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 down town, 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 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 thunder-clap 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 business-like.
“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 well-appearing, 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 looking 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 chair-warmers. 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 dining-room 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.”af 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, bushel-men, 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, 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.”
“I will,” said Hurstwood.
He nodded good-morning and came away. At the corner he looked at the furniture company’s address, and saw that it was in West Twenty-third Street. Accordingly, he went up there. The place was not large enough, however. It looked moderate, the men in it idle and small salaried. He walked by, glancing in, and then decided not to go in there.
“They want a girl, probably, at ten a week,” he said.
At one o’clock he thought of eating, and went to a restaurant in Madison Square. There he pondered over places which he might look up. He was tired. It was blowing up grey again. Across the way, through Madison Square Park, stood the great hotels, looking down upon a busy scene. He decided to go over to the lobby of one and sit a while. It was warm in there and bright. He had seen no one he knew at the Broadway Central. In all likelihood he would encounter no one here. Finding a seat on one of the red plush divans close to the great windows which look out on Broadway’s busy rout, he sat musing. His state did not seem so bad in here. Sitting still and looking out, he could take some slight consolation in the few hundred dollars he had in his purse. He could forget, in a measure, the weariness of the street and his tiresome searches. Still, it was only escape from a severe to a less severe state. He was still gloomy and disheartened. There, minutes seemed to go very slowly. An hour was a long, long time in passing. It was filled for him with observations and mental comments concerning the actual guests of the hotel, who passed in and out, and those more prosperous pedestrians whose good fortune showed in their clothes and spirits as they passed along Broadway, outside. It was nearly the first time since he had arrived in the city that his leisure afforded him ample opportunity to contemplate this spectacle. Now, being, perforce, idle himself, he wondered at the activity of others. How gay were the youths he saw, how pretty the women. Such fine clothes they all wore. They were so intent upon getting somewhere. He saw coquettish glances cast by magnificent girls. Ah, the money it required to train with such-how well he knew! How long it had been since he had had the opportunity to do so!
The clock outside registered four. It was a little early, but he thought he would go back to the flat.
This going back to the flat was coupled with the thought that Carrie would think he was sitting around too much if he came home early. He hoped he wouldn’t have to, but the day hung heavily on his hands. Over there he was on his own ground. He could sit in his rocking-chair and read. This busy, distracting, suggestive scene was shut out. He could read his papers. Accordingly, he went home. Carrie was reading, quite alone. It was rather dark in the flat, shut in as it was.
“You’ll hurt your eyes,” he said when he saw her.
After taking off his coat, he felt it incumbent upon him to make some little report of his day.
“I’ve been talking with a wholesale liquor company,” he said. “I may go out on the road.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice!” said Carrie.
“It wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” he answered.
Always from the man at the corner now he bought two papers—the “Evening World” and “Evening Sun.” So now he merely picked his papers up, as he came by, without stopping.
He drew up his chair near the radiator and lighted the gas. Then it was as the evening before. His difficulties vanished in the items he so well loved to read.
The next day was even worse than the one before, because now he could not think of where to go. Nothing he saw in the papers he studied—till ten o’clock—appealed to him. He felt that he ought to go out, and yet he sickened at the thought. Where to, where to?
“You mustn’t forget to leave me my money for this week,” said Carrie, quietly.
They had an arrangement by which he placed twelve do
llars a week in her hands, out of which to pay current expenses. He heaved a little sigh as she said this, and drew out his purse. Again he felt the dread of the thing. Here he was taking off, taking off, and nothing coming in.
“Lord!” he said, in his own thoughts, “this can’t go on.”
To Carrie he said nothing whatsoever. She could feel that her request disturbed him. To pay her would soon become a distressing thing.
“Yet, what have I got to do with it?” she thought. “Oh, why should I be made to worry?”
Hurstwood went out and made for Broadway. He wanted to think up some place. Before long, though, he reached the Grand Hotel at Thirty-first Street. He knew of its comfortable lobby. He was cold after his twenty blocks’ walk.
“I’ll go in their barber shop and get a shave,” he thought.
Thus he justified himself in sitting down in here after his tonsorial treatment.
Again, time hanging heavily on his hands, he went home early, and this continued for several days, each day the need to hunt paining him, and each day disgust, depression, shamefacedness driving him into lobby idleness.
At last three days came in which a storm prevailed, and he did not go out at all. The snow began to fall late one afternoon. It was a regular flurry of large, soft, white flakes. In the morning it was still coming down with a high wind, and the papers announced a blizzard. From out the front windows one could see a deep, soft bedding.
“I guess I’ll not try to go out to-day,” he said to Carrie at breakfast. “It’s going to be awful bad, so the papers say.”
“The man hasn’t brought my coal, either,” said Carrie, who ordered by the bushel.
“I’ll go over and see about it,” said Hurstwood. This was the first time he had ever suggested doing an errand, but, somehow, the wish to sit about the house prompted it as a sort of compensation for the privilege.
All day and all night it snowed, and the city began to suffer from a general blockade of traffic. Great attention was given to the details of the storm by the newspapers, which played up the distress of the poor in large type.
Sister Carrie (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 37
