Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser [ebook reader below 3000 .TXT] 📗

thickening the air. A heavy snow was falling⁠—a fine picking, whipping snow, borne forward by a swift wind in long, thin lines. The streets were bedded with it⁠—six inches of cold, soft carpet, churned to a dirty brown by the crush of teams and the feet of men. Along Broadway men picked their way in ulsters and umbrellas. Along the Bowery, men slouched through it with collars and hats pulled over their ears. In the former thoroughfare business men and travellers were making for comfortable hotels. In the latter, crowds on cold errands shifted past dingy stores, in the deep recesses of which lights were already gleaming. There were early lights in the cable cars, whose usual clatter was reduced by the mantle about the wheels. The whole city was muffled by this fast-thickening mantle.

In her comfortable chambers at the Waldorf, Carrie was reading at this time Père Goriot, which Ames had recommended to her. It was so strong, and Ames’s mere recommendation had so aroused her interest, that she caught nearly the full sympathetic significance of it. For the first time, it was being borne in upon her how silly and worthless had been her earlier reading, as a whole. Becoming wearied, however, she yawned and came to the window, looking out upon the old winding procession of carriages rolling up Fifth Avenue.

“Isn’t it bad?” she observed to Lola.

“Terrible!” said that little lady, joining her. “I hope it snows enough to go sleigh riding.”

“Oh, dear,” said Carrie, with whom the sufferings of Father Goriot were still keen. “That’s all you think of. Aren’t you sorry for the people who haven’t anything tonight?”

“Of course I am,” said Lola; “but what can I do? I haven’t anything.”

Carrie smiled.

“You wouldn’t care, if you had,” she returned.

“I would, too,” said Lola. “But people never gave me anything when I was hard up.”

“Isn’t it just awful?” said Carrie, studying the winter’s storm.

“Look at that man over there,” laughed Lola, who had caught sight of someone falling down. “How sheepish men look when they fall, don’t they?”

“We’ll have to take a coach tonight,” answered Carrie, absently.

In the lobby of the Imperial, Mr. Charles Drouet was just arriving, shaking the snow from a very handsome ulster. Bad weather had driven him home early and stirred his desire for those pleasures which shut out the snow and gloom of life. A good dinner, the company of a young woman, and an evening at the theatre were the chief things for him.

“Why, hello, Harry!” he said, addressing a lounger in one of the comfortable lobby chairs. “How are you?”

“Oh, about six and six,” said the other.

“Rotten weather, isn’t it?”

“Well, I should say,” said the other. “I’ve been just sitting here thinking where I’d go tonight.”

“Come along with me,” said Drouet. “I can introduce you to something dead swell.”

“Who is it?” said the other.

“Oh, a couple of girls over here in Fortieth Street. We could have a dandy time. I was just looking for you.”

“Supposing we get ’em and take ’em out to dinner?”

“Sure,” said Drouet. “Wait’ll I go upstairs and change my clothes.”

“Well, I’ll be in the barber shop,” said the other. “I want to get a shave.”

“All right,” said Drouet, creaking off in his good shoes toward the elevator. The old butterfly was as light on the wing as ever.

On an incoming vestibuled Pullman, speeding at forty miles an hour through the snow of the evening, were three others, all related.

“First call for dinner in the dining-car,” a Pullman servitor was announcing, as he hastened through the aisle in snow-white apron and jacket.

“I don’t believe I want to play any more,” said the youngest, a black-haired beauty, turned supercilious by fortune, as she pushed a euchre hand away from her.

“Shall we go into dinner?” inquired her husband, who was all that fine raiment can make.

“Oh, not yet,” she answered. “I don’t want to play any more, though.”

“Jessica,” said her mother, who was also a study in what good clothing can do for age, “push that pin down in your tie⁠—it’s coming up.”

Jessica obeyed, incidentally touching at her lovely hair and looking at a little jewel-faced watch. Her husband studied her, for beauty, even cold, is fascinating from one point of view.

“Well, we won’t have much more of this weather,” he said. “It only takes two weeks to get to Rome.”

Mrs. Hurstwood nestled comfortably in her corner and smiled. It was so nice to be the mother-in-law of a rich young man⁠—one whose financial state had borne her personal inspection.

“Do you suppose the boat will sail promptly?” asked Jessica, “if it keeps up like this?”

“Oh, yes,” answered her husband. “This won’t make any difference.”

Passing down the aisle came a very fair-haired banker’s son, also of Chicago, who had long eyed this supercilious beauty. Even now he did not hesitate to glance at her, and she was conscious of it. With a specially conjured show of indifference, she turned her pretty face wholly away. It was not wifely modesty at all. By so much was her pride satisfied.

At this moment Hurstwood stood before a dirty four-story building in a side street quite near the Bowery, whose onetime coat of buff had been changed by soot and rain. He mingled with a crowd of men⁠—a crowd which had been, and was still, gathering by degrees.

It began with the approach of two or three, who hung about the closed wooden doors and beat their feet to keep them warm. They had on faded derby hats with dents in them. Their misfit coats were heavy with melted snow and turned up at the collars. Their trousers were mere bags, frayed at the bottom and wobbling over big, soppy shoes, torn at the sides and worn almost to shreds. They made no effort to go in, but shifted ruefully about, digging their hands deep in their pockets and leering at the crowd and the increasing lamps. With the minutes, increased the number. There were old men with grizzled beards and sunken eyes, men who