And yet no supper was provided here — nothing but beds.
Hurstwood laid down his fifteen cents and crept off with weary steps to his allotted room.
It was a dingy affair — wooden, dusty, hard.
A small gas-jet furnished sufficient light for so rueful a corner.
“Hm!” he said, clearing his throat and locking the door.
Now he began leisurely to take off his clothes, but stopped first with his coat, and tucked it along the crack under the door.
His vest he arranged in the same place.
His old wet, cracked hat he laid softly upon the table.
Then he pulled off his shoes and lay down.
It seemed as if he thought a while, for now he arose and turned the gas out, standing calmly in the blackness, hidden from view.
After a few moments, in which he reviewed nothing, but merely hesitated, he turned the gas on again, but applied no match.
Even then he stood there, hidden wholly in that kindness which is night, while the uprising fumes filled the room.
When the odour reached his nostrils, he quit his attitude and fumbled for the bed.
“What’s the use?” he said, weakly, as he stretched himself to rest.
And now Carrie had attained that which in the beginning seemed life’s object, or, at least, such fraction of it as human beings ever attain of their original desires.
She could look about on her gowns and carriage, her furniture and bank account.
Friends there were, as the world takes it — those who would bow and smile in acknowledgment of her success.
For these she had once craved.
Applause there was, and publicity — once far off, essential things, but now grown trivial and indifferent.
Beauty also — her type of loveliness — and yet she was lonely.
In her rocking-chair she sat, when not otherwise engaged — singing and dreaming.
Thus in life there is ever the intellectual and the emotional nature — the mind that reasons, and the mind that feels.
Of one come the men of action — generals and statesmen; of the other, the poets and dreamers — artists all.
As harps in the wind, the latter respond to every breath of fancy, voicing in their moods all the ebb and flow of the ideal.
Man has not yet comprehended the dreamer any more than he has the ideal.
For him the laws and morals of the world are unduly severe.
Ever hearkening to the sound of beauty, straining for the flash of its distant wings, he watches to follow, wearying his feet in travelling.
So watched Carrie, so followed, rocking and singing.
And it must be remembered that reason had little part in this.
Chicago dawning, she saw the city offering more of loveliness than she had ever known, and instinctively, by force of her moods alone, clung to it.
In fine raiment and elegant surroundings, men seemed to be contented. Hence, she drew near these things.
Chicago, New York; Drouet, Hurstwood; the world of fashion and the world of stage — these were but incidents.
Not them, but that which they represented, she longed for.
Time proved the representation false.
Oh, the tangle of human life!
How dimly as yet we see.
Here was Carrie, in the beginning poor, unsophisticated. emotional; responding with desire to everything most lovely in life, yet finding herself turned as by a wall.
Laws to say:
“Be allured, if you will, by everything lovely, but draw not nigh unless by righteousness.”
Convention to say:
“You shall not better your situation save by honest labour.”
If honest labour be unremunerative and difficult to endure; if it be the long, long road which never reaches beauty, but wearies the feet and the heart; if the drag to follow beauty be such that one abandons the admired way, taking rather the despised path leading to her dreams quickly, who shall cast the first stone?
Not evil, but longing for that which is better, more often directs the steps of the erring.
Not evil, but goodness more often allures the feeling mind unused to reason.
Amid the tinsel and shine of her state walked Carrie, unhappy.
As when Drouet took her, she had thought:
“Now I am lifted into that which is best”; as when Hurstwood seemingly offered her the better way:
“Now am I happy.”
But since the world goes its way past all who will not partake of its folly, she now found herself alone.
Her purse was open to him whose need was greatest.