_ Carrie pondered over this situation as consistently as Hurstwood,
once she got the facts adjusted in her mind. It took several
days for her to fully realise that the approach of the
dissolution of her husband's business meant commonplace struggle
and privation. Her mind went back to her early venture in
Chicago, the Hansons and their flat, and her heart revolted.
That was terrible! Everything about poverty was terrible. She
wished she knew a way out. Her recent experiences with the
Vances had wholly unfitted her to view her own state with
complacence. The glamour of the high life of the city had, in
the few experiences afforded her by the former, seized her
completely. She had been taught how to dress and where to go
without having ample means to do either. Now, these things--
ever-present realities as they were--filled her eyes and mind.
The more circumscribed became her state, the more entrancing
seemed this other. And now poverty threatened to seize her
entirely and to remove this other world far upward like a heaven
to which any Lazarus might extend, appealingly, his hands.
So, too, the ideal brought into her life by Ames remained. He
had gone, but here was his word that riches were not everything;
that there was a great deal more in the world than she knew; that
the stage was good, and the literature she read poor. He was a
strong man and clean--how much stronger and better than Hurstwood
and Drouet she only half formulated to herself, but the
difference was painful. It was something to which she
voluntarily closed her eyes.
During the last three months of the Warren Street connection,
Hurstwood took parts of days off and hunted, tracking the
business advertisements. It was a more or less depressing
business, wholly because of the thought that he must soon get
something or he would begin to live on the few hundred dollars he
was saving, and then he would have nothing to invest--he would
have to hire out as a clerk.
Everything he discovered in his line advertised as an
opportunity, was either too expensive or too wretched for him.
Besides, winter was coming, the papers were announcing hardships,
and there was a general feeling of hard times in the air, or, at
least, he thought so. In his worry, other people's worries
became apparent. No item about a firm failing, a family
starving, or a man dying upon the streets, supposedly of
starvation, but arrested his eye as he scanned the morning
papers. Once the "World" came out with a flaring announcement
about "80,000 people out of employment in New York this winter,"
which struck as a knife at his heart.
"Eighty thousand!" he thought. "What an awful thing that is."
This was new reasoning for Hurstwood. In the old days the world
had seemed to be getting along well enough. He had been wont to
see similar things in the "Daily News," in Chicago, but they did
not hold his attention. Now, these things were like grey clouds
hovering along the horizon of a clear day. They threatened to
cover and obscure his life with chilly greyness. He tried to
shake them off, to forget and brace up. Sometimes he said to
himself, mentally:
"What's the use worrying? I'm not out yet. I've got six weeks
more. Even if worst comes to worst, I've got enough to live on
for six months."
Curiously, as he troubled over his future, his thoughts
occasionally reverted to his wife and family. He had avoided
such thoughts for the first three years as much as possible. He
hated her, and he could get along without her. Let her go. He
would do well enough. Now, however, when he was not doing well
enough, he began to wonder what she was doing, how his children
were getting along. He could see them living as nicely as ever,
occupying the comfortable house and using his property.
"By George! it's a shame they should have it all," he vaguely
thought to himself on several occasions. "I didn't do anything."
As he looked back now and analysed the situation which led up to
his taking the money, he began mildly to justify himself. What
had he done--what in the world--that should bar him out this way
and heap such difficulties upon him? It seemed only yesterday to
him since he was comfortable and well-to-do. But now it was all
wrested from him.
"She didn't deserve what she got out of me, that is sure. I
didn't do so much, if everybody could just know."
There was no thought that the facts ought to be advertised. It
was only a mental justification he was seeking from himself--
something that would enable him to bear his state as a righteous
man.
One afternoon, five weeks before the Warren Street place closed
up, he left the saloon to visit three or four places he saw
advertised in the "Herald." One was down in Gold Street, and he
visited that, but did not enter. It was such a cheap looking
place he felt that he could not abide it. Another was on the
Bowery, which he knew contained many showy resorts. It was near
Grand Street, and turned out to be very handsomely fitted up. He
talked around about investments for fully three-quarters of an
hour with the proprietor, who maintained that his health was
poor, and that was the reason he wished a partner.
"Well, now, just how much money would it take to buy a half
interest here?" said Hurstwood, who saw seven hundred dollars as
his limit.
"Three thousand," said the man.
Hurstwood's jaw fell.
"Cash?" he said.
"Cash."
He tried to put on an air of deliberation, as one who might
really buy; but his eyes showed gloom. He wound up by saying he
would think it over, and came away. The man he had been talking
to sensed his condition in a vague way.
"I don't think he wants to buy," he said to himself. "He doesn't
talk right."
The afternoon was as grey as lead and cold. It was blowing up a
disagreeable winter wind. He visited a place far up on the east
side, near Sixty-ninth Street, and it was five o'clock, and
growing dim, when he reached there. A portly German kept this
place.
"How about this ad of yours?" asked Hurstwood, who rather
objected to the looks of the place.
"Oh, dat iss all over," said the German. "I vill not sell now."
"Oh, is that so?"
"Yes; dere is nothing to dat. It iss all over."
"Very well," said Hurstwood, turning around.
The German paid no more attention to him, and it made him angry.
"The crazy ass!" he said to himself. "What does he want to
advertise for?"
Wholly depressed, he started for Thirteenth Street. The flat had
only a light in the kitchen, where Carrie was working. He struck
a match and, lighting the gas, sat down in the dining-room
without even greeting her. She came to the door and looked in.
"It's you, is it?" she said, and went back.
"Yes," he said, without even looking up from the evening paper he
had bought.
Carrie saw things were wrong with him. He was not so handsome
when gloomy. The lines at the sides of the eyes were deepened.
Naturally dark of skin, gloom made him look slightly sinister.
He was quite a disagreeable figure.
Carrie set the table and brought in the meal.
"Dinner's ready," she said, passing him for something.
He did not answer, reading on.
She came in and sat down at her place, feeling exceedingly
wretched.
"Won't you eat now?" she asked.
He folded his paper and drew near, silence holding for a time,
except for the "Pass me's."
"It's been gloomy to-day, hasn't it?" ventured Carrie, after a
time.
"Yes," he said.
He only picked at his food.
"Are you still sure to close up?" said Carrie, venturing to take
up the subject which they had discussed often enough.
"Of course we are," he said, with the slightest modification of
sharpness.
This retort angered Carrie. She had had a dreary day of it
herself.
"You needn't talk like that," she said.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, pushing back from the table, as if to say
more, but letting it go at that. Then he picked up his paper.
Carrie left her seat, containing herself with difficulty. He saw
she was hurt.
"Don't go 'way," he said, as she started back into the kitchen.
"Eat your dinner."
She passed, not answering.
He looked at the paper a few moments, and then rose up and put on
his coat.
"I'm going downtown, Carrie," he said, coming out. "I'm out of
sorts to-night."
She did not answer.
"Don't be angry," he said. "It will be all right to morrow."
He looked at her, but she paid no attention to him, working at
her dishes.
"Good-bye!" he said finally, and went out.
This was the first strong result of the situation between them,
but with the nearing of the last day of the business the gloom
became almost a permanent thing. Hurstwood could not conceal his
feelings about the matter. Carrie could not help wondering where
she was drifting. It got so that they talked even less than
usual, and yet it was not Hurstwood who felt any objection to
Carrie. It was Carrie who shied away from him. This he noticed.
It aroused an objection to her becoming indifferent to him. He
made the possibility of friendly intercourse almost a giant task,
and then noticed with discontent that Carrie added to it by her
manner and made it more impossible.
At last the final day came. When it actually arrived, Hurstwood,
who had got his mind into such a state where a thunderclap and
raging storm would have seemed highly appropriate, was rather
relieved to find that it was a plain, ordinary day. The sun
shone, the temperature was pleasant. He felt, as he came to the
breakfast table, that it wasn't so terrible, after all.
"Well," he said to Carrie, "to-day's my last day on earth."
Carrie smiled in answer to his humour.
Hurstwood glanced over his paper rather gayly. He seemed to have
lost a load.
"I'll go down for a little while," he said after breakfast, "and
then I'll look around. To-morrow I'll spend the whole day
looking about. I think I can get something, now this thing's off
my hands."
He went out smiling and visited the place. Shaughnessy was
there. They had made all arrangements to share according to
their interests. When, however, he had been there several hours,
gone out three more, and returned, his elation had departed. As
much as he had objected to the place, now that it was no longer
to exist, he felt sorry. He wished that things were different.
Shaughnessy was coolly businesslike.
"Well," he said at five o'clock, "we might as well count the
change and divide."
They did so. The fixtures had already been sold and the sum
divided.
"Good-night," said Hurstwood at the final moment, in a last
effort to be genial.
"So long," said Shaughnessy, scarcely deigning a notice.
Thus the Warren Street arrangement was permanently concluded.
Carrie had prepared a good dinner at the flat, but after his ride
up, Hurstwood was in a solemn and reflective mood.
"Well?" said Carrie, inquisitively.
"I'm out of that," he answered, taking off his coat.
As she looked at him, she wondered what his financial state was
now. They ate and talked a little.
"Will you have enough to buy in anywhere else?" asked Carrie.
"No," he said. "I'll have to get something else and save up."
"It would be nice if you could get some place," said Carrie,
prompted by anxiety and hope.
"I guess I will," he said reflectively.
For some days thereafter he put on his overcoat regularly in the
morning and sallied forth. On these ventures he first consoled
himself with the thought that with the seven hundred dollars he
had he could still make some advantageous arrangement. He
thought about going to some brewery, which, as he knew,
frequently controlled saloons which they leased, and get them to
help him. Then he remembered that he would have to pay out
several hundred any way for fixtures and that he would have
nothing left for his monthly expenses. It was costing him nearly
eighty dollars a month to live.
"No," he said, in his sanest moments, "I can't do it. I'll get
something else and save up."
This getting-something proposition complicated itself the moment
he began to think of what it was he wanted to do. Manage a
place? Where should he get such a position? The papers contained
no requests for managers. Such positions, he knew well enough,
were either secured by long years of service or were bought with
a half or third interest. Into a place important enough to need
such a manager he had not money enough to buy.
Nevertheless, he started out. His clothes were very good and his
appearance still excellent, but it involved the trouble of
deluding. People, looking at him, imagined instantly that a man
of his age, stout and well dressed, must be well off. He
appeared a comfortable owner of something, a man from whom the
common run of mortals could well expect gratuities. Being now
forty-three years of age, and comfortably built, walking was not
easy. He had not been used to exercise for many years. His legs
tired, his shoulders ached, and his feet pained him at the close
of the day, even when he took street cars in almost every
direction. The mere getting up and down, if long continued,
produced this result.
The fact that people took him to be better off than he was, he
well understood. It was so painfully clear to him that it
retarded his search. Not that he wished to be less 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 individual was welcome to a chair in the lobby.
This was in the Broadway Central, which was then one of the most
important hotels in the city. Taking a chair here was a painful
thing to him. To think he should come to this! He had heard
loungers about hotels called chairwarmers. He had called them
that himself in his day. But here he was, despite the
possibility of meeting some one who knew him, shielding himself
from cold and the weariness of the streets in a hotel lobby.
"I can't do this way," he said to himself. "There's no use of my
starting out mornings without first thinking up some place to go.
I'll think of some places and then look them up."
It occurred to him that the positions of bartenders were
sometimes open, but he put this out of his mind. Bartender--he,
the ex-manager!
It grew awfully dull sitting in the hotel lobby, and so at four
he went home. He tried to put on a business air as he went in,
but it was a feeble imitation. The rocking chair in the 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." 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. _