McTeague by Frank Norris (leveled readers TXT) 📕

I got to do this. I got to work like a dray horse while she sits at home by her stove and counts her money⁠—and sells my concertina.”

Six o’clock came. Instead of supper, McTeague drank some more whiskey, five ponies in rapid succession. After supper he was obliged to go out with the dray to deliver a concert grand at the Odd Fellows’ Hall, where a piano “recital” was to take place.

“Ain’t you coming back with us?” asked one of the handlers as he climbed upon the driver’s seat after the piano had been put in place.

“No, no,” returned the dentist; “I got something else to do.” The brilliant lights of a saloon near the City Hall caught his eye. He decided he would have another drink of whiskey. It was about eight o’clock.

The following day was to be a fête day at the kindergarten, the Christmas and New Year festivals combined. All that afternoon the little two-story building on Pacific Street had been filled with a number of grand ladies of the Kindergarten Board, who were hanging up ropes of evergreen and sprays of holly, and arranging a great Christmas tree that stood in the centre of the ring in the schoolroom. The whole place was pervaded with a pungent, piney odor. Trina had been very busy since the early morning, coming and going at everybody’s call, now running down the street after another tack-hammer or a fresh supply of cranberries, now tying together the ropes of evergreen and passing them up to one of the grand ladies as she carefully balanced herself on a stepladder. By evening everything was in place. As the last grand lady left the school, she gave Trina an extra dollar for her work, and said:

“Now, if you’ll just tidy up here, Mrs. McTeague, I think that will be all. Sweep up the pine needles here⁠—you see they are all over the floor⁠—and look through all the rooms, and tidy up generally. Good night⁠—and a Happy New Year,” she cried pleasantly as she went out.

Trina put the dollar away in her trunk before she did anything else and cooked herself a bit of supper. Then she came downstairs again.

The kindergarten was not large. On the lower floor were but two rooms, the main schoolroom and another room, a cloakroom, very small, where the children hung their hats and coats. This cloakroom opened off the back of the main schoolroom. Trina cast a critical glance into both of these rooms. There had been a great deal of going and coming in them during the day, and she decided that the first thing to do would be to scrub the floors. She went up again to her room overhead and heated some water over her oil stove; then, re-descending, set to work vigorously.

By nine o’clock she had almost finished with the schoolroom. She was down on her hands and knees in the midst of a steaming muck of soapy water. On her feet were a pair of man’s shoes fastened with buckles; a dirty cotton gown, damp with the water, clung about her shapeless, stunted figure. From time to time she sat back on her heels to ease the strain of her position, and with one smoking hand, white and parboiled with the hot water, brushed her hair, already streaked with gray, out of her weazened, pale face and the corners of her mouth.

It was very quiet. A gas-jet without a globe lit up the place with a crude, raw light. The cat who lived on the premises, preferring to be dirty rather than to be wet, had got into the coal scuttle, and over its rim watched her sleepily with a long, complacent purr.

All at once he stopped purring, leaving an abrupt silence in the air like the sudden shutting off of a stream of water, while his eyes grew wide, two lambent disks of yellow in the heap of black fur.

“Who is there?” cried Trina, sitting back on her heels. In the stillness that succeeded, the water dripped from her hands with the steady tick of a clock. Then a brutal fist swung open the street door of the schoolroom and McTeague came in. He was drunk; not with that drunkenness which is stupid, maudlin, wavering on its feet, but with that which is alert, unnaturally intelligent, vicious, perfectly steady, deadly wicked. Trina only had to look once at him, and in an instant, with some strange sixth sense, born of the occasion, knew what she had to expect.

She jumped up and ran from him into the little cloakroom. She locked and bolted the door after her, and leaned her weight against it, panting and trembling, every nerve shrinking and quivering with the fear of him.

McTeague put his hand on the knob of the door outside and opened it, tearing off the lock and bolt guard, and sending her staggering across the room.

“Mac,” she cried to him, as he came in, speaking with horrid rapidity, cringing and holding out her hands, “Mac, listen. Wait a minute⁠—look here⁠—listen here. It wasn’t my fault. I’ll give you some money. You can come back. I’ll do anything you want. Won’t you just listen to me? Oh, don’t! I’ll scream. I can’t help it, you know. The people will hear.”

McTeague came towards her slowly, his immense feet dragging and grinding on the floor; his enormous fists, hard as wooden mallets, swinging at his sides. Trina backed from him to the corner of the room, cowering before him, holding her elbow crooked in front of her face, watching him with fearful intentness, ready to dodge.

“I want that money,” he said, pausing in front of her.

“What money?” cried Trina.

“I want that money. You got it⁠—that five thousand dollars. I want every nickel of it! You understand?”

“I haven’t it. It isn’t here. Uncle Oelbermann’s got it.”

“That’s a lie. He told me that you came and got it. You’ve had it long enough; now I want it. Do you hear?”

“Mac, I can’t give