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_ Minnie's flat, as the one-floor resident apartments were then
being called, was in a part of West Van Buren Street inhabited by
families of labourers and clerks, men who had come, and were
still coming, with the rush of population pouring in at the rate
of 50,000 a year. It was on the third floor, the front windows
looking down into the street, where, at night, the lights of
grocery stores were shining and children were playing. To Carrie,
the sound of the little bells upon the horse-cars, as they
tinkled in and out of hearing, was as pleasing as it was novel.
She gazed into the lighted street when Minnie brought her into
the front room, and wondered at the sounds, the movement, the
murmur of the vast city which stretched for miles and miles in
every direction.
Mrs. Hanson, after the first greetings were over, gave Carrie the
baby and proceeded to get supper. Her husband asked a few
questions and sat down to read the evening paper. He was a
silent man, American born, of a Swede father, and now employed as
a cleaner of refrigerator cars at the stock-yards. To him the
presence or absence of his wife's sister was a matter of
indifference. Her personal appearance did not affect him one way
or the other. His one observation to the point was concerning
the chances of work in Chicago.
"It's a big place," he said. "You can get in somewhere in a few
days. Everybody does."
It had been tacitly understood beforehand that she was to get
work and pay her board. He was of a clean, saving disposition,
and had already paid a number of monthly instalments on two lots
far out on the West Side. His ambition was some day to build a
house on them.
In the interval which marked the preparation of the meal Carrie
found time to study the flat. She had some slight gift of
observation and that sense, so rich in every woman--intuition.
She felt the drag of a lean and narrow life. The walls of the
rooms were discordantly papered. The floors were covered with
matting and the hall laid with a thin rag carpet. One could see
that the furniture was of that poor, hurriedly patched together
quality sold by the instalment houses.
She sat with Minnie, in the kitchen, holding the baby until it
began to cry. Then she walked and sang to it, until Hanson,
disturbed in his reading, came and took it. A pleasant side to
his nature came out here. He was patient. One could see that he
was very much wrapped up in his offspring.
"Now, now," he said, walking. "There, there," and there was a
certain Swedish accent noticeable in his voice.
"You'll want to see the city first, won't you?" said Minnie, when
they were eating. "Well, we'll go out Sunday and see Lincoln
Park.
Carrie noticed that Hanson had said nothing to this. He seemed to
be thinking of something else.
"Well," she said, "I think I'll look around tomorrow. I've got
Friday and Saturday, and it won't be any trouble. Which way is
the business part?"
Minnie began to explain, but her husband took this part of the
conversation to himself.
"It's that way," he said, pointing east. "That's east." Then he
went off into the longest speech he had yet indulged in,
concerning the lay of Chicago. "You'd better look in those big
manufacturing houses along Franklin Street and just the other
side of the river," he concluded. "Lots of girls work there.
You could get home easy, too. It isn't very far."
Carrie nodded and asked her sister about the neighbourhood. The
latter talked in a subdued tone, telling the little she knew
about it, while Hanson concerned himself with the baby. Finally
he jumped up and handed the child to his wife.
"I've got to get up early in the morning, so I'll go to bed," and
off he went, disappearing into the dark little bedroom off the
hall, for the night.
"He works way down at the stock-yards," explained Minnie, "so
he's got to get up at half-past five."
"What time do you get up to get breakfast?" asked Carrie.
"At about twenty minutes of five."
Together they finished the labour of the day, Carrie washing the
dishes while Minnie undressed the baby and put it to bed.
Minnie's manner was one of trained industry, and Carrie could see
that it was a steady round of toil with her.
She began to see that her relations with Drouet would have to be
abandoned. He could not come here. She read from the manner of
Hanson, in the subdued air of Minnie, and, indeed, the whole
atmosphere of the flat, a settled opposition to anything save a
conservative round of toil. If Hanson sat every evening in the
front room and read his paper, if he went to bed at nine, and
Minnie a little later, what would they expect of her? She saw
that she would first need to get work and establish herself on a
paying basis before she could think of having company of any
sort. Her little flirtation with Drouet seemed now an
extraordinary thing.
"No," she said to herself, "he can't come here."
She asked Minnie for ink and paper, which were upon the mantel in
the dining-room, and when the latter had gone to bed at ten, got
out Drouet's card and wrote him.
"I cannot have you call on me here. You will have to wait until
you hear from me again. My sister's place is so small."
She troubled herself over what else to put in the letter. She
wanted to make some reference to their relations upon the train,
but was too timid. She concluded by thanking him for his
kindness in a crude way, then puzzled over the formality of
signing her name, and finally decided upon the severe, winding up
with a "Very truly," which she subsequently changed to
"Sincerely." She scaled and addressed the letter, and going in
the front room, the alcove of which contained her bed, drew the
one small rocking-chair up to the open window, and sat looking
out upon the night and streets in silent wonder. Finally,
wearied by her own reflections, she began to grow dull in her
chair, and feeling the need of sleep, arranged her clothing for
the night and went to bed.
When she awoke at eight the next morning, Hanson had gone. Her
sister was busy in the dining-room, which was also the sitting-
room, sewing. She worked, after dressing, to arrange a little
breakfast for herself, and then advised with Minnie as to which
way to look. The latter had changed considerably since Carrie had
seen her. She was now a thin, though rugged, woman of twenty-
seven, with ideas of life coloured by her husband's, and fast
hardening into narrower conceptions of pleasure and duty than had
ever been hers in a thoroughly circumscribed youth. She had
invited Carrie, not because she longed for her presence, but
because the latter was dissatisfied at home, and could probably
get work and pay her board here. She was pleased to see her in a
way but reflected her husband's point of view in the matter of
work. Anything was good enough so long as it paid--say, five
dollars a week to begin with. A shop girl was the destiny
prefigured for the newcomer. She would get in one of the great
shops and do well enough until--well, until something happened.
Neither of them knew exactly what. They did not figure on
promotion. They did not exactly count on marriage. Things would
go on, though, in a dim kind of way until the better thing would
eventuate, and Carrie would be rewarded for coming and toiling in
the city. It was under such auspicious circumstances that she
started out this morning to look for work.
Before following her in her round of seeking, let us look at the
sphere in which her future was to lie. In 1889 Chicago had the
peculiar qualifications of growth which made such adventuresome
pilgrimages even on the part of young girls plausible. Its many
and growing commercial opportunities gave it widespread fame,
which made of it a giant magnet, drawing to itself, from all
quarters, the hopeful and the hopeless--those who had their
fortune yet to make and those whose fortunes and affairs had
reached a disastrous climax elsewhere. It was a city of over
500,000, with the ambition, the daring, the activity of a
metropolis of a million. Its streets and houses were already
scattered over an area of seventy-five square miles. Its
population was not so much thriving upon established commerce as
upon the industries which prepared for the arrival of others. The
sound of the hammer engaged upon the erection of new structures
was everywhere heard. Great industries were moving in. The huge
railroad corporations which had long before recognised the
prospects of the place had seized upon vast tracts of land for
transfer and shipping purposes. Street-car lines had been
extended far out into the open country in anticipation of rapid
growth. The city had laid miles and miles of streets and sewers
through regions where, perhaps, one solitary house stood out
alone--a pioneer of the populous ways to be. There were regions
open to the sweeping winds and rain, which were yet lighted
throughout the night with long, blinking lines of gas-lamps,
fluttering in the wind. Narrow board walks extended out, passing
here a house, and there a store, at far intervals, eventually
ending on the open prairie.
In the central portion was the vast wholesale and shopping
district, to which the uninformed seeker for work usually
drifted. It was a characteristic of Chicago then, and one not
generally shared by other cities, that individual firms of any
pretension occupied individual buildings. The presence of ample
ground made this possible. It gave an imposing appearance to
most of the wholesale houses, whose offices were upon the ground
floor and in plain view of the street. The large plates of
window glass, now so common, were then rapidly coming into use,
and gave to the ground floor offices a distinguished and
prosperous look. The casual wanderer could see as he passed a
polished array of office fixtures, much frosted glass, clerks
hard at work, and genteel businessmen in "nobby" suits and clean
linen lounging about or sitting in groups. Polished brass or
nickel signs at the square stone entrances announced the firm and
the nature of the business in rather neat and reserved terms.
The entire metropolitan centre possessed a high and mighty air
calculated to overawe and abash the common applicant, and to make
the gulf between poverty and success seem both wide and deep.
Into this important commercial region the timid Carrie went. She
walked east along Van Buren Street through a region of lessening
importance, until it deteriorated into a mass of shanties and
coal-yards, and finally verged upon the river. She walked
bravely forward, led by an honest desire to find employment and
delayed at every step by the interest of the unfolding scene, and
a sense of helplessness amid so much evidence of power and force
which she did not understand. These vast buildings, what were
they? These strange energies and huge interests, for what
purposes were they there? She could have understood the meaning
of a little stone-cutter's yard at Columbia City, carving little
pieces of marble for individual use, but when the yards of some
huge stone corporation came into view, filled with spur tracks
and flat cars, transpierced by docks from the river and traversed
overhead by immense trundling cranes of wood and steel, it lost
all significance in her little world.
It was so with the vast railroad yards, with the crowded array of
vessels she saw at the river, and the huge factories over the
way, lining the water's edge. Through the open windows she could
see the figures of men and women in working aprons, moving busily
about. The great streets were wall-lined mysteries to her; the
vast offices, strange mazes which concerned far-off individuals
of importance. She could only think of people connected with
them as counting money, dressing magnificently, and riding in
carriages. What they dealt in, how they laboured, to what end it
all came, she had only the vaguest conception. It was all
wonderful, all vast, all far removed, and she sank in spirit
inwardly and fluttered feebly at the heart as she thought of
entering any one of these mighty concerns and asking for
something to do--something that she could do--anything. _
Read next: CHAPTER III WEE QUESTION OF FORTUNE--FOUR-FIFTY A WEEK
Read previous: Chapter I THE MAGNET ATTRACTING--A WAIF AMID FORCES
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