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_ Carrie was an apt student of fortune's ways--of fortune's
superficialities. Seeing a thing, she would immediately set to
inquiring how she would look, properly related to it. Be it
known that this is not fine feeling, it is not wisdom. The
greatest minds are not so afflicted; and on the contrary, the
lowest order of mind is not so disturbed. Fine clothes to her
were a vast persuasion; they spoke tenderly and Jesuitically for
themselves. When she came within earshot of their pleading,
desire in her bent a willing ear. The voice of the so-called
inanimate! Who shall translate for us the language of the
stones?
"My dear," said the lace collar she secured from Partridge's, "I
fit you beautifully; don't give me up."
"Ah, such little feet," said the leather of the soft new shoes;
"how effectively I cover them. What a pity they should ever want
my aid."
Once these things were in her hand, on her person, she might
dream of giving them up; the method by which they came might
intrude itself so forcibly that she would ache to be rid of the
thought of it, but she would not give them up. "Put on the old
clothes--that torn pair of shoes," was called to her by her
conscience in vain. She could possibly have conquered the fear
of hunger and gone back; the thought of hard work and a narrow
round of suffering would, under the last pressure of conscience,
have yielded, but spoil her appearance?--be old-clothed and poor-
appearing?--never!
Drouet heightened her opinion on this and allied subjects in such
a manner as to weaken her power of resisting their influence. It
is so easy to do this when the thing opined is in the line of
what we desire. In his hearty way, he insisted upon her good
looks. He looked at her admiringly, and she took it at its full
value. Under the circumstances, she did not need to carry
herself as pretty women do. She picked that knowledge up fast
enough for herself. Drouet had a habit, characteristic of his
kind, of looking after stylishly dressed or pretty women on the
street and remarking upon them. He had just enough of the
feminine love of dress to be a good judge--not of intellect, but
of clothes. He saw how they set their little feet, how they
carried their chins, with what grace and sinuosity they swung
their bodies. A dainty, self-conscious swaying of the hips by a
woman was to him as alluring as the glint of rare wine to a
toper. He would turn and follow the disappearing vision with his
eyes. He would thrill as a child with the unhindered passion
that was in him. He loved the thing that women love in
themselves, grace. At this, their own shrine, he knelt with
them, an ardent devotee.
"Did you see that woman who went by just now?" he said to Carrie
on the first day they took a walk together. "Fine stepper, wasn't
she?"
Carrie looked, and observed the grace commended.
"Yes, she is," she returned, cheerfully, a little suggestion of
possible defect in herself awakening in her mind. If that was so
fine, she must look at it more closely. Instinctively, she felt
a desire to imitate it. Surely she could do that too.
When one of her mind sees many things emphasized and re-
emphasized and admired, she gathers the logic of it and applies
accordingly. Drouet was not shrewd enough to see that this was
not tactful. He could not see that it would be better to make
her feel that she was competing with herself, not others better
than herself. He would not have done it with an older, wiser
woman, but in Carrie he saw only the novice. Less clever than
she, he was naturally unable to comprehend her sensibility. He
went on educating and wounding her, a thing rather foolish in one
whose admiration for his pupil and victim was apt to grow.
Carrie took the instructions affably. She saw what Drouet liked;
in a vague way she saw where he was weak. It lessens a woman's
opinion of a man when she learns that his admiration is so
pointedly and generously distributed. She sees but one object of
supreme compliment in this world, and that is herself. If a man
is to succeed with many women, he must be all in all to each.
In her own apartments Carrie saw things which were lessons in the
same school.
In the same house with her lived an official of one of the
theatres, Mr. Frank A. Hale, manager of the Standard, and his
wife, a pleasing-looking brunette of thirty-five. They were
people of a sort very common in America today, who live
respectably from hand to mouth. Hale received a salary of forty-
five dollars a week. His wife, quite attractive, affected the
feeling of youth, and objected to that sort of home life which
means the care of a house and the raising of a family. Like
Drouet and Carrie, they also occupied three rooms on the floor
above.
Not long after she arrived Mrs. Hale established social relations
with her, and together they went about. For a long time this was
her only companionship, and the gossip of the manager's wife
formed the medium through which she saw the world. Such
trivialities, such praises of wealth, such conventional
expression of morals as sifted through this passive creature's
mind, fell upon Carrie and for the while confused her.
On the other hand, her own feelings were a corrective influence.
The constant drag to something better was not to be denied. By
those things which address the heart was she steadily recalled.
In the apartments across the hall were a young girl and her
mother. They were from Evansville, Indiana, the wife and
daughter of a railroad treasurer. The daughter was here to study
music, the mother to keep her company.
Carrie did not make their acquaintance, but she saw the daughter
coming in and going out. A few times she had seen her at the
piano in the parlour, and not infrequently had heard her play.
This young woman was particularly dressy for her station, and
wore a jewelled ring or two which flashed upon her white fingers
as she played.
Now Carrie was affected by music. Her nervous composition
responded to certain strains, much as certain strings of a harp
vibrate when a corresponding key of a piano is struck. She was
delicately moulded in sentiment, and answered with vague
ruminations to certain wistful chords. They awoke longings for
those things which she did not have. They caused her to cling
closer to things she possessed. One short song the young lady
played in a most soulful and tender mood. Carrie heard it
through the open door from the parlour below. It was at that
hour between afternoon and night when, for the idle, the
wanderer, things are apt to take on a wistful aspect. The mind
wanders forth on far journeys and returns with sheaves of
withered and departed joys. Carrie sat at her window looking
out. Drouet had been away since ten in the morning. She had
amused herself with a walk, a book by Bertha M. Clay which Drouet
had left there, though she did not wholly enjoy the latter, and
by changing her dress for the evening. Now she sat looking out
across the park as wistful and depressed as the nature which
craves variety and life can be under such circumstances. As she
contemplated her new state, the strain from the parlour below
stole upward. With it her thoughts became coloured and enmeshed.
She reverted to the things which were best and saddest within the
small limit of her experience. She became for the moment a
repentant.
While she was in this mood Drouet came in, bringing with him an
entirely different atmosphere. It was dusk and Carrie had
neglected to light the lamp. The fire in the grate, too, had
burned low.
"Where are you, Cad?" he said, using a pet name he had given her.
"Here," she answered.
There was something delicate and lonely in her voice, but he
could not hear it. He had not the poetry in him that would seek
a woman out under such circumstances and console her for the
tragedy of life. Instead, he struck a match and lighted the gas.
"Hello," he exclaimed, "you've been crying."
Her eyes were still wet with a few vague tears.
"Pshaw," he said, "you don't want to do that."
He took her hand, feeling in his good-natured egotism that it was
probably lack of his presence which had made her lonely.
"Come on, now," he went on; "it's all right. Let's waltz a
little to that music."
He could not have introduced a more incongruous proposition. It
made clear to Carrie that he could not sympathise with her. She
could not have framed thoughts which would have expressed his
defect or made clear the difference between them, but she felt
it. It was his first great mistake.
What Drouet said about the girl's grace, as she tripped out
evenings accompanied by her mother, caused Carrie to perceive the
nature and value of those little modish ways which women adopt
when they would presume to be something. She looked in the
mirror and pursed up her lips, accompanying it with a little toss
of the head, as she had seen the railroad treasurer's daughter
do. She caught up her skirts with an easy swing, for had not
Drouet remarked that in her and several others, and Carrie was
naturally imitative. She began to get the hang of those little
things which the pretty woman who has vanity invariably adopts.
In short, her knowledge of grace doubled, and with it her
appearance changed. She became a girl of considerable taste.
Drouet noticed this. He saw the new bow in her hair and the new
way of arranging her locks which she affected one morning.
"You look fine that way, Cad," he said.
"Do I?" she replied, sweetly. It made her try for other effects
that selfsame day.
She used her feet less heavily, a thing that was brought about by
her attempting to imitate the treasurer's daughter's graceful
carriage. How much influence the presence of that young woman in
the same house had upon her it would be difficult to say. But,
because of all these things, when Hurstwood called he had found a
young woman who was much more than the Carrie to whom Drouet had
first spoken. The primary defects of dress and manner had
passed. She was pretty, graceful, rich in the timidity born of
uncertainty, and with a something childlike in her large eyes
which captured the fancy of this starched and conventional poser
among men. It was the ancient attraction of the fresh for the
stale. If there was a touch of appreciation left in him for the
bloom and unsophistication which is the charm of youth, it
rekindled now. He looked into her pretty face and felt the
subtle waves of young life radiating therefrom. In that large
clear eye he could see nothing that his blase nature could
understand as guile. The little vanity, if he could have
perceived it there, would have touched him as a pleasant thing.
"I wonder," he said, as he rode away in his cab, "how Drouet came
to win her."
He gave her credit for feelings superior to Drouet at the first
glance.
The cab plopped along between the far-receding lines of gas lamps
on either hand. He folded his gloved hands and saw only the
lighted chamber and Carrie's face. He was pondering over the
delight of youthful beauty.
"I'll have a bouquet for her," he thought. "Drouet won't mind."
He never for a moment concealed the fact of her attraction for
himself. He troubled himself not at all about Drouet's priority.
He was merely floating those gossamer threads of thought which,
like the spider's, he hoped would lay hold somewhere. He did not
know, he could not guess, what the result would be.
A few weeks later Drouet, in his peregrinations, encountered one
of his well-dressed lady acquaintances in Chicago on his return
from a short trip to Omaha. He had intended to hurry out to
Ogden Place and surprise Carrie, but now he fell into an
interesting conversation and soon modified his original
intention.
"Let's go to dinner," he said, little recking any chance meeting
which might trouble his way.
"Certainly," said his companion.
They visited one of the better restaurants for a social chat. It
was five in the afternoon when they met; it was seven-thirty
before the last bone was picked.
Drouet was just finishing a little incident he was relating, and
his face was expanding into a smile, when Hurstwood's eye caught
his own. The latter had come in with several friends, and,
seeing Drouet and some woman, not Carrie, drew his own
conclusion.
"Ah, the rascal," he thought, and then, with a touch of righteous
sympathy, "that's pretty hard on the little girl."
Drouet jumped from one easy thought to another as he caught
Hurstwood's eye. He felt but very little misgiving, until he saw
that Hurstwood was cautiously pretending not to see. Then some
of the latter's impression forced itself upon him. He thought of
Carrie and their last meeting. By George, he would have to
explain this to Hurstwood. Such a chance half-hour with an old
friend must not have anything more attached to it than it really
warranted.
For the first time he was troubled. Here was a moral
complication of which he could not possibly get the ends.
Hurstwood would laugh at him for being a fickle boy. He would
laugh with Hurstwood. Carrie would never hear, his present
companion at table would never know, and yet he could not help
feeling that he was getting the worst of it--there was some faint
stigma attached, and he was not guilty. He broke up the dinner
by becoming dull, and saw his companion on her car. Then he went
home.
"He hasn't talked to me about any of these later flames," thought
Hurstwood to himself. "He thinks I think he cares for the girl
out there."
"He ought not to think I'm knocking around, since I have just
introduced him out there," thought Drouet.
"I saw you," Hurstwood said, genially, the next time Drouet
drifted in to his polished resort, from which he could not stay
away. He raised his forefinger indicatively, as parents do to
children.
"An old acquaintance of mine that I ran into just as I was coming
up from the station," explained Drouet. "She used to be quite a
beauty."
"Still attracts a little, eh?" returned the other, affecting to
jest.
"Oh, no," said Drouet, "just couldn't escape her this time."
"How long are you here?" asked Hurstwood.
"Only a few days."
"You must bring the girl down and take dinner with me," he said.
"I'm afraid you keep her cooped up out there. I'll get a box for
Joe Jefferson."
"Not me," answered the drummer. "Sure I'll come."
This pleased Hurstwood immensely. He gave Drouet no credit for
any feelings toward Carrie whatever. He envied him, and now, as
he looked at the well-dressed jolly salesman, whom he so much
liked, the gleam of the rival glowed in his eye. He began to
"size up" Drouet from the standpoints of wit and fascination. He
began to look to see where he was weak. There was no disputing
that, whatever he might think of him as a good fellow, he felt a
certain amount of contempt for him as a lover. He could hoodwink
him all right. Why, if he would just let Carrie see one such
little incident as that of Thursday, it would settle the matter.
He ran on in thought, almost exulting, the while he laughed and
chatted, and Drouet felt nothing. He had no power of analysing
the glance and the atmosphere of a man like Hurstwood. He stood
and smiled and accepted the invitation while his friend examined
him with the eye of a hawk.
The object of this peculiarly involved comedy was not thinking of
either. She was busy adjusting her thoughts and feelings to
newer conditions, and was not in danger of suffering disturbing
pangs from either quarter.
One evening Drouet found her dressing herself before the glass.
"Cad," said he, catching her, "I believe you're getting vain."
"Nothing of the kind," she returned, smiling.
"Well, you're mighty pretty," he went on, slipping his arm around
her. "Put on that navy-blue dress of yours and I'll take you to
the show."
"Oh, I've promised Mrs. Hale to go with her to the Exposition to-
night," she returned, apologetically.
"You did, eh?" he said, studying the situation abstractedly. "I
wouldn't care to go to that myself."
"Well, I don't know," answered Carrie, puzzling, but not offering
to break her promise in his favour.
Just then a knock came at their door and the maidservant handed a
letter in.
"He says there's an answer expected," she explained.
"It's from Hurstwood," said Drouet, noting the superscription as
he tore it open.
"You are to come down and see Joe Jefferson with me to-night," it
ran in part. "It's my turn, as we agreed the other day. All
other bets are off."
"Well, what do you say to this?" asked Drouet, innocently, while
Carrie's mind bubbled with favourable replies.
"You had better decide, Charlie," she said, reservedly.
"I guess we had better go, if you can break that engagement
upstairs," said Drouet.
"Oh, I can," returned Carrie without thinking.
Drouet selected writing paper while Carrie went to change her
dress. She hardly explained to herself why this latest
invitation appealed to her most
"Shall I wear my hair as I did yesterday?" she asked, as she came
out with several articles of apparel pending.
"Sure," he returned, pleasantly.
She was relieved to see that he felt nothing. She did not credit
her willingness to go to any fascination Hurstwood held for her.
It seemed that the combination of Hurstwood, Drouet, and herself
was more agreeable than anything else that had been suggested.
She arrayed herself most carefully and they started off,
extending excuses upstairs.
"I say," said Hurstwood, as they came up the theatre lobby, "we
are exceedingly charming this evening."
Carrie fluttered under his approving glance.
"Now, then," he said, leading the way up the foyer into the
theatre.
If ever there was dressiness it was here. It was the
personification of the old term spick and span.
"Did you ever see Jefferson?" he questioned, as he leaned toward
Carrie in the box.
"I never did," she returned.
"He's delightful, delightful," he went on, giving the commonplace
rendition of approval which such men know. He sent Drouet after
a programme, and then discoursed to Carrie concerning Jefferson
as he had heard of him. The former was pleased beyond
expression, and was really hypnotised by the environment, the
trappings of the box, the elegance of her companion. Several
times their eyes accidentally met, and then there poured into
hers such a flood of feeling as she had never before experienced.
She could not for the moment explain it, for in the next glance
or the next move of the hand there was seeming indifference,
mingled only with the kindest attention.
Drouet shared in the conversation, but he was almost dull in
comparison. Hurstwood entertained them both, and now it was
driven into Carrie's mind that here was the superior man. She
instinctively felt that he was stronger and higher, and yet
withal so simple. By the end of the third act she was sure that
Drouet was only a kindly soul, but otherwise defective. He sank
every moment in her estimation by the strong comparison.
"I have had such a nice time," said Carrie, when it was all over
and they were coming out.
"Yes, indeed," added Drouet, who was not in the least aware that
a battle had been fought and his defences weakened. He was like
the Emperor of China, who sat glorying in himself, unaware that
his fairest provinces were being wrested from him.
"Well, you have saved me a dreary evening," returned Hurstwood.
"Good-night."
He took Carrie's little hand, and a current of feeling swept from
one to the other.
"I'm so tired," said Carrie, leaning back in the car when Drouet
began to talk.
"Well, you rest a little while I smoke," he said, rising, and
then he foolishly went to the forward platform of the car and
left the game as it stood. _
Read next: CHAPTER XII OF THE LAMPS OF THE MANSIONS--THE AMBASSADOR PLEA
Read previous: CHAPTER X THE COUNSEL OF WINTER--FORTUNE'S AMBASSADOR CALLS
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