Sister Carrie: A Novel
“I’ll be back in a moment,” said her companion, who saw nothing in the
inventor.
Now he looked up in her face, for she was standing a moment, while he
sat.
“Isn’t that a pathetic strain?” he inquired, listening.
“Oh, very,” she returned, also catching it, now that her attention was
called.
“Sit down,” he added, offering her the chair beside him.
They listened a few moments in silence, touched by the same feeling,
only hers reached her through the heart. Music still charmed her as in
the old days.
“I don’t know what it is about music,” she started to say, moved by the
inexplicable longings which surged within her; “but it always makes me
feel as if I wanted something—I——”
“Yes,” he replied; “I know how you feel.”
Suddenly he turned to considering the peculiarity of her disposition,
expressing her feelings so frankly.
“You ought not to be melancholy,” he said.
He thought a while, and then went off into a seemingly alien
observation which, however, accorded with their feelings.
“The world is full of desirable situations, but, unfortunately, we can
occupy but one at a time. It doesn’t do us any good to wring our hands
over the far-off things.”
The music ceased and he arose, taking a standing position before her,
as if to rest himself.
“Why don’t you get into some good, strong comedy-drama?” he said. He
was looking directly at her now, studying her face. Her large,
sympathetic eyes and pain-touched mouth appealed to him as proofs of
his judgment.
“Perhaps I shall,” she returned.
“That’s your field,” he added.
“Do you think so?”
“Yes,” he said; “I do. I don’t suppose you’re aware of it, but there is
something about your eyes and mouth which fits you for that sort of
work.”
Carrie thrilled to be taken so seriously. For the moment, loneliness
deserted her. Here was praise which was keen and analytical.
“It’s in your eyes and mouth,” he went on abstractedly. “I remember
thinking, the first time I saw you, that there was something peculiar
about your mouth. I thought you were about to cry.”
“How odd,” said Carrie, warm with delight. This was what her heart
craved.
“Then I noticed that that was your natural look, and to-night I saw it
again. There’s a shadow about your eyes, too, which gives your face
much this same character. It’s in the depth of them, I think.”
Carrie looked straight into his face, wholly aroused.
“You probably are not aware of it,” he added.
She looked away, pleased that he should speak thus, longing to be equal
to this feeling written upon her countenance. It unlocked the door to a
new desire. She had cause to ponder over this until they met
again—several weeks or more. It showed her she was drifting away from
the old ideal which had filled her in the dressing-rooms of the Avery
stage and thereafter, for a long time. Why had she lost it?
“I know why you should be a success,” he said, another time, “if you
had a more dramatic part. I’ve studied it out——”
“What is it?” said Carrie.
“Well,” he said, as one pleased with a puzzle, “the expression in your
face is one that comes out in different things. You get the same thing
in a pathetic song, or any picture which moves you deeply. It’s a thing
the world likes to see, because it’s a natural expression of its
longing.”
Carrie gazed without exactly getting the import of what he meant.
“The world is always struggling to express itself,” he went on. “Most
people are not capable of voicing their feelings. They depend upon
others. That is what genius is for. One man expresses their desires for
them in music; another one in poetry; another one in a play. Sometimes
nature does it in a face—it makes the face representative of all
desire. That’s what has happened in your case.”
He looked at her with so much of the import of the thing in his eyes
that she caught it. At least, she got the idea that her look was
something which represented the world’s longing. She took it to heart
as a creditable thing, until he added:
“That puts a burden of duty on you. It so happens that you have this
thing. It is no credit to you—that is, I mean, you might not have had
it. You paid nothing to get it. But now that you have it, you must do
something with it.”
“What?” asked Carrie.
“I should say, turn to the dramatic field. You have so much sympathy
and such a melodious voice. Make them valuable to others. It will make
your powers endure.”
Carrie did not understand this last. All the rest showed her that her
comedy success was little or nothing.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Why, just this. You have this quality in your eyes and mouth and in
your nature. You can lose it, you know. If you turn away from it and
live to satisfy yourself alone, it will go fast enough. The look will
leave your eyes. Your mouth will change. Your power to act will
disappear. You may think they won’t, but they will. Nature takes care
of that.”
He was so interested in forwarding all good causes that he sometimes
became enthusiastic, giving vent to these preachments. Something in
Carrie appealed to him. He wanted to stir her up.
“I know,” she said, absently, feeling slightly guilty of neglect.
“If I were you,” he said, “I’d change.”
The effect of this was like roiling helpless waters. Carrie troubled
over it in her rocking-chair for days.
“I don’t believe I’ll stay in comedy so very much longer,” she
eventually remarked to Lola.
“Oh, why not?” said the latter.
“I think,” she said, “I can do better in a serious play.”
“What put that idea in your head?”
“Oh, nothing,” she answered; “I’ve always thought so.”
Still, she did nothing—grieving. It was a long way to this better
thing—or seemed so—and comfort was about her; hence the inactivity and
longing.
Chapter XLVII. THE WAY OF THE BEATEN: A HARP IN THE WIND
In the city, at that time, there were a number of charities similar in
nature to that of the captain’s, which Hurstwood now patronised in a
like unfortunate way. One was a convent mission-house of the Sisters of
Mercy in Fifteenth Street—a row of red brick family dwellings, before
the door of which hung a plain wooden contribution box, on which was
painted the statement that every noon a meal was given free to all
those who might apply and ask for aid. This simple announcement was
modest in the extreme, covering, as it did, a charity so broad.
Institutions and charities are so large and so numerous in New York
that such things as this are not often noticed by the more comfortably
situated. But to one whose mind is upon the matter, they grow
exceedingly under inspection. Unless one were looking up this matter in
particular, he could have stood at Sixth Avenue and Fifteenth Street
for days around the noon hour and never have noticed that out of the
vast crowd that surged along that busy thoroughfare there turned out,
every few seconds, some weather-beaten, heavy-footed specimen of
humanity, gaunt in countenance and dilapidated in the matter of
clothes. The fact is none the less true, however, and the colder the
day the more apparent it became. Space and a lack of culinary room in
the mission-house, compelled an arrangement which permitted of only
twenty-five or thirty eating at one time, so that a line had to be
formed outside and an orderly entrance effected. This caused a daily
spectacle which, however, had become so common by repetition during a
number of years that now nothing was thought of it. The men waited
patiently, like cattle, in the coldest weather—waited for several hours
before they could be admitted. No questions were asked and no service
rendered. They ate and went away again, some of them returning
regularly day after day the winter through.
A big, motherly looking woman invariably stood guard at the door during
the entire operation and counted the admissible number. The men moved
up in solemn order. There was no haste and no eagerness displayed. It
was almost a dumb procession. In the bitterest weather this line was to
be found here. Under an icy wind there was a prodigious slapping of
hands and a dancing of feet. Fingers and the features of the face
looked as if severely nipped by the cold. A study of these men in broad
light proved them to be nearly all of a type. They belonged to the
class that sit on the park benches during the endurable days and sleep
upon them during the summer nights. They frequent the Bowery and those
down-at-the-heels East Side streets where poor clothes and shrunken
features are not singled out as curious. They are the men who are in
the lodging-house sitting-rooms during bleak and bitter weather and who
swarm about the cheaper shelters which only open at six in a number of
the lower East Side streets. Miserable food, ill-timed and greedily
eaten, had played havoc with bone and muscle. They were all pale,
flabby, sunken-eyed, hollow-chested, with eyes that glinted and shone
and lips that were a sickly red by contrast. Their hair was but half
attended to, their ears anæmic in hue, and their shoes broken in
leather and run down at heel and toe. They were of the class which
simply floats and drifts, every wave of people washing up one, as
breakers do driftwood upon a stormy shore.
For nearly a quarter of a century, in another section of the city,
Fleischmann, the baker, had given a loaf of bread to any one who would
come for it to the side door of his restaurant at the corner of
Broadway and Tenth Street, at midnight. Every night during twenty years
about three hundred men had formed in line and at the appointed time
marched past the doorway, picked their loaf from a great box placed
just outside, and vanished again into the night. From the beginning to
the present time there had been little change in the character or
number of these men. There were two or three figures that had grown
familiar to those who had seen this little procession pass year after
year. Two of them had missed scarcely a night in fifteen years. There
were about forty, more or less, regular callers. The remainder of the
line was formed of strangers. In times of panic and unusual hardships
there were seldom more than three hundred. In times of prosperity, when
little is heard of the unemployed, there were seldom less. The same
number, winter and summer, in storm or calm, in good times and bad,
held this melancholy midnight rendezvous at Fleischmann’s bread box.
At both of these two charities, during the severe winter which was now
on, Hurstwood was a frequent visitor. On one occasion it was peculiarly
cold, and finding no comfort in begging about the streets, he waited
until noon before seeking this free offering to the poor. Already, at
eleven o’clock of this morning, several such as he had shambled forward
out of Sixth Avenue, their thin clothes flapping and fluttering in the
wind. They leaned against the iron railing which protects the walls of
the Ninth Regiment Armory, which fronts upon that section of Fifteenth
Street, having come early in order to be first in. Having an hour to
wait, they at first lingered at a respectful distance; but others
coming up, they moved closer in order to protect their right of
precedence. To this collection Hurstwood came up from the west out of
Seventh Avenue and stopped close to the door, nearer than all the
others. Those who had been waiting before him, but farther away, now
drew near, and by a certain stolidity of demeanour, no words being
spoken, indicated that they were first.
Seeing the opposition to his action, he looked sullenly along the line,
then moved out, taking his place at the foot. When order had been
restored, the animal feeling of opposition relaxed.
“Must be pretty near noon,” ventured one.
“It is,” said another. “I’ve been waiting nearly an hour.”
“Gee, but it’s cold!”