Sister Carrie: A Novel
chairwarmers. He had called them that himself in his day. But here he
was, despite the possibility of meeting some one who knew him,
shielding himself from cold and the weariness of the streets in a hotel
lobby.
“I can’t do this way,” he said to himself. “There’s no use of my
starting out mornings without first thinking up some place to go. I’ll
think of some places and then look them up.”
It occurred to him that the positions of bartenders were sometimes
open, but he put this out of his mind. Bartender—he, the ex-manager!
It grew awfully dull sitting in the hotel lobby, and so at four he went
home. He tried to put on a business air as he went in, but it was a
feeble imitation. The rocking chair in the dining-room was comfortable.
He sank into it gladly, with several papers he had bought, and began to
read.
As she was going through the room to begin preparing dinner, Carrie
said:
“The man was here for the rent to-day.”
“Oh, was he?” said Hurstwood.
The least wrinkle crept into his brow as he remembered that this was
February 2d, the time the man always called. He fished down in his
pocket for his purse, getting the first taste of paying out when
nothing is coming in. He looked at the fat, green roll as a sick man
looks at the one possible saving cure. Then he counted off twenty-eight
dollars.
“Here you are,” he said to Carrie, when she came through again.
He buried himself in his papers and read. Oh, the rest of it—the relief
from walking and thinking! What Lethean waters were these floods of
telegraphed intelligence! He forgot his troubles, in part. Here was a
young, handsome woman, if you might believe the newspaper drawing,
suing a rich, fat, candy-making husband in Brooklyn for divorce. Here
was another item detailing the wrecking of a vessel in ice and snow off
Prince’s Bay on Staten Island. A long, bright column told of the doings
in the theatrical world—the plays produced, the actors appearing, the
managers making announcements. Fannie Davenport was just opening at the
Fifth Avenue. Daly was producing “King Lear.” He read of the early
departure for the season of a party composed of the Vanderbilts and
their friends for Florida. An interesting shooting affray was on in the
mountains of Kentucky. So he read, read, read, rocking in the warm room
near the radiator and waiting for dinner to be served.
Chapter XXXV. THE PASSING OF EFFORT: THE VISAGE OF CARE
The next morning he looked over the papers and waded through a long
list of advertisements, making a few notes. Then he turned to the
male-help-wanted column, but with disagreeable feelings. The day was
before him—a long day in which to discover something—and this was how
he must begin to discover. He scanned the long column, which mostly
concerned bakers, bushelmen, cooks, compositors, drivers, and the like,
finding two things only which arrested his eye. One was a cashier
wanted in a wholesale furniture house, and the other a salesman for a
whiskey house. He had never thought of the latter. At once he decided
to look that up.
The firm in question was Alsbery & Co., whiskey brokers.
He was admitted almost at once to the manager on his appearance.
“Good-morning, sir,” said the latter, thinking at first that he was
encountering one of his out-of-town customers.
“Good-morning,” said Hurstwood. “You advertised, I believe, for a
salesman?”
“Oh,” said the man, showing plainly the enlightenment which had come to
him. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
“I thought I’d drop in,” said Hurstwood, with dignity. “I’ve had some
experience in that line myself.”
“Oh, have you?” said the man. “What experience have you had?”
“Well, I’ve managed several liquor houses in my time. Recently I owned
a third-interest in a saloon at Warren and Hudson streets.”
“I see,” said the man.
Hurstwood ceased, waiting for some suggestion.
“We did want a salesman,” said the man. “I don’t know as it’s anything
you’d care to take hold of, though.”
“I see,” said Hurstwood. “Well, I’m in no position to choose, just at
present. If it were open, I should be glad to get it.”
The man did not take kindly at all to his “No position to choose.” He
wanted some one who wasn’t thinking of a choice or something better.
Especially not an old man. He wanted some one young, active, and glad
to work actively for a moderate sum. Hurstwood did not please him at
all. He had more of an air than his employers.
“Well,” he said in answer, “we’d be glad to consider your application.
We shan’t decide for a few days yet. Suppose you send us your
references.”
“I will,” said Hurstwood.
He nodded good-morning and came away. At the corner he looked at the
furniture company’s address, and saw that it was in West Twenty-third
Street. Accordingly, he went up there. The place was not large enough,
however. It looked moderate, the men in it idle and small salaried. He
walked by, glancing in, and then decided not to go in there.
“They want a girl, probably, at ten a week,” he said.
At one o’clock he thought of eating, and went to a restaurant in
Madison Square. There he pondered over places which he might look up.
He was tired. It was blowing up grey again. Across the way, through
Madison Square Park, stood the great hotels, looking down upon a busy
scene. He decided to go over to the lobby of one and sit a while. It
was warm in there and bright. He had seen no one he knew at the
Broadway Central. In all likelihood he would encounter no one here.
Finding a seat on one of the red plush divans close to the great
windows which look out on Broadway’s busy rout, he sat musing. His
state did not seem so bad in here. Sitting still and looking out, he
could take some slight consolation in the few hundred dollars he had in
his purse. He could forget, in a measure, the weariness of the street
and his tiresome searches. Still, it was only escape from a severe to a
less severe state. He was still gloomy and disheartened. There, minutes
seemed to go very slowly. An hour was a long, long time in passing. It
was filled for him with observations and mental comments concerning the
actual guests of the hotel, who passed in and out, and those more
prosperous pedestrians whose good fortune showed in their clothes and
spirits as they passed along Broadway, outside. It was nearly the first
time since he had arrived in the city that his leisure afforded him
ample opportunity to contemplate this spectacle. Now, being, perforce,
idle himself, he wondered at the activity of others. How gay were the
youths he saw, how pretty the women. Such fine clothes they all wore.
They were so intent upon getting somewhere. He saw coquettish glances
cast by magnificent girls. Ah, the money it required to train with
such—how well he knew! How long it had been since he had had the
opportunity to do so!
The clock outside registered four. It was a little early, but he
thought he would go back to the flat.
This going back to the flat was coupled with the thought that Carrie
would think he was sitting around too much if he came home early. He
hoped he wouldn’t have to, but the day hung heavily on his hands. Over
there he was on his own ground. He could sit in his rocking-chair and
read. This busy, distracting, suggestive scene was shut out. He could
read his papers. Accordingly, he went home. Carrie was reading, quite
alone. It was rather dark in the flat, shut in as it was.
“You’ll hurt your eyes,” he said when he saw her.
After taking off his coat, he felt it incumbent upon him to make some
little report of his day.
“I’ve been talking with a wholesale liquor company,” he said. “I may go
on the road.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice!” said Carrie.
“It wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” he answered.
Always from the man at the corner now he bought two papers—the “Evening
World” and “Evening Sun.” So now he merely picked his papers up, as he
came by, without stopping.
He drew up his chair near the radiator and lighted the gas. Then it was
as the evening before. His difficulties vanished in the items he so
well loved to read.
The next day was even worse than the one before, because now he could
not think of where to go. Nothing he saw in the papers he studied—till
ten o’clock—appealed to him. He felt that he ought to go out, and yet
he sickened at the thought. Where to, where to?
“You mustn’t forget to leave me my money for this week,” said Carrie,
quietly.
They had an arrangement by which he placed twelve dollars a week in her
hands, out of which to pay current expenses. He heaved a little sigh as
she said this, and drew out his purse. Again he felt the dread of the
thing. Here he was taking off, taking off, and nothing coming in.
“Lord!” he said, in his own thoughts, “this can’t go on.”
To Carrie he said nothing whatsoever. She could feel that her request
disturbed him. To pay her would soon become a distressing thing.
“Yet, what have I got to do with it?” she thought. “Oh, why should I be
made to worry?”
Hurstwood went out and made for Broadway. He wanted to think up some
place. Before long, though, he reached the Grand Hotel at Thirty-first
Street. He knew of its comfortable lobby. He was cold after his twenty
blocks’ walk.
“I’ll go in their barber shop and get a shave,” he thought.
Thus he justified himself in sitting down in here after his tonsorial
treatment.
Again, time hanging heavily on his hands, he went home early, and this
continued for several days, each day the need to hunt paining him, and
each day disgust, depression, shamefacedness driving him into lobby
idleness.
At last three days came in which a storm prevailed, and he did not go
out at all. The snow began to fall late one afternoon. It was a regular
flurry of large, soft, white flakes. In the morning it was still coming
down with a high wind, and the papers announced a blizzard. From out
the front windows one could see a deep, soft bedding.
“I guess I’ll not try to go out to-day,” he said to Carrie at
breakfast. “It’s going to be awful bad, so the papers say.”
“The man hasn’t brought my coal, either,” said Carrie, who ordered by
the bushel.
“I’ll go over and see about it,” said Hurstwood. This was the first
time he had ever suggested doing an errand, but, somehow, the wish to
sit about the house prompted it as a sort of compensation for the
privilege.
All day and all night it snowed, and the city began to suffer from a
general blockade of traffic. Great attention was given to the details
of the storm by the newspapers, which played up the distress of the
poor in large type.
Hurstwood sat and read by his radiator in the corner. He did not try to
think about his need of work. This storm being so terrific, and tying
up all things, robbed him of the need. He made himself wholly
comfortable and toasted his feet.
Carrie observed his ease with some misgiving. For all the fury of the
storm she doubted his comfort. He took his situation too
philosophically.
Hurstwood, however, read on and on. He did not pay much attention to
Carrie. She fulfilled her household duties and said little to disturb
him.
The next day it was still snowing, and the next, bitter cold. Hurstwood
took the alarm of the paper and sat still. Now he volunteered to do a
few other little things. One was to go to the butcher, another to the
grocery. He really thought nothing of these little services in
connection with their true significance. He felt as if he were not
wholly useless—indeed, in such a stress of weather, quite worth while
about the house.
On the fourth day, however, it cleared, and he read that the storm was
over. Now, however, he idled, thinking how sloppy the streets would be.
It was noon before he finally abandoned his papers and got under way.