Sister Carrie 21 страница

The time came, in the third year, when this thinking began to produce results in the Warren Street place. The tide of patronage dropped a little below what it had been at its best since he had been there. This irritated and worried him.

There came a night when he confessed to Carrie that the business was not doing as well this month as it had the month before. This was in lieu of certain suggestions she had made concerning little things she wanted to buy. She had not failed to notice that he did not seem to consult her about buying clothes for himself. For the first time, it struck her as a ruse, or that he said it so that she would not think of asking for things. Her reply was mild enough, but her thoughts were rebellious. He was not looking after her at all. She was depending for her enjoyment upon the Vances.

And now the latter announced that they were going away. It was approaching spring, and they were going North.

“Oh, yes, ” said Mrs. Vance to Carrie, “we think we might as well give up the flat and store our things. We'll be gone for the summer, and it would be a useless expense. I think we'll settle a little farther down town when we come back. ”

Carrie heard this with genuine sorrow. She had enjoyed Mrs. Vance's companionship so much. There was no one else in the house whom she knew. Again she would be all alone.

Hurstwood's gloom over the slight decrease in profits and the departure of the Vances came together. So Carrie had loneliness and this mood of her husband to enjoy at the same time. It was a grievous thing. She became restless and dissatisfied, not exactly, as she thought, with Hurstwood, but with life. What was it? A very dull round indeed. What did she have? Nothing but this narrow, little flat. The Vances could travel, they could do the things worth doing, and here she was. For what was she made, anyhow? More thought followed, and then tears—tears seemed justified, and the only relief in the world.

For another period this state continued, the twain leading a rather monotonous life, and then there was a slight change for the worse. One evening, Hurstwood, after thinking about a way to modify Carrie's desire for clothes and the general strain upon his ability to provide, said:

“I don't think I'll ever be able to do much with Shaughnessy. ”

“What's the matter? ” said Carrie.

“Oh, he's a slow, greedy 'mick'! He won't agree to anything to improve the place, and it won't ever pay without it. ”

“Can't you make him? ” said Carrie.

“No; I've tried. The only thing I can see, if I want to improve, is to get hold of a place of my own. ”

“Why don't you? ” said Carrie.

“Well, all I have is tied up in there just now. If I had a chance to save a while I think I could open a place that would give us plenty of money. ”

“Can't we save? ” said Carrie.

“We might try it, ” he suggested. “I've been thinking that if we'd take a smaller flat down town and live economically for a year, I would have enough, with what I have invested, to open a good place. Then we could arrange to live as you want to. ”

“It would suit me all right, ” said Carrie, who, nevertheless, felt badly to think it had come to this. Talk of a smaller flat sounded like poverty.

“There are lots of nice little flats down around Sixth Avenue, below Fourteenth Street. We might get one down there. ”

“I'll look at them if you say so, ” said Carrie.

“I think I could break away from this fellow inside of a year, ” said Hurstwood. “Nothing will ever come of this arrangement as it's going on now. ”

“I'll look around, ” said Carrie, observing that the proposed change seemed to be a serious thing with him.

The upshot of this was that the change was eventually effected; not without great gloom on the part of Carrie. It really affected her more seriously than anything that had yet happened. She began to look upon Hurstwood wholly as a man, and not as a lover or husband. She felt thoroughly bound to him as a wife, and that her lot was cast with his, whatever it might be; but she began to see that he was gloomy and taciturn, not a young, strong, and buoyant man. He looked a little bit old to her about the eyes and mouth now, and there were other things which placed him in his true rank, so far as her estimation was concerned. She began to feel that she had made a mistake. Incidentally, she also began to recall the fact that he had practically forced her to flee with him.

The new flat was located in Thirteenth Street, a half block west of Sixth Avenue, and contained only four rooms. The new neighbourhood did not appeal to Carrie as much. There were no trees here, no west view of the river. The street was solidly built up. There were twelve families here, respectable enough, but nothing like the Vances. Richer people required more space.

Being left alone in this little place, Carrie did without a girl. She made it charming enough, but could not make it delight her. Hurstwood was not inwardly pleased to think that they should have to modify their state, but he argued that he could do nothing. He must put the best face on it, and let it go at that.

He tried to show Carrie that there was no cause for financial alarm, but only congratulation over the chance he would have at the end of the year by taking her rather more frequently to the theatre and by providing a liberal table. This was for the time only. He was getting in the frame of mind where he wanted principally to be alone and to be allowed to think. The disease of brooding was beginning to claim him as a victim. Only the newspapers and his own thoughts were worth while. The delight of love had again slipped away. It was a case of live, now, making the best you can out of a very commonplace station in life.

The road downward has but few landings and level places. The very state of his mind, superinduced by his condition, caused the breach to widen between him and his partner. At last that individual began to wish that Hurstwood was out of it. It so happened, however, that a real estate deal on the part of the owner of the land arranged things even more effectually than illwill could have schemed.

“Did you see that? ” said Shaughnessy one morning to Hurstwood, pointing to the real estate column in a copy of the “Herald, ” which he held.

“No, what is it? ” said Hurstwood, looking down the items of news.

“The man who owns this ground has sold it. ”

“You don't say so? ” said Hurstwood.

He looked, and there was the notice. Mr. August Viele had yesterday registered the transfer of the lot, 25 x 75 feet, at the corner of Warren and Hudson Streets, to J. F. Slawson for the sum of $57, 000.

“Our lease expires when? ” asked Hurstwood, thinking. “Next February, isn't it? ”

“That's right, ” said Shaughnessy.

“It doesn't say what the new man's going to do with it, ” remarked Hurstwood, looking back to the paper.

“We'll hear, I guess, soon enough, ” said Shaughnessy.

Sure enough, it did develop. Mr. Slawson owned the property adjoining, and was going to put up a modern office building. The present one was to be torn down. It would take probably a year and a half to complete the other one.

All these things developed by degrees, and Hurstwood began to ponder over what would become of the saloon. One day he spoke about it to his partner.

“Do you think it would be worth while to open up somewhere else in the neighbourhood? ”

“What would be the use? ” said Shaughnessy. “We couldn't get another corner around here. ”

“It wouldn't pay anywhere else, do you think? ”

“I wouldn't try it, ” said the other. The approaching change now took on a most serious aspect to Hurstwood. Dissolution meant the loss of his thousand dollars, and he could not save another thousand in the time. He understood that Shaughnessy was merely tired of the arrangement, and would probably lease the new corner, when completed, alone. He began to worry about the necessity of a new connection and to see impending serious financial straits unless something turned up. This left him in no mood to enjoy his flat or Carrie, and consequently the depression invaded that quarter.

Meanwhile, he took such time as he could to look about, but opportunities were not numerous. More, he had not the same impressive personality which he had when he first came to New York. Bad thoughts had put a shade into his eyes which did not impress others favourably. Neither had he thirteen hundred dollars in hand to talk with. About a month later, finding that he had not made any progress, Shaughnessy reported definitely that Slawson would not extend the lease.

“I guess this thing's got to come to an end, ” he said, affecting an air of concern.

“Well, if it has, it has, ” answered Hurstwood, grimly. He would not give the other a key to his opinions, whatever they were. He should not have the satisfaction.

A day or two later he saw that he must say something to Carrie.

“You know, ” he said, “I think I'm going to get the worst of my deal down there. ”

“How is that? ” asked Carrie in astonishment.

“Well, the man who owns the ground has sold it. and the new owner won't release it to us. The business may come to an end. ”

“Can't you start somewhere else? ”

“There doesn't seem to be any place. Shaughnessy doesn't want to. ”

“Do you lose what you put in? ”

“Yes, ” said Hurstwood, whose face was a study.

“Oh, isn't that too bad? ” said Carrie.

“It's a trick, ” said Hurstwood. “That's all. They'll start another place there all right. ”

Carrie looked at him, and gathered from his whole demeanour what it meant. It was serious, very serious.

“Do you think you can get something else? ” she ventured, timidly.

Hurstwood thought a while. It was all up with the bluff about money and investment. She could see now that he was “broke. ”

“I don't know, ” he said solemnly; “I can try. ”

Chapter XXXIV

THE GRIND OF THE MILLSTONES—A SAMPLE OF CHAFF

Carrie pondered over this situation as consistently as Hurstwood, once she got the facts adjusted in her mind. It took several days for her to fully realise that the approach of the dissolution of her husband's business meant commonplace struggle and privation. Her mind went back to her early venture in Chicago, the Hansons and their flat, and her heart revolted. That was terrible! Everything about poverty was terrible. She wished she knew a way out. Her recent experiences with the Vances had wholly unfitted her to view her own state with complacence. The glamour of the high life of the city had, in the few experiences afforded her by the former, seized her completely. She had been taught how to dress and where to go without having ample means to do either. Now, these things— ever-present realities as they were—filled her eyes and mind. The more circumscribed became her state, the more entrancing seemed this other. And now poverty threatened to seize her entirely and to remove this other world far upward like a heaven to which any Lazarus might extend, appealingly, his hands.

So, too, the ideal brought into her life by Ames remained. He had gone, but here was his word that riches were not everything; that there was a great deal more in the world than she knew; that the stage was good, and the literature she read poor. He was a strong man and clean—how much stronger and better than Hurstwood and Drouet she only half formulated to herself, but the difference was painful. It was something to which she voluntarily closed her eyes.

During the last three months of the Warren Street connection, Hurstwood took parts of days off and hunted, tracking the business advertisements. It was a more or less depressing business, wholly because of the thought that he must soon get something or he would begin to live on the few hundred dollars he was saving, and then he would have nothing to invest—he would have to hire out as a clerk.

Everything he discovered in his line advertised as an opportunity, was either too expensive or too wretched for him. Besides, winter was coming, the papers were announcing hardships, and there was a general feeling of hard times in the air, or, at least, he thought so. In his worry, other people's worries became apparent. No item about a firm failing, a family starving, or a man dying upon the streets, supposedly of starvation, but arrested his eye as he scanned the morning papers. Once the “World” came out with a flaring announcement about “80, 000 people out of employment in New York this winter, ” which struck as a knife at his heart.

“Eighty thousand! ” he thought. “What an awful thing that is. ”

This was new reasoning for Hurstwood. In the old days the world had seemed to be getting along well enough. He had been wont to see similar things in the “Daily News, ” in Chicago, but they did not hold his attention. Now, these things were like grey clouds hovering along the horizon of a clear day. They threatened to cover and obscure his life with chilly greyness. He tried to shake them off, to forget and brace up. Sometimes he said to himself, mentally:

“What's the use worrying? I'm not out yet. I've got six weeks more. Even if worst comes to worst, I've got enough to live on for six months. ”

Curiously, as he troubled over his future, his thoughts occasionally reverted to his wife and family. He had avoided such thoughts for the first three years as much as possible. He hated her, and he could get along without her. Let her go. He would do well enough. Now, however, when he was not doing well enough, he began to wonder what she was doing, how his children were getting along. He could see them living as nicely as ever, occupying the comfortable house and using his property.

“By George! it's a shame they should have it all, ” he vaguely thought to himself on several occasions. “I didn't do anything. ”

As he looked back now and analysed the situation which led up to his taking the money, he began mildly to justify himself. What had he done—what in the world—that should bar him out this way and heap such difficulties upon him? It seemed only yesterday to him since he was comfortable and well-to-do. But now it was all wrested from him.

“She didn't deserve what she got out of me, that is sure. I didn't do so much, if everybody could just know. ”

There was no thought that the facts ought to be advertised. It was only a mental justification he was seeking from himself— something that would enable him to bear his state as a righteous man.

One afternoon, five weeks before the Warren Street place closed up, he left the saloon to visit three or four places he saw advertised in the “Herald. ” One was down in Gold Street, and he visited that, but did not enter. It was such a cheap looking place he felt that he could not abide it. Another was on the Bowery, which he knew contained many showy resorts. It was near Grand Street, and turned out to be very handsomely fitted up. He talked around about investments for fully three-quarters of an hour with the proprietor, who maintained that his health was poor, and that was the reason he wished a partner.

“Well, now, just how much money would it take to buy a half interest here? ” said Hurstwood, who saw seven hundred dollars as his limit.

“Three thousand, ” said the man.

Hurstwood's jaw fell.

“Cash? ” he said.

“Cash. ”

He tried to put on an air of deliberation, as one who might really buy; but his eyes showed gloom. He wound up by saying he would think it over, and came away. The man he had been talking to sensed his condition in a vague way.

“I don't think he wants to buy, ” he said to himself. “He doesn't talk right. ”

The afternoon was as grey as lead and cold. It was blowing up a disagreeable winter wind. He visited a place far up on the east side, near Sixty-ninth Street, and it was five o'clock, and growing dim, when he reached there. A portly German kept this place.

“How about this ad of yours? ” asked Hurstwood, who rather objected to the looks of the place.

“Oh, dat iss all over, ” said the German. “I vill not sell now. ”

“Oh, is that so? ”

“Yes; dere is nothing to dat. It iss all over. ”

“Very well, ” said Hurstwood, turning around.

The German paid no more attention to him, and it made him angry.

“The crazy ass! ” he said to himself. “What does he want to advertise for? ”

Wholly depressed, he started for Thirteenth Street. The flat had only a light in the kitchen, where Carrie was working. He struck a match and, lighting the gas, sat down in the dining-room without even greeting her. She came to the door and looked in.

“It's you, is it? ” she said, and went back.

“Yes, ” he said, without even looking up from the evening paper he had bought.

Carrie saw things were wrong with him. He was not so handsome when gloomy. The lines at the sides of the eyes were deepened. Naturally dark of skin, gloom made him look slightly sinister. He was quite a disagreeable figure.

Carrie set the table and brought in the meal.

“Dinner's ready, ” she said, passing him for something.

He did not answer, reading on.

She came in and sat down at her place, feeling exceedingly wretched.

“Won't you eat now? ” she asked.

He folded his paper and drew near, silence holding for a time, except for the “Pass me's. ”

“It's been gloomy to-day, hasn't it? ” ventured Carrie, after a time.

“Yes, ” he said.

He only picked at his food.

“Are you still sure to close up? ” said Carrie, venturing to take up the subject which they had discussed often enough.

“Of course we are, ” he said, with the slightest modification of sharpness.

This retort angered Carrie. She had had a dreary day of it herself.

“You needn't talk like that, ” she said.

“Oh! ” he exclaimed, pushing back from the table, as if to say more, but letting it go at that. Then he picked up his paper. Carrie left her seat, containing herself with difficulty. He saw she was hurt.

“Don't go 'way, ” he said, as she started back into the kitchen. “Eat your dinner. ”

She passed, not answering.

He looked at the paper a few moments, and then rose up and put on his coat.

“I'm going downtown, Carrie, ” he said, coming out. “I'm out of sorts to-night. ”

She did not answer.

“Don't be angry, ” he said. “It will be all right to morrow. ”

He looked at her, but she paid no attention to him, working at her dishes.

“Good-bye! ” he said finally, and went out.

This was the first strong result of the situation between them, but with the nearing of the last day of the business the gloom became almost a permanent thing. Hurstwood could not conceal his feelings about the matter. Carrie could not help wondering where she was drifting. It got so that they talked even less than usual, and yet it was not Hurstwood who felt any objection to Carrie. It was Carrie who shied away from him. This he noticed. It aroused an objection to her becoming indifferent to him. He made the possibility of friendly intercourse almost a giant task, and then noticed with discontent that Carrie added to it by her manner and made it more impossible.

At last the final day came. When it actually arrived, Hurstwood, who had got his mind into such a state where a thunderclap and raging storm would have seemed highly appropriate, was rather relieved to find that it was a plain, ordinary day. The sun shone, the temperature was pleasant. He felt, as he came to the breakfast table, that it wasn't so terrible, after all.

“Well, ” he said to Carrie, “to-day's my last day on earth. ”

Carrie smiled in answer to his humour.

Hurstwood glanced over his paper rather gayly. He seemed to have lost a load.

“I'll go down for a little while, ” he said after breakfast, “and then I'll look around. To-morrow I'll spend the whole day looking about. I think I can get something, now this thing's off my hands. ”

He went out smiling and visited the place. Shaughnessy was there. They had made all arrangements to share according to their interests. When, however, he had been there several hours, gone out three more, and returned, his elation had departed. As much as he had objected to the place, now that it was no longer to exist, he felt sorry. He wished that things were different.

Shaughnessy was coolly businesslike.

“Well, ” he said at five o'clock, “we might as well count the change and divide. ”

They did so. The fixtures had already been sold and the sum divided.

“Good-night, ” said Hurstwood at the final moment, in a last effort to be genial.

“So long, ” said Shaughnessy, scarcely deigning a notice.

Thus the Warren Street arrangement was permanently concluded.

Carrie had prepared a good dinner at the flat, but after his ride up, Hurstwood was in a solemn and reflective mood.

“Well? ” said Carrie, inquisitively.

“I'm out of that, ” he answered, taking off his coat.

As she looked at him, she wondered what his financial state was now. They ate and talked a little.

“Will you have enough to buy in anywhere else? ” asked Carrie.

“No, ” he said. “I'll have to get something else and save up. ”

“It would be nice if you could get some place, ” said Carrie, prompted by anxiety and hope.

“I guess I will, ” he said reflectively.

For some days thereafter he put on his overcoat regularly in the morning and sallied forth. On these ventures he first consoled himself with the thought that with the seven hundred dollars he had he could still make some advantageous arrangement. He thought about going to some brewery, which, as he knew, frequently controlled saloons which they leased, and get them to help him. Then he remembered that he would have to pay out several hundred any way for fixtures and that he would have nothing left for his monthly expenses. It was costing him nearly eighty dollars a month to live.

“No, ” he said, in his sanest moments, “I can't do it. I'll get something else and save up. ”

This getting-something proposition complicated itself the moment he began to think of what it was he wanted to do. Manage a place? Where should he get such a position? The papers contained no requests for managers. Such positions, he knew well enough, were either secured by long years of service or were bought with a half or third interest. Into a place important enough to need such a manager he had not money enough to buy.

Nevertheless, he started out. His clothes were very good and his appearance still excellent, but it involved the trouble of deluding. People, looking at him, imagined instantly that a man of his age, stout and well dressed, must be well off. He appeared a comfortable owner of something, a man from whom the common run of mortals could well expect gratuities. Being now forty-three years of age, and comfortably built, walking was not easy. He had not been used to exercise for many years. His legs tired, his shoulders ached, and his feet pained him at the close of the day, even when he took street cars in almost every direction. The mere getting up and down, if long continued, produced this result.

The fact that people took him to be better off than he was, he well understood. It was so painfully clear to him that it retarded his search. Not that he wished to be less wellappearing, but that he was ashamed to belie his appearance by incongruous appeals. So he hesitated, wondering what to do.

He thought of the hotels, but instantly he remembered that he had had no experience as a clerk, and, what was more important, no acquaintances or friends in that line to whom he could go. He did know some hotel owners in several cities, including New York, but they knew of his dealings with Fitzgerald and Moy. He could not apply to them. He thought of other lines suggested by large buildings or businesses which he knew of—wholesale groceries, hardware, insurance concerns, and the like—but he had had no experience.

How to go about getting anything was a bitter thought. Would he have to go personally and ask; wait outside an office door, and, then, distinguished and affluent looking, announce that he was looking for something to do? He strained painfully at the thought. No, he could not do that.

He really strolled about, thinking, and then, the weather being cold, stepped into a hotel. He knew hotels well enough to know that any decent individual was welcome to a chair in the lobby. This was in the Broadway Central, which was then one of the most important hotels in the city. Taking a chair here was a painful thing to him. To think he should come to this! He had heard loungers about hotels called chairwarmers. He had called them that himself in his day. But here he was, despite the possibility of meeting some one who knew him, shielding himself from cold and the weariness of the streets in a hotel lobby.

“I can't do this way, ” he said to himself. “There's no use of my starting out mornings without first thinking up some place to go. I'll think of some places and then look them up. ”

It occurred to him that the positions of bartenders were sometimes open, but he put this out of his mind. Bartender—he, the ex-manager!

It grew awfully dull sitting in the hotel lobby, and so at four he went home. He tried to put on a business air as he went in, but it was a feeble imitation. The rocking chair in the diningroom was comfortable. He sank into it gladly, with several papers he had bought, and began to read.

As she was going through the room to begin preparing dinner, Carrie said:

“The man was here for the rent to-day. ”

“Oh, was he? ” said Hurstwood.

The least wrinkle crept into his brow as he remembered that this was February 2d, the time the man always called. He fished down in his pocket for his purse, getting the first taste of paying out when nothing is coming in. He looked at the fat, green roll as a sick man looks at the one possible saving cure. Then he counted off twenty-eight dollars.

“Here you are, ” he said to Carrie, when she came through again.

He buried himself in his papers and read. Oh, the rest of it— the relief from walking and thinking! What Lethean waters were these floods of telegraphed intelligence! He forgot his troubles, in part. Here was a young, handsome woman, if you might believe the newspaper drawing, suing a rich, fat, candy-making husband in Brooklyn for divorce. Here was another item detailing the wrecking of a vessel in ice and snow off Prince's Bay on Staten Island. A long, bright column told of the doings in the theatrical world—the plays produced, the actors appearing, the managers making announcements. Fannie Davenport was just opening at the Fifth Avenue. Daly was producing “King Lear. ” He read of the early departure for the season of a party composed of the Vanderbilts and their friends for Florida. An interesting shooting affray was on in the mountains of Kentucky. So he read, read, read, rocking in the warm room near the radiator and waiting for dinner to be served.

Chapter XXXV

THE PASSING OF EFFORT—THE VISAGE OF CARE

The next morning he looked over the papers and waded through a long list of advertisements, making a few notes. Then he turned to the male-help-wanted column, but with disagreeable feelings. The day was before him—a long day in which to discover something—and this was how he must begin to discover. He scanned the long column, which mostly concerned bakers, bushelmen, cooks, compositors, drivers, and the like, finding two things only which arrested his eye. One was a cashier wanted in a wholesale furniture house, and the other a salesman for a whiskey house. He had never thought of the latter. At once he decided to look that up.

The firm in question was Alsbery & Co., whiskey brokers.

He was admitted almost at once to the manager on his appearance.

“Good-morning, sir, ” said the latter, thinking at first that he was encountering one of his out-of-town customers.

“Good-morning, ” said Hurstwood. “You advertised, I believe, for a salesman? ”

“Oh, ” said the man, showing plainly the enlightenment which had come to him. “Yes. Yes, I did. ”

“I thought I'd drop in, ” said Hurstwood, with dignity. “I've had some experience in that line myself. ”

“Oh, have you? ” said the man. “What experience have you had? ”

“Well, I've managed several liquor houses in my time. Recently I owned a third-interest in a saloon at Warren and Hudson streets. ”

“I see, ” said the man.

Hurstwood ceased, waiting for some suggestion.

“We did want a salesman, ” said the man. “I don't know as it's anything you'd care to take hold of, though. ”

“I see, ” said Hurstwood. “Well, I'm in no position to choose, just at present. If it were open, I should be glad to get it. ”

The man did not take kindly at all to his “No position to choose. ” He wanted some one who wasn't thinking of a choice or something better. Especially not an old man. He wanted some one young, active, and glad to work actively for a moderate sum. Hurstwood did not please him at all. He had more of an air than his employers.

“Well, ” he said in answer, “we'd be glad to consider your application. We shan't decide for a few days yet. Suppose you send us your references. ”

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