Sister Carrie: A Novel
around, and a foreman, in an apron and shirt sleeves, the latter rolled
up to his shoulders, approached.
“Do you want to see me?” he asked.
“Do you need any help?” said Carrie, already learning directness of
address.
“Do you know how to stitch caps?” he returned.
“No, sir,” she replied.
“Have you ever had any experience at this kind of work?” he inquired.
She answered that she had not.
“Well,” said the foreman, scratching his ear meditatively, “we do need
a stitcher. We like experienced help, though. We’ve hardly got time to
break people in.” He paused and looked away out of the window. “We
might, though, put you at finishing,” he concluded reflectively.
“How much do you pay a week?” ventured Carrie, emboldened by a certain
softness in the man’s manner and his simplicity of address.
“Three and a half,” he answered.
“Oh,” she was about to exclaim, but checked herself and allowed her
thoughts to die without expression.
“We’re not exactly in need of anybody,” he went on vaguely, looking her
over as one would a package. “You can come on Monday morning, though,”
he added, “and I’ll put you to work.”
“Thank you,” said Carrie weakly.
“If you come, bring an apron,” he added.
He walked away and left her standing by the elevator, never so much as
inquiring her name.
While the appearance of the shop and the announcement of the price paid
per week operated very much as a blow to Carrie’s fancy, the fact that
work of any kind was offered after so rude a round of experience was
gratifying. She could not begin to believe that she would take the
place, modest as her aspirations were. She had been used to better than
that. Her mere experience and the free out-of-door life of the country
caused her nature to revolt at such confinement. Dirt had never been
her share. Her sister’s flat was clean. This place was grimy and low,
the girls were careless and hardened. They must be bad-minded and
hearted, she imagined. Still, a place had been offered her. Surely
Chicago was not so bad if she could find one place in one day. She
might find another and better later.
Her subsequent experiences were not of a reassuring nature, however.
From all the more pleasing or imposing places she was turned away
abruptly with the most chilling formality. In others where she applied
only the experienced were required. She met with painful rebuffs, the
most trying of which had been in a manufacturing cloak house, where she
had gone to the fourth floor to inquire.
“No, no,” said the foreman, a rough, heavily built individual, who
looked after a miserably lighted workshop, “we don’t want any one.
Don’t come here.”
With the wane of the afternoon went her hopes, her courage, and her
strength. She had been astonishingly persistent. So earnest an effort
was well deserving of a better reward. On every hand, to her fatigued
senses, the great business portion grew larger, harder, more stolid in
its indifference. It seemed as if it was all closed to her, that the
struggle was too fierce for her to hope to do anything at all. Men and
women hurried by in long, shifting lines. She felt the flow of the tide
of effort and interest—felt her own helplessness without quite
realising the wisp on the tide that she was. She cast about vainly for
some possible place to apply, but found no door which she had the
courage to enter. It would be the same thing all over. The old
humiliation of her plea, rewarded by curt denial. Sick at heart and in
body, she turned to the west, the direction of Minnie’s flat, which she
had now fixed in mind, and began that wearisome, baffled retreat which
the seeker for employment at nightfall too often makes. In passing
through Fifth Avenue, south towards Van Buren Street, where she
intended to take a car, she passed the door of a large wholesale shoe
house, through the plate-glass windows of which she could see a
middle-aged gentleman sitting at a small desk. One of those forlorn
impulses which often grow out of a fixed sense of defeat, the last
sprouting of a baffled and uprooted growth of ideas, seized upon her.
She walked deliberately through the door and up to the gentleman, who
looked at her weary face with partially awakened interest.
“What is it?” he said.
“Can you give me something to do?” said Carrie.
“Now, I really don’t know,” he said kindly. “What kind of work is it
you want—you’re not a typewriter, are you?”
“Oh, no,” answered Carrie.
“Well, we only employ book-keepers and typewriters here. You might go
around to the side and inquire upstairs. They did want some help
upstairs a few days ago. Ask for Mr. Brown.”
She hastened around to the side entrance and was taken up by the
elevator to the fourth floor.
“Call Mr. Brown, Willie,” said the elevator man to a boy near by.
Willie went off and presently returned with the information that Mr.
Brown said she should sit down and that he would be around in a little
while.
It was a portion of the stock room which gave no idea of the general
character of the place, and Carrie could form no opinion of the nature
of the work.
“So you want something to do,” said Mr. Brown, after he inquired
concerning the nature of her errand. “Have you ever been employed in a
shoe factory before?”
“No, sir,” said Carrie.
“What is your name?” he inquired, and being informed, “Well, I don’t
know as I have anything for you. Would you work for four and a half a
week?”
Carrie was too worn by defeat not to feel that it was considerable. She
had not expected that he would offer her less than six. She acquiesced,
however, and he took her name and address.
“Well,” he said, finally, “you report here at eight o’clock Monday
morning. I think I can find something for you to do.”
He left her revived by the possibilities, sure that she had found
something at last. Instantly the blood crept warmly over her body. Her
nervous tension relaxed. She walked out into the busy street and
discovered a new atmosphere. Behold, the throng was moving with a
lightsome step. She noticed that men and women were smiling. Scraps of
conversation and notes of laughter floated to her. The air was light.
People were already pouring out of the buildings, their labour ended
for the day. She noticed that they were pleased, and thoughts of her
sister’s home and the meal that would be awaiting her quickened her
steps. She hurried on, tired perhaps, but no longer weary of foot. What
would not Minnie say! Ah, the long winter in Chicago—the lights, the
crowd, the amusement! This was a great, pleasing metropolis after all.
Her new firm was a goodly institution. Its windows were of huge plate
glass. She could probably do well there. Thoughts of Drouet returned—of
the things he had told her. She now felt that life was better, that it
was livelier, sprightlier. She boarded a car in the best of spirits,
feeling her blood still flowing pleasantly. She would live in Chicago,
her mind kept saying to itself. She would have a better time than she
had ever had before—she would be happy.
Chapter IV. THE SPENDINGS OF FANCY: FACTS ANSWER WITH SNEERS
For the next two days Carrie indulged in the most high-flown
speculations.
Her fancy plunged recklessly into privileges and amusements which would
have been much more becoming had she been cradled a child of fortune.
With ready will and quick mental selection she scattered her meagre
four-fifty per week with a swift and graceful hand. Indeed, as she sat
in her rocking-chair these several evenings before going to bed and
looked out upon the pleasantly lighted street, this money cleared for
its prospective possessor the way to every joy and every bauble which
the heart of woman may desire. “I will have a fine time,” she thought.
Her sister Minnie knew nothing of these rather wild cerebrations,
though they exhausted the markets of delight. She was too busy
scrubbing the kitchen woodwork and calculating the purchasing power of
eighty cents for Sunday’s dinner. When Carrie had returned home,
flushed with her first success and ready, for all her weariness, to
discuss the now interesting events which led up to her achievement, the
former had merely smiled approvingly and inquired whether she would
have to spend any of it for car fare. This consideration had not
entered in before, and it did not now for long affect the glow of
Carrie’s enthusiasm. Disposed as she then was to calculate upon that
vague basis which allows the subtraction of one sum from another
without any perceptible diminution, she was happy.
When Hanson came home at seven o’clock, he was inclined to be a little
crusty—his usual demeanour before supper. This never showed so much in
anything he said as in a certain solemnity of countenance and the
silent manner in which he slopped about. He had a pair of yellow carpet
slippers which he enjoyed wearing, and these he would immediately
substitute for his solid pair of shoes. This, and washing his face with
the aid of common washing soap until it glowed a shiny red, constituted
his only preparation for his evening meal. He would then get his
evening paper and read in silence.
For a young man, this was rather a morbid turn of character, and so
affected Carrie. Indeed, it affected the entire atmosphere of the flat,
as such things are inclined to do, and gave to his wife’s mind its
subdued and tactful turn, anxious to avoid taciturn replies. Under the
influence of Carrie’s announcement he brightened up somewhat.
“You didn’t lose any time, did you?” he remarked, smiling a little.
“No,” returned Carrie with a touch of pride.
He asked her one or two more questions and then turned to play with the
baby, leaving the subject until it was brought up again by Minnie at
the table.
Carrie, however, was not to be reduced to the common level of
observation which prevailed in the flat.
“It seems to be such a large company,” she said, at one place.
“Great big plate-glass windows and lots of clerks. The man I saw said
they hired ever so many people.”
“It’s not very hard to get work now,” put in Hanson, “if you look
right.”
Minnie, under the warming influence of Carrie’s good spirits and her
husband’s somewhat conversational mood, began to tell Carrie of some of
the well-known things to see—things the enjoyment of which cost
nothing.
“You’d like to see Michigan Avenue. There are such fine houses. It is
such a fine street.”
“Where is H. R. Jacob’s?” interrupted Carrie, mentioning one of the
theatres devoted to melodrama which went by that name at the time.
“Oh, it’s not very far from here,” answered Minnie. “It’s in Halstead
Street, right up here.”
“How I’d like to go there. I crossed Halstead Street to-day, didn’t I?”
At this there was a slight halt in the natural reply. Thoughts are a
strangely permeating factor. At her suggestion of going to the theatre,
the unspoken shade of disapproval to the doing of those things which
involved the expenditure of money—shades of feeling which arose in the
mind of Hanson and then in Minnie—slightly affected the atmosphere of
the table. Minnie answered “yes,” but Carrie could feel that going to
the theatre was poorly advocated here. The subject was put off for a
little while until Hanson, through with his meal, took his paper and
went into the front room.
When they were alone, the two sisters began a somewhat freer
conversation, Carrie interrupting it to hum a little, as they worked at
the dishes.
“I should like to walk up and see Halstead Street, if it isn’t too
far,” said Carrie, after a time. “Why don’t we go to the theatre
to-night?”
“Oh, I don’t think Sven would want to go to-night,” returned Minnie.
“He has to get up so early.”
“He wouldn’t mind—he’d enjoy it,” said Carrie.
“No, he doesn’t go very often,” returned Minnie.