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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.
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