Sister Carrie: A Novel
“Olsen,” said the manager, “is there anything downstairs you could find
for this man to do? I’d like to give him something.”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Olsen. “We have about all the help we need. I
think I could find something, sir, though, if you like.”
“Do. Take him to the kitchen and tell Wilson to give him something to
eat.”
“All right, sir,” said Olsen.
Hurstwood followed. Out of the manager’s sight, the head porter’s
manner changed.
“I don’t know what the devil there is to do,” he observed.
Hurstwood said nothing. To him the big trunk hustler was a subject for
private contempt.
“You’re to give this man something to eat,” he observed to the cook.
The latter looked Hurstwood over, and seeing something keen and
intellectual in his eyes, said:
“Well, sit down over there.”
Thus was Hurstwood installed in the Broadway Central, but not for long.
He was in no shape or mood to do the scrub work that exists about the
foundation of every hotel. Nothing better offering, he was set to aid
the fireman, to work about the basement, to do anything and everything
that might offer. Porters, cooks, firemen, clerks—all were over him.
Moreover his appearance did not please these individuals—his temper was
too lonely—and they made it disagreeable for him.
With the stolidity and indifference of despair, however, he endured it
all, sleeping in an attic at the roof of the house, eating what the
cook gave him, accepting a few dollars a week, which he tried to save.
His constitution was in no shape to endure.
One day the following February he was sent on an errand to a large coal
company’s office. It had been snowing and thawing and the streets were
sloppy. He soaked his shoes in his progress and came back feeling dull
and weary. All the next day he felt unusually depressed and sat about
as much as possible, to the irritation of those who admired energy in
others.
In the afternoon some boxes were to be moved to make room for new
culinary supplies. He was ordered to handle a truck. Encountering a big
box, he could not lift it.
“What’s the matter there?” said the head porter. “Can’t you handle it?”
He was straining to lift it, but now he quit.
“No,” he said, weakly.
The man looked at him and saw that he was deathly pale.
“Not sick, are you?” he asked.
“I think I am,” returned Hurstwood.
“Well, you’d better go sit down, then.”
This he did, but soon grew rapidly worse. It seemed all he could do to
crawl to his room, where he remained for a day.
“That man Wheeler’s sick,” reported one of the lackeys to the night
clerk.
“What’s the matter with him?”
“I don’t know. He’s got a high fever.”
The hotel physician looked at him.
“Better send him to Bellevue,” he recommended. “He’s got pneumonia.”
Accordingly, he was carted away.
In three weeks the worst was over, but it was nearly the first of May
before his strength permitted him to be turned out. Then he was
discharged.
No more weakly looking object ever strolled out into the spring
sunshine than the once hale, lusty manager. All his corpulency had
fled. His face was thin and pale, his hands white, his body flabby.
Clothes and all, he weighed but one hundred and thirty-five pounds.
Some old garments had been given him—a cheap brown coat and misfit pair
of trousers. Also some change and advice. He was told to apply to the
charities.
Again he resorted to the Bowery lodging-house, brooding over where to
look. From this it was but a step to beggary.
“What can a man do?” he said. “I can’t starve.”
His first application was in sunny Second Avenue. A well-dressed man
came leisurely strolling toward him out of Stuyvesant Park. Hurstwood
nerved himself and sidled near.
“Would you mind giving me ten cents?” he said, directly. “I’m in a
position where I must ask some one.”
The man scarcely looked at him, fished in his vest pocket and took out
a dime.
“There you are,” he said.
“Much obliged,” said Hurstwood, softly, but the other paid no more
attention to him.
Satisfied with his success and yet ashamed of his situation, he decided
that he would only ask for twenty-five cents more, since that would be
sufficient. He strolled about sizing up people, but it was long before
just the right face and situation arrived. When he asked, he was
refused. Shocked by this result, he took an hour to recover and then
asked again. This time a nickel was given him. By the most watchful
effort he did get twenty cents more, but it was painful.
The next day he resorted to the same effort, experiencing a variety of
rebuffs and one or two generous receptions. At last it crossed his mind
that there was a science of faces, and that a man could pick the
liberal countenance if he tried.
It was no pleasure to him, however, this stopping of passers-by. He saw
one man taken up for it and now troubled lest he should be arrested.
Nevertheless, he went on, vaguely anticipating that indefinite
something which is always better.
It was with a sense of satisfaction, then, that he saw announced one
morning the return of the Casino Company, “with Miss Carrie Madenda.”
He had thought of her often enough in days past. How successful she
was—how much money she must have! Even now, however, it took a severe
run of ill luck to decide him to appeal to her. He was truly hungry
before he said:
“I’ll ask her. She won’t refuse me a few dollars.”
Accordingly, he headed for the Casino one afternoon, passing it several
times in an effort to locate the stage entrance. Then he sat in Bryant
Park, a block away, waiting. “She can’t refuse to help me a little,” he
kept saying to himself.
Beginning with half-past six, he hovered like a shadow about the
Thirty-ninth Street entrance, pretending always to be a hurrying
pedestrian and yet fearful lest he should miss his object. He was
slightly nervous, too, now that the eventful hour had arrived; but
being weak and hungry, his ability to suffer was modified. At last he
saw that the actors were beginning to arrive, and his nervous tension
increased, until it seemed as if he could not stand much more.
Once he thought he saw Carrie coming and moved forward, only to see
that he was mistaken.
“She can’t be long, now,” he said to himself, half fearing to encounter
her and equally depressed at the thought that she might have gone in by
another way. His stomach was so empty that it ached.
Individual after individual passed him, nearly all well dressed, almost
all indifferent. He saw coaches rolling by, gentlemen passing with
ladies—the evening’s merriment was beginning in this region of theatres
and hotels.
Suddenly a coach rolled up and the driver jumped down to open the door.
Before Hurstwood could act, two ladies flounced across the broad walk
and disappeared in the stage door. He thought he saw Carrie, but it was
so unexpected, so elegant and far away, he could hardly tell. He waited
a while longer, growing feverish with want, and then seeing that the
stage door no longer opened, and that a merry audience was arriving, he
concluded it must have been Carrie and turned away.
“Lord,” he said, hastening out of the street into which the more
fortunate were pouring, “I’ve got to get something.”
At that hour, when Broadway is wont to assume its most interesting
aspect, a peculiar individual invariably took his stand at the corner
of Twenty-sixth Street and Broadway—a spot which is also intersected by
Fifth Avenue. This was the hour when the theatres were just beginning
to receive their patrons. Fire signs announcing the night’s amusements
blazed on every hand. Cabs and carriages, their lamps gleaming like
yellow eyes, pattered by. Couples and parties of three and four freely
mingled in the common crowd, which poured by in a thick stream,
laughing and jesting. On Fifth Avenue were loungers—a few wealthy
strollers, a gentleman in evening dress with his lady on his arm, some
club-men passing from one smoking-room to another. Across the way the
great hotels showed a hundred gleaming windows, their cafés and
billiard-rooms filled with a comfortable, well-dressed, and
pleasure-loving throng. All about was the night, pulsating with the
thoughts of pleasure and exhilaration—the curious enthusiasm of a great
city bent upon finding joy in a thousand different ways.
This unique individual was no less than an ex-soldier turned
religionist, who, having suffered the whips and privations of our
peculiar social system, had concluded that his duty to the God which he
conceived lay in aiding his fellow-man. The form of aid which he chose
to administer was entirely original with himself. It consisted of
securing a bed for all such homeless wayfarers as should apply to him
at this particular spot, though he had scarcely the wherewithal to
provide a comfortable habitation for himself. Taking his place amid
this lightsome atmosphere, he would stand, his stocky figure cloaked in
a great cape overcoat, his head protected by a broad slouch hat,
awaiting the applicants who had in various ways learned the nature of
his charity. For a while he would stand alone, gazing like any idler
upon an ever-fascinating scene. On the evening in question, a policeman
passing saluted him as “captain,” in a friendly way. An urchin who had
frequently seen him before, stopped to gaze. All others took him for
nothing out of the ordinary, save in the matter of dress, and conceived
of him as a stranger whistling and idling for his own amusement.
As the first half-hour waned, certain characters appeared. Here and
there in the passing crowds one might see, now and then, a loiterer
edging interestedly near. A slouchy figure crossed the opposite corner
and glanced furtively in his direction. Another came down Fifth Avenue
to the corner of Twenty-sixth Street, took a general survey, and
hobbled off again. Two or three noticeable Bowery types edged along the
Fifth Avenue side of Madison Square, but did not venture over. The
soldier, in his cape overcoat, walked a short line of ten feet at his
corner, to and fro, indifferently whistling.
As nine o’clock approached, some of the hubbub of the earlier hour
passed. The atmosphere of the hotels was not so youthful. The air, too,
was colder. On every hand curious figures were moving—watchers and
peepers, without an imaginary circle, which they seemed afraid to
enter—a dozen in all. Presently, with the arrival of a keener sense of
cold, one figure came forward. It crossed Broadway from out the shadow
of Twenty-sixth Street, and, in a halting, circuitous way, arrived
close to the waiting figure. There was something shamefaced or
diffident about the movement, as if the intention were to conceal any
idea of stopping until the very last moment. Then suddenly, close to
the soldier, came the halt.
The captain looked in recognition, but there was no especial greeting.
The newcomer nodded slightly and murmured something like one who waits
for gifts. The other simply motioned toward the edge of the walk.
“Stand over there,” he said.
By this the spell was broken. Even while the soldier resumed his short,
solemn walk, other figures shuffled forward. They did not so much as
greet the leader, but joined the one, sniffling and hitching and
scraping their feet.
“Cold, ain’t it?”
“I’m glad winter’s over.”
“Looks as though it might rain.”
The motley company had increased to ten. One or two knew each other and
conversed. Others stood off a few feet, not wishing to be in the crowd
and yet not counted out. They were peevish, crusty, silent, eying
nothing in particular and moving their feet.
There would have been talking soon, but the soldier gave them no
chance. Counting sufficient to begin, he came forward.
“Beds, eh, all of you?”
There was a general shuffle and murmur of approval.