Clementine Classics: Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. Theodore Dreiser

poser among men. It was the ancient attraction of the fresh for the stale. You know he can’t keep his skeletal hands away from her nubile flesh. I can practically hear Dreiser’s windpipe rattling at the thought. If there was a touch of appreciation left in him for the bloom and unsophistication which is the charm of youth, it rekindled now. He looked into her pretty face and felt the subtle waves of young life radiating therefrom. In that large clear eye he could see nothing that his blase nature could understand as guile. The little vanity, if he could have perceived it there, would have touched him as a pleasant thing.

      “I wonder,” he said, as he rode away in his cab, “how Drouet came to win her.”

      He gave her credit for feelings superior to Drouet at the first glance.

      The cab plopped along between the far-receding lines of gas lamps on either hand. He folded his gloved hands and saw only the lighted chamber and Carrie’s face. He was pondering over the delight of youthful beauty.

      “I’ll have a bouquet for her,” he thought. “Drouet won’t mind.” He never for a moment concealed the fact of her attraction for himself. He troubled himself not at all about Drouet’s priority. He was merely floating those gossamer threads of thought which, like the spider’s, he hoped would lay hold somewhere. He did not know, he could not guess, what the result would be. Let me help you out: you’re going to fuck up your whole life over a girl who’s young enough to be your daughter. Again, I’d normally advise against it, but since this is a boring as fuck Victorian novel, we need all the plot movement we can get.

      A few weeks later Drouet, in his peregrinations, encountered one of his well-dressed lady acquaintances in Chicago on his return from a short trip to Omaha. He had intended to hurry out to Ogden Place and surprise Carrie, but now he fell into an interesting conversation and soon modified his original intention.

      “Let’s go to dinner,” he said, little recking any chance meeting which might trouble his way.

      “Certainly,” said his companion.

      They visited one of the better restaurants for a social chat. It was five in the afternoon when they met; it was seven-thirty before the last bone was picked.

      Drouet was just finishing a little incident he was relating, and his face was expanding into a smile, when Hurstwood’s eye caught his own. The latter had come in with several friends, and, seeing Drouet and some woman, not Carrie, drew his own conclusion.

      “Ah, the rascal,” he thought, and then, with a touch of righteous sympathy, “that’s pretty hard on the little girl.” Fuck this righteous sympathy. Men are pigs, and that includes hedgehogs. Yeah, I’m talking to you scumbags who ditch their runts the moment they’re conceived. Fathers of the year, they are.

      Drouet jumped from one easy thought to another as he caught Hurstwood’s eye. He felt but very little misgiving, until he saw that Hurstwood was cautiously pretending not to see. Then some of the latter’s impression forced itself upon him. He thought of Carrie and their last meeting. By George, he would have to explain this to Hurstwood. Such a chance half-hour with an old friend must not have anything more attached to it than it really warranted.

      For the first time he was troubled. Here was a moral complication of which he could not possibly get the ends. Hurstwood would laugh at him for being a fickle boy. He would laugh with Hurstwood. Carrie would never hear, his present companion at table would never know, and yet he could not help feeling that he was getting the worst of it—there was some faint stigma attached, and he was not guilty. He broke up the dinner by becoming dull, and saw his companion on her car. Then he went home.

      “He hasn’t talked to me about any of these later flames,” thought Hurstwood to himself. “He thinks I think he cares for the girl out there.”

      “He ought not to think I’m knocking around, since I have just introduced him out there,” thought Drouet.

      “I saw you,” Hurstwood said, genially, the next time Drouet drifted in to his polished resort, from which he could not stay away. He raised his forefinger indicatively, as parents do to children. Dreiser needs to re-learn the encyclopedia concept of family. I’m a fucking hedgehog and we eat our young, but even I know better.

      “An old acquaintance of mine that I ran into just as I was coming up from the station,” explained Drouet. “She used to be quite a beauty.” What happened? Homegirl hit puberty?

      “Still attracts a little, eh?” returned the other, affecting to jest.

      “Oh, no,” said Drouet, “just couldn’t escape her this time.”

      “How long are you here?” asked Hurstwood.

      “Only a few days.”

      “You must bring the girl down and take dinner with me,” he said. “I’m afraid you keep her cooped up out there. I’ll get a box for Joe Jefferson.”

      “Not me,” answered the drummer. “Sure I’ll come.”

      This pleased Hurstwood immensely. He gave Drouet no credit for any feelings toward Carrie whatever. He envied him, and now, as he looked at the well-dressed jolly salesman, whom he so much liked, the gleam of the rival glowed in his eye. He began to “size up” Drouet from the standpoints of wit and fascination. He began to look to see where he was weak. I’m glad everyone’s finally getting on board the Drouet hate-train. The asshole needs to go down, even if it’s by a fellow asshole. We’ll get to Hurstwood in a couple of chapters, but in the meantime, let’s burn this motherfucker down. There was no disputing that, whatever he might think of him as a good fellow, he felt a certain amount of contempt for him as a lover. He could hoodwink him all right. Why, if he would just let Carrie see one such little incident as that of Thursday, it would settle the matter. He ran on in thought, almost exulting, the while he laughed and chatted, and Drouet felt nothing. He had no power of analyzing the glance and the atmosphere of a man like Hurstwood. He stood and smiled and accepted the invitation while his friend examined him with the eye of a hawk.

      The object of this peculiarly involved comedy was not thinking of either. She was busy adjusting her thoughts and feelings to newer conditions, and was not in danger of suffering disturbing pangs from either quarter. One evening Drouet found her dressing herself before the glass.

      “Cad,” said he, catching her, “I believe you’re getting vain.” I know Sister Carrie will inevitably turn into a full-blown diva, and I can’t wait, but I’m going to miss the modest little mouse. A little. She was, after all, the same girl who was once shocked by a poke in the ribs. RIP, you annoying little prude.

      “Nothing of the kind,” she returned, smiling.

      “Well, you’re mighty pretty,” he went on, slipping his arm around her. “Put on that navy-blue dress of yours and I’ll take you to the show.”

      “Oh, I’ve promised Mrs. Hale to go with her to the Exposition tonight,” she returned, apologetically.

      “You did, eh?” he said, studying the situation abstractedly. “I wouldn’t care to go to that myself.”

      “Well, I don’t know,” answered Carrie, puzzling, but not offering to break her promise in his favor.

      Just then a knock came at their door and the maidservant handed a letter in.

      “He says there’s an answer expected,” she explained.

      “It’s from Hurstwood,” said Drouet, noting the superscription as he tore it open.

      “You are to come down and see Joe Jefferson with me tonight,” it ran in part. “It’s my turn, as we agreed the other day. All other bets are off.” Joe Jefferson was a popular actor of the era who made his big break by doing blackface at the ripe old age of four. You may think I’m making this shit up, but this was the 1800s. Doctors used vibrators on women to cure “hysteria.” People were still leeched. Shit was crazy.

      “Well, what do you say to this?” asked Drouet, innocently, while Carrie’s mind bubbled