McTeague by Frank Norris (leveled readers TXT) 📕

refused to fill up; after three weeks of the most rigid economy they contained but eighteen dollars and some small change. What was that compared with four hundred? Trina told herself that she must have her money in hand. She longed to see again the heap of it upon her worktable, where she could plunge her hands into it, her face into it, feeling the cool, smooth metal upon her cheeks. At such moments she would see in her imagination her wonderful five thousand dollars piled in columns, shining and gleaming somewhere at the bottom of Uncle Oelbermann’s vault. She would look at the paper that Uncle Oelbermann had given her, and tell herself that it represented five thousand dollars. But in the end this ceased to satisfy her, she must have the money itself. She must have her four hundred dollars back again, there in her trunk, in her bag and her matchbox, where she could touch it and see it whenever she desired.

At length she could stand it no longer, and one day presented herself before Uncle Oelbermann as he sat in his office in the wholesale toy store, and told him she wanted to have four hundred dollars of her money.

“But this is very irregular, you know, Mrs. McTeague,” said the great man. “Not businesslike at all.”

But his niece’s misfortunes and the sight of her poor maimed hand appealed to him. He opened his checkbook. “You understand, of course,” he said, “that this will reduce the amount of your interest by just so much.”

“I know, I know. I’ve thought of that,” said Trina.

“Four hundred, did you say?” remarked Uncle Oelbermann, taking the cap from his fountain pen.

“Yes, four hundred,” exclaimed Trina, quickly, her eyes glistening.

Trina cashed the check and returned home with the money⁠—all in twenty-dollar pieces as she had desired⁠—in an ecstasy of delight. For half of that night she sat up playing with her money, counting it and recounting it, polishing the duller pieces until they shone. Altogether there were twenty twenty-dollar gold pieces.

“Oh-h, you beauties!” murmured Trina, running her palms over them, fairly quivering with pleasure. “You beauties! Is there anything prettier than a twenty-dollar gold piece? You dear, dear money! Oh, don’t I love you! Mine, mine, mine⁠—all of you mine.”

She laid them out in a row on the ledge of the table, or arranged them in patterns⁠—triangles, circles, and squares⁠—or built them all up into a pyramid which she afterward overthrew for the sake of hearing the delicious clink of the pieces tumbling against each other. Then at last she put them away in the brass matchbox and chamois bag, delighted beyond words that they were once more full and heavy.

Then, a few days after, the thought of the money still remaining in Uncle Oelbermann’s keeping returned to her. It was hers, all hers⁠—all that four thousand six hundred. She could have as much of it or as little of it as she chose. She only had to ask. For a week Trina resisted, knowing very well that taking from her capital was proportionately reducing her monthly income. Then at last she yielded.

“Just to make it an even five hundred, anyhow,” she told herself. That day she drew a hundred dollars more, in twenty-dollar gold pieces as before. From that time Trina began to draw steadily upon her capital, a little at a time. It was a passion with her, a mania, a veritable mental disease; a temptation such as drunkards only know.

It would come upon her all of a sudden. While she was about her work, scrubbing the floor of some vacant house; or in her room, in the morning, as she made her coffee on the oil stove, or when she woke in the night, a brusque access of cupidity would seize upon her. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes glistened, her breath came short. At times she would leave her work just as it was, put on her old bonnet of black straw, throw her shawl about her, and go straight to Uncle Oelbermann’s store and draw against her money. Now it would be a hundred dollars, now sixty; now she would content herself with only twenty; and once, after a fortnight’s abstinence, she permitted herself a positive debauch of five hundred. Little by little she drew her capital from Uncle Oelbermann, and little by little her original interest of twenty-five dollars a month dwindled.

One day she presented herself again in the office of the wholesale toy store.

“Will you let me have a check for two hundred dollars, Uncle Oelbermann?” she said.

The great man laid down his fountain pen and leaned back in his swivel chair with great deliberation.

“I don’t understand, Mrs. McTeague,” he said. “Every week you come here and draw out a little of your money. I’ve told you that it is not at all regular or businesslike for me to let you have it this way. And more than this, it’s a great inconvenience to me to give you these checks at unstated times. If you wish to draw out the whole amount let’s have some understanding. Draw it in monthly installments of, say, five hundred dollars, or else,” he added, abruptly, “draw it all at once, now, today. I would even prefer it that way. Otherwise it’s⁠—it’s annoying. Come, shall I draw you a check for thirty-seven hundred, and have it over and done with?”

“No, no,” cried Trina, with instinctive apprehension, refusing, she did not know why. “No, I’ll leave it with you. I won’t draw out any more.”

She took her departure, but paused on the pavement outside the store, and stood for a moment lost in thought, her eyes beginning to glisten and her breath coming short. Slowly she turned about and reentered the store; she came back into the office, and stood trembling at the corner of Uncle Oelbermann’s desk. He looked up sharply. Twice Trina tried to get her voice, and when it did come to her, she could hardly recognize it. Between breaths she