THE GRIND OF THE MILLSTONES: A SAMPLE OF CHAFF
Carrie pondered over this situation as consistently as Hurstwood, once
she got the facts adjusted in her mind. It took several days for her to
fully realise that the approach of the dissolution of her husband's
business meant commonplace struggle and privation. Her mind went back to
her early venture in Chicago, the Hansons and their flat, and her heart
revolted. That was terrible! Everything about poverty was terrible. She
wished she knew a way out. Her recent experiences with the Vances had
wholly unfitted her to view her own state with complacence. The glamour
of the high life of the city had, in the few experiences afforded her by
the former, seized her completely. She had been taught how to dress and
where to go without having ample means to do either. Now, these
things--ever-present realities as they were--filled her eyes and mind.
The more circumscribed became her state, the more entrancing seemed this
other. And now poverty threatened to seize her entirely and to remove
this other world far upward like a heaven to which any Lazarus might
extend, appealingly, his hands.
So, too, the ideal brought into her life by Ames remained. He had gone,
but here was his word that riches were not everything; that there was a
great deal more in the world than she knew; that the stage was good, and
the literature she read poor. He was a strong man and clean--how much
stronger and better than Hurstwood and Drouet she only half formulated
to herself, but the difference was painful. It was something to which
she voluntarily closed her eyes.
During the last three months of the Warren Street connection, Hurstwood
took parts of days off and hunted, tracking the business advertisements.
It was a more or less depressing business, wholly because of the thought
that he must soon get something or he would begin to live on the few
hundred dollars he was saving, and then he would have nothing to
invest--he would have to hire out as a clerk.
Everything he discovered in his line advertised as an opportunity, was
either too expensive or too wretched for him. Besides, winter was
coming, the papers were announcing hardships, and there was a general
feeling of hard times in the air, or, at least, he thought so. In his
worry, other people's worries became apparent. No item about a firm
failing, a family starving, or a man dying upon the streets, supposedly
of starvation, but arrested his eye as he scanned the morning papers.
Once the "World" came out with a flaring announcement about "80,000
people out of employment in New York this winter," which struck as a
knife at his heart.
"Eighty thousand!" he thought. "What an awful thing that is."
This was new reasoning for Hurstwood. In the old days the world had
seemed to be getting along well enough. He had been wont to see similar
things in the "Daily News," in Chicago, but they did not hold his
attention. Now, these things were like grey clouds hovering along the
horizon of a clear day. They threatened to cover and obscure his life
with chilly greyness. He tried to shake them off, to forget and brace
up. Sometimes he said to himself, mentally:
"What's the use worrying? I'm not out yet. I've got six weeks more. Even
if worst comes to worst, I've got enough to live on for six months."
Curiously, as he troubled over his future, his thoughts occasionally
reverted to his wife and family. He had avoided such thoughts for the
first three years as much as possible. He hated her, and he could get
along without her. Let her go. He would do well enough. Now, however,
when he was not doing well enough, he began to wonder what she was
doing, how his children were getting along. He could see them living as
nicely as ever, occupying the comfortable house and using his property.
"By George! it's a shame they should have it all," he vaguely thought to
himself on several occasions. "I didn't do anything."
As he looked back now and analysed the situation which led up to his
taking the money, he began mildly to justify himself. What had he
done--what in the world--that should bar him out this way and heap such
difficulties upon him? It seemed only yesterday to him since he was
comfortable and well-to-do. But now it was all wrested from him.
"She didn't deserve what she got out of me, that is sure. I didn't do so
much, if everybody could just know."
There was no thought that the facts ought to be advertised. It was only
a mental justification he was seeking from himself--something that would
enable him to bear his state as a righteous man.
One afternoon, five weeks before the Warren Street place closed up, he
left the saloon to visit three or four places he saw advertised in the
"Herald." One was down in Gold Street, and he visited that, but did not
enter. It was such a cheap looking place he felt that he could not
abide it. Another was on the Bowery, which he knew contained many showy
resorts. It was near Grand Street, and turned out to be very handsomely
fitted up. He talked around about investments for fully three-quarters
of an hour with the proprietor, who maintained that his health was poor,
and that was the reason he wished a partner.
"Well, now, just how much money would it take to buy a half interest
here?" said Hurstwood, who saw seven hundred dollars as his limit.
"Three thousand," said the man.
Hurstwood's jaw fell.
"Cash?" he said.
"Cash."
He tried to put on an air of deliberation, as one who might really buy;
but his eyes showed gloom. He wound up by saying he would think it over,
and came away. The man he had been talking to sensed his condition in a
vague way.
"I don't think he wants to buy," he said to himself. "He doesn't talk
right."
The afternoon was as grey as lead and cold. It was blowing up a
disagreeable winter wind. He visited a place far up on the east side,
near Sixty-ninth Street, and it was five o'clock, and growing dim, when
he reached there. A portly German kept this place.
"How about this ad. of yours?" asked Hurstwood, who rather objected to
the looks of the place.
"Oh, dat iss all over," said the German. "I vill not sell now."
"Oh, is that so?"
"Yes; dere is nothing to dat. It iss all over."
"Very well," said Hurstwood, turning around.
The German paid no more attention to him, and it made him angry.
"The crazy ass!" he said to himself. "What does he want to advertise
for?"
Wholly depressed, he started for Thirteenth Street. The flat had only a
light in the kitchen, where Carrie was working. He struck a match and,
lighting the gas, sat down in the dining-room without even greeting her.
She came to the door and looked in.
"It's you, is it?" she said, and went back.
"Yes," he said, without even looking up from the evening paper he had
bought.
Carrie saw things were wrong with him. He was not so handsome when
gloomy. The lines at the sides of the eyes were deepened. Naturally dark
of skin, gloom made him look slightly sinister. He was quite a
disagreeable figure.
Carrie set the table and brought in the meal.
"Dinner's ready," she said, passing him for something.
He did not answer, reading on.
She came in and sat down at her place, feeling exceedingly wretched.
"Won't you eat now?" she asked.
He folded his paper and drew near, silence holding for a time, except
for the "Pass me's."
"It's been gloomy to-day, hasn't it?" ventured Carrie, after a time.
"Yes," he said.
He only picked at his food.
"Are you still sure to close up?" said Carrie, venturing to take up the
subject which they had discussed often enough.
"Of course we are," he said, with the slightest modification of
sharpness.
This retort angered Carrie. She had had a dreary day of it herself.
"You needn't talk like that," she said.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, pushing back from the table, as if to say more, but
letting it go at that. Then he picked up his paper. Carrie left her
seat, containing herself with difficulty. He saw she was hurt.
"Don't go 'way," he said, as she started back into the kitchen. "Eat
your dinner."
She passed, not answering.
He looked at the paper a few moments, and then rose up and put on his
coat.
"I'm going down town, Carrie," he said, coming out. "I'm out of sorts
to-night."
She did not answer.
"Don't be angry," he said. "It will be all right to-morrow."
He looked at her, but she paid no attention to him, working at her
dishes.
"Good-bye!" he said finally, and went out.
This was the first strong result of the situation between them, but with
the nearing of the last day of the business the gloom became almost a
permanent thing. Hurstwood could not conceal his feelings about the
matter. Carrie could not help wondering where she was drifting. It got
so that they talked even less than usual, and yet it was not Hurstwood
who felt any objection to Carrie. It was Carrie who shied away from him.
This he noticed. It aroused an objection to her becoming indifferent to
him. He made the possibility of friendly intercourse almost a giant
task, and then noticed with discontent that Carrie added to it by her
manner and made it more impossible.
At last the final day came. When it actually arrived, Hurstwood, who had
got his mind into such a state where a thunder-clap and raging storm
would have seemed highly appropriate, was rather relieved to find that
it was a plain, ordinary day. The sun shone, the temperature was
pleasant. He felt, as he came to the breakfast table, that it wasn't so
terrible, after all.
"Well," he said to Carrie, "to-day's my last day on earth."
Carrie smiled in answer to his humour.
Hurstwood glanced over his paper rather gayly. He seemed to have lost a
load.
"I'll go down for a little while," he said after breakfast, "and then
I'll look around. To-morrow I'll spend the whole day looking about. I
think I can get something, now this thing's off my hands."
He went out smiling and visited the place. Shaughnessy was there. They
had made all arrangements to share according to their interests. When,
however, he had been there several hours, gone out three more, and
returned, his elation had departed. As much as he had objected to the
place, now that it was no longer to exist, he felt sorry. He wished that
things were different.
Shaughnessy was coolly business-like.
"Well," he said at five o'clock, "we might as well count the change and
divide."
They did so. The fixtures had already been sold and the sum divided.
"Good-night," said Hurstwood at the final moment, in a last effort to be
genial.
"So long," said Shaughnessy, scarcely deigning a notice.
Thus the Warren Street arrangement was permanently concluded.
Carrie had prepared a good dinner at the flat, but after his ride up,
Hurstwood was in a solemn and reflective mood.
"Well?" said Carrie, inquisitively.
"I'm out of that," he answered, taking off his coat.
As she looked at him, she wondered what his financial state was now.
They ate and talked a little.
"Will you have enough to buy in anywhere else?" asked Carrie.
"No," he said. "I'll have to get something else and save up."
"It would be nice if you could get some place," said Carrie, prompted by
anxiety and hope.
"I guess I will," he said reflectively.
For some days thereafter he put on his overcoat regularly in the morning
and sallied forth. On these ventures he first consoled himself with the
thought that with the seven hundred dollars he had he could still make
some advantageous arrangement. He thought about going to some brewery,
which, as he knew, frequently controlled saloons which they leased, and
get them to help him. Then he remembered that he would have to pay out
several hundred any way for fixtures and that he would have nothing left
for his monthly expenses. It was costing him nearly eighty dollars a
month to live.
"No," he said, in his sanest moments, "I can't do it. I'll get something
else and save up."
This getting-something proposition complicated itself the moment he
began to think of what it was he wanted to do. Manage a place? Where
should he get such a position? The papers contained no requests for
managers. Such positions, he knew well enough, were either secured by
long years of service or were bought with a half or third interest. Into
a place important enough to need such a manager he had not money enough
to buy.
Nevertheless, he started out. His clothes were very good and his
appearance still excellent, but it involved the trouble of deluding.
People, looking at him, imagined instantly that a man of his age, stout
and well dressed, must be well off. He appeared a comfortable owner of
something, a man from whom the common run of mortals could well expect
gratuities. Being now forty-three years of age, and comfortably built,
walking was not easy. He had not been used to exercise for many years.
His legs tired, his shoulders ached, and his feet pained him at the
close of the day, even when he took street cars in almost every
direction. The mere getting up and down, if long continued, produced
this result.
The fact that people took him to be better off than he was, he well
understood. It was so painfully clear to him that it retarded his
search. Not that he wished to be less well-appearing, but that he was
ashamed to belie his appearance by incongruous appeals. So he hesitated,
wondering what to do.
He thought of the hotels, but instantly he remembered that he had had no
experience as a clerk, and, what was more important, no acquaintances or
friends in that line to whom he could go. He did know some hotel owners
in several cities, including New York, but they knew of his dealings
with Fitzgerald and Moy. He could not apply to them. He thought of other
lines suggested by large buildings or businesses which he knew
of--wholesale groceries, hardware, insurance concerns, and the like--but
he had had no experience.
How to go about getting anything was a bitter thought. Would he have to
go personally and ask; wait outside an office door, and, then,
distinguished and affluent looking, announce that he was looking for
something to do? He strained painfully at the thought. No, he could not
do that.
He really strolled about, thinking, and then, the weather being cold,
stepped into a hotel. He knew hotels well enough to know that any
decent looking individual was welcome to a chair in the lobby. This was
in the Broadway Central, which was then one of the most important hotels
in the city. Taking a chair here was a painful thing to him. To think he
should come to this! He had heard loungers about hotels called
chair-warmers. He had called them that himself in his day. But here he
was, despite the possibility of meeting some one who knew him, shielding
himself from cold and the weariness of the streets in a hotel lobby.
"I can't do this way," he said to himself. "There's no use of my
starting out mornings without first thinking up some place to go. I'll
think of some places and then look them up."
It occurred to him that the positions of bartenders were sometimes open,
but he put this out of his mind. Bartender--he, the ex-manager!
It grew awfully dull sitting in the hotel lobby, and so at four he went
home. He tried to put on a business air as he went in, but it was a
feeble imitation. The rocking-chair in the dining-room was comfortable.
He sank into it gladly, with several papers he had bought, and began to
read.
As she was going through the room to begin preparing dinner, Carrie
said:
"The man was here for the rent to-day."
"Oh, was he?" said Hurstwood.
The least wrinkle crept into his brow as he remembered that this was
February 2d, the time the man always called. He fished down in his
pocket for his purse, getting the first taste of paying out when nothing
is coming in. He looked at the fat, green roll as a sick man looks at
the one possible saving cure. Then he counted off twenty-eight dollars.
"Here you are," he said to Carrie, when she came through again.
He buried himself in his papers and read. Oh, the rest of it--the relief
from walking and thinking! What Lethean waters were these floods of
telegraphed intelligence! He forgot his troubles, in part. Here was a
young, handsome woman, if you might believe the newspaper drawing, suing
a rich, fat, candy-making husband in Brooklyn for divorce. Here was
another item detailing the wrecking of a vessel in ice and snow off
Prince's Bay on Staten Island. A long, bright column told of the doings
in the theatrical world--the plays produced, the actors appearing, the
managers making announcements. Fannie Davenport was just opening at the
Fifth Avenue. Daly was producing "King Lear." He read of the early
departure for the season of a party composed of the Vanderbilts and
their friends for Florida. An interesting shooting affray was on in the
mountains of Kentucky. So he read, read, read, rocking in the warm room
near the radiator and waiting for dinner to be served.