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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Carrie felt this question to be an infringement on her liberty. She did not take into account how much liberty she was securing. Only the last step, the newest freedom, must not be questioned. Hurstwood saw it all clearly enough. He was shrewd after his kind, and yet there was enough decency in the man to stop him from making an effectual protest. In his almost inexplicable apathy he was content to droop supinely while Carrie drifted out of his life, just as he was willing supinely to see opportunity pass beyond his control. He could not help clinging and protesting in a mild, irritating, and ineffectual way, however-a way that simply widened the breach by slow degrees. A further enlargement of this chasm between them came when the manager, looking between the wings upon the brightly lighted stage where the chorus was going through some of its glittering evolutions, said to the master of the ballet: "Who is that fourth girl there on the right-the one coming round at the end now?" "Oh," said the ballet-master, "that’s Miss Madenda." "She’s good looking. Why don’t you let her head that line?" "I will," said the man. "Just do that. She’ll look better there than the woman you’ve got." "All right. I will do that," said the master. The next evening Carrie was called out, much as if for an error. "You lead your company to-night," said the master. "Yes, sir," said Carrie. "Put snap into it," he added. "We must have snap." "Yes, sir," replied Carrie. Astonished at this change, she thought that the heretofore leader must be ill; but when she saw her in the line, with a distinct expression of something unfavourable in her eye, she began to think that perhaps it was merit. She had a chic way of tossing her head to one side, and holding her arms as if for action-not listlessly. In front of the line this showed up even more effectually. "That girl knows how to carry herself," said the manager, another evening. He began to think that he should like to talk with her. If he hadn’t made it a rule to have nothing to do with the members of the chorus, he would have approached her most unbendingly. "Put that girl at the head of the white column," he suggested to the man in charge of the ballet. This white column consisted of some twenty girls, all in snow- white flannel trimmed with silver and blue. Its leader was most stunningly arrayed in the same colours, elaborated, however, with epaulets and a belt of silver, with a short sword dangling at one side. Carrie was fitted for this costume, and a few days later appeared, proud of her new laurels. She was especially gratified to find that her salary was now eighteen instead of twelve. Hurstwood heard nothing about this. "I’ll not give him the rest of my money," said Carrie. "I do enough. I am going to get me something to wear." As a matter of fact, during this second month she had been buying for herself as recklessly as she dared, regardless of the consequences. There were impending more complications rent day and more extension of the credit system in the neighbourhood. Now, however, she proposed to do better by herself. Her first move was to buy a shirt waist, and in studying these she found how little her money would buy-how much, if she could only use all. She forgot that if she were alone she would have to pay for a room and board, and imagined that every cent of her eighteen could be spent for clothes and things that she liked. At last she picked upon something, which not only used up all her surplus above twelve, but invaded that sum. She knew she was going too far, but her feminine love of finery prevailed. The next day Hurstwood said: "We owe the grocer five dollars and forty cents this week." "Do we?" said Carrie, frowning a little. She looked in her purse to leave it. "I’ve only got eight dollars and twenty cents altogether." |
