The Essential Works of Theodore Dreiser. Theodore Dreiser

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      Chapter XLII

      A Touch of Spring — The Empty Shell

       Table of Contents

      Those who look upon Hurstwood’s Brooklyn venture as an error of judgment will none the less realise the negative influence on him of the fact that he had tried and failed. Carrie got a wrong idea of it. He said so little that she imagined he had encountered nothing worse than the ordinary roughness — quitting so soon in the face of this seemed trifling. He did not want to work.

      She was now one of a group of oriental beauties who, in the second act of the comic opera, were paraded by the vizier before the new potentate as the treasures of his harem. There was no word assigned to any of them, but on the evening when Hurstwood was housing himself in the loft of the street-car barn, the leading comedian and star, feeling exceedingly facetious, said in a profound voice, which created a ripple of laughter:

      “Well, who are you?”

      It merely happened to be Carrie who was courtesying before him. It might as well have been any of the others, so far as he was concerned. He expected no answer and a dull one would have been reproved. But Carrie, whose experience and belief in herself gave her daring, courtesied sweetly again and answered:

      “I am yours truly.”

      It was a trivial thing to say, and yet something in the way she did it caught the audience, which laughed heartily at the mock-fierce potentate towering before the young woman. The comedian also liked it, hearing the laughter.

      “I thought your name was Smith,” he returned, endeavouring to get the last laugh.

      Carrie almost trembled for her daring after she had said this. All members of the company had been warned that to interpolate lines or “business” meant a fine or worse. She did not know what to think.

      As she was standing in her proper position in the wings, awaiting another entry, the great comedian made his exit past her and paused in recognition.

      “You can just leave that in hereafter,” he remarked, seeing how intelligent she appeared. “Don’t add any more, though.”

      “Thank you,” said Carrie, humbly. When he went on she found herself trembling violently.

      “Well, you’re in luck,” remarked another member of the chorus. “There isn’t another one of us has got a line.”

      There was no gainsaying the value of this. Everybody in the company realised that she had got a start. Carrie hugged herself when next evening the lines got the same applause. She went home rejoicing, knowing that soon something must come of it. It was Hurstwood who, by his presence, caused her merry thoughts to flee and replaced them with sharp longings for an end of distress.

      The next day she asked him about his venture.

      “They’re not trying to run any cars except with police. They don’t want anybody just now — not before next week.”

      Next week came, but Carrie saw no change. Hurstwood seemed more apathetic than ever. He saw her off mornings to rehearsals and the like with the utmost calm. He read and read. Several times he found himself staring at an item, but thinking of something else. The first of these lapses that he sharply noticed concerned a hilarious party he had once attended at a driving club, of which he had been a member. He sat, gazing downward, and gradually thought he heard the old voices and the clink of glasses.

      “You’re a dandy, Hurstwood,” his friend Walker said. He was standing again well dressed, smiling, good-natured, the recipient of encores for a good story.

      All at once he looked up. The room was so still it seemed ghostlike. He heard the clock ticking audibly and half suspected that he had been dozing. The paper was so straight in his hands, however, and the items he had been reading so directly before him, that he rid himself of the doze idea. Still, it seemed peculiar. When it occurred a second time, however, it did not seem quite so strange.

      Butcher and grocery man, baker and coal man — not the group with whom he was then dealing, but those who had trusted him to the limit — called. He met them all blandly, becoming deft in excuse. At last he became bold, pretended to be out, or waved them off.

      “They can’t get blood out of a turnip,” he said. “if I had it I’d pay them.”

      Carrie’s little soldier friend, Miss Osborne, seeing her succeeding, had become a sort of satellite. Little Osborne could never of herself amount to anything. She seemed to realise it in a sort of pussy-like way and instinctively concluded to cling with her soft little claws to Carrie.

      “Oh, you’ll get up,” she kept telling Carrie with admiration. “You’re so good.”

      Timid as Carrie was, she was strong in capability. The reliance of others made her feel as if she must, and when she must she dared. Experience of the world and of necessity was in her favour. No longer the lightest word of a man made her head dizzy. She had learned that men could change and fail. Flattery in its most palpable form had lost its force with her. It required superiority — kindly superiority — to move her — the superiority of a genius like Ames.

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