Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (best book clubs .TXT) 📕

much as I had,” he thought.

So off he went to a poker room in the neighbourhood, feeling much as he had in the old days. In this period of self-forgetfulness, aroused first by the shock of argument and perfected by a dinner in the hotel, with cocktails and cigars, he was as nearly like the old Hurstwood as he would ever be again. It was not the old Hurstwood⁠—only a man arguing with a divided conscience and lured by a phantom.

This poker room was much like the other one, only it was a back room in a better drinking resort. Hurstwood watched a while, and then, seeing an interesting game, joined in. As before, it went easy for a while, he winning a few times and cheering up, losing a few pots and growing more interested and determined on that account. At last the fascinating game took a strong hold on him. He enjoyed its risks and ventured, on a trifling hand, to bluff the company and secure a fair stake. To his self-satisfaction intense and strong, he did it.

In the height of this feeling he began to think his luck was with him. No one else had done so well. Now came another moderate hand, and again he tried to open the jackpot on it. There were others there who were almost reading his heart, so close was their observation.

“I have three of a kind,” said one of the players to himself. “I’ll just stay with that fellow to the finish.”

The result was that bidding began.

“I raise you ten.”

“Good.”

“Ten more.”

“Good.”

“Ten again.”

“Right you are.”

It got to where Hurstwood had seventy-five dollars up. The other man really became serious. Perhaps this individual (Hurstwood) really did have a stiff hand.

“I call,” he said.

Hurstwood showed his hand. He was done. The bitter fact that he had lost seventy-five dollars made him desperate.

“Let’s have another pot,” he said, grimly.

“All right,” said the man.

Some of the other players quit, but observant loungers took their places. Time passed, and it came to twelve o’clock. Hurstwood held on, neither winning nor losing much. Then he grew weary, and on a last hand lost twenty more. He was sick at heart.

At a quarter after one in the morning he came out of the place. The chill, bare streets seemed a mockery of his state. He walked slowly west, little thinking of his row with Carrie. He ascended the stairs and went into his room as if there had been no trouble. It was his loss that occupied his mind. Sitting down on the bedside he counted his money. There was now but a hundred and ninety dollars and some change. He put it up and began to undress.

“I wonder what’s getting into me, anyhow?” he said.

In the morning Carrie scarcely spoke, and he felt as if he must go out again. He had treated her badly, but he could not afford to make up. Now desperation seized him, and for a day or two, going out thus, he lived like a gentleman⁠—or what he conceived to be a gentleman⁠—which took money. For his escapades he was soon poorer in mind and body, to say nothing of his purse, which had lost thirty by the process. Then he came down to cold, bitter sense again.

“The rent man comes today,” said Carrie, greeting him thus indifferently three mornings later.

“He does?”

“Yes; this is the second,” answered Carrie.

Hurstwood frowned. Then in despair he got out his purse.

“It seems an awful lot to pay for rent,” he said.

He was nearing his last hundred dollars.

XXXVII The Spirit Awakens: New Search for the Gate

It would be useless to explain how in due time the last fifty dollars was in sight. The seven hundred, by his process of handling, had only carried them into June. Before the final hundred mark was reached he began to indicate that a calamity was approaching.

“I don’t know,” he said one day, taking a trivial expenditure for meat as a text, “it seems to take an awful lot for us to live.”

“It doesn’t seem to me,” said Carrie, “that we spend very much.”

“My money is nearly gone,” he said, “and I hardly know where it’s gone to.”

“All that seven hundred dollars?” asked Carrie.

“All but a hundred.”

He looked so disconsolate that it scared her. She began to see that she herself had been drifting. She had felt it all the time.

“Well, George,” she exclaimed, “why don’t you get out and look for something? You could find something.”

“I have looked,” he said. “You can’t make people give you a place.”

She gazed weakly at him and said: “Well, what do you think you will do? A hundred dollars won’t last long.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t do any more than look.”

Carrie became frightened over this announcement. She thought desperately upon the subject. Frequently she had considered the stage as a door through which she might enter that gilded state which she had so much craved. Now, as in Chicago, it came as a last resource in distress. Something must be done if he did not get work soon. Perhaps she would have to go out and battle again alone.

She began to wonder how one would go about getting a place. Her experience in Chicago proved that she had not tried the right way. There must be people who would listen to and try you⁠—men who would give you an opportunity.

They were talking at the breakfast table, a morning or two later, when she brought up the dramatic subject by saying that she saw that Sarah Bernhardt was coming to this country. Hurstwood had seen it, too.

“How do people get on the stage, George?” she finally asked, innocently.

“I don’t know,” he said. “There must be dramatic agents.”

Carrie was sipping coffee, and did not look up.

“Regular people who get you a place?”

“Yes, I think so,” he answered.

Suddenly the air with which she asked attracted his attention.

“You’re not still thinking about being an actress, are you?” he asked.

“No,” she answered,