McTeague by Frank Norris (leveled readers TXT) 📕

“Of Marcus!” cried Trina. “Hoh! Why, he threw his knife at Mac one time, and another time he bit him, actually bit him with his teeth, while they were wrestling just for fun. Marcus would do anything to injure Mac.”

“Dear, dear,” returned Old Grannis, genuinely pained. “I had always believed Schouler to be such a good fellow.”

“That’s because you’re so good yourself, Mr. Grannis,” responded Trina.

“I tell you what, Doc,” declared Heise the harness-maker, shaking his finger impressively at the dentist, “you must fight it; you must appeal to the courts; you’ve been practising too long to be debarred now. The statute of limitations, you know.”

“No, no,” Trina had exclaimed, when the dentist had repeated this advice to her. “No, no, don’t go near the law courts. I know them. The lawyers take all your money, and you lose your case. We’re bad off as it is, without lawing about it.”

Then at last came the sale. McTeague and Trina, whom Miss Baker had invited to her room for that day, sat there side by side, holding each other’s hands, listening nervously to the turmoil that rose to them from the direction of their suite. From nine o’clock till dark the crowds came and went. All Polk Street seemed to have invaded the suite, lured on by the red flag that waved from the front windows. It was a fête, a veritable holiday, for the whole neighborhood. People with no thought of buying presented themselves. Young women⁠—the candy-store girls and florist’s apprentices⁠—came to see the fun, walking arm in arm from room to room, making jokes about the pretty lithographs and mimicking the picture of the two little girls saying their prayers.

“Look here,” they would cry, “look here what she used for curtains⁠—nottingham lace, actually! Whoever thinks of buying Nottingham lace nowadays? Say, don’t that jar you?”

“And a melodeon,” another one would exclaim, lifting the sheet. “A melodeon, when you can rent a piano for a dollar a week; and say, I really believe they used to eat in the kitchen.”

“Dollarn-half, dollarn-half, dollarn-half, give me two,” intoned the auctioneer from the secondhand store. By noon the crowd became a jam. Wagons backed up to the curb outside and departed heavily laden. In all directions people could be seen going away from the house, carrying small articles of furniture⁠—a clock, a water pitcher, a towel rack. Every now and then old Miss Baker, who had gone below to see how things were progressing, returned with reports of the foray.

“Mrs. Heise bought the chenille portieres. Mister Ryer made a bid for your bed, but a man in a gray coat bid over him. It was knocked down for three dollars and a half. The German shoemaker on the next block bought the stone pug dog. I saw our postman going away with a lot of the pictures. Zerkow has come, on my word! the rags-bottles-sacks man; he’s buying lots; he bought all Doctor McTeague’s gold tape and some of the instruments. Maria’s there too. That dentist on the corner took the dental engine, and wanted to get the sign, the big gold tooth,” and so on and so on. Cruelest of all, however, at least to Trina, was when Miss Baker herself began to buy, unable to resist a bargain. The last time she came up she carried a bundle of the gay tidies that used to hang over the chair backs.

“He offered them, three for a nickel,” she explained to Trina, “and I thought I’d spend just a quarter. You don’t mind, now, do you, Mrs. McTeague?”

“Why, no, of course not, Miss Baker,” answered Trina, bravely.

“They’ll look very pretty on some of my chairs,” went on the little old dressmaker, innocently. “See.” She spread one of them on a chair back for inspection. Trina’s chin quivered.

“Oh, very pretty,” she answered.

At length that dreadful day was over. The crowd dispersed. Even the auctioneer went at last, and as he closed the door with a bang, the reverberation that went through the suite gave evidence of its emptiness.

“Come,” said Trina to the dentist, “let’s go down and look⁠—take a last look.”

They went out of Miss Baker’s room and descended to the floor below. On the stairs, however, they were met by Old Grannis. In his hands he carried a little package. Was it possible that he too had taken advantage of their misfortunes to join in the raid upon the suite?

“I went in,” he began, timidly, “for⁠—for a few moments. This”⁠—he indicated the little package he carried⁠—“this was put up. It was of no value but to you. I⁠—I ventured to bid it in. I thought perhaps”⁠—his hand went to his chin, “that you wouldn’t mind; that⁠—in fact, I bought it for you⁠—as a present. Will you take it?” He handed the package to Trina and hurried on. Trina tore off the wrappings.

It was the framed photograph of McTeague and his wife in their wedding finery, the one that had been taken immediately after the marriage. It represented Trina sitting very erect in a rep armchair, holding her wedding bouquet straight before her, McTeague standing at her side, his left foot forward, one hand upon her shoulder, and the other thrust into the breast of his “Prince Albert” coat, in the attitude of a statue of a Secretary of State.

“Oh, it was good of him, it was good of him,” cried Trina, her eyes filling again. “I had forgotten to put it away. Of course it was not for sale.”

They went on down the stairs, and arriving at the door of the sitting-room, opened it and looked in. It was late in the afternoon, and there was just light enough for the dentist and his wife to see the results of that day of sale. Nothing was left, not even the carpet. It was a pillage, a devastation, the barrenness of a field after the passage of a swarm of locusts. The room had been picked and stripped