Sister Carrie (Barnes & Noble Classics S - Theodore Dreiser [196]
“Mr. Stevens,” he said, referring to the author, “is preparing a little song, which he would like you to sing next week.”
“Oh, I can’t sing,” returned Carrie.
“It isn’t anything difficult. ‘It’s something that is very simple,’ he says, ‘and would suit you exactly.’ ”
“Of course, I wouldn’t mind trying,” said Carrie, archly.
“Would you mind coming to the box-office a few moments before you dress?” observed the manager, in addition. “There’s a little matter I want to speak to you about.”
“Certainly,” replied Carrie.
In that latter place the manager produced a paper.
“Now, of course,” he said, “we want to be fair with you in the matter of salary. Your contract here only calls for thirty dollars a week for the next three months. How would it do to make it, say, one hundred and fifty a week and extend it for twelve months?”
“Oh, very well,” said Carrie, scarcely believing her ears.
“Supposing, then, you just sign this.”
Carrie looked and beheld a new contract made out like the other one, with the exception of the new figures of salary and time. With a hand trembling from excitement she affixed her name.
“One hundred and fifty a week!” she murmured, when she was again alone. She found, after all—as what millionaire has not?—that there was no realising, in consciousness, the meaning of large sums. It was only a shimmering, glittering phrase in which lay a world of possibilities.
Down in a third-rate Bleecker Street hotel, the brooding Hurstwood read the dramatic item covering Carrie’s success, without at first realising who was meant. Then suddenly it came to him and he read the whole thing over again.
“That’s her, all right, I guess,” he said.
Then he looked about upon a dingy, moth-eaten hotel lobby.
“I guess she’s struck it,” he thought, a picture of the old shiny, plush-covered world coming back, with its lights, its ornaments, its carriages, and flowers. Ah, she was in the walled city now! Its splendid gates had opened, admitting her from a cold, dreary outside. She seemed a creature afar off—like every other celebrity he had known.
“Well, let her have it,” he said. “I won’t bother her.”
It was the grim resolution of a bent, bedraggled, but unbroken pride.
CHAPTER XLIV
AND THIS IS NOT ELFLAND:
WHAT GOLD WILL NOT BUY
WHEN CARRIE GOT BACK on the stage, she found that over night her dressing-room had been changed.
“You are to use this room, Miss Madenda,” said one of the stage lackeys.
No longer any need of climbing several flights of steps to a small coop shared with another. Instead, a comparatively large and commodious chamber with conveniences not enjoyed by the small fry overhead. She breathed deeply and with delight. Her sensations were more physical than mental. In fact, she was scarcely thinking at all. Heart and body were having their say.
Gradually the deference and congratulation gave her a mental appreciation of her state. She was no longer ordered, but requested, and that politely. The other members of the cast looked at her enviously as she came out arrayed in her simple habit, which she wore all through the play. All those who had supposedly been her equals and superiors now smiled the smile of sociability, as much as to say: “How friendly we have always been.” Only the star comedian whose part had been so deeply injured stalked by himself. Figuratively, he could not kiss the hand that smote him.
Doing her simple part, Carrie gradually realised the meaning of the applause which was for her, and it was sweet. She felt mildly guilty of something—perhaps unworthiness. When her associates addressed her in the wings she only smiled weakly. The pride and daring of place were not for her. It never once crossed her mind to be reserved or haughty—to be other than she had been. After the performances she rode to her room with Lola, in a carriage provided.
Then came a week in which the first fruits of success were offered to her lips—bowl after bowl. It did not matter that her splendid salary had not begun. The world seemed satisfied with the promise. She began to get letters and cards. A Mr. Withers