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

Timid as Carrie was, she was strong in capability. The reliance of others made her feel as if she must, and when she must she dared. Experience of the world and of necessity was in her favour. No longer the lightest word of a man made her head dizzy. She had learned that men could change and fail. Flattery in its most palpable form had lost its force with her. It required superiority⁠—kindly superiority⁠—to move her⁠—the superiority of a genius like Ames.

“I don’t like the actors in our company,” she told Lola one day. “They’re all so struck on themselves.”

“Don’t you think Mr. Barclay’s pretty nice?” inquired Lola, who had received a condescending smile or two from that quarter.

“Oh, he’s nice enough,” answered Carrie; “but he isn’t sincere. He assumes such an air.”

Lola felt for her first hold upon Carrie in the following manner:

“Are you paying room-rent where you are?”

“Certainly,” answered Carrie. “Why?”

“I know where I could get the loveliest room and bath, cheap. It’s too big for me, but it would be just right for two, and the rent is only six dollars a week for both.”

“Where?” said Carrie.

“In Seventeenth Street.”

“Well, I don’t know as I’d care to change,” said Carrie, who was already turning over the three-dollar rate in her mind. She was thinking if she had only herself to support this would leave her seventeen for herself.

Nothing came of this until after the Brooklyn adventure of Hurstwood’s and her success with the speaking part. Then she began to feel as if she must be free. She thought of leaving Hurstwood and thus making him act for himself, but he had developed such peculiar traits she feared he might resist any effort to throw him off. He might hunt her out at the show and hound her in that way. She did not wholly believe that he would, but he might. This, she knew, would be an embarrassing thing if he made himself conspicuous in any way. It troubled her greatly.

Things were precipitated by the offer of a better part. One of the actresses playing the part of a modest sweetheart gave notice of leaving and Carrie was selected.

“How much are you going to get?” asked Miss Osborne, on hearing the good news.

“I didn’t ask him,” said Carrie.

“Well, find out. Goodness, you’ll never get anything if you don’t ask. Tell them you must have forty dollars, anyhow.”

“Oh, no,” said Carrie.

“Certainly!” exclaimed Lola. “Ask ’em, anyway.”

Carrie succumbed to this prompting, waiting, however, until the manager gave her notice of what clothing she must have to fit the part.

“How much do I get?” she inquired.

“Thirty-five dollars,” he replied.

Carrie was too much astonished and delighted to think of mentioning forty. She was nearly beside herself, and almost hugged Lola, who clung to her at the news.

“It isn’t as much as you ought to get,” said the latter, “especially when you’ve got to buy clothes.”

Carrie remembered this with a start. Where to get the money? She had none laid up for such an emergency. Rent day was drawing near.

“I’ll not do it,” she said, remembering her necessity. “I don’t use the flat. I’m not going to give up my money this time. I’ll move.”

Fitting into this came another appeal from Miss Osborne, more urgent than ever.

“Come live with me, won’t you?” she pleaded. “We can have the loveliest room. It won’t cost you hardly anything that way.”

“I’d like to,” said Carrie, frankly.

“Oh, do,” said Lola. “We’ll have such a good time.”

Carrie thought a while.

“I believe I will,” she said, and then added: “I’ll have to see first, though.”

With the idea thus grounded, rent day approaching, and clothes calling for instant purchase, she soon found excuse in Hurstwood’s lassitude. He said less and drooped more than ever.

As rent day approached, an idea grew in him. It was fostered by the demands of creditors and the impossibility of holding up many more. Twenty-eight dollars was too much for rent. “It’s hard on her,” he thought. “We could get a cheaper place.”

Stirred with this idea, he spoke at the breakfast table.

“Don’t you think we pay too much rent here?” he asked.

“Indeed I do,” said Carrie, not catching his drift.

“I should think we could get a smaller place,” he suggested. “We don’t need four rooms.”

Her countenance, had he been scrutinising her, would have exhibited the disturbance she felt at this evidence of his determination to stay by her. He saw nothing remarkable in asking her to come down lower.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered, growing wary.

“There must be places around here where we could get a couple of rooms, which would do just as well.”

Her heart revolted. “Never!” she thought. Who would furnish the money to move? To think of being in two rooms with him! She resolved to spend her money for clothes quickly, before something terrible happened. That very day she did it. Having done so, there was but one other thing to do.

“Lola,” she said, visiting her friend, “I think I’ll come.”

“Oh, jolly!” cried the latter.

“Can we get it right away?” she asked, meaning the room.

“Certainly,” cried Lola.

They went to look at it. Carrie had saved ten dollars from her expenditures⁠—enough for this and her board beside. Her enlarged salary would not begin for ten days yet⁠—would not reach her for seventeen. She paid half of the six dollars with her friend.

“Now, I’ve just enough to get on to the end of the week,” she confided.

“Oh, I’ve got some,” said Lola. “I’ve got twenty-five dollars, if you need it.”

“No,” said Carrie. “I guess I’ll get along.”

They decided to move Friday, which was two days away. Now that the thing was settled, Carrie’s heart misgave her. She felt very much like a criminal in the matter. Each day looking at Hurstwood, she had realised that, along with the disagreeableness of his attitude, there was something pathetic.

She looked at him the same evening she had made up her mind to go, and now he seemed not so shiftless and worthless, but