Sister Carrie Chapter 47 by Theodore Dreiser Lyrics
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!"
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 poster-board, on which was a fine lithograph of
Carrie, life-size.
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.
"That's you," he said at last, addressing her. "Wasn't good enough for
you, was I? Huh!"
He lingered, trying to think logically. This was no longer possible with
him.
"She's got it," he said, incoherently, thinking of money. "Let her give
me some."
He started around to the side door. Then he forgot what he was going for
and paused, pushing his hands deeper to warm the wrists. Suddenly it
returned. The stage door! That was it.
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 business men 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."
"Who is it?" said the other.
"Oh, a couple of girls over here in Fortieth Street. We could have a
dandy time. I was just looking for you."
"Supposing we get 'em and take 'em out to dinner?"
"Sure," said Drouet. "Wait'll I go upstairs and change my clothes."
"Well, I'll be in the barber shop," said the other. "I want to get a
shave."
"All right," said Drouet, creaking off in his good shoes toward the
elevator. The old butterfly was as light on the wing as ever.
* * * * *
On an incoming vestibuled Pullman, speeding at forty miles an hour
through the snow of the evening, were three others, all related.
"First call for dinner in the dining-car," a Pullman servitor was
announcing, as he hastened through the aisle in snow-white apron and
jacket.
"I don't believe I want to play any more," said the youngest, a
black-haired beauty, turned supercilious by fortune, as she pushed a
euchre hand away from her.
"Shall we go into dinner?" inquired her husband, who was all that fine
raiment can make.
"Oh, not yet," she answered. "I don't want to play any more, though."
"Jessica," said her mother, who was also a study in what good clothing
can do for age, "push that pin down in your tie--it's coming up."
Jessica obeyed, incidentally touching at her lovely hair and looking at
a little jewel-faced watch. Her husband studied her, for beauty, even
cold, is fascinating from one point of view.
"Well, we won't have much more of this weather," he said. "It only takes
two weeks to get to Rome."
Mrs. Hurstwood nestled comfortably in her corner and smiled. It was so
nice to be the mother-in-law of a rich young man--one whose financial
state had borne her personal inspection.
"Do you suppose the boat will sail promptly?" asked Jessica, "if it
keeps up like this?"
"Oh, yes," answered her husband. "This won't make any difference."
Passing down the aisle came a very fair-haired banker's son, also of
Chicago, who had long eyed this supercilious beauty. Even now he did not
hesitate to glance at her, and she was conscious of it. With a specially
conjured show of indifference, she turned her pretty face wholly away.
It was not wifely modesty at all. By so much was her pride satisfied.
* * * * *
At this moment Hurstwood stood before a dirty four-story building in a
side street quite near the Bowery, whose one-time coat of buff had been
changed by soot and rain. He mingled with a crowd of men--a crowd which
had been, and was still, gathering by degrees.
It began with the approach of two or three, who hung about the closed
wooden doors and beat their feet to keep them warm. They had on faded
derby hats with dents in them. Their misfit coats were heavy with melted
snow and turned up at the collars. Their trousers were mere bags, frayed
at the bottom and wobbling over big, soppy shoes, torn at the sides and
worn almost to shreds. They made no effort to go in, but shifted
ruefully about, digging their hands deep in their pockets and leering at
the crowd and the increasing lamps. With the minutes, increased the
number. There were old men with grizzled beards and sunken eyes, men
who were comparatively young but shrunken by diseases, men who were
middle-aged. None were fat. There was a face in the thick of the
collection which was as white as drained veal. There was another red as
brick. Some came with thin, rounded shoulders; others with wooden legs,
still others with frames so lean that clothes only flapped about them.
There were great ears, swollen noses, thick lips, and, above all, red,
blood-shot eyes. Not a normal, healthy face in the whole mass; not a
straight figure; not a straightforward, steady glance.
In the drive of the wind and sleet they pushed in on one another. There
were wrists, unprotected by coat or pocket, which were red with cold.
There were ears, half covered by every conceivable semblance of a hat,
which still looked stiff and bitten. In the snow they shifted, now one
foot, now another, almost rocking in unison.
With the growth of the crowd about the door came a murmur. It was not
conversation, but a running comment directed at any one in general. It
contained oaths and slang phrases.
"By damn, I wish they'd hurry up."
"Look at the copper watchin'."
"Maybe it ain't winter, nuther!"
"I wisht I was in Sing Sing."
Now a sharper lash of wind cut down and they huddled closer. It was an
edging, shifting, pushing throng. There was no anger, no pleading, no
threatening words. It was all sullen endurance, unlightened by either
wit or good fellowship.
A carriage went jingling by with some reclining figure in it. One of the
men nearest the door saw it.
"Look at the bloke ridin'."
"He ain't so cold."
"Eh, eh, eh!" yelled another, the carriage having long since passed out
of hearing.
Little by little the night crept on. Along the walk a crowd turned out
on its way home. Men and shop-girls went by with quick steps. The
cross-town cars began to be crowded. The gas lamps were blazing, and
every window bloomed ruddy with a steady flame. Still the crowd hung
about the door, unwavering.
"Ain't they ever goin' to open up?" queried a hoarse voice,
suggestively.
This seemed to renew the general interest in the closed door, and many
gazed in that direction. They looked at it as dumb brutes look, as dogs
paw and whine and study the knob. They shifted and blinked and muttered,
now a curse, now a comment. Still they waited and still the snow whirled
and cut them with biting flakes. On the old hats and peaked shoulders it
was piling. It gathered in little heaps and curves and no one brushed it
off. In the centre of the crowd the warmth and steam melted it, and
water trickled off hat rims and down noses, which the owners could not
reach to scratch. On the outer rim the piles remained unmelted.
Hurstwood, who could not get in the centre, stood with head lowered to
the weather and bent his form.
A light appeared through the transom overhead. It sent a thrill of
possibility through the watchers. There was a murmur of recognition. At
last the bars grated inside and the crowd pricked up its ears. Footsteps
shuffled within and it murmured again. Some one called: "Slow up there,
now," and then the door opened. It was push and jam for a minute, with
grim, beast silence to prove its quality, and then it melted inward,
like logs floating, and disappeared. There were wet hats and wet
shoulders, a cold, shrunken, disgruntled mass, pouring in between bleak
walls. It was just six o'clock and there was supper in every hurrying
pedestrian's face. And yet no supper was provided here--nothing but
beds.
Hurstwood laid down his fifteen cents and crept off with weary steps to
his allotted room. It was a dingy affair--wooden, dusty, hard. A small
gas-jet furnished sufficient light for so rueful a corner.
"Hm!" he said, clearing his throat and locking the door.
Now he began leisurely to take off his clothes, but stopped first with
his coat, and tucked it along the crack under the door. His vest he
arranged in the same place. His old wet, cracked hat he laid softly upon
the table. Then he pulled off his shoes and lay down.
It seemed as if he thought a while, for now he arose and turned the gas
out, standing calmly in the blackness, hidden from view. After a few
moments, in which he reviewed nothing, but merely hesitated, he turned
the gas on again, but applied no match. Even then he stood there, hidden
wholly in that kindness which is night, while the uprising fumes filled
the room. When the odour reached his nostrils, he quit his attitude and
fumbled for the bed.
"What's the use?" he said, weakly, as he stretched himself to rest.
* * * * *
And now Carrie had attained that which in the beginning seemed life's
object, or, at least, such fraction of it as human beings ever attain of
their original desires. She could look about on her gowns and carriage,
her furniture and bank account. Friends there were, as the world takes
it--those who would bow and smile in acknowledgment of her success. For
these she had once craved. Applause there was, and publicity--once far
off, essential things, but now grown trivial and indifferent. Beauty
also--her type of loveliness--and yet she was lonely. In her
rocking-chair she sat, when not otherwise engaged--singing and dreaming.
Thus in life there is ever the intellectual and the emotional
nature--the mind that reasons, and the mind that feels. Of one come the
men of action--generals and statesmen; of the other, the poets and
dreamers--artists all.
As harps in the wind, the latter respond to every breath of fancy,
voicing in their moods all the ebb and flow of the ideal.
Man has not yet comprehended the dreamer any more than he has the ideal.
For him the laws and morals of the world are unduly severe. Ever
hearkening to the sound of beauty, straining for the flash of its
distant wings, he watches to follow, wearying his feet in travelling. So
watched Carrie, so followed, rocking and singing.
And it must be remembered that reason had little part in this. Chicago
dawning, she saw the city offering more of loveliness than she had ever
known, and instinctively, by force of her moods alone, clung to it. In
fine raiment and elegant surroundings, men seemed to be contented.
Hence, she drew near these things. Chicago, New York; Drouet, Hurstwood;
the world of fashion and the world of stage--these were but incidents.
Not them, but that which they represented, she longed for. Time proved
the representation false.
Oh, the tangle of human life! How dimly as yet we see. Here was Carrie,
in the beginning poor, unsophisticated, emotional; responding with
desire to everything most lovely in life, yet finding herself turned as
by a wall. Laws to say: "Be allured, if you will, by everything lovely,
but draw not nigh unless by righteousness." Convention to say: "You
shall not better your situation save by honest labour." If honest labour
be unremunerative and difficult to endure; if it be the long, long road
which never reaches beauty, but wearies the feet and the heart; if the
drag to follow beauty be such that one abandons the admired way, taking
rather the despised path leading to her dreams quickly, who shall cast
the first stone? Not evil, but longing for that which is better, more
often directs the steps of the erring. Not evil, but goodness more often
allures the feeling mind unused to reason.
Amid the tinsel and shine of her state walked Carrie, unhappy. As when
Drouet took her, she had thought: "Now am I lifted into that which is
best"; as when Hurstwood seemingly offered her the better way: "Now am I
happy." But since the world goes its way past all who will not partake
of its folly, she now found herself alone. Her purse was open to him
whose need was greatest. In her walks on Broadway, she no longer thought
of the elegance of the creatures who passed her. Had they more of that
peace and beauty which glimmered afar off, then were they to be envied.
Drouet abandoned his claim and was seen no more. Of Hurstwood's death
she was not even aware. A slow, black boat setting out from the pier at
Twenty-seventh Street upon its weekly errand bore, with many others, his
nameless body to the Potter's Field.
Thus passed all that was of interest concerning these twain in their
relation to her. Their influence upon her life is explicable alone by
the nature of her longings. Time was when both represented for her all
that was most potent in earthly success. They were the personal
representatives of a state most blessed to attain--the titled
ambassadors of comfort and peace, aglow with their credentials. It is
but natural that when the world which they represented no longer allured
her, its ambassadors should be discredited. Even had Hurstwood returned
in his original beauty and glory, he could not now have allured her. She
had learned that in his world, as in her own present state, was not
happiness.
Sitting alone, she was now an illustration of the devious ways by which
one who feels, rather than reasons, may be led in the pursuit of beauty.
Though often disillusioned, she was still waiting for that halcyon day
when she should be led forth among dreams become real. Ames had pointed
out a farther step, but on and on beyond that, if accomplished, would
lie others for her. It was forever to be the pursuit of that radiance of
delight which tints the distant hilltops of the world.
Oh, Carrie, Carrie! Oh, blind strivings of the human heart! Onward,
onward, it saith, and where beauty leads, there it follows. Whether it
be the tinkle of a lone sheep bell o'er some quiet landscape, or the
glimmer of beauty in sylvan places, or the show of soul in some passing
eye, the heart knows and makes answer, following. It is when the feet
weary and hope seems vain that the heartaches and the longings arise.
Know, then, that for you is neither surfeit nor content. In your
rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your
rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may
never feel.
THE END
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!"
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 poster-board, on which was a fine lithograph of
Carrie, life-size.
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.
"That's you," he said at last, addressing her. "Wasn't good enough for
you, was I? Huh!"
He lingered, trying to think logically. This was no longer possible with
him.
"She's got it," he said, incoherently, thinking of money. "Let her give
me some."
He started around to the side door. Then he forgot what he was going for
and paused, pushing his hands deeper to warm the wrists. Suddenly it
returned. The stage door! That was it.
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 business men 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."
"Who is it?" said the other.
"Oh, a couple of girls over here in Fortieth Street. We could have a
dandy time. I was just looking for you."
"Supposing we get 'em and take 'em out to dinner?"
"Sure," said Drouet. "Wait'll I go upstairs and change my clothes."
"Well, I'll be in the barber shop," said the other. "I want to get a
shave."
"All right," said Drouet, creaking off in his good shoes toward the
elevator. The old butterfly was as light on the wing as ever.
* * * * *
On an incoming vestibuled Pullman, speeding at forty miles an hour
through the snow of the evening, were three others, all related.
"First call for dinner in the dining-car," a Pullman servitor was
announcing, as he hastened through the aisle in snow-white apron and
jacket.
"I don't believe I want to play any more," said the youngest, a
black-haired beauty, turned supercilious by fortune, as she pushed a
euchre hand away from her.
"Shall we go into dinner?" inquired her husband, who was all that fine
raiment can make.
"Oh, not yet," she answered. "I don't want to play any more, though."
"Jessica," said her mother, who was also a study in what good clothing
can do for age, "push that pin down in your tie--it's coming up."
Jessica obeyed, incidentally touching at her lovely hair and looking at
a little jewel-faced watch. Her husband studied her, for beauty, even
cold, is fascinating from one point of view.
"Well, we won't have much more of this weather," he said. "It only takes
two weeks to get to Rome."
Mrs. Hurstwood nestled comfortably in her corner and smiled. It was so
nice to be the mother-in-law of a rich young man--one whose financial
state had borne her personal inspection.
"Do you suppose the boat will sail promptly?" asked Jessica, "if it
keeps up like this?"
"Oh, yes," answered her husband. "This won't make any difference."
Passing down the aisle came a very fair-haired banker's son, also of
Chicago, who had long eyed this supercilious beauty. Even now he did not
hesitate to glance at her, and she was conscious of it. With a specially
conjured show of indifference, she turned her pretty face wholly away.
It was not wifely modesty at all. By so much was her pride satisfied.
* * * * *
At this moment Hurstwood stood before a dirty four-story building in a
side street quite near the Bowery, whose one-time coat of buff had been
changed by soot and rain. He mingled with a crowd of men--a crowd which
had been, and was still, gathering by degrees.
It began with the approach of two or three, who hung about the closed
wooden doors and beat their feet to keep them warm. They had on faded
derby hats with dents in them. Their misfit coats were heavy with melted
snow and turned up at the collars. Their trousers were mere bags, frayed
at the bottom and wobbling over big, soppy shoes, torn at the sides and
worn almost to shreds. They made no effort to go in, but shifted
ruefully about, digging their hands deep in their pockets and leering at
the crowd and the increasing lamps. With the minutes, increased the
number. There were old men with grizzled beards and sunken eyes, men
who were comparatively young but shrunken by diseases, men who were
middle-aged. None were fat. There was a face in the thick of the
collection which was as white as drained veal. There was another red as
brick. Some came with thin, rounded shoulders; others with wooden legs,
still others with frames so lean that clothes only flapped about them.
There were great ears, swollen noses, thick lips, and, above all, red,
blood-shot eyes. Not a normal, healthy face in the whole mass; not a
straight figure; not a straightforward, steady glance.
In the drive of the wind and sleet they pushed in on one another. There
were wrists, unprotected by coat or pocket, which were red with cold.
There were ears, half covered by every conceivable semblance of a hat,
which still looked stiff and bitten. In the snow they shifted, now one
foot, now another, almost rocking in unison.
With the growth of the crowd about the door came a murmur. It was not
conversation, but a running comment directed at any one in general. It
contained oaths and slang phrases.
"By damn, I wish they'd hurry up."
"Look at the copper watchin'."
"Maybe it ain't winter, nuther!"
"I wisht I was in Sing Sing."
Now a sharper lash of wind cut down and they huddled closer. It was an
edging, shifting, pushing throng. There was no anger, no pleading, no
threatening words. It was all sullen endurance, unlightened by either
wit or good fellowship.
A carriage went jingling by with some reclining figure in it. One of the
men nearest the door saw it.
"Look at the bloke ridin'."
"He ain't so cold."
"Eh, eh, eh!" yelled another, the carriage having long since passed out
of hearing.
Little by little the night crept on. Along the walk a crowd turned out
on its way home. Men and shop-girls went by with quick steps. The
cross-town cars began to be crowded. The gas lamps were blazing, and
every window bloomed ruddy with a steady flame. Still the crowd hung
about the door, unwavering.
"Ain't they ever goin' to open up?" queried a hoarse voice,
suggestively.
This seemed to renew the general interest in the closed door, and many
gazed in that direction. They looked at it as dumb brutes look, as dogs
paw and whine and study the knob. They shifted and blinked and muttered,
now a curse, now a comment. Still they waited and still the snow whirled
and cut them with biting flakes. On the old hats and peaked shoulders it
was piling. It gathered in little heaps and curves and no one brushed it
off. In the centre of the crowd the warmth and steam melted it, and
water trickled off hat rims and down noses, which the owners could not
reach to scratch. On the outer rim the piles remained unmelted.
Hurstwood, who could not get in the centre, stood with head lowered to
the weather and bent his form.
A light appeared through the transom overhead. It sent a thrill of
possibility through the watchers. There was a murmur of recognition. At
last the bars grated inside and the crowd pricked up its ears. Footsteps
shuffled within and it murmured again. Some one called: "Slow up there,
now," and then the door opened. It was push and jam for a minute, with
grim, beast silence to prove its quality, and then it melted inward,
like logs floating, and disappeared. There were wet hats and wet
shoulders, a cold, shrunken, disgruntled mass, pouring in between bleak
walls. It was just six o'clock and there was supper in every hurrying
pedestrian's face. And yet no supper was provided here--nothing but
beds.
Hurstwood laid down his fifteen cents and crept off with weary steps to
his allotted room. It was a dingy affair--wooden, dusty, hard. A small
gas-jet furnished sufficient light for so rueful a corner.
"Hm!" he said, clearing his throat and locking the door.
Now he began leisurely to take off his clothes, but stopped first with
his coat, and tucked it along the crack under the door. His vest he
arranged in the same place. His old wet, cracked hat he laid softly upon
the table. Then he pulled off his shoes and lay down.
It seemed as if he thought a while, for now he arose and turned the gas
out, standing calmly in the blackness, hidden from view. After a few
moments, in which he reviewed nothing, but merely hesitated, he turned
the gas on again, but applied no match. Even then he stood there, hidden
wholly in that kindness which is night, while the uprising fumes filled
the room. When the odour reached his nostrils, he quit his attitude and
fumbled for the bed.
"What's the use?" he said, weakly, as he stretched himself to rest.
* * * * *
And now Carrie had attained that which in the beginning seemed life's
object, or, at least, such fraction of it as human beings ever attain of
their original desires. She could look about on her gowns and carriage,
her furniture and bank account. Friends there were, as the world takes
it--those who would bow and smile in acknowledgment of her success. For
these she had once craved. Applause there was, and publicity--once far
off, essential things, but now grown trivial and indifferent. Beauty
also--her type of loveliness--and yet she was lonely. In her
rocking-chair she sat, when not otherwise engaged--singing and dreaming.
Thus in life there is ever the intellectual and the emotional
nature--the mind that reasons, and the mind that feels. Of one come the
men of action--generals and statesmen; of the other, the poets and
dreamers--artists all.
As harps in the wind, the latter respond to every breath of fancy,
voicing in their moods all the ebb and flow of the ideal.
Man has not yet comprehended the dreamer any more than he has the ideal.
For him the laws and morals of the world are unduly severe. Ever
hearkening to the sound of beauty, straining for the flash of its
distant wings, he watches to follow, wearying his feet in travelling. So
watched Carrie, so followed, rocking and singing.
And it must be remembered that reason had little part in this. Chicago
dawning, she saw the city offering more of loveliness than she had ever
known, and instinctively, by force of her moods alone, clung to it. In
fine raiment and elegant surroundings, men seemed to be contented.
Hence, she drew near these things. Chicago, New York; Drouet, Hurstwood;
the world of fashion and the world of stage--these were but incidents.
Not them, but that which they represented, she longed for. Time proved
the representation false.
Oh, the tangle of human life! How dimly as yet we see. Here was Carrie,
in the beginning poor, unsophisticated, emotional; responding with
desire to everything most lovely in life, yet finding herself turned as
by a wall. Laws to say: "Be allured, if you will, by everything lovely,
but draw not nigh unless by righteousness." Convention to say: "You
shall not better your situation save by honest labour." If honest labour
be unremunerative and difficult to endure; if it be the long, long road
which never reaches beauty, but wearies the feet and the heart; if the
drag to follow beauty be such that one abandons the admired way, taking
rather the despised path leading to her dreams quickly, who shall cast
the first stone? Not evil, but longing for that which is better, more
often directs the steps of the erring. Not evil, but goodness more often
allures the feeling mind unused to reason.
Amid the tinsel and shine of her state walked Carrie, unhappy. As when
Drouet took her, she had thought: "Now am I lifted into that which is
best"; as when Hurstwood seemingly offered her the better way: "Now am I
happy." But since the world goes its way past all who will not partake
of its folly, she now found herself alone. Her purse was open to him
whose need was greatest. In her walks on Broadway, she no longer thought
of the elegance of the creatures who passed her. Had they more of that
peace and beauty which glimmered afar off, then were they to be envied.
Drouet abandoned his claim and was seen no more. Of Hurstwood's death
she was not even aware. A slow, black boat setting out from the pier at
Twenty-seventh Street upon its weekly errand bore, with many others, his
nameless body to the Potter's Field.
Thus passed all that was of interest concerning these twain in their
relation to her. Their influence upon her life is explicable alone by
the nature of her longings. Time was when both represented for her all
that was most potent in earthly success. They were the personal
representatives of a state most blessed to attain--the titled
ambassadors of comfort and peace, aglow with their credentials. It is
but natural that when the world which they represented no longer allured
her, its ambassadors should be discredited. Even had Hurstwood returned
in his original beauty and glory, he could not now have allured her. She
had learned that in his world, as in her own present state, was not
happiness.
Sitting alone, she was now an illustration of the devious ways by which
one who feels, rather than reasons, may be led in the pursuit of beauty.
Though often disillusioned, she was still waiting for that halcyon day
when she should be led forth among dreams become real. Ames had pointed
out a farther step, but on and on beyond that, if accomplished, would
lie others for her. It was forever to be the pursuit of that radiance of
delight which tints the distant hilltops of the world.
Oh, Carrie, Carrie! Oh, blind strivings of the human heart! Onward,
onward, it saith, and where beauty leads, there it follows. Whether it
be the tinkle of a lone sheep bell o'er some quiet landscape, or the
glimmer of beauty in sylvan places, or the show of soul in some passing
eye, the heart knows and makes answer, following. It is when the feet
weary and hope seems vain that the heartaches and the longings arise.
Know, then, that for you is neither surfeit nor content. In your
rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your
rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may
never feel.
THE END