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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.
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