customary for them to discuss the regular summer outing at this
season of the year.
“Not yet,” he said, “I’m very busy just now.”
“Well, you’ll want to make up your mind pretty soon, won’t you, if
we’re going?” she returned.
“I guess we have a few days yet,” he said.
“Hmff,” she returned. “Don’t wait until the season’s over.”
She stirred in aggravation as she said this.
“There you go again,” he observed. “One would think I never did
anything, the way you begin.”
“Well, I want to know about it,” she reiterated.
“You’ve got a few days yet,” he insisted. “You’ll not want to start
before the races are over.”
He was irritated to think that this should come up when he wished to
have his thoughts for other purposes.
“Well, we may. Jessica doesn’t want to stay until the end of the
races.”
“What did you want with a season ticket, then?”
“Uh!” she said, using the sound as an exclamation of disgust, “I’ll not
argue with you,” and therewith arose to leave the table.
“Say,” he said, rising, putting a note of determination in his voice
which caused her to delay her departure, “what’s the matter with you of
late? Can’t I talk with you any more?”
“Certainly, you can _talk_ with me,” she replied, laying emphasis on
the word.
“Well, you wouldn’t think so by the way you act. Now, you want to know
when I’ll be ready—not for a month yet. Maybe not then.”
“We’ll go without you.”
“You will, eh?” he sneered.
“Yes, we will.”
He was astonished at the woman’s determination, but it only irritated
him the more.
“Well, we’ll see about that. It seems to me you’re trying to run things
with a pretty high hand of late. You talk as though you settled my
affairs for me. Well, you don’t. You don’t regulate anything that’s
connected with me. If you want to go, go, but you won’t hurry me by any
such talk as that.”
He was thoroughly aroused now. His dark eyes snapped, and he crunched
his paper as he laid it down. Mrs. Hurstwood said nothing more. He was
just finishing when she turned on her heel and went out into the hall
and upstairs. He paused for a moment, as if hesitating, then sat down
and drank a little coffee, and thereafter arose and went for his hat
and gloves upon the main floor.
His wife had really not anticipated a row of this character. She had
come down to the breakfast table feeling a little out of sorts with
herself and revolving a scheme which she had in her mind. Jessica had
called her attention to the fact that the races were not what they were
supposed to be. The social opportunities were not what they had thought
they would be this year. The beautiful girl found going every day a
dull thing. There was an earlier exodus this year of people who were
anybody to the watering places and Europe. In her own circle of
acquaintances several young men in whom she was interested had gone to
Waukesha. She began to feel that she would like to go too, and her
mother agreed with her.
Accordingly, Mrs. Hurstwood decided to broach the subject. She was
thinking this over when she came down to the table, but for some reason
the atmosphere was wrong. She was not sure, after it was all over, just
how the trouble had begun. She was determined now, however, that her
husband was a brute, and that, under no circumstances, would she let
this go by unsettled. She would have more lady-like treatment or she
would know why.
For his part, the manager was loaded with the care of this new argument
until he reached his office and started from there to meet Carrie. Then
the other complications of love, desire, and opposition possessed him.
His thoughts fled on before him upon eagles’ wings. He could hardly
wait until he should meet Carrie face to face. What was the night,
after all, without her—what the day? She must and should be his.
For her part, Carrie had experienced a world of fancy and feeling since
she had left him, the night before. She had listened to Drouet’s
enthusiastic maunderings with much regard for that part which concerned
herself, with very little for that which affected his own gain. She
kept him at such lengths as she could, because her thoughts were with
her own triumph. She felt Hurstwood’s passion as a delightful
background to her own achievement, and she wondered what he would have
to say. She was sorry for him, too, with that peculiar sorrow which
finds something complimentary to itself in the misery of another. She
was now experiencing the first shades of feeling of that subtle change
which removes one out of the ranks of the suppliants into the lines of
the dispensers of charity. She was, all in all, exceedingly happy.
On the morrow, however, there was nothing in the papers concerning the
event, and, in view of the flow of common, everyday things about, it
now lost a shade of the glow of the previous evening. Drouet himself
was not talking so much _of_ as _for_ her. He felt instinctively that,
for some reason or other, he needed reconstruction in her regard.
“I think,” he said, as he spruced around their chambers the next
morning, preparatory to going down town, “that I’ll straighten out that
little deal of mine this month and then we’ll get married. I was
talking with Mosher about that yesterday.”
“No, you won’t,” said Carrie, who was coming to feel a certain faint
power to jest with the drummer.
“Yes, I will,” he exclaimed, more feelingly than usual, adding, with
the tone of one who pleads, “Don’t you believe what I’ve told you?”
Carrie laughed a little.
“Of course I do,” she answered.
Drouet’s assurance now misgave him. Shallow as was his mental
observation, there was that in the things which had happened which made
his little power of analysis useless. Carrie was still with him, but
not helpless and pleading. There was a lilt in her voice which was new.
She did not study him with eyes expressive of dependence. The drummer
was feeling the shadow of something which was coming. It coloured his
feelings and made him develop those little attentions and say those
little words which were mere forefendations against danger.
Shortly afterward he departed, and Carrie prepared for her meeting with
Hurstwood. She hurried at her toilet, which was soon made, and hastened
down the stairs. At the corner she passed Drouet, but they did not see
each other.
The drummer had forgotten some bills which he wished to turn into his
house. He hastened up the stairs and burst into the room, but found
only the chambermaid, who was cleaning up.
“Hello,” he exclaimed, half to himself, “has Carrie gone?”
“Your wife? Yes, she went out just a few minutes ago.”
“That’s strange,” thought Drouet. “She didn’t say a word to me. I
wonder where she went?”
He hastened about, rummaging in his valise for what he wanted, and
finally pocketing it. Then he turned his attention to his fair
neighbour, who was good-looking and kindly disposed towards him.
“What are you up to?” he said, smiling.
“Just cleaning,” she replied, stopping and winding a dusting towel
about her hand.
“Tired of it?”
“Not so very.”
“Let me show you something,” he said, affably, coming over and taking
out of his pocket a little lithographed card which had been issued by a
wholesale tobacco company. On this was printed a picture of a pretty
girl, holding a striped parasol, the colours of which could be changed
by means of a revolving disk in the back, which showed red, yellow,
green, and blue through little interstices made in the ground occupied
by the umbrella top.
“Isn’t that clever?” he said, handing it to her and showing her how it
worked. “You never saw anything like that before.”
“Isn’t it nice?” she answered.
“You can have it if you want it,” he remarked.
“That’s a pretty ring you have,” he said, touching a commonplace
setting which adorned the hand holding the card he had given her.
“Do you think so?”
“That’s right,” he answered, making use of a pretence at examination to
secure her finger. “That’s fine.”
The ice being thus broken, he launched into further observation