Читать книгу Sister Carrie / Сестра Кэрри. Книга для чтения на английском языке онлайн | страница 2

“That,” said a voice in her ear,” is one of the prettiest little resorts in Wisconsin.”

“Is it?” she answered nervously. The train was just pulling out of Waukesha. For some time she had been conscious of a man behind. She felt him observing her mass of hair. He had been fidgeting, and with natural intuition she felt a certain interest growing in that quarter. Her maidenly reserve, and a certain sense of what was conventional under the circumstances, called her to forestall and deny this familiarity, but the daring and magnetism of the individual, born of past experience and triumphs, prevailed. She answered. He leaned forward to put his elbows upon the back of her seat and proceeded to make himself volubly agreeable.

“Yes, that is a great resort for Chicago people. The hotels are swell. You are not familiar with this part of the country, are you?”

“Oh, yes I am,” answered Carrie. “That is, I live at Columbia City. I have never been through here, though.”

“And so this is your first visit to Chicago,” he observed. All the time she was conscious of certain features out of the side of her eye. Flush, colorful cheeks, a light moustache, a gray fedora hat[3]. She now turned and looked upon him in full, the instincts of self-protection and coquetry mingling confusedly in her brain.

“I didn’t say that” she said.

“Oh,” he answered, in a very pleasing way and with an assumed air of mistake, “I thought you did.”

Here was a type of the traveling canvasser[4] for a manufacturing house a class which at that time was first being dubbed by the slang of the day “drummers”[5]. He came within the meaning of a still newer term, which had sprung into general use among Americans in 1880, and which concisely expressed the thought of one whose dress or manners are calculated to elicit the admiration of susceptible young women – a “masher”[6]. His suit was of a striped and crossed pattern of brown wool, new at that time, but since become familiar as a business suit. The low crotch of the vest revealed a stiff bosom of white and pink stripes. From his coat sleeves protruded a pair of linen cuffs of the same pattern, fastened with large, gold plate buttons, set with the common yellow agates known as “cat’s-eyes.” His finger bore several rings – one, the ever-ending heavy seal – and from his vest dangled a neat gold watch chain, from which was suspended the secret insignia of the Order of Elks[7]. The whole suit was rather tight-fitting, and was finished off with heavy-soled tan shoes, highly polished, and the gray fedora hat.