Sister Carrie: A Novel
They peered eagerly at the door, where all must enter. A grocery man
drove up and carried in several baskets of eatables. This started some
words upon grocery men and the cost of food in general.
“I see meat’s gone up,” said one.
“If there wuz war, it would help this country a lot.”
The line was growing rapidly. Already there were fifty or more, and
those at the head, by their demeanour, evidently congratulated
themselves upon not having so long to wait as those at the foot. There
was much jerking of heads, and looking down the line.
“It don’t matter how near you get to the front, so long as you’re in
the first twenty-five,” commented one of the first twenty-five. “You
all go in together.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Hurstwood, who had been so sturdily displaced.
“This here Single Tax is the thing,” said another. “There ain’t going
to be no order till it comes.”
For the most part there was silence; gaunt men shuffling, glancing, and
beating their arms.
At last the door opened and the motherly-looking sister appeared. She
only looked an order. Slowly the line moved up and, one by one, passed
in, until twenty-five were counted. Then she interposed a stout arm,
and the line halted, with six men on the steps. Of these the ex-manager
was one. Waiting thus, some talked, some ejaculated concerning the
misery of it; some brooded, as did Hurstwood. At last he was admitted,
and, having eaten, came away, almost angered because of his pains in
getting it.
At eleven o’clock of another evening, perhaps two weeks later, he was
at the midnight offering of a loaf—waiting patiently. It had been an
unfortunate day with him, but now he took his fate with a touch of
philosophy. If he could secure no supper, or was hungry late in the
evening, here was a place he could come. A few minutes before twelve, a
great box of bread was pushed out, and exactly on the hour a portly,
round-faced German took position by it, calling “Ready.” The whole line
at once moved forward each taking his loaf in turn and going his
separate way. On this occasion, the ex-manager ate his as he went
plodding the dark streets in silence to his bed.
By January he had about concluded that the game was up with him. Life
had always seemed a precious thing, but now constant want and weakened
vitality had made the charms of earth rather dull and inconspicuous.
Several times, when fortune pressed most harshly, he thought he would
end his troubles; but with a change of weather, or the arrival of a
quarter or a dime, his mood would change, and he would wait. Each day
he would find some old paper lying about and look into it, to see if
there was any trace of Carrie, but all summer and fall he had looked in
vain. Then he noticed that his eyes were beginning to hurt him, and
this ailment rapidly increased until, in the dark chambers of the
lodgings he frequented, he did not attempt to read. Bad and irregular
eating was weakening every function of his body. The one recourse left
him was to doze when a place offered and he could get the money to
occupy it.
He was beginning to find, in his wretched clothing and meagre state of
body, that people took him for a chronic type of bum and beggar. Police
hustled him along, restaurant and lodging-house keepers turned him out
promptly the moment he had his due; pedestrians waved him off. He found
it more and more difficult to get anything from anybody.
At last he admitted to himself that the game was up. It was after a
long series of appeals to pedestrians, in which he had been refused and
refused—every one hastening from contact.
“Give me a little something, will you, mister?” he said to the last
one. “For God’s sake, do; I’m starving.”
“Aw, get out,” said the man, who happened to be a common type himself.
“You’re no good. I’ll give you nawthin’.”
Hurstwood put his hands, red from cold, down in his pockets. Tears came
into his eyes.
“That’s right,” he said; “I’m no good now. I was all right. I had
money. I’m going to quit this,” and, with death in his heart, he
started down toward the Bowery. People had turned on the gas before and
died; why shouldn’t he? He remembered a lodging-house where there were
little, close rooms, with gas-jets in them, almost pre-arranged, he
thought, for what he wanted to do, which rented for fifteen cents. Then
he remembered that he had no fifteen cents.
On the way he met a comfortable-looking gentleman, coming,
clean-shaven, out of a fine barber shop.
“Would you mind giving me a little something?” he asked this man
boldly.
The gentleman looked him over and fished for a dime. Nothing but
quarters were in his pocket.
“Here,” he said, handing him one, to be rid of him. “Be off, now.”
Hurstwood moved on, wondering. The sight of the large, bright coin
pleased him a little. He remembered that he was hungry and that he
could get a bed for ten cents. With this, the idea of death passed, for
the time being, out of his mind. It was only when he could get nothing
but insults that death seemed worth while.
One day, in the middle of the winter, the sharpest spell of the season
set in. It broke grey and cold in the first day, and on the second
snowed. Poor luck pursuing him, he had secured but ten cents by
nightfall, and this he had spent for food. At evening he found himself
at the Boulevard and Sixty-seventh Street, where he finally turned his
face Bowery-ward. Especially fatigued because of the wandering
propensity which had seized him in the morning, he now half dragged his
wet feet, shuffling the soles upon the sidewalk. An old, thin coat was
turned up about his red ears—his cracked derby hat was pulled down
until it turned them outward. His hands were in his pockets.
“I’ll just go down Broadway,” he said to himself.
When he reached Forty-second Street, the fire signs were already
blazing brightly. Crowds were hastening to dine. Through bright
windows, at every corner, might be seen gay companies in luxuriant
restaurants. There were coaches and crowded cable cars.
In his weary and hungry state, he should never have come here. The
contrast was too sharp. Even he was recalled keenly to better things.
“What’s the use?” he thought. “It’s all up with me. I’ll quit this.”
People turned to look after him, so uncouth was his shambling figure.
Several officers followed him with their eyes, to see that he did not
beg of anybody.
Once he paused in an aimless, incoherent sort of way and looked through
the windows of an imposing restaurant, before which blazed a fire sign,
and through the large, plate windows of which could be seen the red and
gold decorations, the palms, the white napery, and shining glassware,
and, above all, the comfortable crowd. Weak as his mind had become, his
hunger was sharp enough to show the importance of this. He stopped
stock still, his frayed trousers soaking in the slush, and peered
foolishly in.
“Eat,” he mumbled. “That’s right, eat. Nobody else wants any.”
Then his voice dropped even lower, and his mind half lost the fancy it
had.
“It’s mighty cold,” he said. “Awful cold.”
At Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street was blazing, in incandescent fire,
Carrie’s name. “Carrie Madenda,” it read, “and the Casino Company.” All
the wet, snowy sidewalk was bright with this radiated fire. It was so
bright that it attracted Hurstwood’s gaze. He looked up, and then at a
large, gilt-framed posterboard, on which was a fine lithograph of
Carrie, lifesize.
Hurstwood gazed at it a moment, snuffling and hunching one shoulder, as
if something were scratching him. He was so run down, however, that his
mind was not exactly clear.
He approached that entrance and went in.
“Well?” said the attendant, staring at him. Seeing him pause, he went
over and shoved him. “Get out of here,” he said.
“I want to see Miss Madenda,” he said.
“You do, eh?” the other said, almost tickled at the spectacle. “Get out
of here,” and he shoved him again. Hurstwood had no strength to resist.
“I want to see Miss Madenda,” he tried to explain, even as he was being
hustled away. “I’m all right. I——”
The man gave him a last push and closed the door. As he did so,
Hurstwood slipped and fell in the snow. It hurt him, and some vague
sense of shame returned. He began to cry and swear foolishly.
“God damned dog!” he said. “Damned old cur,” wiping the slush from his
worthless coat. “I—I hired such people as you once.”
Now a fierce feeling against Carrie welled up—just one fierce, angry
thought before the whole thing slipped out of his mind.
“She owes me something to eat,” he said. “She owes it to me.”
Hopelessly he turned back into Broadway again and slopped onward and
away, begging, crying, losing track of his thoughts, one after another,
as a mind decayed and disjointed is wont to do.
It was truly a wintry evening, a few days later, when his one distinct
mental decision was reached. Already, at four o’clock, the sombre hue
of night was thickening the air. A heavy snow was falling—a fine
picking, whipping snow, borne forward by a swift wind in long, thin
lines. The streets were bedded with it—six inches of cold, soft carpet,
churned to a dirty brown by the crush of teams and the feet of men.
Along Broadway men picked their way in ulsters and umbrellas. Along the
Bowery, men slouched through it with collars and hats pulled over their
ears. In the former thoroughfare businessmen and travellers were making
for comfortable hotels. In the latter, crowds on cold errands shifted
past dingy stores, in the deep recesses of which lights were already
gleaming. There were early lights in the cable cars, whose usual
clatter was reduced by the mantle about the wheels. The whole city was
muffled by this fast-thickening mantle.
In her comfortable chambers at the Waldorf, Carrie was reading at this
time “Père Goriot,” which Ames had recommended to her. It was so
strong, and Ames’s mere recommendation had so aroused her interest,
that she caught nearly the full sympathetic significance of it. For the
first time, it was being borne in upon her how silly and worthless had
been her earlier reading, as a whole. Becoming wearied, however, she
yawned and came to the window, looking out upon the old winding
procession of carriages rolling up Fifth Avenue.
“Isn’t it bad?” she observed to Lola.
“Terrible!” said that little lady, joining her. “I hope it snows enough
to go sleigh riding.”
“Oh, dear,” said Carrie, with whom the sufferings of Father Goriot were
still keen. “That’s all you think of. Aren’t you sorry for the people
who haven’t anything to-night?”
“Of course I am,” said Lola; “but what can I do? I haven’t anything.”
Carrie smiled.
“You wouldn’t care, if you had,” she returned.
“I would, too,” said Lola. “But people never gave me anything when I
was hard up.”
“Isn’t it just awful?” said Carrie, studying the winter’s storm.
“Look at that man over there,” laughed Lola, who had caught sight of
some one falling down. “How sheepish men look when they fall, don’t
they?”
“We’ll have to take a coach to-night,” answered Carrie absently.
In the lobby of the Imperial, Mr. Charles Drouet was just arriving,
shaking the snow from a very handsome ulster. Bad weather had driven
him home early and stirred his desire for those pleasures which shut
out the snow and gloom of life. A good dinner, the company of a young
woman, and an evening at the theatre were the chief things for him.
“Why, hello, Harry!” he said, addressing a lounger in one of the
comfortable lobby chairs. “How are you?”
“Oh, about six and six,” said the other. “Rotten weather, isn’t it?”
“Well, I should say,” said the other. “I’ve been just sitting here
thinking where I’d go to-night.”
“Come along with me,” said Drouet. “I can introduce you to something
dead swell.”