Sister Carrie: A Novel
they came to her. The elegant apartments of Mrs. Vance in the
Chelsea—these were hers. Men sent flowers, love notes, offers of
fortune. And still her dreams ran riot. The one hundred and fifty! the
one hundred and fifty! What a door to an Aladdin’s cave it seemed to
be. Each day, her head almost turned by developments, her fancies of
what her fortune must be, with ample money, grew and multiplied. She
conceived of delights which were not—saw lights of joy that never were
on land or sea. Then, at last, after a world of anticipation, came her
first installment of one hundred and fifty dollars.
It was paid to her in greenbacks—three twenties, six tens, and six
fives. Thus collected it made a very convenient roll. It was
accompanied by a smile and a salutation from the cashier who paid it.
“Ah, yes,” said the latter, when she applied; “Miss Madenda—one hundred
and fifty dollars. Quite a success the show seems to have made.”
“Yes, indeed,” returned Carrie.
Right after came one of the insignificant members of the company, and
she heard the changed tone of address.
“How much?” said the same cashier, sharply. One, such as she had only
recently been, was waiting for her modest salary. It took her back to
the few weeks in which she had collected—or rather had received—almost
with the air of a domestic, four-fifty per week from a lordly foreman
in a shoe factory—a man who, in distributing the envelopes, had the
manner of a prince doling out favours to a servile group of
petitioners. She knew that out in Chicago this very day the same
factory chamber was full of poor homely-clad girls working in long
lines at clattering machines; that at noon they would eat a miserable
lunch in a half-hour; that Saturday they would gather, as they had when
she was one of them, and accept the small pay for work a hundred times
harder than she was now doing. Oh, it was so easy now! The world was so
rosy and bright. She felt so thrilled that she must needs walk back to
the hotel to think, wondering what she should do.
It does not take money long to make plain its impotence, providing the
desires are in the realm of affection. With her one hundred and fifty
in hand, Carrie could think of nothing particularly to do. In itself,
as a tangible, apparent thing which she could touch and look upon, it
was a diverting thing for a few days, but this soon passed. Her hotel
bill did not require its use. Her clothes had for some time been wholly
satisfactory. Another day or two and she would receive another hundred
and fifty. It began to appear as if this were not so startlingly
necessary to maintain her present state. If she wanted to do anything
better or move higher she must have more—a great deal more.
Now a critic called to get up one of those tinsel interviews which
shine with clever observations, show up the wit of critics, display the
folly of celebrities, and divert the public. He liked Carrie, and said
so, publicly—adding, however, that she was merely pretty, good-natured,
and lucky. This cut like a knife. The “Herald,” getting up an
entertainment for the benefit of its free ice fund, did her the honour
to beg her to appear along with celebrities for nothing. She was
visited by a young author, who had a play which he thought she could
produce. Alas, she could not judge. It hurt her to think it. Then she
found she must put her money in the bank for safety, and so moving,
finally reached the place where it struck her that the door to life’s
perfect enjoyment was not open.
Gradually she began to think it was because it was summer. Nothing was
going on much save such entertainments as the one in which she was the
star. Fifth Avenue was boarded up where the rich had deserted their
mansions. Madison Avenue was little better. Broadway was full of
loafing thespians in search of next season’s engagements. The whole
city was quiet and her nights were taken up with her work. Hence the
feeling that there was little to do.
“I don’t know,” she said to Lola one day, sitting at one of the windows
which looked down into Broadway, “I get lonely; don’t you?”
“No,” said Lola, “not very often. You won’t go anywhere. That’s what’s
the matter with you.”
“Where can I go?”
“Why, there’re lots of places,” returned Lola, who was thinking of her
own lightsome tourneys with the gay youths. “You won’t go with
anybody.”
“I don’t want to go with these people who write to me. I know what kind
they are.”
“You oughtn’t to be lonely,” said Lola, thinking of Carrie’s success.
“There’re lots would give their ears to be in your shoes.”
Carrie looked out again at the passing crowd.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Unconsciously her idle hands were beginning to weary.
Chapter XLV. CURIOUS SHIFTS OF THE POOR
The gloomy Hurstwood, sitting in his cheap hotel, where he had taken
refuge with seventy dollars—the price of his furniture—between him and
nothing, saw a hot summer out and a cool fall in, reading. He was not
wholly indifferent to the fact that his money was slipping away. As
fifty cents after fifty cents were paid out for a day’s lodging he
became uneasy, and finally took a cheaper room—thirty-five cents a
day—to make his money last longer. Frequently he saw notices of Carrie.
Her picture was in the “World” once or twice, and an old “Herald” he
found in a chair informed him that she had recently appeared with some
others at a benefit for something or other. He read these things with
mingled feelings. Each one seemed to put her farther and farther away
into a realm which became more imposing as it receded from him. On the
billboards, too, he saw a pretty poster, showing her as the Quaker
Maid, demure and dainty. More than once he stopped and looked at these,
gazing at the pretty face in a sullen sort of way. His clothes were
shabby, and he presented a marked contrast to all that she now seemed
to be.
Somehow, so long as he knew she was at the Casino, though he had never
any intention of going near her, there was a subconscious comfort for
him—he was not quite alone. The show seemed such a fixture that, after
a month or two, he began to take it for granted that it was still
running. In September it went on the road and he did not notice it.
When all but twenty dollars of his money was gone, he moved to a
fifteen-cent lodging-house in the Bowery, where there was a bare
lounging-room filled with tables and benches as well as some chairs.
Here his preference was to close his eyes and dream of other days, a
habit which grew upon him. It was not sleep at first, but a mental
hearkening back to scenes and incidents in his Chicago life. As the
present became darker, the past grew brighter, and all that concerned
it stood in relief.
He was unconscious of just how much this habit had hold of him until
one day he found his lips repeating an old answer he had made to one of
his friends. They were in Fitzgerald and Moy’s. It was as if he stood
in the door of his elegant little office, comfortably dressed, talking
to Sagar Morrison about the value of South Chicago real estate in which
the latter was about to invest.
“How would you like to come in on that with me?” he heard Morrison say.
“Not me,” he answered, just as he had years before. “I have my hands
full now.”
The movement of his lips aroused him. He wondered whether he had really
spoken. The next time he noticed anything of the sort he really did
talk.
“Why don’t you jump, you bloody fool?” he was saying. “Jump!”
It was a funny English story he was telling to a company of actors.
Even as his voice recalled him, he was smiling. A crusty old codger,
sitting near by, seemed disturbed; at least, he stared in a most
pointed way. Hurstwood straightened up. The humour of the memory fled
in an instant and he felt ashamed. For relief, he left his chair and
strolled out into the streets.
One day, looking down the ad. columns of the “Evening World,” he saw
where a new play was at the Casino. Instantly, he came to a mental
halt. Carrie had gone! He remembered seeing a poster of her only
yesterday, but no doubt it was one left uncovered by the new signs.
Curiously, this fact shook him up. He had almost to admit that somehow
he was depending upon her being in the city. Now she was gone. He
wondered how this important fact had skipped him. Goodness knows when
she would be back now. Impelled by a nervous fear, he rose and went
into the dingy hall, where he counted his remaining money, unseen.
There were but ten dollars in all.
He wondered how all these other lodging-house people around him got
along. They didn’t seem to do anything. Perhaps they
begged—unquestionably they did. Many was the dime he had given to such
as they in his day. He had seen other men asking for money on the
streets. Maybe he could get some that way. There was horror in this
thought.
Sitting in the lodging-house room, he came to his last fifty cents. He
had saved and counted until his health was affected. His stoutness had
gone. With it, even the semblance of a fit in his clothes. Now he
decided he must do something, and, walking about, saw another day go
by, bringing him down to his last twenty cents—not enough to eat for
the morrow.
Summoning all his courage, he crossed to Broadway and up to the
Broadway Central hotel. Within a block he halted, undecided. A big,
heavy-faced porter was standing at one of the side entrances, looking
out. Hurstwood purposed to appeal to him. Walking straight up, he was
upon him before he could turn away.
“My friend,” he said, recognising even in his plight the man’s
inferiority, “is there anything about this hotel that I could get to
do?”
The porter stared at him the while he continued to talk.
“I’m out of work and out of money and I’ve got to get something,—it
doesn’t matter what. I don’t care to talk about what I’ve been, but if
you’d tell me how to get something to do, I’d be much obliged to you.
It wouldn’t matter if it only lasted a few days just now. I’ve got to
have something.”
The porter still gazed, trying to look indifferent. Then, seeing that
Hurstwood was about to go on, he said:
“I’ve nothing to do with it. You’ll have to ask inside.”
Curiously, this stirred Hurstwood to further effort.
“I thought you might tell me.”
The fellow shook his head irritably.
Inside went the ex-manager and straight to an office off the clerk’s
desk. One of the managers of the hotel happened to be there. Hurstwood
looked him straight in the eye.
“Could you give me something to do for a few days?” he said. “I’m in a
position where I have to get something at once.”
The comfortable manager looked at him, as much as to say: “Well, I
should judge so.”
“I came here,” explained Hurstwood, nervously, “because I’ve been a
manager myself in my day. I’ve had bad luck in a way but I’m not here
to tell you that. I want something to do, if only for a week.”
The man imagined he saw a feverish gleam in the applicant’s eye.
“What hotel did you manage?” he inquired.
“It wasn’t a hotel,” said Hurstwood. “I was manager of Fitzgerald and
Moy’s place in Chicago for fifteen years.”
“Is that so?” said the hotel man. “How did you come to get out of
that?”
The figure of Hurstwood was rather surprising in contrast to the fact.
“Well, by foolishness of my own. It isn’t anything to talk about now.
You could find out if you wanted to. I’m ‘broke’ now and, if you will
believe me, I haven’t eaten anything to-day.”
The hotel man was slightly interested in this story. He could hardly
tell what to do with such a figure, and yet Hurstwood’s earnestness
made him wish to do something.
“Call Olsen,” he said, turning to the clerk.
In reply to a bell and a disappearing hall-boy, Olsen, the head porter,
appeared.