Sister Carrie (Barnes & Noble Classics S - Theodore Dreiser [195]
“Let up,” said a voice, “you’re all right. Stand up.”
He was let loose and recovered himself. Now he recognised two officers. He felt as if he would faint from exhaustion. Something was wet on his chin. He put up his hand and felt, then looked. It was red.
“They cut me,” he said, foolishly, fishing for his handkerchief.
“Now, now,” said one of the officers. “It’s only a scratch.”
His senses became cleared now and he looked around. He was standing in a little store, where they left him for the moment.
Outside, he could see, as he stood wiping his chin, the car and the excited crowd. A patrol wagon was there, and another.
He walked over and looked out. It was an ambulance, backing in.
He saw some energetic charging by the police and arrests being made.
“Come on, now, if you want to take your car,” said an officer, opening the door and looking in.
He walked out, feeling rather uncertain of himself. He was very cold and frightened.
“Where’s the conductor?” he asked.
“Oh, he’s not here now,” said the policeman.
Hurstwood went toward the car and stepped nervously on. As he did so there was a pistol shot. Something stung his shoulder.
“Who fired that?” he heard an officer exclaim. “By God! who did that?” Both left him, running toward a certain building. He paused a moment and then got down.
“George!” exclaimed Hurstwood, weakly, “this is too much for me.”
He walked nervously to the corner and hurried down a side street.
“Whew!” he said, drawing in his breath.
A half block away, a small girl gazed at him.
“You’d better sneak,” she called.
He walked homeward in a blinding snowstorm, reaching the ferry by dusk. The cabins were filled with comfortable souls, who studied him curiously. His head was still in such a whirl that he felt confused. All the wonder of the twinkling lights of the river in a white storm passed for nothing. He trudged doggedly on until he reached the flat. There he entered and found the room warm. Carrie was gone. A couple of evening papers were lying on the table where she left them. He lit the gas and sat down. Then he got up and stripped to examine his shoulder. It was a mere scratch. He washed his hands and face, still in a brown study, apparently, and combed his hair. Then he looked for something to eat, and finally, his hunger gone, sat down in his comfortable rocking-chair. It was a wonderful relief.
He put his hand to his chin, forgetting, for the moment, the papers.
“Well,” he said, after a time, his nature recovering itself. “That’s a pretty tough game over there.”
Then he turned and saw the papers. With half a sigh he picked up the “World.”
“Strike Spreading in Brooklyn,” he read. “Rioting Breaks Out in all Parts of the City.”
He adjusted his paper very comfortably and continued. It was the one thing he read with absorbing interest.
CHAPTER XLII
A TOUCH OF SPRING: THE EMPTY SHELL
THOSE WHO LOOK UPON Hurstwood’s Brooklyn venture as an error of judgment will none the less realise the negative influence on him of the fact that he had tried and failed. Carrie got a wrong idea of it. He said so little that she imagined he had encountered nothing worse than the ordinary roughness—quitting so soon in the face of this seemed trifling. He did not want to work.
She was now one of a group of oriental beauties who, in the second act of the comic opera, were paraded by the vizier before the new potentate as the treasures of his harem. There was no word assigned to any of them, but on the evening when Hurstwood was housing himself in the loft of the street-car barn, the leading comedian and star, feeling exceedingly facetious, said in a profound voice, which created a ripple of laughter:
“Well, who are you?”
It merely happened to be Carrie who was courtesying before him. It might as well have been any of the others, so far as he was concerned. He expected no answer and a dull one would have been reproved. But Carrie,