Читать книгу Sister Carrie / Сестра Кэрри. Книга для чтения на английском языке онлайн | страница 56
In her own apartments Carrie saw things that were lessons in the same school.
In the same house with her lived an official of one of the theatres, Mr. Frank A. Hale, manager of the Standard, and his wife, a pleasing-looking brunette of thirty-five. They were people of a sort very common in America today, who live respectably from hand to mouth. His wife, quite attractive, affected the feeling of youth, and objected to that sort of home life which means the care of a house and the raising of a family. Like Drouet and Carrie, they also occupied three rooms on the floor above. Not long after she arrived Mrs. Hale established social relations with her, and together they went about. For a long time this was her only companionship, and the gossip of the manager’s wife formed the medium, through which she saw the world. Such trivialities, such praises of wealth, such conventional expression of morals as sifted through this passive creature’s mind, fell upon Carrie and for the while confused her.
On the other hand, her own feelings were a corrective influence. Their constant drag to something better was not to be denied. By those things which address the heart was she steadily recalled. In the apartments across the hall were a young girl and her mother. They were from Evansville, Indiana, the wife and daughter of a railroad treasurer. The daughter was here to study music, the mother to keep her company.
Carrie did not make their acquaintance, but she saw the daughter coming in and going out. A few times she had seen her at the piano in the parlor, and not infrequently had heard her play. This young woman was particularly dressy for her station, and wore a jeweled ring or two which flashed upon her white fingers as she played.
Now Carrie was affected by music. Her nervous composition responded to certain strains, much as certain strings of a harp vibrate when a corresponding key of a piano is struck. She was delicately molded in sentiment and answered with vague ruminations to certain wistful chords. They awoke longings for those things which she did not have. They caused her cling closer to things she possessed. One shorts song the young lady played in a most soulful and tender mood. Carrie heard it through the open door from the parlor below. In was at that hour between afternoon and night when, for the idle, the wanderer, things are apt to take on a wistful aspect. The mind wanders forth on far journeys and returns with sheaves of withered and departed joys. Carrie sat at her window looking out.