第51章

He heard of their doings occasionally, more often not.Some days he found that he was all at sea as to what they were talking about--things they had arranged to do or that they had done in his absence.More affecting was the feeling that there were little things going on of which he no longer heard.Jessica was beginning to feel that her affairs were her own.George, Jr., flourished about as if he were a man entirely and must needs have private matters.All this Hurstwood could see, and it left a trace of feeling, for he was used to being considered--in his official position, at least--and felt that his importance should not begin to wane here.To darken it all, he saw the same indifference and independence growing in his wife, while he looked on and paid the bills.

He consoled himself with the thought, however, that, after all, he was not without affection.Things might go as they would at his house, but he had Carrie outside of it.With his mind's eye he looked into her comfortable room in Ogden Place, where he had spent several such delightful evenings, and thought how charming it would be when Drouet was disposed of entirely and she was waiting evenings in cosey little quarters for him.That no cause would come up whereby Drouet would be led to inform Carrie concerning his married state, he felt hopeful.Things were going so smoothly that he believed they would not change.Shortly now he would persuade Carrie and all would be satisfactory.

The day after their theatre visit he began writing her regularly--

a letter every morning, and begging her to do as much for him.

He was not literary by any means, but experience of the world and his growing affection gave him somewhat of a style.This he exercised at his office desk with perfect deliberation.He purchased a box of delicately coloured and scented writing paper in monogram, which he kept locked in one of the drawers.His friends now wondered at the cleric and very official-looking nature of his position.The five bartenders viewed with respect the duties which could call a man to do so much desk-work and penmanship.

Hurstwood surprised himself with his fluency.By the natural law which governs all effort, what he wrote reacted upon him.He began to feel those subtleties which he could find words to express.With every expression came increased conception.Those inmost breathings which there found words took hold upon him.He thought Carrie worthy of all the affection he could there express.

Carrie was indeed worth loving if ever youth and grace are to command that token of acknowledgment from life in their bloom.

Experience had not yet taken away that freshness of the spirit which is the charm of the body.Her soft eyes contained in their liquid lustre no suggestion of the knowledge of disappointment.

She had been troubled in a way by doubt and longing, but these had made no deeper impression than could be traced in a certain open wistfulness of glance and speech.The mouth had the expression at times, in talking and in repose, of one who might be upon the verge of tears.It was not that grief was thus ever present.The pronunciation of certain syllables gave to her lips this peculiarity of formation--a formation as suggestive and moving as pathos itself.

There was nothing bold in her manner.Life had not taught her domination--superciliousness of grace, which is the lordly power of some women.Her longing for consideration was not sufficiently powerful to move her to demand it.Even now she lacked self-assurance, but there was that in what she had already experienced which left her a little less than timid.She wanted pleasure, she wanted position, and yet she was confused as to what these things might be.Every hour the kaleidoscope of human affairs threw a new lustre upon something, and therewith it became for her the desired--the all.Another shift of the box, and some other had become the beautiful, the perfect.

On her spiritual side, also, she was rich in feeling, as such a nature well might be.Sorrow in her was aroused by many a spectacle--an uncritical upwelling of grief for the weak and the helpless.She was constantly pained by the sight of the white-

faced, ragged men who slopped desperately by her in a sort of wretched mental stupor.The poorly clad girls who went blowing by her window evenings, hurrying home from some of the shops of the West Side, she pitied from the depths of her heart.She would stand and bite her lips as they passed, shaking her little head and wondering.They had so little, she thought.It was so sad to be ragged and poor.The hang of faded clothes pained her eyes.

"And they have to work so hard!" was her only comment.

On the street sometimes she would see men working--Irishmen with picks, coal-heavers with great loads to shovel, Americans busy about some work which was a mere matter of strength--and they touched her fancy.Toil, now that she was free of it, seemed even a more desolate thing than when she was part of it.She saw it through a mist of fancy--a pale, sombre half-light, which was the essence of poetic feeling.Her old father, in his flour-

dusted miller's suit, sometimes returned to her in memory, revived by a face in a window.A shoemaker pegging at his last, a blastman seen through a narrow window in some basement where iron was being melted, a bench-worker seen high aloft in some window, his coat off, his sleeves rolled up; these took her back in fancy to the details of the mill.She felt, though she seldom expressed them, sad thoughts upon this score.Her sympathies were ever with that under-world of toil from which she had so recently sprung, and which she best understood.