McTeague by Frank Norris (leveled readers TXT) 📕

“It is too,” vociferated McTeague. “It is too. We could live like Christians and decent people if you wanted to. You got more’n five thousand dollars, and you’re so damned stingy that you’d rather live in a rat hole⁠—and make me live there too⁠—before you’d part with a nickel of it. I tell you I’m sick and tired of the whole business.”

An allusion to her lottery money never failed to rouse Trina.

“And I’ll tell you this much too,” she cried, winking back the tears. “Now that you’re out of a job, we can’t afford even to live in your rat hole, as you call it. We’ve got to find a cheaper place than this even.”

“What!” exclaimed the dentist, purple with rage. “What, get into a worse hole in the wall than this? Well, we’ll see if we will. We’ll just see about that. You’re going to do just as I tell you after this, Trina McTeague,” and once more he thrust his face close to hers.

“I know what’s the matter,” cried Trina, with a half sob; “I know, I can smell it on your breath. You’ve been drinking whiskey.”

“Yes, I’ve been drinking whiskey,” retorted her husband. “I’ve been drinking whiskey. Have you got anything to say about it? Ah, yes, you’re right, I’ve been drinking whiskey. What have you got to say about my drinking whiskey? Let’s hear it.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” sobbed Trina, covering her face with her hands. McTeague caught her wrists in one palm and pulled them down. Trina’s pale face was streaming with tears; her long, narrow blue eyes were swimming; her adorable little chin upraised and quivering.

“Let’s hear what you got to say,” exclaimed McTeague.

“Nothing, nothing,” said Trina, between her sobs.

“Then stop that noise. Stop it, do you hear me? Stop it.” He threw up his open hand threateningly. “Stop!” he exclaimed.

Trina looked at him fearfully, half blinded with weeping. Her husband’s thick mane of yellow hair was disordered and rumpled upon his great square-cut head; his big red ears were redder than ever; his face was purple; the thick eyebrows were knotted over the small, twinkling eyes; the heavy yellow mustache, that smelt of alcohol, drooped over the massive, protruding chin, salient, like that of the carnivora; the veins were swollen and throbbing on his thick red neck; while over her head Trina saw his upraised palm, callused, enormous.

“Stop!” he exclaimed. And Trina, watching fearfully, saw the palm suddenly contract into a fist, a fist that was hard as a wooden mallet, the fist of the old-time carboy. And then her ancient terror of him, the intuitive fear of the male, leaped to life again. She was afraid of him. Every nerve of her quailed and shrank from him. She choked back her sobs, catching her breath.

“There,” growled the dentist, releasing her, “that’s more like. Now,” he went on, fixing her with his little eyes, “now listen to me. I’m beat out. I’ve walked the city over⁠—ten miles, I guess⁠—an’ I’m going to bed, an’ I don’t want to be bothered. You understand? I want to be let alone.” Trina was silent.

“Do you hear?” he snarled.

“Yes, Mac.”

The dentist took off his coat, his collar and necktie, unbuttoned his vest, and slipped his heavy-soled boots from his big feet. Then he stretched himself upon the bed and rolled over towards the wall. In a few minutes the sound of his snoring filled the room.

Trina craned her neck and looked at her husband over the footboard of the bed. She saw his red, congested face; the huge mouth wide open; his unclean shirt, with its frayed wristbands; and his huge feet encased in thick woollen socks. Then her grief and the sense of her unhappiness returned more poignant than ever. She stretched her arms out in front of her on her worktable, and, burying her face in them, cried and sobbed as though her heart would break.

The rain continued. The panes of the single window ran with sheets of water; the eaves dripped incessantly. It grew darker. The tiny, grimy room, full of the smells of cooking and of “nonpoisonous” paint, took on an aspect of desolation and cheerlessness lamentable beyond words. The canary in its little gilt prison chittered feebly from time to time. Sprawled at full length upon the bed, the dentist snored and snored, stupefied, inert, his legs wide apart, his hands lying palm upward at his sides.

At last Trina raised her head, with a long, trembling breath. She rose, and going over to the washstand, poured some water from the pitcher into the basin, and washed her face and swollen eyelids, and rearranged her hair. Suddenly, as she was about to return to her work, she was struck with an idea.

“I wonder,” she said to herself, “I wonder where he got the money to buy his whiskey.” She searched the pockets of his coat, which he had flung into a corner of the room, and even came up to him as he lay upon the bed and went through the pockets of his vest and trousers. She found nothing.

“I wonder,” she murmured, “I wonder if he’s got any money he don’t tell me about. I’ll have to look out for that.”

A week passed, then a fortnight, then a month. It was a month of the greatest anxiety and unquietude for Trina. McTeague was out of a job, could find nothing to do; and Trina, who saw the impossibility of saving as much money as usual out of her earnings under the present conditions, was on the lookout for cheaper quarters. In spite of his outcries and sulky resistance Trina had induced her husband to consent to such a move, bewildering him with a torrent of phrases and marvellous columns of figures by which she proved conclusively that they were in a condition but one remove from downright destitution.

The dentist continued idle. Since his ill success with the manufacturers of surgical instruments he had