Sister Carrie: A Novel
will you? Rob the poor, will you, you thief? We’ll get you yet, now.
Wait.”
Not all of this was delivered by one man. It came from here and there,
incorporated with much more of the same sort and curses.
“Work, you blackguards,” yelled a voice. “Do the dirty work. You’re the
suckers that keep the poor people down!”
“May God starve ye yet,” yelled an old Irish woman, who now threw open
a nearby window and stuck out her head.
“Yes, and you,” she added, catching the eye of one of the policemen.
“You bloody, murtherin’ thafe! Crack my son over the head, will you,
you hardhearted, murtherin’ divil? Ah, ye——”
But the officer turned a deaf ear.
“Go to the devil, you old hag,” he half muttered as he stared round
upon the scattered company.
Now the stones were off, and Hurstwood took his place again amid a
continued chorus of epithets. Both officers got up beside him and the
conductor rang the bell, when, bang! bang! through window and door came
rocks and stones. One narrowly grazed Hurstwood’s head. Another
shattered the window behind.
“Throw open your lever,” yelled one of the officers, grabbing at the
handle himself.
Hurstwood complied and the car shot away, followed by a rattle of
stones and a rain of curses.
“That — — — —— hit me in the neck,” said one of the officers. “I gave
him a good crack for it, though.”
“I think I must have left spots on some of them,” said the other.
“I know that big guy that called us a — — — ——” said the first. “I’ll
get him yet for that.”
“I thought we were in for it sure, once there,” said the second.
Hurstwood, warmed and excited, gazed steadily ahead. It was an
astonishing experience for him. He had read of these things, but the
reality seemed something altogether new. He was no coward in spirit.
The fact that he had suffered this much now rather operated to arouse a
stolid determination to stick it out. He did not recur in thought to
New York or the flat. This one trip seemed a consuming thing.
They now ran into the business heart of Brooklyn uninterrupted. People
gazed at the broken windows of the car and at Hurstwood in his plain
clothes. Voices called “scab” now and then, as well as other epithets,
but no crowd attacked the car. At the downtown end of the line, one of
the officers went to call up his station and report the trouble.
“There’s a gang out there,” he said, “laying for us yet. Better send
some one over there and clean them out.”
The car ran back more quietly—hooted, watched, flung at, but not
attacked. Hurstwood breathed freely when he saw the barns.
“Well,” he observed to himself, “I came out of that all right.”
The car was turned in and he was allowed to loaf a while, but later he
was again called. This time a new team of officers was aboard. Slightly
more confident, he sped the car along the commonplace streets and felt
somewhat less fearful. On one side, however, he suffered intensely. The
day was raw, with a sprinkling of snow and a gusty wind, made all the
more intolerable by the speed of the car. His clothing was not intended
for this sort of work. He shivered, stamped his feet, and beat his arms
as he had seen other motormen do in the past, but said nothing. The
novelty and danger of the situation modified in a way his disgust and
distress at being compelled to be here, but not enough to prevent him
from feeling grim and sour. This was a dog’s life, he thought. It was a
tough thing to have to come to.
The one thought that strengthened him was the insult offered by Carrie.
He was not down so low as to take all that, he thought. He could do
something—this, even—for a while. It would get better. He would save a
little.
A boy threw a clod of mud while he was thus reflecting and hit him upon
the arm. It hurt sharply and angered him more than he had been any time
since morning.
“The little cur!” he muttered.
“Hurt you?” asked one of the policemen.
“No,” he answered.
At one of the corners, where the car slowed up because of a turn, an
ex-motorman, standing on the sidewalk, called to him:
“Won’t you come out, pardner, and be a man? Remember we’re fighting for
decent day’s wages, that’s all. We’ve got families to support.” The man
seemed most peaceably inclined.
Hurstwood pretended not to see him. He kept his eyes straight on before
and opened the lever wide. The voice had something appealing in it.
All morning this went on and long into the afternoon. He made three
such trips. The dinner he had was no stay for such work and the cold
was telling on him. At each end of the line he stopped to thaw out, but
he could have groaned at the anguish of it. One of the barnmen, out of
pity, loaned him a heavy cap and a pair of sheepskin gloves, and for
once he was extremely thankful.
On the second trip of the afternoon he ran into a crowd about half way
along the line, that had blocked the car’s progress with an old
telegraph pole.
“Get that thing off the track,” shouted the two policemen.
“Yah, yah, yah!” yelled the crowd. “Get it off yourself.”
The two policemen got down and Hurstwood started to follow.
“You stay there,” one called. “Some one will run away with your car.”
Amid the babel of voices, Hurstwood heard one close beside him.
“Come down, pardner, and be a man. Don’t fight the poor. Leave that to
the corporations.”
He saw the same fellow who had called to him from the corner. Now, as
before, he pretended not to hear him.
“Come down,” the man repeated gently. “You don’t want to fight poor
men. Don’t fight at all.” It was a most philosophic and jesuitical
motorman.
A third policeman joined the other two from somewhere and some one ran
to telephone for more officers. Hurstwood gazed about, determined but
fearful.
A man grabbed him by the coat.
“Come off of that,” he exclaimed, jerking at him and trying to pull him
over the railing.
“Let go,” said Hurstwood, savagely.
“I’ll show you—you scab!” cried a young Irishman, jumping up on the car
and aiming a blow at Hurstwood. The latter ducked and caught it on the
shoulder instead of the jaw.
“Away from here,” shouted an officer, hastening to the rescue, and
adding, of course, the usual oaths.
Hurstwood recovered himself, pale and trembling. It was becoming
serious with him now. People were looking up and jeering at him. One
girl was making faces.
He began to waver in his resolution, when a patrol wagon rolled up and
more officers dismounted. Now the track was quickly cleared and the
release effected.
“Let her go now, quick,” said the officer, and again he was off.
The end came with a real mob, which met the car on its return trip a
mile or two from the barns. It was an exceedingly poor-looking
neighbourhood. He wanted to run fast through it, but again the track
was blocked. He saw men carrying something out to it when he was yet a
half-dozen blocks away.
“There they are again!” exclaimed one policeman.
“I’ll give them something this time,” said the second officer, whose
patience was becoming worn. Hurstwood suffered a qualm of body as the
car rolled up. As before, the crowd began hooting, but now, rather than
come near, they threw things. One or two windows were smashed and
Hurstwood dodged a stone.
Both policemen ran out toward the crowd, but the latter replied by
running toward the car. A woman—a mere girl in appearance—was among
these, bearing a rough stick. She was exceedingly wrathful and struck
at Hurstwood, who dodged. Thereupon, her companions, duly encouraged,
jumped on the car and pulled Hurstwood over. He had hardly time to
speak or shout before he fell.
“Let go of me,” he said, falling on his side.
“Ah, you sucker,” he heard some one say. Kicks and blows rained on him.
He seemed to be suffocating. Then two men seemed to be dragging him off
and he wrestled for freedom.
“Let up,” said a voice, “you’re all right. Stand up.”
He was let loose and recovered himself. Now he recognised two officers.
He felt as if he would faint from exhaustion. Something was wet on his
chin. He put up his hand and felt, then looked. It was red.
“They cut me,” he said, foolishly, fishing for his handkerchief.
“Now, now,” said one of the officers. “It’s only a scratch.”
His senses became cleared now and he looked around. He was standing in
a little store, where they left him for the moment. Outside, he could
see, as he stood wiping his chin, the car and the excited crowd. A
patrol wagon was there, and another.
He walked over and looked out. It was an ambulance, backing in.
He saw some energetic charging by the police and arrests being made.
“Come on, now, if you want to take your car,” said an officer, opening
the door and looking in. He walked out, feeling rather uncertain of
himself. He was very cold and frightened.
“Where’s the conductor?” he asked.
“Oh, he’s not here now,” said the policeman.
Hurstwood went toward the car and stepped nervously on. As he did so
there was a pistol shot. Something stung his shoulder.
“Who fired that?” he heard an officer exclaim. “By God! who did that?”
Both left him, running toward a certain building. He paused a moment
and then got down.
“George!” exclaimed Hurstwood, weakly, “this is too much for me.”
He walked nervously to the corner and hurried down a side street.
“Whew!” he said, drawing in his breath.
A half block away, a small girl gazed at him.
“You’d better sneak,” she called.
He walked homeward in a blinding snowstorm, reaching the ferry by dusk.
The cabins were filled with comfortable souls, who studied him
curiously. His head was still in such a whirl that he felt confused.
All the wonder of the twinkling lights of the river in a white storm
passed for nothing. He trudged doggedly on until he reached the flat.
There he entered and found the room warm. Carrie was gone. A couple of
evening papers were lying on the table where she left them. He lit the
gas and sat down. Then he got up and stripped to examine his shoulder.
It was a mere scratch. He washed his hands and face, still in a brown
study, apparently, and combed his hair. Then he looked for something to
eat, and finally, his hunger gone, sat down in his comfortable
rocking-chair. It was a wonderful relief.
He put his hand to his chin, forgetting, for the moment, the papers.
“Well,” he said, after a time, his nature recovering itself, “that’s a
pretty tough game over there.”
Then he turned and saw the papers. With half a sigh he picked up the
“World.”
“Strike Spreading in Brooklyn,” he read. “Rioting Breaks Out in all
Parts of the City.”
He adjusted his paper very comfortably and continued. It was the one
thing he read with absorbing interest.
Chapter XLII. A TOUCH OF SPRING: THE EMPTY SHELL
Those who look upon Hurstwood’s Brooklyn venture as an error of
judgment will none the less realise the negative influence on him of
the fact that he had tried and failed. Carrie got a wrong idea of it.
He said so little that she imagined he had encountered nothing worse
than the ordinary roughness—quitting so soon in the face of this seemed
trifling. He did not want to work.
She was now one of a group of oriental beauties who, in the second act
of the comic opera, were paraded by the vizier before the new potentate
as the treasures of his harem. There was no word assigned to any of
them, but on the evening when Hurstwood was housing himself in the loft
of the street-car barn, the leading comedian and star, feeling
exceedingly facetious, said in a profound voice, which created a ripple
of laughter:
“Well, who are you?”
It merely happened to be Carrie who was courtesying before him. It
might as well have been any of the others, so far as he was concerned.
He expected no answer and a dull one would have been reproved. But