Sister Carrie: A Novel
of introduction. “They won’t care.”
Carrie looked at her gratefully. “I guess I will,” she said.
She stood up from her stool and worked that way for a while, but it was
a more difficult position. Her neck and shoulders ached in bending
over.
The spirit of the place impressed itself on her in a rough way. She did
not venture to look around, but above the clack of the machine she
could hear an occasional remark. She could also note a thing or two out
of the side of her eye.
“Did you see Harry last night?” said the girl at her left, addressing
her neighbour.
“No.”
“You ought to have seen the tie he had on. Gee, but he was a mark.”
“S-s-t,” said the other girl, bending over her work. The first,
silenced, instantly assumed a solemn face. The foreman passed slowly
along, eyeing each worker distinctly. The moment he was gone, the
conversation was resumed again.
“Say,” began the girl at her left, “what jeh think he said?”
“I don’t know.”
“He said he saw us with Eddie Harris at Martin’s last night.”
“No!” They both giggled.
A youth with tan-coloured hair, that needed clipping very badly, came
shuffling along between the machines, bearing a basket of leather
findings under his left arm, and pressed against his stomach. When near
Carrie, he stretched out his right hand and gripped one girl under the
arm.
“Aw, let me go,” she exclaimed angrily. “Duffer.”
He only grinned broadly in return.
“Rubber!” he called back as she looked after him. There was nothing of
the gallant in him.
Carrie at last could scarcely sit still. Her legs began to tire and she
wanted to get up and stretch. Would noon never come? It seemed as if
she had worked an entire day. She was not hungry at all, but weak, and
her eyes were tired, straining at the one point where the eye-punch
came down. The girl at the right noticed her squirmings and felt sorry
for her. She was concentrating herself too thoroughly—what she did
really required less mental and physical strain. There was nothing to
be done, however. The halves of the uppers came piling steadily down.
Her hands began to ache at the wrists and then in the fingers, and
towards the last she seemed one mass of dull, complaining muscles,
fixed in an eternal position and performing a single mechanical
movement which became more and more distasteful, until as last it was
absolutely nauseating. When she was wondering whether the strain would
ever cease, a dull-sounding bell clanged somewhere down an elevator
shaft, and the end came. In an instant there was a buzz of action and
conversation. All the girls instantly left their stools and hurried
away in an adjoining room, men passed through, coming from some
department which opened on the right. The whirling wheels began to sing
in a steadily modifying key, until at last they died away in a low
buzz. There was an audible stillness, in which the common voice sounded
strange.
Carrie got up and sought her lunch box. She was stiff, a little dizzy,
and very thirsty. On the way to the small space portioned off by wood,
where all the wraps and lunches were kept, she encountered the foreman,
who stared at her hard.
“Well,” he said, “did you get along all right?”
“I think so,” she replied, very respectfully.
“Um,” he replied, for want of something better, and walked on.
Under better material conditions, this kind of work would not have been
so bad, but the new socialism which involves pleasant working
conditions for employees had not then taken hold upon manufacturing
companies.
The place smelled of the oil of the machines and the new leather—a
combination which, added to the stale odours of the building, was not
pleasant even in cold weather. The floor, though regularly swept every
evening, presented a littered surface. Not the slightest provision had
been made for the comfort of the employees, the idea being that
something was gained by giving them as little and making the work as
hard and unremunerative as possible. What we know of foot-rests,
swivel-back chairs, dining-rooms for the girls, clean aprons and
curling irons supplied free, and a decent cloak room, were unthought
of. The washrooms were disagreeable, crude, if not foul places, and the
whole atmosphere was sordid.
Carrie looked about her, after she had drunk a tinful of water from a
bucket in one corner, for a place to sit and eat. The other girls had
ranged themselves about the windows or the work-benches of those of the
men who had gone out. She saw no place which did not hold a couple or a
group of girls, and being too timid to think of intruding herself, she
sought out her machine and, seated upon her stool, opened her lunch on
her lap. There she sat listening to the chatter and comment about her.
It was, for the most part, silly and graced by the current slang.
Several of the men in the room exchanged compliments with the girls at
long range.
“Say, Kitty,” called one to a girl who was doing a waltz step in a few
feet of space near one of the windows, “are you going to the ball with
me?”
“Look out, Kitty,” called another, “you’ll jar your back hair.”
“Go on, Rubber,” was her only comment.
As Carrie listened to this and much more of similar familiar badinage
among the men and girls, she instinctively withdrew into herself. She
was not used to this type, and felt that there was something hard and
low about it all. She feared that the young boys about would address
such remarks to her—boys who, beside Drouet, seemed uncouth and
ridiculous. She made the average feminine distinction between clothes,
putting worth, goodness, and distinction in a dress suit, and leaving
all the unlovely qualities and those beneath notice in overalls and
jumper.
She was glad when the short half hour was over and the wheels began to
whirr again. Though wearied, she would be inconspicuous. This illusion
ended when another young man passed along the aisle and poked her
indifferently in the ribs with his thumb. She turned about, indignation
leaping to her eyes, but he had gone on and only once turned to grin.
She found it difficult to conquer an inclination to cry.
The girl next her noticed her state of mind. “Don’t you mind,” she
said. “He’s too fresh.”
Carrie said nothing, but bent over her work. She felt as though she
could hardly endure such a life. Her idea of work had been so entirely
different. All during the long afternoon she thought of the city
outside and its imposing show, crowds, and fine buildings. Columbia
City and the better side of her home life came back. By three o’clock
she was sure it must be six, and by four it seemed as if they had
forgotten to note the hour and were letting all work overtime. The
foreman became a true ogre, prowling constantly about, keeping her tied
down to her miserable task. What she heard of the conversation about
her only made her feel sure that she did not want to make friends with
any of these. When six o’clock came she hurried eagerly away, her arms
aching and her limbs stiff from sitting in one position.
As she passed out along the hall after getting her hat, a young machine
hand, attracted by her looks, made bold to jest with her.
“Say, Maggie,” he called, “if you wait, I’ll walk with you.”
It was thrown so straight in her direction that she knew who was meant,
but never turned to look.
In the crowded elevator, another dusty, toil-stained youth tried to
make an impression on her by leering in her face.
One young man, waiting on the walk outside for the appearance of
another, grinned at her as she passed.
“Ain’t going my way, are you?” he called jocosely.
Carrie turned her face to the west with a subdued heart. As she turned
the corner, she saw through the great shiny window the small desk at
which she had applied. There were the crowds, hurrying with the same
buzz and energy-yielding enthusiasm. She felt a slight relief, but it
was only at her escape. She felt ashamed in the face of better dressed
girls who went by. She felt as though she should be better served, and
her heart revolted.
Chapter V. A GLITTERING NIGHT FLOWER: THE USE OF A NAME
Drouet did not call that evening. After receiving the letter, he had
laid aside all thought of Carrie for the time being and was floating
around having what he considered a gay time. On this particular evening
he dined at “Rector’s,” a restaurant of some local fame, which occupied
a basement at Clark and Monroe Streets. There—after he visited the
resort of Fitzgerald and Moy’s in Adams Street, opposite the imposing
Federal Building. There he leaned over the splendid bar and swallowed a
glass of plain whiskey and purchased a couple of cigars, one of which
he lighted. This to him represented in part high life—a fair sample of
what the whole must be. Drouet was not a drinker in excess. He was not
a moneyed man. He only craved the best, as his mind conceived it, and
such doings seemed to him a part of the best. Rector’s, with its
polished marble walls and floor, its profusion of lights, its show of
china and silverware, and, above all, its reputation as a resort for
actors and professional men, seemed to him the proper place for a
successful man to go. He loved fine clothes, good eating, and
particularly the company and acquaintanceship of successful men. When
dining, it was a source of keen satisfaction to him to know that Joseph
Jefferson was wont to come to this same place, or that Henry E. Dixie,
a well-known performer of the day, was then only a few tables off. At
Rector’s he could always obtain this satisfaction, for there one could
encounter politicians, brokers, actors, some rich young “rounders” of
the town, all eating and drinking amid a buzz of popular commonplace
conversation.
“That’s So-and-so over there,” was a common remark of these gentlemen
among themselves, particularly among those who had not yet reached, but
hoped to do so, the dazzling height which money to dine here lavishly
represented.
“You don’t say so,” would be the reply.
“Why, yes, didn’t you know that? Why, he’s manager of the Grand Opera
House.”
When these things would fall upon Drouet’s ears, he would straighten
himself a little more stiffly and eat with solid comfort. If he had any
vanity, this augmented it, and if he had any ambition, this stirred it.
He would be able to flash a roll of greenbacks too some day. As it was,
he could eat where _they_ did.
His preference for Fitzgerald and Moy’s Adams Street place was another
yard off the same cloth. This was really a gorgeous saloon from a
Chicago standpoint. Like Rector’s, it was also ornamented with a blaze
of incandescent lights, held in handsome chandeliers. The floors were
of brightly coloured tiles, the walls a composition of rich, dark,
polished wood, which reflected the light, and coloured stucco-work,
which gave the place a very sumptuous appearance. The long bar was a
blaze of lights, polished woodwork, coloured and cut glassware, and
many fancy bottles. It was a truly swell saloon, with rich screens,
fancy wines, and a line of bar goods unsurpassed in the country.
At Rector’s, Drouet had met Mr. G. W. Hurstwood, manager of Fitzgerald
and Moy’s. He had been pointed out as a very successful and well-known
man about town. Hurstwood looked the part, for, besides being slightly
under forty, he had a good, stout constitution, an active manner, and a
solid, substantial air, which was composed in part of his fine clothes,
his clean linen, his jewels, and, above all, his own sense of his
importance. Drouet immediately conceived a notion of him as being some
one worth knowing, and was glad not only to meet him, but to visit the
Adams Street bar thereafter whenever he wanted a drink or a cigar.
Hurstwood was an interesting character after his kind. He was shrewd