Sister Carrie: A Novel
Owing to the slightly warmer temperature the streets were bad. He went
across Fourteenth Street on the car and got a transfer south on
Broadway. One little advertisement he had, relating to a saloon down in
Pearl Street. When he reached the Broadway Central, however, he changed
his mind.
“What’s the use?” he thought, looking out upon the slop and snow. “I
couldn’t buy into it. It’s a thousand to one nothing comes of it. I
guess I’ll get off,” and off he got. In the lobby he took a seat and
waited again, wondering what he could do.
While he was idly pondering, satisfied to be inside, a well-dressed man
passed up the lobby, stopped, looked sharply, as if not sure of his
memory, and then approached. Hurstwood recognised Cargill, the owner of
the large stables in Chicago of the same name, whom he had last seen at
Avery Hall, the night Carrie appeared there. The remembrance of how
this individual brought up his wife to shake hands on that occasion was
also on the instant clear.
Hurstwood was greatly abashed. His eyes expressed the difficulty he
felt.
“Why, it’s Hurstwood!” said Cargill, remembering now, and sorry that he
had not recognised him quickly enough in the beginning to have avoided
this meeting.
“Yes,” said Hurstwood. “How are you?”
“Very well,” said Cargill, troubled for something to talk about.
“Stopping here?”
“No,” said Hurstwood, “just keeping an appointment.”
“I knew you had left Chicago. I was wondering what had become of you.”
“Oh, I’m here now,” answered Hurstwood, anxious to get away.
“Doing well, I suppose?”
“Excellent.”
“Glad to hear it.”
They looked at one another, rather embarrassed.
“Well, I have an engagement with a friend upstairs. I’ll leave you. So
long.”
Hurstwood nodded his head.
“Damn it all,” he murmured, turning toward the door. “I knew that would
happen.”
He walked several blocks up the street. His watch only registered 1.30.
He tried to think of some place to go or something to do. The day was
so bad he wanted only to be inside. Finally his feet began to feel wet
and cold, and he boarded a car. This took him to Fifty-ninth Street,
which was as good as anywhere else. Landed here, he turned to walk back
along Seventh Avenue, but the slush was too much. The misery of
lounging about with nowhere to go became intolerable. He felt as if he
were catching cold.
Stopping at a corner, he waited for a car south bound. This was no day
to be out; he would go home.
Carrie was surprised to see him at a quarter of three.
“It’s a miserable day out,” was all he said. Then he took off his coat
and changed his shoes.
That night he felt a cold coming on and took quinine. He was feverish
until morning, and sat about the next day while Carrie waited on him.
He was a helpless creature in sickness, not very handsome in a
dull-coloured bath gown and his hair uncombed. He looked haggard about
the eyes and quite old. Carrie noticed this, and it did not appeal to
her. She wanted to be good-natured and sympathetic, but something about
the man held her aloof.
Toward evening he looked so badly in the weak light that she suggested
he go to bed.
“You’d better sleep alone,” she said, “you’ll feel better. I’ll open
your bed for you now.”
“All right,” he said.
As she did all these things, she was in a most despondent state.
“What a life! What a life!” was her one thought.
Once during the day, when he sat near the radiator, hunched up and
reading, she passed through, and seeing him, wrinkled her brows. In the
front room, where it was not so warm, she sat by the window and cried.
This was the life cut out for her, was it? To live cooped up in a small
flat with some one who was out of work, idle, and indifferent to her.
She was merely a servant to him now, nothing more.
This crying made her eyes red, and when, in preparing his bed, she
lighted the gas, and, having prepared it, called him in, he noticed the
fact.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked, looking into her face. His
voice was hoarse and his unkempt head only added to its grewsome
quality.
“Nothing,” said Carrie, weakly.
“You’ve been crying,” he said.
“I haven’t, either,” she answered.
It was not for love of him, that he knew.
“You needn’t cry,” he said, getting into bed. “Things will come out all
right.”
In a day or two he was up again, but rough weather holding, he stayed
in. The Italian newsdealer now delivered the morning papers, and these
he read assiduously. A few times after that he ventured out, but
meeting another of his old-time friends, he began to feel uneasy
sitting about hotel corridors.
Every day he came home early, and at last made no pretence of going
anywhere. Winter was no time to look for anything.
Naturally, being about the house, he noticed the way Carrie did things.
She was far from perfect in household methods and economy, and her
little deviations on this score first caught his eye. Not, however,
before her regular demand for her allowance became a grievous thing.
Sitting around as he did, the weeks seemed to pass very quickly. Every
Tuesday Carrie asked for her money.
“Do you think we live as cheaply as we might?” he asked one Tuesday
morning.
“I do the best I can,” said Carrie.
Nothing was added to this at the moment, but the next day he said:
“Do you ever go to the Gansevoort Market over here?”
“I didn’t know there was such a market,” said Carrie.
“They say you can get things lots cheaper there.”
Carrie was very indifferent to the suggestion. These were things which
she did not like at all.
“How much do you pay for a pound of meat?” he asked one day.
“Oh, there are different prices,” said Carrie. “Sirloin steak is
twenty-two cents.”
“That’s steep, isn’t it?” he answered.
So he asked about other things, until finally, with the passing days,
it seemed to become a mania with him. He learned the prices and
remembered them. His errand-running capacity also improved. It began in
a small way, of course. Carrie, going to get her hat one morning, was
stopped by him.
“Where are you going, Carrie?” he asked.
“Over to the baker’s,” she answered.
“I’d just as leave go for you,” he said.
She acquiesced, and he went. Each afternoon he would go to the corner
for the papers.
“Is there anything you want?” he would say.
By degrees she began to use him. Doing this, however, she lost the
weekly payment of twelve dollars.
“You want to pay me to-day,” she said one Tuesday, about this time.
“How much?” he asked.
She understood well enough what it meant.
“Well, about five dollars,” she answered. “I owe the coal man.”
The same day he said:
“I think this Italian up here on the corner sells coal at twenty-five
cents a bushel. I’ll trade with him.”
Carrie heard this with indifference.
“All right,” she said.
Then it came to be:
“George, I must have some coal to-day,” or, “You must get some meat of
some kind for dinner.”
He would find out what she needed and order.
Accompanying this plan came skimpiness.
“I only got a half-pound of steak,” he said, coming in one afternoon
with his papers. “We never seem to eat very much.”
These miserable details ate the heart out of Carrie. They blackened her
days and grieved her soul. Oh, how this man had changed! All day and
all day, here he sat, reading his papers. The world seemed to have no
attraction. Once in a while he would go out, in fine weather, it might
be four or five hours, between eleven and four. She could do nothing
but view him with gnawing contempt.
It was apathy with Hurstwood, resulting from his inability to see his
way out. Each month drew from his small store. Now, he had only five
hundred dollars left, and this he hugged, half feeling as if he could
stave off absolute necessity for an indefinite period. Sitting around
the house, he decided to wear some old clothes he had. This came first
with the bad days. Only once he apologised in the very beginning:
“It’s so bad to-day, I’ll just wear these around.” Eventually these
became the permanent thing.
Also, he had been wont to pay fifteen cents for a shave, and a tip of
ten cents. In his first distress, he cut down the tip to five, then to
nothing. Later, he tried a ten-cent barber shop, and, finding that the
shave was satisfactory, patronised regularly. Later still, he put off
shaving to every other day, then to every third, and so on, until once
a week became the rule. On Saturday he was a sight to see.
Of course, as his own self-respect vanished, it perished for him in
Carrie. She could not understand what had gotten into the man. He had
some money, he had a decent suit remaining, he was not bad looking when
dressed up. She did not forget her own difficult struggle in Chicago,
but she did not forget either that she had never ceased trying. He
never tried. He did not even consult the ads in the papers any more.
Finally, a distinct impression escaped from her.
“What makes you put so much butter on the steak?” he asked her one
evening, standing around in the kitchen.
“To make it good, of course,” she answered.
“Butter is awful dear these days,” he suggested.
“You wouldn’t mind it if you were working,” she answered.
He shut up after this, and went in to his paper, but the retort rankled
in his mind. It was the first cutting remark that had come from her.
That same evening, Carrie, after reading, went off to the front room to
bed. This was unusual. When Hurstwood decided to go, he retired, as
usual, without a light. It was then that he discovered Carrie’s
absence.
“That’s funny,” he said; “maybe she’s sitting up.”
He gave the matter no more thought, but slept. In the morning she was
not beside him. Strange to say, this passed without comment.
Night approaching, and a slightly more conversational feeling
prevailing, Carrie said:
“I think I’ll sleep alone to-night. I have a headache.”
“All right,” said Hurstwood.
The third night she went to her front bed without apologies.
This was a grim blow to Hurstwood, but he never mentioned it.
“All right,” he said to himself, with an irrepressible frown, “let her
sleep alone.”
Chapter XXXVI. A GRIM RETROGRESSION: THE PHANTOM OF CHANCE
The Vances, who had been back in the city ever since Christmas, had not
forgotten Carrie; but they, or rather Mrs. Vance, had never called on
her, for the very simple reason that Carrie had never sent her address.
True to her nature, she corresponded with Mrs. Vance as long as she
still lived in Seventy-eighth Street, but when she was compelled to
move into Thirteenth, her fear that the latter would take it as an
indication of reduced circumstances caused her to study some way of
avoiding the necessity of giving her address. Not finding any
convenient method, she sorrowfully resigned the privilege of writing to
her friend entirely. The latter wondered at this strange silence,
thought Carrie must have left the city, and in the end gave her up as
lost. So she was thoroughly surprised to encounter her in Fourteenth
Street, where she had gone shopping. Carrie was there for the same
purpose.
“Why, Mrs. Wheeler,” said Mrs. Vance, looking Carrie over in a glance,
“where have you been? Why haven’t you been to see me? I’ve been
wondering all this time what had become of you. Really, I——”
“I’m so glad to see you,” said Carrie, pleased and yet nonplussed. Of
all times, this was the worst to encounter Mrs. Vance. “Why, I’m living
down town here. I’ve been intending to come and see you. Where are you
living now?”
“In Fifty-eighth Street,” said Mrs. Vance, “just off Seventh
Avenue—218. Why don’t you come and see me?”
“I will,” said Carrie. “Really, I’ve been wanting to come. I know I
ought to. It’s a shame. But you know——”
“What’s your number?” said Mrs. Vance.