Sister Carrie: A Novel
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Vance to Carrie, “we think we might as well give
up the flat and store our things. We’ll be gone for the summer, and it
would be a useless expense. I think we’ll settle a little farther down
town when we come back.”
Carrie heard this with genuine sorrow. She had enjoyed Mrs. Vance’s
companionship so much. There was no one else in the house whom she
knew. Again she would be all alone.
Hurstwood’s gloom over the slight decrease in profits and the departure
of the Vances came together. So Carrie had loneliness and this mood of
her husband to enjoy at the same time. It was a grievous thing. She
became restless and dissatisfied, not exactly, as she thought, with
Hurstwood, but with life. What was it? A very dull round indeed. What
did she have? Nothing but this narrow, little flat. The Vances could
travel, they could do the things worth doing, and here she was. For
what was she made, anyhow? More thought followed, and then tears—tears
seemed justified, and the only relief in the world.
For another period this state continued, the twain leading a rather
monotonous life, and then there was a slight change for the worse. One
evening, Hurstwood, after thinking about a way to modify Carrie’s
desire for clothes and the general strain upon his ability to provide,
said:
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do much with Shaughnessy.”
“What’s the matter?” said Carrie.
“Oh, he’s a slow, greedy ‘mick’! He won’t agree to anything to improve
the place, and it won’t ever pay without it.”
“Can’t you make him?” said Carrie.
“No; I’ve tried. The only thing I can see, if I want to improve, is to
get hold of a place of my own.”
“Why don’t you?” said Carrie.
“Well, all I have is tied up in there just now. If I had a chance to
save a while I think I could open a place that would give us plenty of
money.”
“Can’t we save?” said Carrie.
“We might try it,” he suggested. “I’ve been thinking that if we’d take
a smaller flat down town and live economically for a year, I would have
enough, with what I have invested, to open a good place. Then we could
arrange to live as you want to.”
“It would suit me all right,” said Carrie, who, nevertheless, felt
badly to think it had come to this. Talk of a smaller flat sounded like
poverty.
“There are lots of nice little flats down around Sixth Avenue, below
Fourteenth Street. We might get one down there.”
“I’ll look at them if you say so,” said Carrie.
“I think I could break away from this fellow inside of a year,” said
Hurstwood. “Nothing will ever come of this arrangement as it’s going on
now.”
“I’ll look around,” said Carrie, observing that the proposed change
seemed to be a serious thing with him.
The upshot of this was that the change was eventually effected; not
without great gloom on the part of Carrie. It really affected her more
seriously than anything that had yet happened. She began to look upon
Hurstwood wholly as a man, and not as a lover or husband. She felt
thoroughly bound to him as a wife, and that her lot was cast with his,
whatever it might be; but she began to see that he was gloomy and
taciturn, not a young, strong, and buoyant man. He looked a little bit
old to her about the eyes and mouth now, and there were other things
which placed him in his true rank, so far as her estimation was
concerned. She began to feel that she had made a mistake. Incidentally,
she also began to recall the fact that he had practically forced her to
flee with him.
The new flat was located in Thirteenth Street, a half block west of
Sixth Avenue, and contained only four rooms. The new neighbourhood did
not appeal to Carrie as much. There were no trees here, no west view of
the river. The street was solidly built up. There were twelve families
here, respectable enough, but nothing like the Vances. Richer people
required more space.
Being left alone in this little place, Carrie did without a girl. She
made it charming enough, but could not make it delight her. Hurstwood
was not inwardly pleased to think that they should have to modify their
state, but he argued that he could do nothing. He must put the best
face on it, and let it go at that.
He tried to show Carrie that there was no cause for financial alarm,
but only congratulation over the chance he would have at the end of the
year by taking her rather more frequently to the theatre and by
providing a liberal table. This was for the time only. He was getting
in the frame of mind where he wanted principally to be alone and to be
allowed to think. The disease of brooding was beginning to claim him as
a victim. Only the newspapers and his own thoughts were worth while.
The delight of love had again slipped away. It was a case of live, now,
making the best you can out of a very commonplace station in life.
The road downward has but few landings and level places. The very state
of his mind, superinduced by his condition, caused the breach to widen
between him and his partner. At last that individual began to wish that
Hurstwood was out of it. It so happened, however, that a real estate
deal on the part of the owner of the land arranged things even more
effectually than ill-will could have schemed.
“Did you see that?” said Shaughnessy one morning to Hurstwood, pointing
to the real estate column in a copy of the “Herald,” which he held.
“No, what is it?” said Hurstwood, looking down the items of news.
“The man who owns this ground has sold it.”
“You don’t say so?” said Hurstwood.
He looked, and there was the notice. Mr. August Viele had yesterday
registered the transfer of the lot, 25 x 75 feet, at the corner of
Warren and Hudson Streets, to J. F. Slawson for the sum of $57,000.
“Our lease expires when?” asked Hurstwood, thinking. “Next February,
isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” said Shaughnessy.
“It doesn’t say what the new man’s going to do with it,” remarked
Hurstwood, looking back to the paper.
“We’ll hear, I guess, soon enough,” said Shaughnessy.
Sure enough, it did develop. Mr. Slawson owned the property adjoining,
and was going to put up a modern office building. The present one was
to be torn down. It would take probably a year and a half to complete
the other one.
All these things developed by degrees, and Hurstwood began to ponder
over what would become of the saloon. One day he spoke about it to his
partner.
“Do you think it would be worth while to open up somewhere else in the
neighbourhood?”
“What would be the use?” said Shaughnessy. “We couldn’t get another
corner around here.”
“It wouldn’t pay anywhere else, do you think?”
“I wouldn’t try it,” said the other. The approaching change now took on
a most serious aspect to Hurstwood. Dissolution meant the loss of his
thousand dollars, and he could not save another thousand in the time.
He understood that Shaughnessy was merely tired of the arrangement, and
would probably lease the new corner, when completed, alone. He began to
worry about the necessity of a new connection and to see impending
serious financial straits unless something turned up. This left him in
no mood to enjoy his flat or Carrie, and consequently the depression
invaded that quarter.
Meanwhile, he took such time as he could to look about, but
opportunities were not numerous. More, he had not the same impressive
personality which he had when he first came to New York. Bad thoughts
had put a shade into his eyes which did not impress others favourably.
Neither had he thirteen hundred dollars in hand to talk with. About a
month later, finding that he had not made any progress, Shaughnessy
reported definitely that Slawson would not extend the lease.
“I guess this thing’s got to come to an end,” he said, affecting an air
of concern.
“Well, if it has, it has,” answered Hurstwood, grimly. He would not
give the other a key to his opinions, whatever they were. He should not
have the satisfaction.
A day or two later he saw that he must say something to Carrie.
“You know,” he said, “I think I’m going to get the worst of my deal
down there.”
“How is that?” asked Carrie in astonishment.
“Well, the man who owns the ground has sold it, and the new owner won’t
release it to us. The business may come to an end.”
“Can’t you start somewhere else?”
“There doesn’t seem to be any place. Shaughnessy doesn’t want to.”
“Do you lose what you put in?”
“Yes,” said Hurstwood, whose face was a study.
“Oh, isn’t that too bad?” said Carrie.
“It’s a trick,” said Hurstwood. “That’s all. They’ll start another
place there all right.”
Carrie looked at him, and gathered from his whole demeanour what it
meant. It was serious, very serious.
“Do you think you can get something else?” she ventured, timidly.
Hurstwood thought a while. It was all up with the bluff about money and
investment. She could see now that he was “broke.”
“I don’t know,” he said solemnly; “I can try.”
Chapter XXXIV. THE GRIND OF THE MILLSTONES: A SAMPLE OF CHAFF
Carrie pondered over this situation as consistently as Hurstwood, once
she got the facts adjusted in her mind. It took several days for her to
fully realise that the approach of the dissolution of her husband’s
business meant commonplace struggle and privation. Her mind went back
to her early venture in Chicago, the Hansons and their flat, and her
heart revolted. That was terrible! Everything about poverty was
terrible. She wished she knew a way out. Her recent experiences with
the Vances had wholly unfitted her to view her own state with
complacence. The glamour of the high life of the city had, in the few
experiences afforded her by the former, seized her completely. She had
been taught how to dress and where to go without having ample means to
do either. Now, these things—ever-present realities as they were—filled
her eyes and mind. The more circumscribed became her state, the more
entrancing seemed this other. And now poverty threatened to seize her
entirely and to remove this other world far upward like a heaven to
which any Lazarus might extend, appealingly, his hands.
So, too, the ideal brought into her life by Ames remained. He had gone,
but here was his word that riches were not everything; that there was a
great deal more in the world than she knew; that the stage was good,
and the literature she read poor. He was a strong man and clean—how
much stronger and better than Hurstwood and Drouet she only half
formulated to herself, but the difference was painful. It was something
to which she voluntarily closed her eyes.
During the last three months of the Warren Street connection, Hurstwood
took parts of days off and hunted, tracking the business
advertisements. It was a more or less depressing business, wholly
because of the thought that he must soon get something or he would
begin to live on the few hundred dollars he was saving, and then he
would have nothing to invest—he would have to hire out as a clerk.
Everything he discovered in his line advertised as an opportunity, was
either too expensive or too wretched for him. Besides, winter was
coming, the papers were announcing hardships, and there was a general
feeling of hard times in the air, or, at least, he thought so. In his
worry, other people’s worries became apparent. No item about a firm
failing, a family starving, or a man dying upon the streets, supposedly
of starvation, but arrested his eye as he scanned the morning papers.
Once the “World” came out with a flaring announcement about “80,000
people out of employment in New York this winter,” which struck as a
knife at his heart.
“Eighty thousand!” he thought. “What an awful thing that is.”
This was new reasoning for Hurstwood. In the old days the world had
seemed to be getting along well enough. He had been wont to see similar