Sister Carrie (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Theodore Dreiser

  Carrie saw the drift, but could not express her thoughts. She felt more than ever the helplessness of her case.

  “If I could only get something to do,” she said.

  “Maybe you can,” went on Drouet, “if you stay here. You can’t if you go away. They won’t let you stay out there. Now, why not let me get you a nice room? I won’t bother you—you needn’t be afraid. Then, when you get fixed up, maybe you could get something.”

  He looked at her pretty face and it vivified his mental resources. She was a sweet little mortal to him—there was no doubt of that. She seemed to have some power back of her actions. She was not like the common run of store-girls. She wasn’t silly.

  In reality, Carrie had more imagination than he—more taste. It was a finer mental strain in her that made possible her depression and loneliness. Her poor clothes were neat, and she held her head unconsciously in a dainty way.

  “Do you think I could get something?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said, reaching over and filling her cup with tea. “I’ll help you.”

  She looked at him, and he laughed reassuringly.

  “Now I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll go over here to Partridge’s and you pick out what you want. Then we’ll look around for a room for you. You can leave the things there. Then we’ll go to the show to-night.”

  Carrie shook her head.

  “Well, you can go out to the flat then, that’s all right. You don’t need to stay in the room. Just take it and leave your things there.”

  She hung in doubt about this until the dinner was over.

  “Let’s go over and look at the jackets,” he said.

  Together they went. In the store they found that shine and rustle of new things which immediately laid hold of Carrie’s heart. Under the influence of a good dinner and Drouet’s radiating presence, the scheme proposed seemed feasible. She looked about and picked a jacket like the one which she had admired at The Fair. When she got it in her hand it seemed so much nicer. The saleswoman helped her on with it, and, by accident, it fitted perfectly. Drouet’s face lightened as he saw the improvement. She looked quite smart.

  “That’s the thing,” he said.

  Carrie turned before the glass. She could not help feeling pleased as she looked at herself. A warm glow crept into her cheeks.

  “That’s the thing,” said Drouet. “Now pay for it.”

  “It’s nine dollars,” said Carrie.

  “That’s all right—take it,” said Drouet.

  She reached in her purse and took out one of the bills. The woman asked if she would wear the coat and went off. In a few minutes she was back and the purchase was closed.

  From Partridge’s they went to a shoe store, where Carrie was fitted for shoes. Drouet stood by, and when he saw how nice they looked, said, “Wear them.” Carrie shook her head, however. She was thinking of returning to the flat. He bought her a purse for one thing, and a pair of gloves for another, and let her buy the stockings.

  “To-morrow,” he said, “you come down here and buy yourself a skirt.”

  In all of Carrie’s actions there was a touch of misgiving. The deeper she sank into the entanglement, the more she imagined that the thing hung upon the few remaining things she had not done. Since she had not done these, there was a way out.

  Drouet knew a place in Wabash Avenue where there were rooms. He showed Carrie the outside of these, and said: “Now, you’re my sister.” He carried the arrangement off with an easy hand when it came to the selection, looking around, criticising, opining. “Her trunk will be here in a day or so,” he observed to the landlady, who was very pleased.

  When they were alone, Drouet did not change in the least. He talked in the same general way as if they were out in the street. Carrie left her things.

  “Now,” said Drouet, “why don’t you move to-night?”

  “Oh, I can’t,” said Carrie.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to leave them so.”

  He took that up as they walked along the avenue. It was a warm afternoon. The sun had come out and the wind had died down. As he talked with Carrie, he secured an accurate detail of the atmosphere of the flat.

  “Come out of it,” he said, “they won’t care. I’ll help you get along.”

  She listened until her misgivings vanished. He would show her about a little and then help her get something. He really imagined that he would. He would be out on the road and she could be working.

  “Now, I’ll tell you what you do,” he said, “you go out there and get whatever you want and come away.”

  She thought a long time about this. Finally she agreed. He would come out as far as Peoria Street and wait for her. She was to meet him at half-past eight. At half-past five she reached home, and at six her determination was hardened.

  “So you didn’t get it?” said Minnie, referring to Carrie’s story of the Boston Store.

  Carrie looked at her out of the corner of her eye. “No,” she answered.

  “I don’t think you’d better try any more this fall,” said Minnie.

  Carrie said nothing.

  When Hanson came home he wore the same inscrutable demeanour. He washed in silence and went off to read his paper. At dinner Carrie felt a little nervous. The strain of her own plans was considerable, and the feeling that she was not welcome here was strong.

  “Didn’t find anything, eh?” said Hanson.

  “No.”

  He turned to his eating again, the thought that it was a burden to have her here dwelling in his mind. She would have to go home, that was all. Once she was away, there would be no more coming back in the spring.

  Carrie was afraid of what she was going to do, but she was relieved to know that this condition was ending. They would not care. Hanson particularly would be glad when she went. He would not care what became of her.

  After dinner she went into the bathroom, where they could not disturb her, and wrote a little note.

  “Good-bye, Minnie,” it read. “I’m not going home. I’m going to stay in Chicago a little while and look for work. Don’t worry. I’ll be all right.”

  In the front room Hanson was reading his paper. As usual, she helped Minnie clear away the dishes and straighten up. Then she said:

  “I guess I’ll stand down at the door a little while.” She could scarcely prevent her voice from trembling.

  Minnie remembered Hanson’s remonstrance.

  “Sven doesn’t think it looks good to stand down there,” she said.

  “Doesn’t he?” said Carrie. “I won’t do it any more after this.”

  She put on her hat and fidgeted around the table in the little bedroom, wondering where to slip the note. Finally she put it under Minnie’s hair-brush.

  When she had closed the hall-door, she paused a moment and wondered what they would think. Some thought of the queerness of her deed affected her. She went slowly down the stairs. She looked back up the lighted step, and then affected to stroll up the street. When she reached the corner she quickened her pace.

  As she was hurrying away, Hanson came back to his wife.

  “Is Carrie down at the door again?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Minnie; “she said she wasn’t going to do it any more.”

  He went over to the baby where it was playing on the floor and began to poke his finger at it.

  Drouet was on the corner waiting, in good spirits.

  “Hello, Carrie,” he said, as a sprightly figure of a girl drew near him. “Got here safe, did you? Well, we’ll take a car.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  INTIMATIONS BY WINTER:

  AN AMBASSADOR SUMMONED

  AMONG THE FORCES WHICH sweep and play throughout the universe, untutored man is but a wisp in the wind. Our civilisation is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. On the tiger no responsibility rests. We see him aligned by na
ture with the forces of life—he is born into their keeping and without thought he is protected. We see man far removed from the lairs of the jungles, his innate instincts dulled by too near an approach to free-will, his free-will not sufficiently developed to replace his instincts and afford him perfect guidance. He is becoming too wise to hearken always to instincts and desires; he is still too weak to always prevail against them. As a beast, the forces of life aligned him with them; as a man, he has not yet wholly learned to align himself with the forces. In this intermediate stage he wavers—neither drawn in harmony with nature by his instincts nor yet wisely putting himself into harmony by his own free-will. He is even as a wisp in the wind, moved by every breath of passion, acting now by his will and now by his instincts, erring with one, only to retrieve by the other, falling by one, only to rise by the other—a creature of incalculable variability. We have the consolation of knowing that evolution is ever in action, that the ideal is a light that cannot fail. He will not forever balance thus between good and evil. When this jangle of free-will and instinct shall have been adjusted, when perfect understanding has given the former the power to replace the latter entirely, man will no longer vary. The needle of understanding will yet point steadfast and unwavering to the distant pole of truth.

  In Carrie—as in how many of our worldlings do they not?—instinct and reason, desire and understanding, were at war for the mastery. She followed whither her craving led. She was as yet more drawn than she drew.

  When Minnie found the note next morning, after a night of mingled wonder and anxiety, which was not exactly touched by yearning, sorrow, or love, she exclaimed: “Well, what do you think of that?”

  “What?” said Hanson.

  “Sister Carrie has gone to live somewhere else.”

  Hanson jumped out of bed with more celerity than he usually displayed and looked at the note. The only indication of his thoughts came in the form of a little clicking sound made by his tongue; the sound some people make when they wish to urge on a horse.

  “Where do you suppose she’s gone to?” said Minnie, thoroughly aroused.

  “I don’t know,” a touch of cynicism lighting his eye. “Now she has gone and done it.”

  Minnie moved her head in a puzzled way.

  “Oh, oh,” she said, “she doesn’t know what she has done.”

  “Well,” said Hanson, after a while, sticking his hands out before him, “what can you do?”

  Minnie’s womanly nature was higher than this. She figured the possibilities in such cases.

  “Oh,” she said at last, “poor Sister Carrie!”

  At the time of this particular conversation, which occurred at 5 A.M., that little soldier of fortune was sleeping a rather troubled sleep in her new room, alone.

  Carrie’s new state was remarkable in that she saw possibilities in it. She was no sensualist, longing to drowse sleepily in the lap of luxury. She turned about, troubled by her daring, glad of her release, wondering whether she would get something to do, wondering what Drouet would do. That worthy had his future fixed for him beyond a peradventure. He could not help what he was going to do. He could not see clearly enough to wish to do differently. He was drawn by his innate desire to act the old pursuing part. He would need to delight himself with Carrie as surely as he would need to eat his heavy breakfast. He might suffer the least rudimentary twinge of conscience in whatever he did, and in just so far he was evil and sinning. But whatever twinges of conscience he might have would be rudimentary, you may be sure.

  The next day he called upon Carrie, and she saw him in her chamber. He was the same jolly, enlivening soul.

  “Aw,” he said, “what are you looking so blue about? Come on out to breakfast. You want to get your other clothes to-day.”

  Carrie looked at him with the hue of shifting thought in her large eyes.

  “I wish I could get something to do,” she said.

  “You’ll get that all right,” said Drouet. “What’s the use worrying right now? Get yourself fixed up. See the city. I won’t hurt you.”

  “I know you won’t,” she remarked, half truthfully.

  “Got on the new shoes, haven’t you? Stick ’em out. George, they look fine. Put on your jacket.”

  Carrie obeyed.

  “Say, that fits like a T, don’t it?” he remarked, feeling the set of it at the waist and eyeing it from a few paces with real pleasure.

  “What you need now is a new skirt. Let’s go to breakfast.”

  Carrie put on her hat.

  “Where are the gloves?” he inquired.

  “Here,” she said, taking them out of the bureau drawer.

  “Now, come on,” he said.

  Thus the first hour of misgiving was swept away.

  It went this way on every occasion. Drouet did not leave her much alone. She had time for some lone wanderings, but mostly he filled her hours with sight-seeing. At Carson, Pirie’s he bought her a nice skirt and shirt waist. With his money she purchased the little necessaries of toilet, until at last she looked quite another maiden. The mirror convinced her of a few things which she had long believed. She was pretty, yes, indeed! How nice her hat set, and weren’t her eyes pretty. She caught her little red lip with her teeth and felt her first thrill of power. Drouet was so good.

  They went to see “The Mikado”i one evening, an opera which was hilariously popular at that time. Before going, they made off for the Windsor dining-room, which was in Dearborn Street, a considerable distance from Carrie’s room. It was blowing up cold, and out of her window Carrie could see the western sky, still pink with the fading light, but steely blue at the top where it met the darkness. A long, thin cloud of pink hung in midair, shaped like some island in a far-off sea. Somehow the swaying of some dead branches of trees across the way brought back the picture with which she was familiar when she looked from their front window in December days at home.

  She paused and wrung her little hands.

  “What’s the matter?” said Drouet.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, her lip trembling.

  He sensed something, and slipped his arm over her shoulder, patting her arm.

  “Come on,” he said gently, “you’re all right.”

  She turned to slip on her jacket.

  “Better wear that boa about your throat to-night.”

  They walked north on Wabash to Adams Street and then west. The lights in the stores were already shining out in gushes of golden hue. The arc lights were sputtering overhead, and high up were the lighted windows of the tall office buildings. The chill wind whipped in and out in gusty breaths. Homeward bound, the six o’clock throng bumped and jostled. Light overcoats were turned up about the ears, hats were pulled down. Little shop-girls went fluttering by in pairs and fours, chattering, laughing. It was a spectacle of warm-blooded humanity.

  Suddenly a pair of eyes met Carrie’s in recognition. They were looking out from a group of poorly dressed girls. Their clothes were faded and loose-hanging, their jackets old, their general make-up shabby.

  Carrie recognised the glance and the girl. She was one of those who worked at the machines in the shoe factory. The latter looked, not quite sure, and then turned her head and looked. Carrie felt as if some great tide had rolled between them. The old dress and the old machine came back. She actually started. Drouet didn’t notice until Carrie bumped into a pedestrian.

  “You must be thinking,” he said.

  They dined and went to the theatre. That spectacle pleased Carrie immensely. The colour and grace of it caught her eye. She had vain imaginings about place and power, about far-off lands and magnificent people. When it was over, the clatter of coaches and the throng of fine ladies made her stare.

  “Wait a minute,” said Drouet, holding her back in the showy foyer where ladies and gentlemen were moving in a social crush, skirts rustling, lace-covered heads nodding, white teeth showing through parted lips. “Let’s see.”

  “Sixty-seven,” the coach-caller was
saying, his voice lifted in a sort of euphonious cry. “Sixty-seven.”

  “Isn’t it fine?” said Carrie.

  “Great,” said Drouet. He was as much affected by this show of finery and gayety as she. He pressed her arm warmly. Once she looked up, her even teeth glistening through her smiling lips, her eyes alight. As they were moving out he whispered down to her, “You look lovely!” They were right where the coach-caller was swinging open a coach-door and ushering in two ladies.

  “You stick to me and we’ll have a coach,” laughed Drouet.

  Carrie scarcely heard, her head was so full of the swirl of life.

  They stopped in at a restaurant for a little after-theatre lunch. Just a shade of a thought of the hour entered Carrie’s head, but there was no household law to govern her now. If any habits ever had time to fix upon her, they would have operated here. Habits are peculiar things. They will drive the really non-religious mind out of bed to say prayers that are only a custom and not a devotion. The victim of habit, when he has neglected the thing which it was his custom to do, feels a little scratching in the brain, a little irritating something which comes of being out of the rut, and imagines it to be the prick of conscience, the still, small voice that is urging him ever to righteousness. If the digression is unusual enough, the drag of habit will be heavy enough to cause the unreasoning victim to return and perform the perfunctory thing. “Now, bless me,” says such a mind, “I have done my duty,” when, as a matter of fact, it has merely done its old, unbreakable trick once again.

  Carrie had no excellent home principles fixed upon her. If she had, she would have been more consciously distressed. Now the lunch went off with considerable warmth. Under the influence of the varied occurrences, the fine, invisible passion which was emanating from Drouet, the food, the still unusual luxury, she relaxed and heard with open ears. She was again the victim of the city’s hypnotic influence.

  “Well,” said Drouet at last, “we had better be going.”

  They had been dawdling over the dishes, and their eyes had frequently met. Carrie could not help but feel the vibration of force which followed, which, indeed, was his gaze. He had a way of touching her hand in explanation, as if to impress a fact upon her. He touched it now as he spoke of going.