Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; Didactic fiction; Mistresses -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
“I’ll go down for a little while,” he said after breakfast, “and then
I’ll look around. To-morrow I’ll spend the whole day looking about. I
think I can get something, now this thing’s off my hands.”
He went out smiling and visited the place. Shaughnessy was there. They
had made all arrangements to share according to their interests. When,
however, he had been there several hours, gone out three more, and
returned, his elation had departed. As much as he had objected to the
place, now that it was no longer to exist, he felt sorry. He wished
that things were different.
Shaughnessy was coolly businesslike.
“Well,” he said at five o’clock, “we might as well count the change and
divide.”
They did so. The fixtures had already been sold and the sum divided.
“Good-night,” said Hurstwood at the final moment, in a last effort to
be genial.
“So long,” said Shaughnessy, scarcely deigning a notice.
Thus the Warren Street arrangement was permanently concluded.
Carrie had prepared a good dinner at the flat, but after his ride up,
Hurstwood was in a solemn and reflective mood.
“Well?” said Carrie, inquisitively.
“I’m out of that,” he answered, taking off his coat.
As she looked at him, she wondered what his financial state was now.
They ate and talked a little.
“Will you have enough to buy in anywhere else?” asked Carrie.
“No,” he said. “I’ll have to get something else and save up.”
“It would be nice if you could get some place,” said Carrie, prompted
by anxiety and hope.
“I guess I will,” he said reflectively.
For some days thereafter he put on his overcoat regularly in the
morning and sallied forth. On these ventures he first consoled himself
with the thought that with the seven hundred dollars he had he could
still make some advantageous arrangement. He thought about going to
some brewery, which, as he knew, frequently controlled saloons which
they leased, and get them to help him. Then he remembered that he would
have to pay out several hundred any way for fixtures and that he would
have nothing left for his monthly expenses. It was costing him nearly
eighty dollars a month to live.
“No,” he said, in his sanest moments, “I can’t do it. I’ll get
something else and save up.”
This getting-something proposition complicated itself the moment he
began to think of what it was he wanted to do. Manage a place? Where
should he get such a position? The papers contained no requests for
managers. Such positions, he knew well enough, were either secured by
long years of service or were bought with a half or third interest.
Into a place important enough to need such a manager he had not money
enough to buy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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