McTeague by Frank Norris (leveled readers TXT) 📕

one looked down into the flat’s dirty back yard and upon the roofs of the hovels that bordered the alley in the rear. There was a rag carpet on the floor. In place of a closet some dozen wooden pegs were affixed to the wall over the washstand. There was a smell of cheap soap and of ancient hair-oil in the air.

“That’s a single bed,” said Trina, “but the landlady says she’ll put in a double one for us. You see⁠—”

“I ain’t going to live here,” growled McTeague.

“Well, you’ve got to live somewhere,” said Trina, impatiently. “We’ve looked Polk Street over, and this is the only thing we can afford.”

“Afford, afford,” muttered the dentist. “You with your five thousand dollars, and the two or three hundred you got saved up, talking about ‘afford.’ You make me sick.”

“Now, Mac,” exclaimed Trina, deliberately, sitting down in one of the cane-seated chairs; “now, Mac, let’s have this thing⁠—”

“Well, I don’t figure on living in one room,” growled the dentist, sullenly. “Let’s live decently until we can get a fresh start. We’ve got the money.”

“Who’s got the money?”

“We’ve got it.”

“We!”

“Well, it’s all in the family. What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is yours, ain’t it?”

“No, it’s not; no, it’s not,” cried Trina, vehemently. “It’s all mine, mine. There’s not a penny of it belongs to anybody else. I don’t like to have to talk this way to you, but you just make me. We’re not going to touch a penny of my five thousand nor a penny of that little money I managed to save⁠—that seventy-five.”

“That two hundred, you mean.”

“That seventy-five. We’re just going to live on the interest of that and on what I earn from Uncle Oelbermann⁠—on just that thirty-one or two dollars.”

“Huh! Think I’m going to do that, an’ live in such a room as this?”

Trina folded her arms and looked him squarely in the face.

“Well, what are you going to do, then?”

“Huh?”

“I say, what are you going to do? You can go on and find something to do and earn some more money, and then we’ll talk.”

“Well, I ain’t going to live here.”

“Oh, very well, suit yourself. I’m going to live here.”

“You’ll live where I tell you,” the dentist suddenly cried, exasperated at the mincing tone she affected.

“Then you’ll pay the rent,” exclaimed Trina, quite as angry as he.

“Are you my boss, I’d like to know? Who’s the boss, you or I?”

“Who’s got the money, I’d like to know?” cried Trina, flushing to her pale lips. “Answer me that, McTeague, who’s got the money?”

“You make me sick, you and your money. Why, you’re a miser. I never saw anything like it. When I was practising, I never thought of my fees as my own; we lumped everything in together.”

“Exactly; and I’m doing the working now. I’m working for Uncle Oelbermann, and you’re not lumping in anything now. I’m doing it all. Do you know what I’m doing, McTeague? I’m supporting you.”

“Ah, shut up; you make me sick.”

“You got no right to talk to me that way. I won’t let you. I⁠—I won’t have it.” She caught her breath. Tears were in her eyes.

“Oh, live where you like, then,” said McTeague, sullenly.

“Well, shall we take this room then?”

“All right, we’ll take it. But why can’t you take a little of your money an’⁠—an’⁠—sort of fix it up?”

“Not a penny, not a single penny.”

“Oh, I don’t care what you do.” And for the rest of the day the dentist and his wife did not speak.

This was not the only quarrel they had during these days when they were occupied in moving from their suite and in looking for new quarters. Every hour the question of money came up. Trina had become more niggardly than ever since the loss of McTeague’s practice. It was not mere economy with her now. It was a panic terror lest a fraction of a cent of her little savings should be touched; a passionate eagerness to continue to save in spite of all that had happened. Trina could have easily afforded better quarters than the single whitewashed room at the top of the flat, but she made McTeague believe that it was impossible.

“I can still save a little,” she said to herself, after the room had been engaged; “perhaps almost as much as ever. I’ll have three hundred dollars pretty soon, and Mac thinks it’s only two hundred. It’s almost two hundred and fifty; and I’ll get a good deal out of the sale.”

But this sale was a long agony. It lasted a week. Everything went⁠—everything but the few big pieces that went with the suite, and that belonged to the photographer. The melodeon, the chairs, the black walnut table before which they were married, the extension table in the sitting-room, the kitchen table with its oilcloth cover, the framed lithographs from the English illustrated papers, the very carpets on the floors. But Trina’s heart nearly broke when the kitchen utensils and furnishings began to go. Every pot, every stewpan, every knife and fork, was an old friend. How she had worked over them! How clean she had kept them! What a pleasure it had been to invade that little brick-paved kitchen every morning, and to wash up and put to rights after breakfast, turning on the hot water at the sink, raking down the ashes in the cookstove, going and coming over the warm bricks, her head in the air, singing at her work, proud in the sense of her proprietorship and her independence! How happy had she been the day after her marriage when she had first entered that kitchen and knew that it was all her own! And how well she remembered her raids upon the bargain counters in the house-furnishing departments of the great downtown stores! And now it was all to go. Someone else would have it all, while she was relegated to cheap restaurants and meals cooked by hired servants. Night after night she sobbed herself to sleep at the