She grew thin and meagre; her flesh clove tight to her small
skeleton; her small pale mouth and little uplifted chin grew to have a
certain feline eagerness of expression; her long, narrow eyes glistened
continually, as if they caught and held the glint of metal. One day as
she sat in her room, the empty brass match-box and the limp chamois bag
in her hands, she suddenly exclaimed:
"I could have forgiven him if he had only gone away and left me my
money. I could have--yes, I could have forgiven him even THIS"--she
looked at the stumps of her fingers. "But now," her teeth closed
tight and her eyes flashed,
"now--I'll--never--forgive--him--as-long--as--I--live."
The empty bag and the hollow, light match-box troubled her. Day after
day she took them from her trunk and wept over them as other women weep
over a dead baby's shoe. Her four hundred dollars were gone, were gone,
were gone. She would never see them again. She could plainly see her
husband spending her savings by handfuls; squandering her beautiful gold
pieces that she had been at such pains to polish with soap and ashes.
The thought filled her with an unspeakable anguish. She would wake at
night from a dream of McTeague revelling down her money, and ask of the
darkness, "How much did he spend to-day? How many of the gold pieces are
left? Has he broken either of the two twenty-dollar pieces yet? What did
he spend it for?"
The instant she was out of the hospital Trina had begun to save again,
but now it was with an eagerness that amounted at times to a veritable
frenzy.
Pages:
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421