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

you’ll only come back you can have all the money⁠—half of it. Oh, give me back my money. Give me back my money, and I’ll forgive you. You can leave me then if you want to. Oh, my money. Mac, Mac, you’ve gone for good. You don’t love me any more, and now I’m a beggar. My money’s gone, my husband’s gone, gone, gone, gone!”

Her grief was terrible. She dug her nails into her scalp, and clutching the heavy coils of her thick black hair tore it again and again. She struck her forehead with her clenched fists. Her little body shook from head to foot with the violence of her sobbing. She ground her small teeth together and beat her head upon the floor with all her strength.

Her hair was uncoiled and hanging a tangled, dishevelled mass far below her waist; her dress was torn; a spot of blood was upon her forehead; her eyes were swollen; her cheeks flamed vermilion from the fever that raged in her veins. Old Miss Baker found her thus towards five o’clock the next morning.

What had happened between one o’clock and dawn of that fearful night Trina never remembered. She could only recall herself, as in a picture, kneeling before her broken and rifled trunk, and then⁠—weeks later, so it seemed to her⁠—she woke to find herself in her own bed with an iced bandage about her forehead and the little old dressmaker at her side, stroking her hot, dry palm.

The facts of the matter were that the German woman who lived below had been awakened some hours after midnight by the sounds of Trina’s weeping. She had come upstairs and into the room to find Trina stretched face downward upon the floor, half-conscious and sobbing, in the throes of an hysteria for which there was no relief. The woman, terrified, had called her husband, and between them they had got Trina upon the bed. Then the German woman happened to remember that Trina had friends in the big flat near by, and had sent her husband to fetch the retired dressmaker, while she herself remained behind to undress Trina and put her to bed. Miss Baker had come over at once, and began to cry herself at the sight of the dentist’s poor little wife. She did not stop to ask what the trouble was, and indeed it would have been useless to attempt to get any coherent explanation from Trina at that time. Miss Baker had sent the German woman’s husband to get some ice at one of the “all-night” restaurants of the street; had kept cold, wet towels on Trina’s head; had combed and recombed her wonderful thick hair; and had sat down by the side of the bed, holding her hot hand, with its poor maimed fingers, waiting patiently until Trina should be able to speak.

Towards morning Trina awoke⁠—or perhaps it was a mere regaining of consciousness⁠—looked a moment at Miss Baker, then about the room until her eyes fell upon her trunk with its broken lock. Then she turned over upon the pillow and began to sob again. She refused to answer any of the little dressmaker’s questions, shaking her head violently, her face hidden in the pillow.

By breakfast time her fever had increased to such a point that Miss Baker took matters into her own hands and had the German woman call a doctor. He arrived some twenty minutes later. He was a big, kindly fellow who lived over the drug store on the corner. He had a deep voice and a tremendous striding gait less suggestive of a physician than of a sergeant of a cavalry troop.

By the time of his arrival little Miss Baker had divined intuitively the entire trouble. She heard the doctor’s swinging tramp in the entry below, and heard the German woman saying:

“Righd oop der stairs, at der back of der halle. Der room mit der door oppen.”

Miss Baker met the doctor at the landing, she told him in a whisper of the trouble.

“Her husband’s deserted her, I’m afraid, doctor, and took all of her money⁠—a good deal of it. It’s about killed the poor child. She was out of her head a good deal of the night, and now she’s got a raging fever.”

The doctor and Miss Baker returned to the room and entered, closing the door. The big doctor stood for a moment looking down at Trina rolling her head from side to side upon the pillow, her face scarlet, her enormous mane of hair spread out on either side of her. The little dressmaker remained at his elbow, looking from him to Trina.

“Poor little woman!” said the doctor; “poor little woman!”

Miss Baker pointed to the trunk, whispering:

“See, there’s where she kept her savings. See, he broke the lock.”

“Well, Mrs. McTeague,” said the doctor, sitting down by the bed, and taking Trina’s wrist, “a little fever, eh?”

Trina opened her eyes and looked at him, and then at Miss Baker. She did not seem in the least surprised at the unfamiliar faces. She appeared to consider it all as a matter of course.

“Yes,” she said, with a long, tremulous breath, “I have a fever, and my head⁠—my head aches and aches.”

The doctor prescribed rest and mild opiates. Then his eye fell upon the fingers of Trina’s right hand. He looked at them sharply. A deep red glow, unmistakable to a physician’s eyes, was upon some of them, extending from the finger tips up to the second knuckle.

“Hello,” he exclaimed, “what’s the matter here?” In fact something was very wrong indeed. For days Trina had noticed it. The fingers of her right hand had swollen as never before, aching and discolored. Cruelly lacerated by McTeague’s brutality as they were, she had nevertheless gone on about her work on the Noah’s ark animals, constantly in contact with the “nonpoisonous” paint. She told as much to the doctor in answer to his questions. He shook his head with an exclamation.

“Why, this is blood-poisoning, you know,”