In the city, at that time, there were a number of charities similar in
nature to that of the captain’s, which Hurstwood now patronised in a
like unfortunate way. One was a convent mission-house of the Sisters of
Mercy in Fifteenth Street—a row of red brick family dwellings, before
the door of which hung a plain wooden contribution box, on which was
painted the statement that every noon a meal was given free to all
those who might apply and ask for aid. This simple announcement was
modest in the extreme, covering, as it did, a charity so broad.
Institutions and charities are so large and so numerous in New York
that such things as this are not often noticed by the more comfortably
situated. But to one whose mind is upon the matter, they grow
exceedingly under inspection. Unless one were looking up this matter in
particular, he could have stood at Sixth Avenue and Fifteenth Street
for days around the noon hour and never have noticed that out of the
vast crowd that surged along that busy thoroughfare there turned out,
every few seconds, some weather-beaten, heavy-footed specimen of
humanity, gaunt in countenance and dilapidated in the matter of
clothes. The fact is none the less true, however, and the colder the
day the more apparent it became. Space and a lack of culinary room in
the mission-house, compelled an arrangement which permitted of only
twenty-five or thirty eating at one time, so that a line had to be
formed outside and an orderly entrance effected. This caused a daily
spectacle which, however, had become so common by repetition during a
number of years that now nothing was thought of it. The men waited
patiently, like cattle, in the coldest weather—waited for several hours
before they could be admitted. No questions were asked and no service
rendered. They ate and went away again, some of them returning
regularly day after day the winter through.
A big, motherly looking woman invariably stood guard at the door during
the entire operation and counted the admissible number. The men moved
up in solemn order. There was no haste and no eagerness displayed. It
was almost a dumb procession. In the bitterest weather this line was to
be found here. Under an icy wind there was a prodigious slapping of
hands and a dancing of feet. Fingers and the features of the face
looked as if severely nipped by the cold. A study of these men in broad
light proved them to be nearly all of a type. They belonged to the
class that sit on the park benches during the endurable days and sleep
upon them during the summer nights. They frequent the Bowery and those
down-at-the-heels East Side streets where poor clothes and shrunken
features are not singled out as curious. They are the men who are in
the lodging-house sitting-rooms during bleak and bitter weather and who
swarm about the cheaper shelters which only open at six in a number of
the lower East Side streets. Miserable food, ill-timed and greedily
eaten, had played havoc with bone and muscle. They were all pale,
flabby, sunken-eyed, hollow-chested, with eyes that glinted and shone
and lips that were a sickly red by contrast. Their hair was but half
attended to, their ears anæmic in hue, and their shoes broken in
leather and run down at heel and toe. They were of the class which
simply floats and drifts, every wave of people washing up one, as
breakers do driftwood upon a stormy shore.
For nearly a quarter of a century, in another section of the city,
Fleischmann, the baker, had given a loaf of bread to any one who would
come for it to the side door of his restaurant at the corner of
Broadway and Tenth Street, at midnight. Every night during twenty years
about three hundred men had formed in line and at the appointed time
marched past the doorway, picked their loaf from a great box placed
just outside, and vanished again into the night. From the beginning to
the present time there had been little change in the character or
number of these men. There were two or three figures that had grown
familiar to those who had seen this little procession pass year after
year. Two of them had missed scarcely a night in fifteen years. There
were about forty, more or less, regular callers. The remainder of the
line was formed of strangers. In times of panic and unusual hardships
there were seldom more than three hundred. In times of prosperity, when
little is heard of the unemployed, there were seldom less. The same
number, winter and summer, in storm or calm, in good times and bad,
held this melancholy midnight rendezvous at Fleischmann’s bread box.
At both of these two charities, during the severe winter which was now
on, Hurstwood was a frequent visitor. On one occasion it was peculiarly
cold, and finding no comfort in begging about the streets, he waited
until noon before seeking this free offering to the poor. Already, at
eleven o’clock of this morning, several such as he had shambled forward
out of Sixth Avenue, their thin clothes flapping and fluttering in the
wind. They leaned against the iron railing which protects the walls of
the Ninth Regiment Armory, which fronts upon that section of Fifteenth
Street, having come early in order to be first in. Having an hour to
wait, they at first lingered at a respectful distance; but others
coming up, they moved closer in order to protect their right of
precedence. To this collection Hurstwood came up from the west out of
Seventh Avenue and stopped close to the door, nearer than all the
others. Those who had been waiting before him, but farther away, now
drew near, and by a certain stolidity of demeanour, no words being
spoken, indicated that they were first.
Seeing the opposition to his action, he looked sullenly along the line,
then moved out, taking his place at the foot. When order had been
restored, the animal feeling of opposition relaxed.
“Must be pretty near noon,” ventured one.
“It is,” said another. “I’ve been waiting nearly an hour.”
“Gee, but it’s cold!”
They peered eagerly at the door, where all must enter. A grocery man
drove up and carried in several baskets of eatables. This started some
words upon grocery men and the cost of food in general.
“I see meat’s gone up,” said one.
“If there wuz war, it would help this country a lot.”
The line was growing rapidly. Already there were fifty or more, and
those at the head, by their demeanour, evidently congratulated
themselves upon not having so long to wait as those at the foot. There
was much jerking of heads, and looking down the line.
“It don’t matter how near you get to the front, so long as you’re in
the first twenty-five,” commented one of the first twenty-five. “You
all go in together.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Hurstwood, who had been so sturdily displaced.
“This here Single Tax is the thing,” said another. “There ain’t going
to be no order till it comes.”
For the most part there was silence; gaunt men shuffling, glancing, and
beating their arms.
At last the door opened and the motherly-looking sister appeared. She
only looked an order. Slowly the line moved up and, one by one, passed
in, until twenty-five were counted. Then she interposed a stout arm,
and the line halted, with six men on the steps. Of these the ex-manager
was one. Waiting thus, some talked, some ejaculated concerning the
misery of it; some brooded, as did Hurstwood. At last he was admitted,
and, having eaten, came away, almost angered because of his pains in
getting it.
At eleven o’clock of another evening, perhaps two weeks later, he was
at the midnight offering of a loaf—waiting patiently. It had been an
unfortunate day with him, but now he took his fate with a touch of
philosophy. If he could secure no supper, or was hungry late in the
evening, here was a place he could come. A few minutes before twelve, a
great box of bread was pushed out, and exactly on the hour a portly,
round-faced German took position by it, calling “Ready.” The whole line
at once moved forward each taking his loaf in turn and going his
separate way. On this occasion, the ex-manager ate his as he went
plodding the dark streets in silence to his bed.
By January he had about concluded that the game was up with him. Life
had always seemed a precious thing, but now constant want and weakened
vitality had made the charms of earth rather dull and inconspicuous.
Several times, when fortune pressed most harshly, he thought he would
end his troubles; but with a change of weather, or the arrival of a
quarter or a dime, his mood would change, and he would wait. Each day
he would find some old paper lying about and look into it, to see if
there was any trace of Carrie, but all summer and fall he had looked in
vain. Then he noticed that his eyes were beginning to hurt him, and
this ailment rapidly increased until, in the dark chambers of the
lodgings he frequented, he did not attempt to read. Bad and irregular
eating was weakening every function of his body. The one recourse left
him was to doze when a place offered and he could get the money to
occupy it.
He was beginning to find, in his wretched clothing and meagre state of
body, that people took him for a chronic type of bum and beggar. Police
hustled him along, restaurant and lodging-house keepers turned him out
promptly the moment he had his due; pedestrians waved him off. He found
it more and more difficult to get anything from anybody.
At last he admitted to himself that the game was up. It was after a
long series of appeals to pedestrians, in which he had been refused and
refused—every one hastening from contact.
“Give me a little something, will you, mister?” he said to the last
one. “For God’s sake, do; I’m starving.”
“Aw, get out,” said the man, who happened to be a common type himself.
“You’re no good. I’ll give you nawthin’.”
Hurstwood put his hands, red from cold, down in his pockets. Tears came
into his eyes.
“That’s right,” he said; “I’m no good now. I was all right. I had
money. I’m going to quit this,” and, with death in his heart, he
started down toward the Bowery. People had turned on the gas before and
died; why shouldn’t he? He remembered a lodging-house where there were
little, close rooms, with gas-jets in them, almost pre-arranged, he
thought, for what he wanted to do, which rented for fifteen cents. Then
he remembered that he had no fifteen cents.
On the way he met a comfortable-looking gentleman, coming,
clean-shaven, out of a fine barber shop.
“Would you mind giving me a little something?” he asked this man
boldly.
The gentleman looked him over and fished for a dime. Nothing but
quarters were in his pocket.
“Here,” he said, handing him one, to be rid of him. “Be off, now.”
Hurstwood moved on, wondering. The sight of the large, bright coin
pleased him a little. He remembered that he was hungry and that he
could get a bed for ten cents. With this, the idea of death passed, for
the time being, out of his mind. It was only when he could get nothing
but insults that death seemed worth while.
One day, in the middle of the winter, the sharpest spell of the season
set in. It broke grey and cold in the first day, and on the second
snowed. Poor luck pursuing him, he had secured but ten cents by
nightfall, and this he had spent for food. At evening he found himself
at the Boulevard and Sixty-seventh Street, where he finally turned his
face Bowery-ward. Especially fatigued because of the wandering
propensity which had seized him in the morning, he now half dragged his
wet feet, shuffling the soles upon the sidewalk. An old, thin coat was
turned up about his red ears—his cracked derby hat was pulled down
until it turned them outward. His hands were in his pockets.
“I’ll just go down Broadway,” he said to himself.
When he reached Forty-second Street, the fire signs were already
blazing brightly. Crowds were hastening to dine. Through bright
windows, at every corner, might be seen gay companies in luxuriant
restaurants. There were coaches and crowded cable cars.
In his weary and hungry state, he should never have come here. The
contrast was too sharp. Even he was recalled keenly to better things.
“What’s the use?” he thought. “It’s all up with me. I’ll quit this.”
People turned to look after him, so uncouth was his shambling figure.
Several officers followed him with their eyes, to see that he did not
beg of anybody.
Once he paused in an aimless, incoherent sort of way and looked through
the windows of an imposing restaurant, before which blazed a fire sign,
and through the large, plate windows of which could be seen the red and
gold decorations, the palms, the white napery, and shining glassware,
and, above all, the comfortable crowd. Weak as his mind had become, his
hunger was sharp enough to show the importance of this. He stopped
stock still, his frayed trousers soaking in the slush, and peered
foolishly in.
“Eat,” he mumbled. “That’s right, eat. Nobody else wants any.”
Then his voice dropped even lower, and his mind half lost the fancy it
had.
“It’s mighty cold,” he said. “Awful cold.”
At Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street was blazing, in incandescent fire,
Carrie’s name. “Carrie Madenda,” it read, “and the Casino Company.” All
the wet, snowy sidewalk was bright with this radiated fire. It was so
bright that it attracted Hurstwood’s gaze. He looked up, and then at a
large, gilt-framed posterboard, on which was a fine lithograph of
Carrie, lifesize.
Hurstwood gazed at it a moment, snuffling and hunching one shoulder, as
if something were scratching him. He was so run down, however, that his
mind was not exactly clear.
He approached that entrance and went in.
“Well?” said the attendant, staring at him. Seeing him pause, he went
over and shoved him. “Get out of here,” he said.
“I want to see Miss Madenda,” he said.
“You do, eh?” the other said, almost tickled at the spectacle. “Get out
of here,” and he shoved him again. Hurstwood had no strength to resist.
“I want to see Miss Madenda,” he tried to explain, even as he was being
hustled away. “I’m all right. I——”
The man gave him a last push and closed the door. As he did so,
Hurstwood slipped and fell in the snow. It hurt him, and some vague
sense of shame returned. He began to cry and swear foolishly.
“God damned dog!” he said. “Damned old cur,” wiping the slush from his
worthless coat. “I—I hired such people as you once.”
Now a fierce feeling against Carrie welled up—just one fierce, angry
thought before the whole thing slipped out of his mind.
“She owes me something to eat,” he said. “She owes it to me.”
Hopelessly he turned back into Broadway again and slopped onward and
away, begging, crying, losing track of his thoughts, one after another,
as a mind decayed and disjointed is wont to do.
It was truly a wintry evening, a few days later, when his one distinct
mental decision was reached. Already, at four o’clock, the sombre hue
of night was 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 businessmen 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 to-night?”
“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
some one falling down. “How sheepish men look when they fall, don’t
they?”
“We’ll have to take a coach to-night,” 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 to-night.”
“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 you 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 one-time 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 were comparatively young but shrunken by diseases,
men who were middle-aged. None were fat. There was a face in the thick
of the collection which was as white as drained veal. There was another
red as brick. Some came with thin, rounded shoulders, others with
wooden legs, still others with frames so lean that clothes only flapped
about them. There were great ears, swollen noses, thick lips, and,
above all, red, blood-shot eyes. Not a normal, healthy face in the
whole mass; not a straight figure; not a straightforward, steady
glance.
In the drive of the wind and sleet they pushed in on one another. There
were wrists, unprotected by coat or pocket, which were red with cold.
There were ears, half covered by every conceivable semblance of a hat,
which still looked stiff and bitten. In the snow they shifted, now one
foot, now another, almost rocking in unison.
With the growth of the crowd about the door came a murmur. It was not
conversation, but a running comment directed at any one in general. It
contained oaths and slang phrases.
“By damn, I wish they’d hurry up.”
“Look at the copper watchin’.”
“Maybe it ain’t winter, nuther!”
“I wisht I was in Sing Sing.”
Now a sharper lash of wind cut down and they huddled closer. It was an
edging, shifting, pushing throng. There was no anger, no pleading, no
threatening words. It was all sullen endurance, unlightened by either
wit or good fellowship.
A carriage went jingling by with some reclining figure in it. One of
the men nearest the door saw it.
“Look at the bloke ridin’.”
“He ain’t so cold.”
“Eh, eh, eh!” yelled another, the carriage having long since passed out
of hearing.
Little by little the night crept on. Along the walk a crowd turned out
on its way home. Men and shop-girls went by with quick steps. The
cross-town cars began to be crowded. The gas lamps were blazing, and
every window bloomed ruddy with a steady flame. Still the crowd hung
about the door, unwavering.
“Ain’t they ever goin’ to open up?” queried a hoarse voice,
suggestively.
This seemed to renew the general interest in the closed door, and many
gazed in that direction. They looked at it as dumb brutes look, as dogs
paw and whine and study the knob. They shifted and blinked and
muttered, now a curse, now a comment. Still they waited and still the
snow whirled and cut them with biting flakes. On the old hats and
peaked shoulders it was piling. It gathered in little heaps and curves
and no one brushed it off. In the centre of the crowd the warmth and
steam melted it, and water trickled off hat rims and down noses, which
the owners could not reach to scratch. On the outer rim the piles
remained unmelted. Hurstwood, who could not get in the centre, stood
with head lowered to the weather and bent his form.
A light appeared through the transom overhead. It sent a thrill of
possibility through the watchers. There was a murmur of recognition. At
last the bars grated inside and the crowd pricked up its ears.
Footsteps shuffled within and it murmured again. Some one called: “Slow
up there, now,” and then the door opened. It was push and jam for a
minute, with grim, beast silence to prove its quality, and then it
melted inward, like logs floating, and disappeared. There were wet hats
and wet shoulders, a cold, shrunken, disgruntled mass, pouring in
between bleak walls. It was just six o’clock and there was supper in
every hurrying pedestrian’s face. 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. In her walks on Broadway, she no longer
thought of the elegance of the creatures who passed her. Had they more
of that peace and beauty which glimmered afar off, then were they to be
envied.
Drouet abandoned his claim and was seen no more. Of Hurstwood’s death
she was not even aware. A slow, black boat setting out from the pier at
Twenty-seventh Street upon its weekly errand bore, with many others,
his nameless body to the Potter’s Field.
Thus passed all that was of interest concerning these twain in their
relation to her. Their influence upon her life is explicable alone by
the nature of her longings. Time was when both represented for her all
that was most potent in earthly success. They were the personal
representatives of a state most blessed to attain—the titled
ambassadors of comfort and peace, aglow with their credentials. It is
but natural that when the world which they represented no longer
allured her, its ambassadors should be discredited. Even had Hurstwood
returned in his original beauty and glory, he could not now have
allured her. She had learned that in his world, as in her own present
state, was not happiness.
Sitting alone, she was now an illustration of the devious ways by which
one who feels, rather than reasons, may be led in the pursuit of
beauty. Though often disillusioned, she was still waiting for that
halcyon day when she would be led forth among dreams become real. Ames
had pointed out a farther step, but on and on beyond that, if
accomplished, would lie others for her. It was forever to be the
pursuit of that radiance of delight which tints the distant hilltops of
the world.
Oh, Carrie, Carrie! Oh, blind strivings of the human heart! Onward
onward, it saith, and where beauty leads, there it follows. Whether it
be the tinkle of a lone sheep bell o’er some quiet landscape, or the
glimmer of beauty in sylvan places, or the show of soul in some passing
eye, the heart knows and makes answer, following. It is when the feet
weary and hope seems vain that the heartaches and the longings arise.
Know, then, that for you is neither surfeit nor content. In your
rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your
rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you
may never feel.