The clock outside registered four. It was a little early, but he thought he would go back to the flat.
This going back to the flat was coupled with the thought that Carrie would think he was sitting around too much if he came home early. He hoped he wouldn’t have to, but the day hung heavily on his hands. Over there he was on his own ground. He could sit in his rocking-chair and read. This busy, distracting, suggestive scene was shut out. He could read his papers. Accordingly, he went home. Carrie was reading, quite alone. It was rather dark in the flat, shut in as it was.
“You’ll hurt your eyes,” he said when he saw her.
After taking off his coat, he felt it incumbent upon him to make some little report of his day.
“I’ve been talking with a wholesale liquor company,” he said. “I may go out on the road.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice!” said Carrie.
“It wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” he answered.
Always from the man at the corner now he bought two papers—the “Evening World” and “Evening Sun.” So now he merely picked his papers up, as he came by, without stopping.
He drew up his chair near the radiator and lighted the gas. Then it was as the evening before. His difficulties vanished in the items he so well loved to read.
The next day was even worse than the one before, because now he could not think of where to go. Nothing he saw in the papers he studied—till ten o’clock—appealed to him. He felt that he ought to go out, and yet he sickened at the thought. Where to, where to?
“You mustn’t forget to leave me my money for this week,” said Carrie, quietly.
They had an arrangement by which he placed twelve dollars a week in her hands, out of which to pay current expenses. He heaved a little sigh as she said this, and drew out his purse. Again he felt the dread of the thing. Here he was taking off, taking off, and nothing coming in.
“Lord!” he said, in his own thoughts, “this can’t go on.”
To Carrie he said nothing whatsoever. She could feel that her request disturbed him. To pay her would soon become a distressing thing.
“Yet, what have I got to do with it?” she thought. “Oh, why should I be made to worry?”
Hurstwood went out and made for Broadway. He wanted to think up some place. Before long, though, he reached the Grand Hotel at Thirty-first Street. He knew of its comfortable lobby. He was cold after his twenty blocks’ walk.
“I’ll go in their barber shop and get a shave,” he thought.
Thus he justified himself in sitting down in here after his tonsorial treatment.
Again, time hanging heavily on his hands, he went home early, and this continued for several days, each day the need to hunt paining him, and each day disgust, depression, shamefacedness driving him into lobby idleness.
At last three days came in which a storm prevailed, and he did not go out at all. The snow began to fall late one afternoon. It was a regular flurry of large, soft, white flakes. In the morning it was still coming down with a high wind, and the papers announced a blizzard. From out the front windows one could see a deep, soft bedding.
“I guess I’ll not try to go out to-day,” he said to Carrie at breakfast. “It’s going to be awful bad, so the papers say.”
“The man hasn’t brought my coal, either,” said Carrie, who ordered by the bushel.
“I’ll go over and see about it,” said Hurstwood. This was the first time he had ever suggested doing an errand, but, somehow, the wish to sit about the house prompted it as a sort of compensation for the privilege.
All day and all night it snowed, and the city began to suffer from a general blockade of traffic. Great attention was given to the details of the storm by the newspapers, which played up the distress of the poor in large type.
Hurstwood sat and read by his radiator in the corner. He did not try to think about his need of work. This storm being so terrific, and tying up all things, robbed him of the need. He made himself wholly comfortable and toasted his feet.
Carrie observed his ease with some misgiving. For all the fury of the storm she doubted his comfort. He took his situation too philosophically.
Hurstwood, however, read on and on. He did not pay much attention to Carrie. She fulfilled her household duties and said little to disturb him.
The next day it was still snowing, and the next, bitter cold. Hurstwood took the alarm of the paper and sat still. Now he volunteered to do a few other little things. One was to go to the butcher, another to the grocery. He really thought nothing of these little services in connection with their true significance. He felt as if he were not wholly useless—indeed, in such a stress of weather, quite worth while about the house.
On the fourth day, however, it cleared, and he read that the storm was over. Now, however, he idled, thinking how sloppy the streets would be.
It was noon before he finally abandoned his papers and got under way. Owing to the slightly warmer temperature the streets were bad. He went across Fourteenth Street on the car and got a transfer south on Broadway. One little advertisement he had, relating to a saloon down in Pearl Street. When he reached the Broadway Central, however, he changed his mind.
“What’s the use?” he thought, looking out upon the slop and snow. “I couldn’t buy into it. It’s a thousand to one nothing comes of it. I guess I’ll get off,” and off he got. In the lobby he took a seat and waited again, wondering what he could do.
While he was idly pondering, satisfied to be inside, a well-dressed man passed up the lobby, stopped, looked sharply, as if not sure of his memory, and then approached. Hurstwood recognised Cargill, the owner of the large stables in Chicago of the same name, whom he had last seen at Avery Hall, the night Carrie appeared there. The remembrance of how this individual brought up his wife to shake hands on that occasion was also on the instant clear.
Hurstwood was greatly abashed. His eyes expressed the difficulty he felt.
“Why, it’s Hurstwood!” said Cargill, remembering now, and sorry that he had not recognised him quickly enough in the beginning to have avoided this meeting.
“Yes,” said Hurstwood. “How are you?”
“Very well,” said Cargill, troubled for something to talk about. “Stopping here?”
“No,” said Hurstwood, “just keeping an appointment.”
“I knew you had left Chicago. I was wondering what had become of you.”
“Oh, I’m here now,” answered Hurstwood, anxious to get away.
“Doing well, I suppose?”
“Excellent.”
“Glad to hear it.”
They looked at one another, rather embarrassed.
“Well, I have an engagement with a friend upstairs. I’ll leave you. So long.”
Hurstwood nodded his head.
“Damn it all,” he murmured, turning toward the door. “I knew that would happen.”
He walked several blocks up the street. His watch only registered 1.30. He tried to think of some place to go or something to do. The day was so bad he wanted only to be inside. Finally his feet began to feel wet and cold, and he boarded a car. This took him to Fifty-ninth Street, which was as good as anywhere else. Landed here, he turned to walk back along Seventh Avenue, but the slush was too much. The misery of lounging about with nowhere to go became intolerable. He felt as if he were catching cold.
Stopping at a corner, he waited for a car south bound. This was no day to be out; he would go home.
Carrie was surprised to see him at a quarter of three.
“It’s a miserable day out,” was all he said. Then he took off his coat and changed his shoes.
That night he felt a cold coming on and took quinine. He was feverish until morning, and sat about the next day while Carrie waited on him. He was a helpless creature in sickness, not very handsome in a dull-coloured bath gown and his hair uncombed. He looked haggard about the eyes and quite old. Carrie noticed this, and it did not appeal to her. She wanted to be good-natured and sympathetic, but something about the man held her aloof.