Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
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[A hand-writted note, transcribed below, appeared on the first page of
this copy of the book. The etext transcriber cannot attest to its
authenticity.]
My Dear Mr. Norris:
Owing as I do so very much to your earliest and most unqualified
approval of this story in manuscript form it is my determination to
inscribe a copy to you whether you will or no. That it reaches either
you or the public "under cover" so soon is due entirely to you.
Therefore refuse not a corner on the family table to the off-spring you
so generously fostered; neither attempt to deny in the future that your
sins do find you out.
With the most grateful remembrances I am,
Sincerely yours
Dreiser
SISTER CARRIE
Sister Carrie
By
Theodore Dreiser
NEW YORK
Doubleday, Page & Co.
1900
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.
TO MY FRIEND
ARTHUR HENRY
WHOSE STEADFAST IDEALS AND SERENE
DEVOTION TO TRUTH AND BEAUTY
HAVE SERVED TO LIGHTEN THE METHOD
AND STRENGTHEN THE PURPOSE OF
THIS VOLUME.
SISTER CARRIE
SISTER CARRIE
CHAPTER I
THE MAGNET ATTRACTING: A WAIF AMID FORCES
When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total
outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin
satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse,
containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van
Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was
eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of
ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised
her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A
gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss, a touch in her throat when
the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a
pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in
review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home
were irretrievably broken.
To be sure there was always the next station, where one might descend
and return. There was the great city, bound more closely by these very
trains which came up daily. Columbia City was not so very far away, even
once she was in Chicago. What, pray, is a few hours--a few hundred
miles? She looked at the little slip bearing her sister's address and
wondered. She gazed at the green landscape, now passing in swift
review, until her swifter thoughts replaced its impression with vague
conjectures of what Chicago might be.
When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things.
Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly
assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an
intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility.
The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and
more human tempter. There are large forces which allure with all the
soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam
of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a
wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and
natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of
sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the
astonished senses in equivocal terms. Without a counsellor at hand to
whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these things
breathe into the unguarded ear! Unrecognised for what they are, their
beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens, then perverts the
simpler human perceptions.
Caroline, or Sister Carrie, as she had been half affectionately termed
by the family, was possessed of a mind rudimentary in its power of
observation and analysis. Self-interest with her was high, but not
strong. It was, nevertheless, her guiding characteristic. Warm with the
fancies of youth, pretty with the insipid prettiness of the formative
period, possessed of a figure promising eventual shapeliness and an eye
alight with certain native intelligence, she was a fair example of the
middle American class--two generations removed from the emigrant. Books
were beyond her interest--knowledge a sealed book. In the intuitive
graces she was still crude. She could scarcely toss her head
gracefully. Her hands were almost ineffectual. The feet, though small,
were set flatly. And yet she was interested in her charms, quick to
understand the keener pleasures of life, ambitious to gain in material
things. A half-equipped little knight she was, venturing to reconnoitre
the mysterious city and dreaming wild dreams of some vague, far-off
supremacy, which should make it prey and subject--the proper penitent,
grovelling at a woman's slipper.
"That," said a voice in her ear, "is one of the prettiest little resorts
in Wisconsin."
"Is it?" she answered nervously.
The train was just pulling out of Waukesha. For some time she had been
conscious of a man behind. She felt him observing her mass of hair. He
had been fidgetting, and with natural intuition she felt a certain
interest growing in that quarter. Her maidenly reserve, and a certain
sense of what was conventional under the circumstances, called her to
forestall and deny this familiarity, but the daring and magnetism of the
individual, born of past experiences and triumphs, prevailed. She
answered.
He leaned forward to put his elbows upon the back of her seat and
proceeded to make himself volubly agreeable.
"Yes, that is a great resort for Chicago people. The hotels are swell.
You are not familiar with this part of the country, are you?"
"Oh, yes, I am," answered Carrie. "That is, I live at Columbia City. I
have never been through here, though."
"And so this is your first visit to Chicago," he observed.
All the time she was conscious of certain features out of the side of
her eye. Flush, colourful cheeks, a light moustache, a grey fedora hat.
She now turned and looked upon him in full, the instincts of
self-protection and coquetry mingling confusedly in her brain.
"I didn't say that," she said.
"Oh," he answered, in a very pleasing way and with an assumed air of
mistake, "I thought you did."
Here was a type of the travelling canvasser for a manufacturing house--a
class which at that time was first being dubbed by the slang of the day
"drummers." He came within the meaning of a still newer term, which had
sprung into general use among Americans in 1880, and which concisely
expressed the thought of one whose dress or manners are calculated to
elicit the admiration of susceptible young women--a "masher." His suit
was of a striped and crossed pattern of brown wool, new at that time,
but since become familiar as a business suit. The low crotch of the vest
revealed a stiff shirt bosom of white and pink stripes. From his coat
sleeves protruded a pair of linen cuffs of the same pattern, fastened
with large, gold plate buttons, set with the common yellow agates known
as "cat's-eyes." His fingers bore several rings--one, the ever-enduring
heavy seal--and from his vest dangled a neat gold watch chain, from
which was suspended the secret insignia of the Order of Elks. The whole
suit was rather tight-fitting, and was finished off with heavy-soled tan
shoes, highly polished, and the grey fedora hat. He was, for the order
of intellect represented, attractive, and whatever he had to recommend
him, you may be sure was not lost upon Carrie, in this, her first
glance.
Lest this order of individual should permanently pass, let me put down
some of the most striking characteristics of his most successful manner
and method. Good clothes, of course, were the first essential, the
things without which he was nothing. A strong physical nature, actuated
by a keen desire for the feminine, was the next. A mind free of any
consideration of the problems or forces of the world and actuated not by
greed, but an insatiable love of variable pleasure. His method was
always simple. Its principal element was daring, backed, of course, by
an intense desire and admiration for the sex. Let him meet with a young
woman twice and he would straighten her necktie for her and perhaps
address her by her first name. In the great department stores he was at
his ease. If he caught the attention of some young woman while waiting
for the cash boy to come back with his change, he would find out her
name, her favourite flower, where a note would reach her, and perhaps
pursue the delicate task of friendship until it proved unpromising, when
it would be relinquished. He would do very well with more pretentious
women, though the burden of expense was a slight deterrent. Upon
entering a parlour car, for instance, he would select a chair next to
the most promising bit of femininity and soon enquire if she cared to
have the shade lowered. Before the train cleared the yards he would have
the porter bring her a footstool. At the next lull in his conversational
progress he would find her something to read, and from then on, by dint
of compliment gently insinuated, personal narrative, exaggeration and
service, he would win her tolerance, and, mayhap, regard.
A woman should some day write the complete philosophy of clothes. No
matter how young, it is one of the things she wholly comprehends. There
is an indescribably faint line in the matter of man's apparel which
somehow divides for her those who are worth glancing at and those who
are not. Once an individual has passed this faint line on the way
downward he will get no glance from her. There is another line at which
the dress of a man will cause her to study her own. This line the
individual at her elbow now marked for Carrie. She became conscious of
an inequality. Her own plain blue dress, with its black cotton tape
trimmings, now seemed to her shabby. She felt the worn state of her
shoes.
"Let's see," he went on, "I know quite a number of people in your town.
Morgenroth the clothier and Gibson the dry goods man."
"Oh, do you?" she interrupted, aroused by memories of longings their
show windows had cost her.
At last he had a clew to her interest, and followed it deftly. In a few
minutes he had come about into her seat. He talked of sales of clothing,
his travels, Chicago, and the amusements of that city.
"If you are going there, you will enjoy it immensely. Have you
relatives?"
"I am going to visit my sister," she explained.
"You want to see Lincoln Park," he said, "and Michigan Boulevard. They
are putting up great buildings there. It's a second New York--great. So
much to see--theatres, crowds, fine houses--oh, you'll like that."
There was a little ache in her fancy of all he described. Her
insignificance in the presence of so much magnificence faintly affected
her. She realised that hers was not to be a round of pleasure, and yet
there was something promising in all the material prospect he set forth.
There was something satisfactory in the attention of this individual
with his good clothes. She could not help smiling as he told her of some
popular actress of whom she reminded him. She was not silly, and yet
attention of this sort had its weight.
"You will be in Chicago some little time, won't you?" he observed at one
turn of the now easy conversation.
"I don't know," said Carrie vaguely--a flash vision of the possibility
of her not securing employment rising in her mind.
"Several weeks, anyhow," he said, looking steadily into her eyes.
There was much more passing now than the mere words indicated. He
recognised the indescribable thing that made up for fascination and
beauty in her. She realised that she was of interest to him from the one
standpoint which a woman both delights in and fears. Her manner was
simple, though for the very reason that she had not yet learned the many
little affectations with which women conceal their true feelings. Some
things she did appeared bold. A clever companion--had she ever had
one--would have warned her never to look a man in the eyes so steadily.
"Why do you ask?" she said.
"Well, I'm going to be there several weeks. I'm going to study stock at
our place and get new samples. I might show you 'round."
"I don't know whether you can or not. I mean I don't know whether I can.
I shall be living with my sister, and----"
"Well, if she minds, we'll fix that." He took out his pencil and a
little pocket note-book as if it were all settled. "What is your address
there?"
She fumbled her purse which contained the address slip.
He reached down in his hip pocket and took out a fat purse. It was
filled with slips of paper, some mileage books, a roll of greenbacks. It
impressed her deeply. Such a purse had never been carried by any one
attentive to her. Indeed, an experienced traveller, a brisk man of the
world, had never come within such close range before. The purse, the
shiny tan shoes, the smart new suit, and the air with which he did
things, built up for her a dim world of fortune, of which he was the
centre. It disposed her pleasantly toward all he might do.
He took out a neat business card, on which was engraved Bartlett, Caryoe
& Company, and down in the left-hand corner, Chas. H. Drouet.
"That's me," he said, putting the card in her hand and touching his
name. "It's pronounced Drew-eh. Our family was French, on my father's
side."
She looked at it while he put up his purse. Then he got out a letter
from a bunch in his coat pocket. "This is the house I travel for," he
went on, pointing to a picture on it, "corner of State and Lake." There
was pride in his voice. He felt that it was something to be connected
with such a place, and he made her feel that way.
"What is your address?" he began again, fixing his pencil to write.
She looked at his hand.
"Carrie Meeber," she said slowly. "Three hundred and fifty-four West Van
Buren Street, care S. C. Hanson."
He wrote it carefully down and got out the purse again. "You'll be at
home if I come around Monday night?" he said.
"I think so," she answered.
How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we
mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible
feelings and purposes. Here were these two, bandying little phrases,
drawing purses, looking at cards, and both unconscious of how
inarticulate all their real feelings were. Neither was wise enough to be
sure of the working of the mind of the other. He could not tell how his
luring succeeded. She could not realise that she was drifting, until he
secured her address. Now she felt that she had yielded something--he,
that he had gained a victory. Already they felt that they were somehow
associated. Already he took control in directing the conversation. His
words were easy. Her manner was relaxed.
They were nearing Chicago. Signs were everywhere numerous. Trains
flashed by them. Across wide stretches of flat, open prairie they could
see lines of telegraph poles stalking across the fields toward the
great city. Far away were indications of suburban towns, some big
smoke-stacks towering high in the air.
Frequently there were two-story frame houses standing out in the open
fields, without fence or trees, lone outposts of the approaching army of
homes.
To the child, the genius with imagination, or the wholly untravelled,
the approach to a great city for the first time is a wonderful thing.
Particularly if it be evening--that mystic period between the glare and
gloom of the world when life is changing from one sphere or condition to
another. Ah, the promise of the night. What does it not hold for the
weary! What old illusion of hope is not here forever repeated! Says the
soul of the toiler to itself, "I shall soon be free. I shall be in the
ways and the hosts of the merry. The streets, the lamps, the lighted
chamber set for dining, are for me. The theatre, the halls, the parties,
the ways of rest and the paths of song--these are mine in the night."
Though all humanity be still enclosed in the shops, the thrill runs
abroad. It is in the air. The dullest feel something which they may not
always express or describe. It is the lifting of the burden of toil.
Sister Carrie gazed out of the window. Her companion, affected by her
wonder, so contagious are all things, felt anew some interest in the
city and pointed out its marvels.
"This is Northwest Chicago," said Drouet. "This is the Chicago River,"
and he pointed to a little muddy creek, crowded with the huge masted
wanderers from far-off waters nosing the black-posted banks. With a
puff, a clang, and a clatter of rails it was gone. "Chicago is getting
to be a great town," he went on. "It's a wonder. You'll find lots to see
here."
She did not hear this very well. Her heart was troubled by a kind of
terror. The fact that she was alone, away from home, rushing into a
great sea of life and endeavour, began to tell. She could not help but
feel a little choked for breath--a little sick as her heart beat so
fast. She half closed her eyes and tried to think it was nothing, that
Columbia City was only a little way off.
"Chicago! Chicago!" called the brakeman, slamming open the door. They
were rushing into a more crowded yard, alive with the clatter and clang
of life. She began to gather up her poor little grip and closed her hand
firmly upon her purse. Drouet arose, kicked his legs to straighten his
trousers, and seized his clean yellow grip.
"I suppose your people will be here to meet you?" he said. "Let me carry
your grip."
"Oh, no," she said. "I'd rather you wouldn't. I'd rather you wouldn't be
with me when I meet my sister."
"All right," he said in all kindness. "I'll be near, though, in case she
isn't here, and take you out there safely."
"You're so kind," said Carrie, feeling the goodness of such attention in
her strange situation.
"Chicago!" called the brakeman, drawing the word out long. They were
under a great shadowy train shed, where the lamps were already beginning
to shine out, with passenger cars all about and the train moving at a
snail's pace. The people in the car were all up and crowding about the
door.
"Well, here we are," said Drouet, leading the way to the door.
"Good-bye, till I see you Monday."
"Good-bye," she answered, taking his proffered hand.
"Remember, I'll be looking till you find your sister."
She smiled into his eyes.
They filed out, and he affected to take no notice of her. A lean-faced,
rather commonplace woman recognised Carrie on the platform and hurried
forward.
"Why, Sister Carrie!" she began, and there was a perfunctory embrace of
welcome.
Carrie realised the change of affectional atmosphere at once. Amid all
the maze, uproar, and novelty she felt cold reality taking her by the
hand. No world of light and merriment. No round of amusement. Her sister
carried with her most of the grimness of shift and toil.
"Why, how are all the folks at home?" she began; "how is father, and
mother?"
Carrie answered, but was looking away. Down the aisle, toward the gate
leading into the waiting-room and the street, stood Drouet. He was
looking back. When he saw that she saw him and was safe with her sister
he turned to go, sending back the shadow of a smile. Only Carrie saw it.
She felt something lost to her when he moved away. When he disappeared
she felt his absence thoroughly. With her sister she was much alone, a
lone figure in a tossing, thoughtless sea.