McTeague, Frank Norris [polar express read aloud .txt] 📗

away from each other. Alexander stalked back to the corner of the street. The collie paced toward the side gate whence he had issued, affecting to remember something of great importance. They disappeared. Once out of sight of one another they began to bark furiously.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Trina in great disgust. “The way those two dogs have been carrying on you’d ’a’ thought they would ’a’ just torn each other to pieces when they had the chance, and here I’m wasting the whole morning⁠—” she closed her window with a bang.

“Sick ’im, sick ’im,” called Maria Macapa, in a vain attempt to promote a fight.

Old Miss Baker came out of the vestibule, pursing her lips, quite put out at the fiasco. “And after all that fuss,” she said to herself aggrievedly.

The little dressmaker bought an envelope of nasturtium seeds at the florist’s, and returned to her tiny room in the flat. But as she slowly mounted the first flight of steps she suddenly came face to face with Old Grannis, who was coming down. It was between eight and nine, and he was on his way to his little dog hospital, no doubt. Instantly Miss Baker was seized with trepidation, her curious little false curls shook, a faint⁠—a very faint⁠—flush came into her withered cheeks, and her heart beat so violently under the worsted shawl that she felt obliged to shift the market-basket to her other arm and put out her free hand to steady herself against the rail.

On his part, Old Grannis was instantly overwhelmed with confusion. His awkwardness seemed to paralyze his limbs, his lips twitched and turned dry, his hand went tremblingly to his chin. But what added to Miss Baker’s miserable embarrassment on this occasion was the fact that the old Englishman should meet her thus, carrying a sordid market-basket full of sordid fish and cabbage. It seemed as if a malicious fate persisted in bringing the two old people face to face at the most inopportune moments.

Just now, however, a veritable catastrophe occurred. The little old dressmaker changed her basket to her other arm at precisely the wrong moment, and Old Grannis, hastening to pass, removing his hat in a hurried salutation, struck it with his fore arm, knocking it from her grasp, and sending it rolling and bumping down the stairs. The sole fell flat upon the first landing; the lentils scattered themselves over the entire flight; while the cabbage, leaping from step to step, thundered down the incline and brought up against the street door with a shock that reverberated through the entire building.

The little retired dressmaker, horribly vexed, nervous and embarrassed, was hard put to it to keep back the tears. Old Grannis stood for a moment with averted eyes, murmuring: “Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. I⁠—I really⁠—I beg your pardon, really⁠—really.”

Marcus Schouler, coming downstairs from his room, saved the situation.

“Hello, people,” he cried. “By damn! you’ve upset your basket⁠—you have, for a fact. Here, let’s pick um up.” He and Old Grannis went up and down the flight, gathering up the fish, the lentils, and the sadly battered cabbage. Marcus was raging over the pusillanimity of Alexander, of which Maria had just told him.

“I’ll cut him in two⁠—with the whip,” he shouted. “I will, I will, I say I will, for a fact. He wouldn’t fight, hey? I’ll give um all the fight he wants, nasty, mangy cur. If he won’t fight he won’t eat. I’m going to get the butcher’s bull pup and I’ll put um both in a bag and shake um up. I will, for a fact, and I guess Alec will fight. Come along, Mister Grannis,” and he took the old Englishman away.

Little Miss Baker hastened to her room and locked herself in. She was excited and upset during all the rest of the day, and listened eagerly for Old Grannis’s return that evening. He went instantly to work binding up “The Breeder and Sportsman,” and back numbers of the “Nation.” She heard him softly draw his chair and the table on which he had placed his little binding apparatus close to the wall. At once she did the same, brewing herself a cup of tea. All through that evening the two old people “kept company” with each other, after their own peculiar fashion. “Setting out with each other” Miss Baker had begun to call it. That they had been presented, that they had even been forced to talk together, had made no change in their relative positions. Almost immediately they had fallen back into their old ways again, quite unable to master their timidity, to overcome the stifling embarrassment that seized upon them when in each other’s presence. It was a sort of hypnotism, a thing stronger than themselves. But they were not altogether dissatisfied with the way things had come to be. It was their little romance, their last, and they were living through it with supreme enjoyment and calm contentment.

Marcus Schouler still occupied his old room on the floor above the McTeagues. They saw but little of him, however. At long intervals the dentist or his wife met him on the stairs of the flat. Sometimes he would stop and talk with Trina, inquiring after the Sieppes, asking her if Mr. Sieppe had yet heard of anyone with whom he, Marcus, could “go in with on a ranch.” McTeague, Marcus merely nodded to. Never had the quarrel between the two men been completely patched up. It did not seem possible to the dentist now that Marcus had ever been his “pal,” that they had ever taken long walks together. He was sorry that he had treated Marcus gratis for an ulcerated tooth, while Marcus daily recalled the fact that he had given up his “girl” to his friend⁠—the girl who had won a fortune⁠—as the great mistake of his life. Only once since the wedding had he called upon Trina, at a time when he knew McTeague would be out. Trina had