Carrie found ample food for reflection in the fifty-dollar proposition.
“Maybe they’d take my money and not give me anything,” she thought.
She had some jewelry — a diamond ring and pin and several other pieces.
She could get fifty dollars for those if she went to a pawnbroker.
Hurstwood was home before her.
He had not thought she would be so long seeking.
“Well?” he said, not venturing to ask what news.
“I didn’t find out anything today,” said Carrie, taking off her gloves.
“They all want money to get you a place.”
“How much?” asked Hurstwood.
“Fifty dollars.”
“They don’t want anything, do they?”
“Oh, they’re like everybody else.
You can’t tell whether they’d ever get you anything after you did pay them.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put up fifty on that basis,” said Hurstwood, as if he were deciding, money in hand.
“I don’t know,” said Carrie.
“I think I’ll try some of the managers.”
Hurstwood heard this, dead to the horror of it.
He rocked a little to and fro, and chewed at his finger.
It seemed all very natural in such extreme states.
He would do better later on.
Chapter XXXVIII
In Elf Land Disporting — The Grim World Without
When Carrie renewed her search, as she did the next day, going to the Casino, she found that in the opera chorus, as in other fields, employment is difficult to secure.
Girls who can stand in a line and look pretty are as numerous as labourers who can swing a pick.
She found there was no discrimination between one and the other of applicants, save as regards a conventional standard of prettiness and form.
Their own opinion or knowledge of their ability went for nothing.
“Where shall I find Mr. Gray?” she asked of a sulky doorman at the stage entrance of the Casino.
“You can’t see him now; he’s busy.”
“Do you know when I can see him?”
“Got an appointment with him?”
“No.”
“Well, you’ll have to call at his office.”
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Carrie.
“Where is his office?”
He gave her the number.
She knew there was no need of calling there now. He would not be in.
Nothing remained but to employ the intermediate hours in search.
The dismal story of ventures in other places is quickly told.
Mr. Daly saw no one save by appointment.
Carrie waited an hour in a dingy office, quite in spite of obstacles, to learn this fact of the placid, indifferent Mr. Dorney.
“You will have to write and ask him to see you.”
So she went away.
At the Empire Theatre she found a hive of peculiarly listless and indifferent individuals.
Everything ornately upholstered, everything carefully finished, everything remarkably reserved.
At the Lyceum she entered one of those secluded, under-stairway closets, berugged and bepaneled, which causes one to feel the greatness of all positions of authority.
Here was reserve itself done into a box-office clerk, a doorman, and an assistant, glorying in their fine positions.
“Ah, be very humble now — very humble indeed.
Tell us what it is you require.
Tell it quickly, nervously, and without a vestige of self-respect.