Sister Carrie: A Novel
Carrie, whose experience and belief in herself gave her daring,
courtesied sweetly again and answered:
“I am yours truly.”
It was a trivial thing to say, and yet something in the way she did it
caught the audience, which laughed heartily at the mock-fierce
potentate towering before the young woman. The comedian also liked it,
hearing the laughter.
“I thought your name was Smith,” he returned, endeavouring to get the
last laugh.
Carrie almost trembled for her daring after she had said this. All
members of the company had been warned that to interpolate lines or
“business” meant a fine or worse. She did not know what to think.
As she was standing in her proper position in the wings, awaiting
another entry, the great comedian made his exit past her and paused in
recognition.
“You can just leave that in hereafter,” he remarked, seeing how
intelligent she appeared. “Don’t add any more, though.”
“Thank you,” said Carrie, humbly. When he went on she found herself
trembling violently.
“Well, you’re in luck,” remarked another member of the chorus. “There
isn’t another one of us has got a line.”
There was no gainsaying the value of this. Everybody in the company
realised that she had got a start. Carrie hugged herself when next
evening the lines got the same applause. She went home rejoicing,
knowing that soon something must come of it. It was Hurstwood who, by
his presence, caused her merry thoughts to flee and replaced them with
sharp longings for an end of distress.
The next day she asked him about his venture.
“They’re not trying to run any cars except with police. They don’t want
anybody just now—not before next week.”
Next week came, but Carrie saw no change. Hurstwood seemed more
apathetic than ever. He saw her off mornings to rehearsals and the like
with the utmost calm. He read and read. Several times he found himself
staring at an item, but thinking of something else. The first of these
lapses that he sharply noticed concerned a hilarious party he had once
attended at a driving club, of which he had been a member. He sat,
gazing downward, and gradually thought he heard the old voices and the
clink of glasses.
“You’re a dandy, Hurstwood,” his friend Walker said. He was standing
again well dressed, smiling, good-natured, the recipient of encores for
a good story.
All at once he looked up. The room was so still it seemed ghostlike. He
heard the clock ticking audibly and half suspected that he had been
dozing. The paper was so straight in his hands, however, and the items
he had been reading so directly before him, that he rid himself of the
doze idea. Still, it seemed peculiar. When it occurred a second time,
however, it did not seem quite so strange.
Butcher and grocery man, baker and coal man—not the group with whom he
was then dealing, but those who had trusted him to the limit—called. He
met them all blandly, becoming deft in excuse. At last he became bold,
pretended to be out, or waved them off.
“They can’t get blood out of a turnip,” he said, “if I had it I’d pay
them.”
Carrie’s little soldier friend, Miss Osborne, seeing her succeeding,
had become a sort of satellite. Little Osborne could never of herself
amount to anything. She seemed to realise it in a sort of pussy-like
way and instinctively concluded to cling with her soft little claws to
Carrie.
“Oh, you’ll get up,” she kept telling Carrie with admiration. “You’re
so good.”
Timid as Carrie was, she was strong in capability. The reliance of
others made her feel as if she must, and when she must she dared.
Experience of the world and of necessity was in her favour. No longer
the lightest word of a man made her head dizzy. She had learned that
men could change and fail. Flattery in its most palpable form had lost
its force with her. It required superiority—kindly superiority—to move
her—the superiority of a genius like Ames.
“I don’t like the actors in our company,” she told Lola one day.
“They’re all so struck on themselves.”
“Don’t you think Mr. Barclay’s pretty nice?” inquired Lola, who had
received a condescending smile or two from that quarter.
“Oh, he’s nice enough,” answered Carrie; “but he isn’t sincere. He
assumes such an air.”
Lola felt for her first hold upon Carrie in the following manner:
“Are you paying room-rent where you are?”
“Certainly,” answered Carrie. “Why?”
“I know where I could get the loveliest room and bath, cheap. It’s too
big for me, but it would be just right for two, and the rent is only
six dollars a week for both.”
“Where?” said Carrie.
“In Seventeenth Street.”
“Well, I don’t know as I’d care to change,” said Carrie, who was
already turning over the three-dollar rate in her mind. She was
thinking if she had only herself to support this would leave her
seventeen for herself.
Nothing came of this until after the Brooklyn adventure of Hurstwood’s
and her success with the speaking part. Then she began to feel as if
she must be free. She thought of leaving Hurstwood and thus making him
act for himself, but he had developed such peculiar traits she feared
he might resist any effort to throw him off. He might hunt her out at
the show and hound her in that way. She did not wholly believe that he
would, but he might. This, she knew, would be an embarrassing thing if
he made himself conspicuous in any way. It troubled her greatly.
Things were precipitated by the offer of a better part. One of the
actresses playing the part of a modest sweetheart gave notice of
leaving and Carrie was selected.
“How much are you going to get?” asked Miss Osborne, on hearing the
good news.
“I didn’t ask him,” said Carrie.
“Well, find out. Goodness, you’ll never get anything if you don’t ask.
Tell them you must have forty dollars, anyhow.”
“Oh, no,” said Carrie.
“Certainly!” exclaimed Lola. “Ask ’em, anyway.”
Carrie succumbed to this prompting, waiting, however, until the manager
gave her notice of what clothing she must have to fit the part.
“How much do I get?” she inquired.
“Thirty-five dollars,” he replied.
Carrie was too much astonished and delighted to think of mentioning
forty. She was nearly beside herself, and almost hugged Lola, who clung
to her at the news.
“It isn’t as much as you ought to get,” said the latter, “especially
when you’ve got to buy clothes.”
Carrie remembered this with a start. Where to get the money? She had
none laid up for such an emergency. Rent day was drawing near.
“I’ll not do it,” she said, remembering her necessity. “I don’t use the
flat. I’m not going to give up my money this time. I’ll move.”
Fitting into this came another appeal from Miss Osborne, more urgent
than ever.
“Come live with me, won’t you?” she pleaded. “We can have the loveliest
room. It won’t cost you hardly anything that way.”
“I’d like to,” said Carrie, frankly.
“Oh, do,” said Lola. “We’ll have such a good time.”
Carrie thought a while.
“I believe I will,” she said, and then added: “I’ll have to see first,
though.”
With the idea thus grounded, rent day approaching, and clothes calling
for instant purchase, she soon found excuse in Hurstwood’s lassitude.
He said less and drooped more than ever.
As rent day approached, an idea grew in him. It was fostered by the
demands of creditors and the impossibility of holding up many more.
Twenty-eight dollars was too much for rent. “It’s hard on her,” he
thought. “We could get a cheaper place.”
Stirred with this idea, he spoke at the breakfast table.
“Don’t you think we pay too much rent here?” he asked.
“Indeed I do,” said Carrie, not catching his drift.
“I should think we could get a smaller place,” he suggested. “We don’t
need four rooms.”
Her countenance, had he been scrutinising her, would have exhibited the
disturbance she felt at this evidence of his determination to stay by
her. He saw nothing remarkable in asking her to come down lower.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered, growing wary.
“There must be places around here where we could get a couple of rooms,
which would do just as well.”
Her heart revolted. “Never!” she thought. Who would furnish the money
to move? To think of being in two rooms with him! She resolved to spend
her money for clothes quickly, before something terrible happened. That
very day she did it. Having done so, there was but one other thing to
do.
“Lola,” she said, visiting her friend, “I think I’ll come.”
“Oh, jolly!” cried the latter.
“Can we get it right away?” she asked, meaning the room.
“Certainly,” cried Lola.
They went to look at it. Carrie had saved ten dollars from her
expenditures—enough for this and her board beside. Her enlarged salary
would not begin for ten days yet—would not reach her for seventeen. She
paid half of the six dollars with her friend.
“Now, I’ve just enough to get on to the end of the week,” she confided.
“Oh, I’ve got some,” said Lola. “I’ve got twenty-five dollars, if you
need it.”
“No,” said Carrie. “I guess I’ll get along.”
They decided to move Friday, which was two days away. Now that the
thing was settled, Carrie’s heart misgave her. She felt very much like
a criminal in the matter. Each day looking at Hurstwood, she had
realised that, along with the disagreeableness of his attitude, there
was something pathetic.
She looked at him the same evening she had made up her mind to go, and
now he seemed not so shiftless and worthless, but run down and beaten
upon by chance. His eyes were not keen, his face marked, his hands
flabby. She thought his hair had a touch of grey. All unconscious of
his doom, he rocked and read his paper, while she glanced at him.
Knowing that the end was so near, she became rather solicitous.
“Will you go over and get some canned peaches?” she asked Hurstwood,
laying down a two-dollar bill.
“Certainly,” he said, looking in wonder at the money.
“See if you can get some nice asparagus,” she added. “I’ll cook it for
dinner.”
Hurstwood rose and took the money, slipping on his overcoat and getting
his hat. Carrie noticed that both of these articles of apparel were old
and poor looking in appearance. It was plain enough before, but now it
came home with peculiar force. Perhaps he couldn’t help it, after all.
He had done well in Chicago. She remembered his fine appearance the
days he had met her in the park. Then he was so sprightly, so clean.
Had it been all his fault?
He came back and laid the change down with the food.
“You’d better keep it,” she observed. “We’ll need other things.”
“No,” he said, with a sort of pride; “you keep it.”
“Oh, go on and keep it,” she replied, rather unnerved. “There’ll be
other things.”
He wondered at this, not knowing the pathetic figure he had become in
her eyes. She restrained herself with difficulty from showing a quaver
in her voice.
To say truly, this would have been Carrie’s attitude in any case. She
had looked back at times upon her parting from Drouet and had regretted
that she had served him so badly. She hoped she would never meet him
again, but she was ashamed of her conduct. Not that she had any choice
in the final separation. She had gone willingly to seek him, with
sympathy in her heart, when Hurstwood had reported him ill. There was
something cruel somewhere, and not being able to track it mentally to
its logical lair, she concluded with feeling that he would never
understand what Hurstwood had done and would see hard-hearted decision
in her deed; hence her shame. Not that she cared for him. She did not
want to make any one who had been good to her feel badly.
She did not realise what she was doing by allowing these feelings to
possess her. Hurstwood, noticing the kindness, conceived better of her.
“Carrie’s good-natured, anyhow,” he thought.