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McTeague: A Story of San Francisco

by Frank Norris · English · Gutenberg #165 · 656,089 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: McTeague: A Story of San Francisco

Author: Frank Norris


        
Release date: March 12, 2006 [eBook #165]
                Most recently updated: March 11, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/165

Credits: Produced by Pauline J. Iacono and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MCTEAGUE: A STORY OF SAN FRANCISCO ***




Produced by Pauline J. Iacono and David Widger






McTEAGUE

A Story of San Francisco

by Frank Norris




CHAPTER 1

It was Sunday, and, according to his custom on that day, McTeague took
his dinner at two in the afternoon at the car conductors' coffee-joint
on Polk Street. He had a thick gray soup; heavy, underdone meat, very
hot, on a cold plate; two kinds of vegetables; and a sort of suet
pudding, full of strong butter and sugar. On his way back to his office,
one block above, he stopped at Joe Frenna's saloon and bought a pitcher
of steam beer. It was his habit to leave the pitcher there on his way to
dinner.

Once in his office, or, as he called it on his signboard, “Dental
Parlors,” he took off his coat and shoes, unbuttoned his vest, and,
having crammed his little stove full of coke, lay back in his operating
chair at the bay window, reading the paper, drinking his beer, and
smoking his huge porcelain pipe while his food digested; crop-full,
stupid, and warm. By and by, gorged with steam beer, and overcome by the
heat of the room, the cheap tobacco, and the effects of his heavy meal,
he dropped off to sleep. Late in the afternoon his canary bird, in its
gilt cage just over his head, began to sing. He woke slowly, finished
the rest of his beer--very flat and stale by this time--and taking down
his concertina from the bookcase, where in week days it kept the company
of seven volumes of “Allen's Practical Dentist,” played upon it some
half-dozen very mournful airs.

McTeague looked forward to these Sunday afternoons as a period of
relaxation and enjoyment. He invariably spent them in the same fashion.
These were his only pleasures--to eat, to smoke, to sleep, and to play
upon his concertina.

The six lugubrious airs that he knew, always carried him back to the
time when he was a car-boy at the Big Dipper Mine in Placer County, ten
years before. He remembered the years he had spent there trundling the
heavy cars of ore in and out of the tunnel under the direction of his
father. For thirteen days of each fortnight his father was a steady,
hard-working shift-boss of the mine. Every other Sunday he became an
irresponsible animal, a beast, a brute, crazy with alcohol.

McTeague remembered his mother, too, who, with the help of the Chinaman,
cooked for forty miners. She was an overworked drudge, fiery and
energetic for all that, filled with the one idea of having her son rise
in life and enter a profession. The chance had come at last when the
father died, corroded with alcohol, collapsing in a few hours. Two or
three years later a travelling dentist visited the mine and put up his
tent near the bunk-house. He was more or less of a charlatan, but he
fired Mrs. McTeague's ambition, and young McTeague went away with him
to learn his profession. He had learnt it after a fashion, mostly by
watching the charlatan operate. He had read many of the necessary books,
but he was too hopelessly stupid to get much benefit from them.

Then one day at San Francisco had come the news of his mother's death;
she had left him some money--not much, but enough to set him up in
business; so he had cut loose from the charlatan and had opened his
“Dental Parlors” on Polk Street, an “accommodation street” of small
shops in the residence quarter of the town. Here he had slowly
collected a clientele of butcher boys, shop girls, drug clerks, and car
conductors. He made but few acquaintances. Polk Street called him the
“Doctor” and spoke of his enormous strength. For McTeague was a young
giant, carrying his huge shock of blond hair six feet three inches
from the ground; moving his immense limbs, heavy with ropes of muscle,
slowly, ponderously. His hands were enormous, red, and covered with a
fell of stiff yellow hair; they were hard as wooden mallets, strong
as vises, the hands of the old-time car-boy. Often he dispensed with
forceps and extracted a refractory tooth with his thumb and finger.
His head was square-cut, angular; the jaw salient, like that of the
carnivora.

McTeague's mind was as his body, heavy, slow to act, sluggish. Yet there
was nothing vicious about the man. Altogether he suggested the draught
horse, immensely strong, stupid, docile, obedient.

When he opened his “Dental Parlors,” he felt that his life was a
success, that he could hope for nothing better. In spite of the name,
there was but one room. It was a corner room on the second floor over
the branch post-office, and faced the street. McTeague made it do for
a bedroom as well, sleeping on the big bed-lounge against the wall
opposite the window. There was a washstand behind the screen in the
corner where he manufactured his moulds. In the round bay window were
his operating chair, his dental engine, and the movable rack on which
he laid out his instruments. Three chairs, a bargain at the second-hand
store, ranged themselves against the wall with military precision
underneath a steel engraving of the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, which
he had bought because there were a great many figures in it for the
money. Over the bed-lounge hung a rifle manufacturer's advertisement
calendar which he never used. The other ornaments were a small
marble-topped centre table covered with back numbers of “The American
System of Dentistry,” a stone pug dog sitting before the little stove,
and a thermometer. A stand of shelves occupied one corner, filled with
the seven volumes of “Allen's Practical Dentist.” On the top shelf
McTeague kept his concertina and a bag of bird seed for the canary. The
whole place exhaled a mingled odor of bedding, creosote, and ether.

But for one thing, McTeague would have been perfectly contented. Just
outside his window was his signboard--a modest affair--that read:
“Doctor McTeague. Dental Parlors. Gas Given”; but that was all. It was
his ambition, his dream, to have projecting from that corner window a
huge gilded tooth, a molar with enormous prongs, something gorgeous and
attractive. He would have it some day, on that he was resolved; but as
yet such a thing was far beyond his means.

When he had finished the last of his beer, McTeague slowly wiped his
lips and huge yellow mustache with the side of his hand. Bull-like, he
heaved himself laboriously up, and, going to the window, stood looking
down into the street.

The street never failed to interest him. It was one of those cross
streets peculiar to Western cities, situated in the heart of the
residence quarter, but occupied by small tradespeople who lived in the
rooms above their shops. There were corner drug stores with huge jars
of red, yellow, and green liquids in their windows, very brave and gay;
stationers' stores, where illustrated weeklies were tacked upon bulletin
boards; barber shops with cigar stands in their vestibules; sad-looking
plumbers' offices; cheap restaurants, in whose windows one saw piles of
unopened oysters weighted down by cubes of ice, and china pigs and cows
knee deep in layers of white beans. At one end of the street McTeague
could see the huge power-house of the cable line. Immediately opposite
him was a great market; while farther on, over the chimney stacks of the
intervening houses, the glass roof of some huge public baths glittered
like crystal in the afternoon sun. Underneath him the branch post-office
was opening its doors, as was its custom between two and three
o'clock on Sunday afternoons. An acrid odor of ink rose upward to him.
Occasionally a cable car passed, trundling heavily, with a strident
whirring of jostled glass windows.

On week days the street was very lively. It woke to its work about seven
o'clock, at the time when the newsboys made their appearance together
with the day laborers. The laborers went trudging past in a straggling
file--plumbers' apprentices, their pockets stuffed with sections of
lead pipe, tweezers, and pliers; carpenters, carrying nothing but their
little pasteboard lunch baskets painted to imitate leather; gangs of
street workers, their overalls soiled with yellow clay, their picks and
long-handled shovels over their shoulders; plasterers, spotted with lime
from head to foot. This little army of workers, tramping steadily in
one direction, met and mingled with other toilers of a different
description--conductors and “swing men” of the cable company going on
duty; heavy-eyed night clerks from the drug stores on their way home to
sleep; roundsmen returning to the precinct police station to make their
night report, and Chinese market gardeners teetering past under their
heavy baskets. The cable cars began to fill up; all along the street
could be seen the shopkeepers taking down their shutters.

Between seven and eight the street breakfasted. Now and then a waiter
from one of the cheap restaurants crossed from one sidewalk to the
other, balancing on one palm a tray covered with a napkin. Everywhere
was the smell of coffee and of frying steaks. A little later, following
in the path of the day laborers, came the clerks and shop girls,
dressed with a certain cheap smartness, always in a hurry, glancing
apprehensively at the power-house clock. Their employers followed
an hour or so later--on the cable cars for the most part whiskered
gentlemen with huge stomachs, reading the morning papers with great
gravity; bank cashiers and insurance clerks with flowers in their
buttonholes.

At the same time the school children invaded the street, filling the air
with a clamor of shrill voices, stopping at the stationers' shops, or
idling a moment in the doorways of the candy stores. For over half an
hour they held possession of the sidewalks, then suddenly disappeared,
leaving behind one or two stragglers who hurried along with great
strides of their little thin legs, very anxious and preoccupied.

Towards eleven o'clock the ladies from the great avenue a block above
Polk Street made their appearance, promenading the sidewalks leisurely,
deliberately. They were at their morning's marketing. They were handsome
women, beautifully dressed. They knew by name their butchers and grocers
and vegetable men. From his window McTeague saw them in front of the
stalls, gloved and veiled and daintily shod, the subservient provision
men at their elbows, scribbling hastily in the order books. They all
seemed to know one another, these grand ladies from the fashionable
avenue. Meetings took place here and there; a conversation was begun;
others arrived; groups were formed; little impromptu receptions were
held before the chopping blocks of butchers' stalls, or on the sidewalk,
around boxes of berries and fruit.

From noon to evening the population of the street was of a mixed
character. The street was busiest at that time; a vast and prolonged
murmur arose--the mingled shuffling of feet, the rattle of wheels, the
heavy trundling of cable cars. At four o'clock the school children
once more swarmed the sidewalks, again disappearing with surprising
suddenness. At six the great homeward march commenced; the cars were
crowded, the laborers thronged the sidewalks, the newsboys chanted the
evening papers. Then all at once the street fell quiet; hardly a soul
was in sight; the sidewalks were deserted. It was supper hour. Evening
began; and one by one a multitude of lights, from the demoniac glare of
the druggists' windows to the dazzling blue whiteness of the electric
globes, grew thick from street corner to street corner. Once more the
street was crowded. Now there was no thought but for amusement. The
cable cars were loaded with theatre-goers--men in high hats and
young girls in furred opera cloaks. On the sidewalks were groups and
couples--the plumbers' apprentices, the girls of the ribbon counters,
the little families that lived on the second stories over their shops,
the dressmakers, the small doctors, the harness-makers--all the various
inhabitants of the street were abroad, strolling idly from shop window
to shop window, taking the air after the day's work. Groups of girls
collected on the corners, talking and laughing very loud, making remarks
upon the young men that passed them. The tamale men appeared. A band of
Salvationists began to sing before a saloon.

Then, little by little, Polk Street dropped back to solitude. Eleven
o'clock struck from the power-house clock. Lights were extinguished. At
one o'clock the cable stopped, leaving an abrupt silence in the air.
All at once it seemed very still. The ugly noises were the occasional
footfalls of a policeman and the persistent calling of ducks and geese
in the closed market. The street was asleep.

Day after day, McTeague saw the same panorama unroll itself. The bay
window of his “Dental Parlors” was for him a point of vantage from which
he watched the world go past.

On Sundays, however, all was changed. As he stood in the bay window,
after finishing his beer, wiping his lips, and looking out into the
street, McTeague was conscious of the difference. Nearly all the stores
were closed. No wagons passed. A few people hurried up and down the
sidewalks, dressed in cheap Sunday finery. A cable car went by; on the
outside seats were a party of returning picnickers. The mother, the
father, a young man, and a young girl, and three children. The two older
people held empty lunch baskets in their laps, while the bands of the
children's hats were stuck full of oak leaves. The girl carried a huge
bunch of wilting poppies and wild flowers.

As the car approached McTeague's window the young man got up and swung
himself off the platform, waving goodby to the party. Suddenly McTeague
recognized him.

“There's Marcus Schouler,” he muttered behind his mustache.

Marcus Schouler was the dentist's one intimate friend. The acquaintance
had begun at the car conductors' coffee-joint, where the two occupied
the same table and met at every meal. Then they made the discovery that
they both lived in the same flat, Marcus occupying a room on the floor
above McTeague. On different occasions McTeague had treated Marcus for
an ulcerated tooth and had refused to accept payment. Soon it came to be
an understood thing between them. They were “pals.”

McTeague, listening, heard Marcus go up-stairs to his room above. In a
few minutes his door opened again. McTeague knew that he had come out
into the hall and was leaning over the banisters.

“Oh, Mac!” he called. McTeague came to his door.

“Hullo! 'sthat you, Mark?”

“Sure,” answered Marcus. “Come on up.”

“You come on down.”

“No, come on up.”

“Oh, you come on down.”

“Oh, you lazy duck!” retorted Marcus, coming down the stairs.

“Been out to the Cliff House on a picnic,” he explained as he sat down
on the bed-lounge, “with my uncle and his people--the Sieppes, you know.
By damn! it was hot,” he suddenly vociferated. “Just look at that! Just
look at that!” he cried, dragging at his limp collar. “That's the third
one since morning; it is--it is, for a fact--and you got your stove
going.” He began to tell about the picnic, talking very loud and fast,
gesturing furiously, very excited over trivial details. Marcus could not
talk without getting excited.

“You ought t'have seen, y'ought t'have seen. I tell you, it was outa
sight. It was; it was, for a fact.”

“Yes, yes,” answered McTeague, bewildered, trying to follow. “Yes,
that's so.”

In recounting a certain dispute with an awkward bicyclist, in which it
appeared he had become involved, Marcus quivered with rage. “'Say that
again,' says I to um. 'Just say that once more, and'”--here a rolling
explosion of oaths--“'you'll go back to the city in the Morgue wagon.
Ain't I got a right to cross a street even, I'd like to know, without
being run down--what?' I say it's outrageous. I'd a knifed him in
another minute. It was an outrage. I say it was an OUTRAGE.”

“Sure it was,” McTeague hastened to reply. “Sure, sure.”

“Oh, and we had an accident,” shouted the other, suddenly off on another
tack. “It was awful. Trina was in the swing there--that's my cousin
Trina, you know who I mean--and she fell out. By damn! I thought she'd
killed herself; struck her face on a rock and knocked out a front tooth.
It's a wonder she didn't kill herself. It IS a wonder; it is, for a
fact. Ain't it, now? Huh? Ain't it? Y'ought t'have seen.”

McTeague had a vague idea that Marcus Schouler was stuck on his cousin
Trina. They “kept company” a good deal; Marcus took dinner with the
Sieppes every Saturday evening at their home at B Street station, across
the bay, and Sunday afternoons he and the family usually made little
excursions into the suburbs. McTeague began to wonder dimly how it
was that on this occasion Marcus had not gone home with his cousin. As
sometimes happens, Marcus furnished the explanation upon the instant.

“I promised a duck up here on the avenue I'd call for his dog at four
this afternoon.”

Marcus was Old Grannis's assistant in a little dog hospital that the
latter had opened in a sort of alley just off Polk Street, some four
blocks above Old Grannis lived in one of the back rooms of McTeague's
flat. He was an Englishman and an expert dog surgeon, but Marcus
Schouler was a bungler in the profession. His father had been a
veterinary surgeon who had kept a livery stable near by, on California
Street, and Marcus's knowledge of the diseases of domestic animals had
been picked up in a haphazard way, much after the manner of McTeague's
education. Somehow he managed to impress Old Grannis, a gentle,
simple-minded old man, with a sense of his fitness, bewildering him with
a torrent of empty phrases that he delivered with fierce gestures and
with a manner of the greatest conviction.

“You'd better come along with me, Mac,” observed Marcus. “We'll get the
duck's dog, and then we'll take a little walk, huh? You got nothun to
do. Come along.”

McTeague went out with him, and the two friends proceeded up to the
avenue to the house where the dog was to be found. It was a huge
mansion-like place, set in an enormous garden that occupied a whole
third of the block; and while Marcus tramped up the front steps and rang
the doorbell boldly, to show his independence, McTeague remained below
on the sidewalk, gazing stupidly at the curtained windows, the marble
steps, and the bronze griffins, troubled and a little confused by all
this massive luxury.

After they had taken the dog to the hospital and had left him to whimper
behind the wire netting, they returned to Polk Street and had a glass of
beer in the back room of Joe Frenna's corner grocery.

Ever since they had left the huge mansion on the avenue, Marcus had been
attacking the capitalists, a class which he pretended to execrate. It
was a pose which he often assumed, certain of impressing the dentist.
Marcus had picked up a few half-truths of political economy--it was
impossible to say where--and as soon as the two had settled themselves
to their beer in Frenna's back room he took up the theme of the labor
question. He discussed it at the top of his voice, vociferating, shaking
his fists, exciting himself with his own noise. He was continually
making use of the stock phrases of the professional politician--phrases
he had caught at some of the ward “rallies” and “ratification meetings.”
 These rolled off his tongue with incredible emphasis, appearing at every
turn of his conversation--“Outraged constituencies,” “cause of labor,”
 “wage earners,” “opinions biased by personal interests,” “eyes blinded
by party prejudice.” McTeague listened to him, awestruck.

“There's where the evil lies,” Marcus would cry. “The masses must learn
self-control; it stands to reason. Look at the figures, look at the
figures. Decrease the number of wage earners and you increase wages,
don't you? don't you?”

Absolutely stupid, and understanding never a word, McTeague would
answer:

“Yes, yes, that's it--self-control--that's the word.”

“It's the capitalists that's ruining the cause of labor,” shouted
Marcus, banging the table with his fist till the beer glasses danced;
“white-livered drones, traitors, with their livers white as snow, eatun
the bread of widows and orphuns; there's where the evil lies.”

Stupefied with his clamor, McTeague answered, wagging his head:

“Yes, that's it; I think it's their livers.”

Suddenly Marcus fell calm again, forgetting his pose all in an instant.

“Say, Mac, I told my cousin Trina to come round and see you about that
tooth of her's. She'll be in to-morrow, I guess.”



CHAPTER 2


After his breakfast the following Monday morning, McTeague looked over
the appointments he had written down in the book-slate that hung against
the screen. His writing was immense, very clumsy, and very round, with
huge, full-bellied l's and h's. He saw that he had made an appointment
at one o'clock for Miss Baker, the retired dressmaker, a little old maid
who had a tiny room a few doors down the hall. It adjoined that of Old
Grannis.

Quite an affair had arisen from this circumstance. Miss Baker and Old
Grannis were both over sixty, and yet it was current talk amongst
the lodgers of the flat that the two were in love with each other.
Singularly enough, they were not even acquaintances; never a word had
passed between them. At intervals they met on the stairway; he on his
way to his little dog hospital, she returning from a bit of marketing
in the street. At such times they passed each other with averted
eyes, pretending a certain preoccupation, suddenly seized with a great
embarrassment, the timidity of a second childhood. He went on about his
business, disturbed and thoughtful. She hurried up to her tiny room,
her curious little false curls shaking with her agitation, the faintest
suggestion of a flush coming and going in her withered cheeks. The
emotion of one of these chance meetings remained with them during all
the rest of the day.

Was it the first romance in the lives of each? Did Old Grannis ever
remember a certain face amongst those that he had known when he was
young Grannis--the face of some pale-haired girl, such as one sees in
the old cathedral towns of England? Did Miss Baker still treasure up
in a seldom opened drawer or box some faded daguerreotype, some strange
old-fashioned likeness, with its curling hair and high stock? It was
impossible to say.

Maria Macapa, the Mexican woman who took care of the lodgers' rooms, had
been the first to call the flat's attention to the affair, spreading the
news of it from room to room, from floor to floor. Of late she had made
a great discovery; all the women folk of the flat were yet vibrant with
it. Old Grannis came home from his work at four o'clock, and between
that time and six Miss Baker would sit in her room, her hands idle in
her lap, doing nothing, listening, waiting. Old Grannis did the same,
drawing his arm-chair near to the wall, knowing that Miss Baker was upon
the other side, conscious, perhaps, that she was thinking of him; and
there the two would sit through the hours of the afternoon, listening
and waiting, they did not know exactly for what, but near to each other,
separated only by the thin partition of their rooms. They had come
to know each other's habits. Old Grannis knew that at quarter of five
precisely Miss Baker made a cup of tea over the oil stove on the stand
between the bureau and the window. Miss Baker felt instinctively the
exact moment when Old Grannis took down his little binding apparatus
from the second shelf of his clothes closet and began his favorite
occupation of binding pamphlets--pamphlets that he never read, for all
that.

In his “Parlors” McTeague began his week's work. He glanced in the glass
saucer in which he kept his sponge-gold, and noticing that he had
used up all his pellets, set about making some more. In examining Miss
Baker's teeth at the preliminary sitting he had found a cavity in one
of the incisors. Miss Baker had decided to have it filled with gold.
McTeague remembered now that it was what is called a “proximate case,”
 where there is not sufficient room to fill with large pieces of gold. He
told himself that he should have to use “mats” in the filling. He made
some dozen of these “mats” from his tape of non-cohesive gold, cutting
it transversely into small pieces that could be inserted edgewise
between the teeth and consolidated by packing. After he had made his
“mats” he continued with the other kind of gold fillings, such as he
would have occasion to use during the week; “blocks” to be used in large
proximal cavities, made by folding the tape on itself a number of
times and then shaping it with the soldering pliers; “cylinders” for
commencing fillings, which he formed by rolling the tape around a needle
called a “broach,” cutting it afterwards into different lengths. He
worked slowly, mechanically, turning the foil between his fingers with
the manual dexterity that one sometimes sees in stupid persons. His head
was quite empty of all thought, and he did not whistle over his work
as another man might have done. The canary made up for his silence,
trilling and chittering continually, splashing about in its morning
bath, keeping up an incessant noise and movement that would have been
maddening to any one but McTeague, who seemed to have no nerves at all.

After he had finished his fillings, he made a hook broach from a bit of
piano wire to replace an old one that he had lost. It was time for his
dinner then, and when he returned from the car conductors' coffee-joint,
he found Miss Baker waiting for him.

The ancient little dressmaker was at all times willing to talk of Old
Grannis to anybody that would listen, quite unconscious of the gossip
of the flat. McTeague found her all a-flutter with excitement. Something
extraordinary had happened. She had found out that the wall-paper in Old
Grannis's room was the same as that in hers.

“It has led me to thinking, Doctor McTeague,” she exclaimed, shaking her
little false curls at him. “You know my room is so small, anyhow, and
the wall-paper being the same--the pattern from my room continues right
into his--I declare, I believe at one time that was all one room. Think
of it, do you suppose it was? It almost amounts to our occupying the
same room. I don't know--why, really--do you think I should speak to the
landlady about it? He bound pamphlets last night until half-past nine.
They say that he's the younger son of a baronet; that there are reasons
for his not coming to the title; his stepfather wronged him cruelly.”

No one had ever said such a thing. It was preposterous to imagine any
mystery connected with Old Grannis. Miss Baker had chosen to invent the
little fiction, had created the title and the unjust stepfather from
some dim memories of the novels of her girlhood.

She took her place in the operating chair. McTeague began the filling.
There was a long silence. It was impossible for McTeague to work and
talk at the same time.

He was just burnishing the last “mat” in Miss Baker's tooth, when the
door of the “Parlors” opened, jangling the bell which he had hung over
it, and which was absolutely unnecessary. McTeague turned, one foot on
the pedal of his dental engine, the corundum disk whirling between his
fingers.

It was Marcus Schouler who came in, ushering a young girl of about
twenty.

“Hello, Mac,” exclaimed Marcus; “busy? Brought my cousin round about
that broken tooth.”

McTeague nodded his head gravely.

“In a minute,” he answered.

Marcus and his cousin Trina sat down in the rigid chairs underneath the
steel engraving of the Court of Lorenzo de' Medici. They began talking
in low tones. The girl looked about the room, noticing the stone pug
dog, the rifle manufacturer's calendar, the canary in its little gilt
prison, and the tumbled blankets on the unmade bed-lounge against
the wall. Marcus began telling her about McTeague. “We're pals,” he
explained, just above a whisper. “Ah, Mac's all right, you bet. Say,
Trina, he's the strongest duck you ever saw. What do you suppose? He can
pull out your teeth with his fingers; yes, he can. What do you think of
that? With his fingers, mind you; he can, for a fact. Get on to the size
of him, anyhow. Ah, Mac's all right!”

Maria Macapa had come into the room while he had been speaking. She was
making up McTeague's bed. Suddenly Marcus exclaimed under his breath:
“Now we'll have some fun. It's the girl that takes care of the rooms.
She's a greaser, and she's queer in the head. She ain't regularly crazy,
but I don't know, she's queer. Y'ought to hear her go on about a gold
dinner service she says her folks used to own. Ask her what her name is
and see what she'll say.” Trina shrank back, a little frightened.

“No, you ask,” she whispered.

“Ah, go on; what you 'fraid of?” urged Marcus. Trina shook her head
energetically, shutting her lips together.

“Well, listen here,” answered Marcus, nudging her; then raising his
voice, he said:

“How do, Maria?” Maria nodded to him over her shoulder as she bent over
the lounge.

“Workun hard nowadays, Maria?”

“Pretty hard.”

“Didunt always have to work for your living, though, did you, when you
ate offa gold dishes?” Maria didn't answer, except by putting her chin
in the air and shutting her eyes, as though to say she knew a long story
about that if she had a mind to talk. All Marcus's efforts to draw her
out on the subject were unavailing. She only responded by movements of
her head.

“Can't always start her going,” Marcus told his cousin.

“What does she do, though, when you ask her about her name?”

“Oh, sure,” said Marcus, who had forgotten. “Say, Maria, what's your
name?”

“Huh?” asked Maria, straightening up, her hands on he hips.

“Tell us your name,” repeated Marcus.

“Name is Maria--Miranda--Macapa.” Then, after a pause, she added, as
though she had but that moment thought of it, “Had a flying squirrel an'
let him go.”

Invariably Maria Macapa made this answer. It was not always she would
talk about the famous service of gold plate, but a question as to her
name never failed to elicit the same strange answer, delivered in a
rapid undertone: “Name is Maria--Miranda--Macapa.” Then, as if struck
with an after thought, “Had a flying squirrel an' let him go.”

Why Maria should associate the release of the mythical squirrel with
her name could not be said. About Maria the flat knew absolutely nothing
further than that she was Spanish-American. Miss Baker was the oldest
lodger in the flat, and Maria was a fixture there as maid of all work
when she had come. There was a legend to the effect that Maria's people
had been at one time immensely wealthy in Central America.

Maria turned again to her work. Trina and Marcus watched her curiously.
There was a silence. The corundum burr in McTeague's engine hummed in a
prolonged monotone. The canary bird chittered occasionally. The room was
warm, and the breathing of the five people in the narrow space made the
air close and thick. At long intervals an acrid odor of ink floated up
from the branch post-office immediately below.

Maria Macapa finished her work and started to leave. As she passed near
Marcus and his cousin she stopped, and drew a bunch of blue tickets
furtively from her pocket. “Buy a ticket in the lottery?” she inquired,
looking at the girl. “Just a dollar.”

“Go along with you, Maria,” said Marcus, who had but thirty cents in his
pocket. “Go along; it's against the law.”

“Buy a ticket,” urged Maria, thrusting the bundle toward Trina. “Try
your luck. The butcher on the next block won twenty dollars the last
drawing.”

Very uneasy, Trina bought a ticket for the sake of being rid of her.
Maria disappeared.

“Ain't she a queer bird?” muttered Marcus. He was much embarrassed and
disturbed because he had not bought the ticket for Trina.

But there was a sudden movement. McTeague had just finished with Miss
Baker.

“You should notice,” the dressmaker said to the dentist, in a low voice,
“he always leaves the door a little ajar in the afternoon.” When she had
gone out, Marcus Schouler brought Trina forward.

“Say, Mac, this is my cousin, Trina Sieppe.” The two shook hands dumbly,
McTeague slowly nodding his huge head with its great shock of yellow
hair. Trina was very small and prettily made. Her face was round and
rather pale; her eyes long and narrow and blue, like the half-open eyes
of a little baby; her lips and the lobes of her tiny ears were pale, a
little suggestive of anaemia; while across the bridge of her nose ran
an adorable little line of freckles. But it was to her hair that one's
attention was most attracted. Heaps and heaps of blue-black coils and
braids, a royal crown of swarthy bands, a veritable sable tiara, heavy,
abundant, odorous. All the vitality that should have given color to her
face seemed to have been absorbed by this marvellous hair. It was
the coiffure of a queen that shadowed the pale temples of this little
bourgeoise. So heavy was it that it tipped her head backward, and
the position thrust her chin out a little. It was a charming poise,
innocent, confiding, almost infantile.

She was dressed all in black, very modest and plain. The effect of her
pale face in all this contrasting black was almost monastic.

“Well,” exclaimed Marcus suddenly, “I got to go. Must get back to work.
Don't hurt her too much, Mac. S'long, Trina.”

McTeague and Trina were left alone. He was embarrassed, troubled.
These young girls disturbed and perplexed him. He did not like
them, obstinately cherishing that intuitive suspicion of all things
feminine--the perverse dislike of an overgrown boy. On the other hand,
she was perfectly at her ease; doubtless the woman in her was not yet
awakened; she was yet, as one might say, without sex. She was almost
like a boy, frank, candid, unreserved.

She took her place in the operating chair and told him what was the
matter, looking squarely into his face. She had fallen out of a swing
the afternoon of the preceding day; one of her teeth had been knocked
loose and the other altogether broken out.

McTeague listened to her with apparent stolidity, nodding his head from
time to time as she spoke. The keenness of his dislike of her as a woman
began to be blunted. He thought she was rather pretty, that he even
liked her because she was so small, so prettily made, so good natured
and straightforward.

“Let's have a look at your teeth,” he said, picking up his mirror. “You
better take your hat off.” She leaned back in her chair and opened her
mouth, showing the rows of little round teeth, as white and even as the
kernels on an ear of green corn, except where an ugly gap came at the
side.

McTeague put the mirror into her mouth, touching one and another of her
teeth with the handle of an excavator. By and by he straightened up,
wiping the moisture from the mirror on his coat-sleeve.

“Well, Doctor,” said the girl, anxiously, “it's a dreadful
disfigurement, isn't it?” adding, “What can you do about it?”

“Well,” answered McTeague, slowly, looking vaguely about on the floor of
the room, “the roots of the broken tooth are still in the gum; they'll
have to come out, and I guess I'll have to pull that other bicuspid. Let
me look again. Yes,” he went on in a moment, peering into her mouth
with the mirror, “I guess that'll have to come out, too.” The tooth was
loose, discolored, and evidently dead. “It's a curious case,” McTeague
went on. “I don't know as I ever had a tooth like that before. It's
what's called necrosis. It don't often happen. It'll have to come out
sure.”

Then a discussion was opened on the subject, Trina sitting up in the
chair, holding her hat in her lap; McTeague leaning against the window
frame his hands in his pockets, his eyes wandering about on the floor.
Trina did not want the other tooth removed; one hole like that was bad
enough; but two--ah, no, it was not to be thought of.

But McTeague reasoned with her, tried in vain to make her understand
that there was no vascular connection between the root and the gum.
Trina was blindly persistent, with the persistency of a girl who has
made up her mind.

McTeague began to like her better and better, and after a while
commenced himself to feel that it would be a pity to disfigure such
a pretty mouth. He became interested; perhaps he could do something,
something in the way of a crown or bridge. “Let's look at that again,”
 he said, picking up his mirror. He began to study the situation very
carefully, really desiring to remedy the blemish.

It was the first bicuspid that was missing, and though part of the root
of the second (the loose one) would remain after its extraction, he was
sure it would not be strong enough to sustain a crown. All at once
he grew obstinate, resolving, with all the strength of a crude and
primitive man, to conquer the difficulty in spite of everything. He
turned over in his mind the technicalities of the case. No, evidently
the root was not strong enough to sustain a crown; besides that, it was
placed a little irregularly in the arch. But, fortunately, there were
cavities in the two teeth on either side of the gap--one in the first
molar and one in the palatine surface of the cuspid; might he not drill
a socket in the remaining root and sockets in the molar and cuspid, and,
partly by bridging, partly by crowning, fill in the gap? He made up his
mind to do it.

Why he should pledge himself to this hazardous case McTeague was puzzled
to know. With most of his clients he would have contented himself with
the extraction of the loose tooth and the roots of the broken one. Why
should he risk his reputation in this case? He could not say why.

It was the most difficult operation he had ever performed. He bungled
it considerably, but in the end he succeeded passably well. He extracted
the loose tooth with his bayonet forceps and prepared the roots of the
broken one as if for filling, fitting into them a flattened piece of
platinum wire to serve as a dowel. But this was only the beginning;
altogether it was a fortnight's work. Trina came nearly every other day,
and passed two, and even three, hours in the chair.

By degrees McTeague's first awkwardness and suspicion vanished entirely.
The two became good friends. McTeague even arrived at that point where
he could work and talk to her at the same time--a thing that had never
before been possible for him.

Never until then had McTeague become so well acquainted with a girl of
Trina's age. The younger women of Polk Street--the shop girls, the
young women of the soda fountains, the waitresses in the cheap
restaurants--preferred another dentist, a young fellow just graduated
from the college, a poser, a rider of bicycles, a man about town, who
wore astonishing waistcoats and bet money on greyhound coursing. Trina
was McTeague's first experience. With her the feminine element suddenly
entered his little world. It was not only her that he saw and felt,
it was the woman, the whole sex, an entire new humanity, strange and
alluring, that he seemed to have discovered. How had he ignored it so
long? It was dazzling, delicious, charming beyond all words. His narrow
point of view was at once enlarged and confused, and all at once he
saw that there was something else in life besides concertinas and steam
beer. Everything had to be made over again. His whole rude idea of
life had to be changed. The male virile desire in him tardily awakened,
aroused itself, strong and brutal. It was resistless, untrained, a thing
not to be held in leash an instant.

Little by little, by gradual, almost imperceptible degrees, the thought
of Trina Sieppe occupied his mind from day to day, from hour to hour.
He found himself thinking of her constantly; at every instant he saw
her round, pale face; her narrow, milk-blue eyes; her little out-thrust
chin; her heavy, huge tiara of black hair. At night he lay awake for
hours under the thick blankets of the bed-lounge, staring upward
into the darkness, tormented with the idea of her, exasperated at the
delicate, subtle mesh in which he found himself entangled. During the
forenoons, while he went about his work, he thought of her. As he made
his plaster-of-paris moulds at the washstand in the corner behind the
screen he turned over in his mind all that had happened, all that
had been said at the previous sitting. Her little tooth that he had
extracted he kept wrapped in a bit of newspaper in his vest pocket.
Often he took it out and held it in the palm of his immense, horny hand,
seized with some strange elephantine sentiment, wagging his head at it,
heaving tremendous sighs. What a folly!

At two o'clock on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays Trina arrived and
took her place in the operating chair. While at his work McTeague was
every minute obliged to bend closely over her; his hands touched her
face, her cheeks, her adorable little chin; her lips pressed against his
fingers. She breathed warmly on his forehead and on his eyelids,
while the odor of her hair, a charming feminine perfume, sweet, heavy,
enervating, came to his nostrils, so penetrating, so delicious, that his
flesh pricked and tingled with it; a veritable sensation of faintness
passed over this huge, callous fellow, with his enormous bones and
corded muscles. He drew a short breath through his nose; his jaws
suddenly gripped together vise-like.

But this was only at times--a strange, vexing spasm, that subsided
almost immediately. For the most part, McTeague enjoyed the pleasure of
these sittings with Trina with a certain strong calmness, blindly happy
that she was there. This poor crude dentist of Polk Street, stupid,
ignorant, vulgar, with his sham education and plebeian tastes, whose
only relaxations were to eat, to drink steam beer, and to play upon his
concertina, was living through his first romance, his first idyl. It
was delightful. The long hours he passed alone with Trina in the “Dental
Parlors,” silent, only for the scraping of the instruments and the
pouring of bud-burrs in the engine, in the foul atmosphere, overheated
by the little stove and heavy with the smell of ether, creosote, and
stale bedding, had all the charm of secret appointments and stolen
meetings under the moon.

By degrees the operation progressed. One day, just after McTeague had
put in the temporary gutta-percha fillings and nothing more could be
done at that sitting, Trina asked him to examine the rest of her teeth.
They were perfect, with one exception--a spot of white caries on the
lateral surface of an incisor. McTeague filled it with gold, enlarging
the cavity with hard-bits and hoe-excavators, and burring in afterward
with half-cone burrs. The cavity was deep, and Trina began to wince and
moan. To hurt Trina was a positive anguish for McTeague, yet an anguish
which he was obliged to endure at every hour of the sitting. It was
harrowing--he sweated under it--to be forced to torture her, of all
women in the world; could anything be worse than that?

“Hurt?” he inquired, anxiously.

She answered by frowning, with a sharp intake of breath, putting her
fingers over her closed lips and nodding her head. McTeague sprayed the
tooth with glycerite of tannin, but without effect. Rather than hurt her
he found himself forced to the use of anaesthesia, which he hated.
He had a notion that the nitrous oxide gas was dangerous, so on this
occasion, as on all others, used ether.

He put the sponge a half dozen times to Trina's face, more nervous than
he had ever been before, watching the symptoms closely. Her breathing
became short and irregular; there was a slight twitching of the muscles.
When her thumbs turned inward toward the palms, he took the sponge away.
She passed off very quickly, and, with a long sigh, sank back into the
chair.

McTeague straightened up, putting the sponge upon the rack behind him,
his eyes fixed upon Trina's face. For some time he stood watching her as
she lay there, unconscious and helpless, and very pretty. He was alone
with her, and she was absolutely without defense.

Suddenly the animal in the man stirred and woke; the evil instincts
that in him were so close to the surface leaped to life, shouting and
clamoring.

It was a crisis--a crisis that had arisen all in an instant; a crisis
for which he was totally unprepared. Blindly, and without knowing
why, McTeague fought against it, moved by an unreasoned instinct of
resistance. Within him, a certain second self, another better McTeague
rose with the brute; both were strong, with the huge crude strength
of the man himself. The two were at grapples. There in that cheap and
shabby “Dental Parlor” a dreaded struggle began. It was the old battle,
old as the world, wide as the world--the sudden panther leap of
the animal, lips drawn, fangs aflash, hideous, monstrous, not to be
resisted, and the simultaneous arousing of the other man, the better
self that cries, “Down, down,” without knowing why; that grips the
monster; that fights to strangle it, to thrust it down and back.

Dizzied and bewildered with the shock, the like of which he had never
known before, McTeague turned from Trina, gazing bewilderedly about the
room. The struggle was bitter; his teeth ground themselves together with
a little rasping sound; the blood sang in his ears; his face flushed
scarlet; his hands twisted themselves together like the knotting of
cables. The fury in him was as the fury of a young bull in the heat of
high summer. But for all that he shook his huge head from time to time,
muttering:

“No, by God! No, by God!”

Dimly he seemed to realize that should he yield now he would never be
able to care for Trina again. She would never be the same to him, never
so radiant, so sweet, so adorable; her charm for him would vanish in an
instant. Across her forehead, her little pale forehead, under the shadow
of her royal hair, he would surely see the smudge of a foul ordure, the
footprint of the monster. It would be a sacrilege, an abomination. He
recoiled from it, banding all his strength to the issue.

“No, by God! No, by God!”

He turned to his work, as if seeking a refuge in it. But as he drew near
to her again, the charm of her innocence and helplessness came over
him afresh. It was a final protest against his resolution. Suddenly he
leaned over and kissed her, grossly, full on the mouth. The thing was
done before he knew it. Terrified at his weakness at the very moment he
believed himself strong, he threw himself once more into his work with
desperate energy. By the time he was fastening the sheet of rubber upon
the tooth, he had himself once more in hand. He was disturbed, still
trembling, still vibrating with the throes of the crisis, but he was the
master; the animal was downed, was cowed for this time, at least.

But for all that, the brute was there. Long dormant, it was now at last
alive, awake. From now on he would feel its presence continually; would
feel it tugging at its chain, watching its opportunity. Ah, the pity
of it! Why could he not always love her purely, cleanly? What was this
perverse, vicious thing that lived within him, knitted to his flesh?

Below the fine fabric of all that was good in him ran the foul stream of
hereditary evil, like a sewer. The vices and sins of his father and
of his father's father, to the third and fourth and five hundredth
generation, tainted him. The evil of an entire race flowed in his veins.
Why should it be? He did not desire it. Was he to blame?

But McTeague could not understand this thing. It had faced him, as
sooner or later it faces every child of man; but its significance was
not for him. To reason with it was beyond him. He could only oppose to
it an instinctive stubborn resistance, blind, inert.

McTeague went on with his work. As he was rapping in the little blocks
and cylinders with the mallet, Trina slowly came back to herself with a
long sigh. She still felt a little confused, and lay quiet in the chair.
There was a long silence, broken only by the uneven tapping of the
hardwood mallet. By and by she said, “I never felt a thing,” and then
she smiled at him very prettily beneath the rubber dam. McTeague turned
to her suddenly, his mallet in one hand, his pliers holding a pellet
of sponge-gold in the other. All at once he said, with the unreasoned
simplicity and directness of a child: “Listen here, Miss Trina, I
like you better than any one else; what's the matter with us getting
married?”

Trina sat up in the chair quickly, and then drew back from him,
frightened and bewildered.

“Will you? Will you?” said McTeague. “Say, Miss Trina, will you?”

“What is it? What do you mean?” she cried, confusedly, her words muffled
beneath the rubber.

“Will you?” repeated McTeague.

“No, no,” she exclaimed, refusing without knowing why, suddenly seized
with a fear of him, the intuitive feminine fear of the male. McTeague
could only repeat the same thing over and over again. Trina, more
and more frightened at his huge hands--the hands of the old-time
car-boy--his immense square-cut head and his enormous brute strength,
cried out: “No, no,” behind the rubber dam, shaking her head violently,
holding out her hands, and shrinking down before him in the operating
chair. McTeague came nearer to her, repeating the same question. “No,
no,” she cried, terrified. Then, as she exclaimed, “Oh, I am sick,”
 was suddenly taken with a fit of vomiting. It was the not unusual
after effect of the ether, aided now by her excitement and nervousness.
McTeague was checked. He poured some bromide of potassium into a
graduated glass and held it to her lips.

“Here, swallow this,” he said.



CHAPTER 3


Once every two months Maria Macapa set the entire flat in commotion.
She roamed the building from garret to cellar, searching each corner,
ferreting through every old box and trunk and barrel, groping about
on the top shelves of closets, peering into rag-bags, exasperating the
lodgers with her persistence and importunity. She was collecting
junks, bits of iron, stone jugs, glass bottles, old sacks, and cast-off
garments. It was one of her perquisites. She sold the junk to Zerkow,
the rags-bottles-sacks man, who lived in a filthy den in the alley just
back of the flat, and who sometimes paid her as much as three cents
a pound. The stone jugs, however, were worth a nickel. The money that
Zerkow paid her, Maria spent on shirt waists and dotted blue neckties,
trying to dress like the girls who tended the soda-water fountain in the
candy store on the corner. She was sick with envy of these young women.
They were in the world, they were elegant, they were debonair, they had
their “young men.”

On this occasion she presented herself at the door of Old Grannis's room
late in the afternoon. His door stood a little open. That of Miss Baker
was ajar a few inches. The two old people were “keeping company” after
their fashion.

“Got any junk, Mister Grannis?” inquired Maria, standing in the door, a
very dirty, half-filled pillowcase over one arm.

“No, nothing--nothing that I can think of, Maria,” replied Old Grannis,
terribly vexed at the interruption, yet not wishing to be unkind.
“Nothing I think of. Yet, however--perhaps--if you wish to look.”

He sat in the middle of the room before a small pine table. His
little binding apparatus was before him. In his fingers was a huge
upholsterer's needle threaded with twine, a brad-awl lay at his elbow,
on the floor beside him was a great pile of pamphlets, the pages uncut.
Old Grannis bought the “Nation” and the “Breeder and Sportsman.” In the
latter he occasionally found articles on dogs which interested him. The
former he seldom read. He could not afford to subscribe regularly to
either of the publications, but purchased their back numbers by the
score, almost solely for the pleasure he took in binding them.

“What you alus sewing up them books for, Mister Grannis?” asked Maria,
as she began rummaging about in Old Grannis's closet shelves. “There's
just hundreds of 'em in here on yer shelves; they ain't no good to you.”

“Well, well,” answered Old Grannis, timidly, rubbing his chin, “I--I'm
sure I can't quite say; a little habit, you know; a diversion, a--a--it
occupies one, you know. I don't smoke; it takes the place of a pipe,
perhaps.”

“Here's this old yellow pitcher,” said Maria, coming out of the closet
with it in her hand. “The handle's cracked; you don't want it; better
give me it.”

Old Grannis did want the pitcher; true, he never used it now, but he
had kept it a long time, and somehow he held to it as old people hold to
trivial, worthless things that they have had for many years.

“Oh, that pitcher--well, Maria, I--I don't know. I'm afraid--you see,
that pitcher----”

“Ah, go 'long,” interrupted Maria Macapa, “what's the good of it?”

“If you insist, Maria, but I would much rather--” he rubbed his chin,
perplexed and annoyed, hating to refuse, and wishing that Maria were
gone.

“Why, what's the good of it?” persisted Maria. He could give no
sufficient answer. “That's all right,” she asserted, carrying the
pitcher out.

“Ah--Maria--I say, you--you might leave the door--ah, don't quite shut
it--it's a bit close in here at times.” Maria grinned, and swung the
door wide. Old Grannis was horribly embarrassed; positively, Maria was
becoming unbearable.

“Got any junk?” cried Maria at Miss Baker's door. The little old lady
was sitting close to the wall in her rocking-chair; her hands resting
idly in her lap.

“Now, Maria,” she said plaintively, “you are always after junk; you know
I never have anything laying 'round like that.”

It was true. The retired dressmaker's tiny room was a marvel of
neatness, from the little red table, with its three Gorham spoons laid
in exact parallels, to the decorous geraniums and mignonettes growing
in the starch box at the window, underneath the fish globe with its
one venerable gold fish. That day Miss Baker had been doing a bit of
washing; two pocket handkerchiefs, still moist, adhered to the window
panes, drying in the sun.

“Oh, I guess you got something you don't want,” Maria went on, peering
into the corners of the room. “Look-a-here what Mister Grannis gi'
me,” and she held out the yellow pitcher. Instantly Miss Baker was in a
quiver of confusion. Every word spoken aloud could be perfectly heard in
the next room. What a stupid drab was this Maria! Could anything be more
trying than this position?

“Ain't that right, Mister Grannis?” called Maria; “didn't you gi' me
this pitcher?” Old Grannis affected not to hear; perspiration stood on
his forehead; his timidity overcame him as if he were a ten-year-old
schoolboy. He half rose from his chair, his fingers dancing nervously
upon his chin.

Maria opened Miss Baker's closet unconcernedly. “What's the matter with
these old shoes?” she exclaimed, turning about with a pair of half-worn
silk gaiters in her hand. They were by no means old enough to throw
away, but Miss Baker was almost beside herself. There was no telling
what might happen next. Her only thought was to be rid of Maria.

“Yes, yes, anything. You can have them; but go, go. There's nothing
else, not a thing.”

Maria went out into the hall, leaving Miss Baker's door wide open, as
if maliciously. She had left the dirty pillow-case on the floor in the
hall, and she stood outside, between the two open doors, stowing away
the old pitcher and the half-worn silk shoes. She made remarks at the
top of her voice, calling now to Miss Baker, now to Old Grannis. In a
way she brought the two old people face to face. Each time they were
forced to answer her questions it was as if they were talking directly
to each other.

“These here are first-rate shoes, Miss Baker. Look here, Mister Grannis,
get on to the shoes Miss Baker gi' me. You ain't got a pair you don't
want, have you? You two people have less junk than any one else in the
flat. How do you manage, Mister Grannis? You old bachelors are just like
old maids, just as neat as pins. You two are just alike--you and Mister
Grannis--ain't you, Miss Baker?”

Nothing could have been more horribly constrained, more awkward. The two
old people suffered veritable torture. When Maria had gone, each heaved
a sigh of unspeakable relief. Softly they pushed to their doors, leaving
open a space of half a dozen inches. Old Grannis went back to his
binding. Miss Baker brewed a cup of tea to quiet her nerves. Each tried
to regain their composure, but in vain. Old Grannis's fingers trembled
so that he pricked them with his needle. Miss Baker dropped her spoon
twice. Their nervousness would not wear off. They were perturbed, upset.
In a word, the afternoon was spoiled.

Maria went on about the flat from room to room. She had already paid
Marcus Schouler a visit early that morning before he had gone out.
Marcus had sworn at her, excitedly vociferating; “No, by damn! No,
he hadn't a thing for her; he hadn't, for a fact. It was a positive
persecution. Every day his privacy was invaded. He would complain to the
landlady, he would. He'd move out of the place.” In the end he had given
Maria seven empty whiskey flasks, an iron grate, and ten cents--the
latter because he said she wore her hair like a girl he used to know.

After coming from Miss Baker's room Maria knocked at McTeague's door.
The dentist was lying on the bed-lounge in his stocking feet, doing
nothing apparently, gazing up at the ceiling, lost in thought.

Since he had spoken to Trina Sieppe, asking her so abruptly to marry
him, McTeague had passed a week of torment. For him there was no going
back. It was Trina now, and none other. It was all one with him that his
best friend, Marcus, might be in love with the same girl. He must
have Trina in spite of everything; he would have her even in spite of
herself. He did not stop to reflect about the matter; he followed his
desire blindly, recklessly, furious and raging at every obstacle. And
she had cried “No, no!” back at him; he could not forget that. She, so
small and pale and delicate, had held him at bay, who was so huge, so
immensely strong.

Besides that, all the charm of their intimacy was gone. After that
unhappy sitting, Trina was no longer frank and straight-forward. Now she
was circumspect, reserved, distant. He could no longer open his mouth;
words failed him. At one sitting in particular they had said but
good-day and good-by to each other. He felt that he was clumsy and
ungainly. He told himself that she despised him.

But the memory of her was with him constantly. Night after night he
lay broad awake thinking of Trina, wondering about her, racked with the
infinite desire of her. His head burnt and throbbed. The palms of his
hands were dry. He dozed and woke, and walked aimlessly about the dark
room, bruising himself against the three chairs drawn up “at attention”
 under the steel engraving, and stumbling over the stone pug dog that sat
in front of the little stove.

Besides this, the jealousy of Marcus Schouler harassed him. Maria
Macapa, coming into his “Parlor” to ask for junk, found him flung at
length upon the bed-lounge, gnawing at his fingers in an excess of
silent fury. At lunch that day Marcus had told him of an excursion that
was planned for the next Sunday afternoon. Mr. Sieppe, Trina's father,
belonged to a rifle club that was to hold a meet at Schuetzen Park
across the bay. All the Sieppes were going; there was to be a basket
picnic. Marcus, as usual, was invited to be one of the party. McTeague
was in agony. It was his first experience, and he suffered all the worse
for it because he was totally unprepared. What miserable complication
was this in which he found himself involved? It seemed so simple to
him since he loved Trina to take her straight to himself, stopping at
nothing, asking no questions, to have her, and by main strength to carry
her far away somewhere, he did not know exactly where, to some vague
country, some undiscovered place where every day was Sunday.

“Got any junk?”

“Huh? What? What is it?” exclaimed McTeague, suddenly rousing up from
the lounge. Often Maria did very well in the “Dental Parlors.” McTeague
was continually breaking things which he was too stupid to have mended;
for him anything that was broken was lost. Now it was a cuspidor, now a
fire-shovel for the little stove, now a China shaving mug.

“Got any junk?”

“I don't know--I don't remember,” muttered McTeague. Maria roamed about
the room, McTeague following her in his huge stockinged feet. All at
once she pounced upon a sheaf of old hand instruments in a coverless
cigar-box, pluggers, hard bits, and excavators. Maria had long coveted
such a find in McTeague's “Parlor,” knowing it should be somewhere
about. The instruments were of the finest tempered steel and really
valuable.

“Say, Doctor, I can have these, can't I?” exclaimed Maria. “You got no
more use for them.” McTeague was not at all sure of this. There were
many in the sheaf that might be repaired, reshaped.

“No, no,” he said, wagging his head. But Maria Macapa, knowing with
whom she had to deal, at once let loose a torrent of words. She made
the dentist believe that he had no right to withhold them, that he had
promised to save them for her. She affected a great indignation, pursing
her lips and putting her chin in the air as though wounded in some finer
sense, changing so rapidly from one mood to another, filling the room
with such shrill clamor, that McTeague was dazed and benumbed.

“Yes, all right, all right,” he said, trying to make himself heard. “It
WOULD be mean. I don't want 'em.” As he turned from her to pick up
the box, Maria took advantage of the moment to steal three “mats” of
sponge-gold out of the glass saucer. Often she stole McTeague's gold,
almost under his very eyes; indeed, it was so easy to do so that there
was but little pleasure in the theft. Then Maria took herself off.
McTeague returned to the sofa and flung himself upon it face downward.

A little before supper time Maria completed her search. The flat was
cleaned of its junk from top to bottom. The dirty pillow-case was full
to bursting. She took advantage of the supper hour to carry her bundle
around the corner and up into the alley where Zerkow lived.

When Maria entered his shop, Zerkow had just come in from his daily
rounds. His decrepit wagon stood in front of his door like a stranded
wreck; the miserable horse, with its lamentable swollen joints, fed
greedily upon an armful of spoiled hay in a shed at the back.

The interior of the junk shop was dark and damp, and foul with all
manner of choking odors. On the walls, on the floor, and hanging from
the rafters was a world of debris, dust-blackened, rust-corroded.
Everything was there, every trade was represented, every class of
society; things of iron and cloth and wood; all the detritus that a
great city sloughs off in its daily life. Zerkow's junk shop was the
last abiding-place, the almshouse, of such articles as had outlived
their usefulness.

Maria found Zerkow himself in the back room, cooking some sort of a meal
over an alcohol stove. Zerkow was a Polish Jew--curiously enough his
hair was fiery red. He was a dry, shrivelled old man of sixty odd. He
had the thin, eager, cat-like lips of the covetous; eyes that had grown
keen as those of a lynx from long searching amidst muck and debris; and
claw-like, prehensile fingers--the fingers of a man who accumulates,
but never disburses. It was impossible to look at Zerkow and not know
instantly that greed--inordinate, insatiable greed--was the dominant
passion of the man. He was the Man with the Rake, groping hourly in the
muck-heap of the city for gold, for gold, for gold. It was his dream,
his passion; at every instant he seemed to feel the generous solid
weight of the crude fat metal in his palms. The glint of it was
constantly in his eyes; the jangle of it sang forever in his ears as the
jangling of cymbals.

“Who is it? Who is it?” exclaimed Zerkow, as he heard Maria's footsteps
in the outer room. His voice was faint, husky, reduced almost to a
whisper by his prolonged habit of street crying.

“Oh, it's you again, is it?” he added, peering through the gloom of the
shop. “Let's see; you've been here before, ain't you? You're the Mexican
woman from Polk Street. Macapa's your name, hey?”

Maria nodded. “Had a flying squirrel an' let him go,” she muttered,
absently. Zerkow was puzzled; he looked at her sharply for a moment,
then dismissed the matter with a movement of his head.

“Well, what you got for me?” he said. He left his supper to grow cold,
absorbed at once in the affair.

Then a long wrangle began. Every bit of junk in Maria's pillow-case
was discussed and weighed and disputed. They clamored into each other's
faces over Old Grannis's cracked pitcher, over Miss Baker's silk
gaiters, over Marcus Schouler's whiskey flasks, reaching the climax of
disagreement when it came to McTeague's instruments.

“Ah, no, no!” shouted Maria. “Fifteen cents for the lot! I might as well
make you a Christmas present! Besides, I got some gold fillings off him;
look at um.”

Zerkow drew a quick breath as the three pellets suddenly flashed in
Maria's palm. There it was, the virgin metal, the pure, unalloyed
ore, his dream, his consuming desire. His fingers twitched and hooked
themselves into his palms, his thin lips drew tight across his teeth.

“Ah, you got some gold,” he muttered, reaching for it.

Maria shut her fist over the pellets. “The gold goes with the others,”
 she declared. “You'll gi' me a fair price for the lot, or I'll take um
back.”

In the end a bargain was struck that satisfied Maria. Zerkow was not one
who would let gold go out of his house. He counted out to her the price
of all her junk, grudging each piece of money as if it had been the
blood of his veins. The affair was concluded.

But Zerkow still had something to say. As Maria folded up the
pillow-case and rose to go, the old Jew said:

“Well, see here a minute, we'll--you'll have a drink before you go,
won't you? Just to show that it's all right between us.” Maria sat down
again.

“Yes, I guess I'll have a drink,” she answered.

Zerkow took down a whiskey bottle and a red glass tumbler with a broken
base from a cupboard on the wall. The two drank together, Zerkow from
the bottle, Maria from the broken tumbler. They wiped their lips slowly,
drawing breath again. There was a moment's silence.

“Say,” said Zerkow at last, “how about those gold dishes you told me
about the last time you were here?”

“What gold dishes?” inquired Maria, puzzled.

“Ah, you know,” returned the other. “The plate your father owned in
Central America a long time ago. Don't you know, it rang like so many
bells? Red gold, you know, like oranges?”

“Ah,” said Maria, putting her chin in the air as if she knew a long
story about that if she had a mind to tell it. “Ah, yes, that gold
service.”

“Tell us about it again,” said Zerkow, his bloodless lower lip moving
against the upper, his claw-like fingers feeling about his mouth and
chin. “Tell us about it; go on.”

He was breathing short, his limbs trembled a little. It was as if some
hungry beast of prey had scented a quarry. Maria still refused, putting
up her head, insisting that she had to be going.

“Let's have it,” insisted the Jew. “Take another drink.” Maria took
another swallow of the whiskey. “Now, go on,” repeated Zerkow; “let's
have the story.” Maria squared her elbows on the deal table, looking
straight in front of her with eyes that saw nothing.

“Well, it was this way,” she began. “It was when I was little. My folks
must have been rich, oh, rich into the millions--coffee, I guess--and
there was a large house, but I can only remember the plate. Oh, that
service of plate! It was wonderful. There were more than a hundred
pieces, and every one of them gold. You should have seen the sight when
the leather trunk was opened. It fair dazzled your eyes. It was a yellow
blaze like a fire, like a sunset; such a glory, all piled up together,
one piece over the other. Why, if the room was dark you'd think you
could see just the same with all that glitter there. There wa'n't a
piece that was so much as scratched; every one was like a mirror, smooth
and bright, just like a little pool when the sun shines into it. There
was dinner dishes and soup tureens and pitchers; and great, big platters
as long as that and wide too; and cream-jugs and bowls with carved
handles, all vines and things; and drinking mugs, every one a different
shape; and dishes for gravy and sauces; and then a great, big punch-bowl
with a ladle, and the bowl was all carved out with figures and bunches
of grapes. Why, just only that punch-bowl was worth a fortune, I guess.
When all that plate was set out on a table, it was a sight for a king to
look at. Such a service as that was! Each piece was heavy, oh, so heavy!
and thick, you know; thick, fat gold, nothing but gold--red, shining,
pure gold, orange red--and when you struck it with your knuckle, ah, you
should have heard! No church bell ever rang sweeter or clearer. It
was soft gold, too; you could bite into it, and leave the dent of your
teeth. Oh, that gold plate! I can see it just as plain--solid, solid,
heavy, rich, pure gold; nothing but gold, gold, heaps and heaps of it.
What a service that was!”

Maria paused, shaking her head, thinking over the vanished splendor.
Illiterate enough, unimaginative enough on all other subjects, her
distorted wits called up this picture with marvellous distinctness. It
was plain she saw the plate clearly. Her description was accurate, was
almost eloquent.

Did that wonderful service of gold plate ever exist outside of her
diseased imagination? Was Maria actually remembering some reality of a
childhood of barbaric luxury? Were her parents at one time possessed
of an incalculable fortune derived from some Central American
coffee plantation, a fortune long since confiscated by armies of
insurrectionists, or squandered in the support of revolutionary
governments?

It was not impossible. Of Maria Macapa's past prior to the time of
her appearance at the “flat” absolutely nothing could be learned. She
suddenly appeared from the unknown, a strange woman of a mixed race,
sane on all subjects but that of the famous service of gold plate; but
unusual, complex, mysterious, even at her best.

But what misery Zerkow endured as he listened to her tale! For he chose
to believe it, forced himself to believe it, lashed and harassed by
a pitiless greed that checked at no tale of treasure, however
preposterous. The story ravished him with delight. He was near someone
who had possessed this wealth. He saw someone who had seen this pile
of gold. He seemed near it; it was there, somewhere close by, under his
eyes, under his fingers; it was red, gleaming, ponderous. He gazed
about him wildly; nothing, nothing but the sordid junk shop and the
rust-corroded tins. What exasperation, what positive misery, to be so
near to it and yet to know that it was irrevocably, irretrievably lost!
A spasm of anguish passed through him. He gnawed at his bloodless lips,
at the hopelessness of it, the rage, the fury of it.

“Go on, go on,” he whispered; “let's have it all over again. Polished
like a mirror, hey, and heavy? Yes, I know, I know. A punch-bowl worth a
fortune. Ah! and you saw it, you had it all!”

Maria rose to go. Zerkow accompanied her to the door, urging another
drink upon her.

“Come again, come again,” he croaked. “Don't wait till you've got junk;
come any time you feel like it, and tell me more about the plate.”

He followed her a step down the alley.

“How much do you think it was worth?” he inquired, anxiously.

“Oh, a million dollars,” answered Maria, vaguely.

When Maria had gone, Zerkow returned to the back room of the shop, and
stood in front of the alcohol stove, looking down into his cold dinner,
preoccupied, thoughtful.

“A million dollars,” he muttered in his rasping, guttural whisper, his
finger-tips wandering over his thin, cat-like lips. “A golden service
worth a million dollars; a punchbowl worth a fortune; red gold plates,
heaps and piles. God!”



CHAPTER 4


The days passed. McTeague had finished the operation on Trina's teeth.
She did not come any more to the “Parlors.” Matters had readjusted
themselves a little between the two during the last sittings. Trina yet
stood upon her reserve, and McTeague still felt himself shambling and
ungainly in her presence; but that constraint and embarrassment that
had followed upon McTeague's blundering declaration broke up little by
little. In spite of themselves they were gradually resuming the same
relative positions they had occupied when they had first met.

But McTeague suffered miserably for all that. He never would have
Trina, he saw that clearly. She was too good for him; too delicate, too
refined, too prettily made for him, who was so coarse, so enormous, so
stupid. She was for someone else--Marcus, no doubt--or at least for some
finer-grained man. She should have gone to some other dentist; the young
fellow on the corner, for instance, the poser, the rider of bicycles,
the courser of grey-hounds. McTeague began to loathe and to envy this
fellow. He spied upon him going in and out of his office, and noted his
salmon-pink neckties and his astonishing waistcoats.

One Sunday, a few days after Trina's last sitting, McTeague met Marcus
Schouler at his table in the car conductors' coffee-joint, next to the
harness shop.

“What you got to do this afternoon, Mac?” inquired the other, as they
ate their suet pudding.

“Nothing, nothing,” replied McTeague, shaking his head. His mouth
was full of pudding. It made him warm to eat, and little beads of
perspiration stood across the bridge of his nose. He looked forward
to an afternoon passed in his operating chair as usual. On leaving
his “Parlors” he had put ten cents into his pitcher and had left it at
Frenna's to be filled.

“What do you say we take a walk, huh?” said Marcus. “Ah, that's the
thing--a walk, a long walk, by damn! It'll be outa sight. I got to take
three or four of the dogs out for exercise, anyhow. Old Grannis thinks
they need ut. We'll walk out to the Presidio.”

Of late it had become the custom of the two friends to take long walks
from time to time. On holidays and on those Sunday afternoons when
Marcus was not absent with the Sieppes they went out together, sometimes
to the park, sometimes to the Presidio, sometimes even across the bay.
They took a great pleasure in each other's company, but silently and
with reservation, having the masculine horror of any demonstration of
friendship.

They walked for upwards of five hours that afternoon, out the length
of California Street, and across the Presidio Reservation to the Golden
Gate. Then they turned, and, following the line of the shore, brought up
at the Cliff House. Here they halted for beer, Marcus swearing that his
mouth was as dry as a hay-bin. Before starting on their walk they had
gone around to the little dog hospital, and Marcus had let out four of
the convalescents, crazed with joy at the release.

“Look at that dog,” he cried to McTeague, showing him a finely-bred
Irish setter. “That's the dog that belonged to the duck on the avenue,
the dog we called for that day. I've bought 'um. The duck thought he
had the distemper, and just threw 'um away. Nothun wrong with 'um but a
little catarrh. Ain't he a bird? Say, ain't he a bird? Look at his flag;
it's perfect; and see how he carries his tail on a line with his back.
See how stiff and white his whiskers are. Oh, by damn! you can't fool me
on a dog. That dog's a winner.”

At the Cliff House the two sat down to their beer in a quiet corner of
the billiard-room. There were but two players. Somewhere in another part
of the building a mammoth music-box was jangling out a quickstep. From
outside came the long, rhythmical rush of the surf and the sonorous
barking of the seals upon the seal rocks. The four dogs curled
themselves down upon the sanded floor.

“Here's how,” said Marcus, half emptying his glass. “Ah-h!” he added,
with a long breath, “that's good; it is, for a fact.”

For the last hour of their walk Marcus had done nearly all the talking.
McTeague merely answering him by uncertain movements of the head. For
that matter, the dentist had been silent and preoccupied throughout the
whole afternoon. At length Marcus noticed it. As he set down his glass
with a bang he suddenly exclaimed:

“What's the matter with you these days, Mac? You got a bean about
somethun, hey? Spit ut out.”

“No, no,” replied McTeague, looking about on the floor, rolling his
eyes; “nothing, no, no.”

“Ah, rats!” returned the other. McTeague kept silence. The two billiard
players departed. The huge music-box struck into a fresh tune.

“Huh!” exclaimed Marcus, with a short laugh, “guess you're in love.”

McTeague gasped, and shuffled his enormous feet under the table.

“Well, somethun's bitun you, anyhow,” pursued Marcus. “Maybe I can
help you. We're pals, you know. Better tell me what's up; guess we can
straighten ut out. Ah, go on; spit ut out.”

The situation was abominable. McTeague could not rise to it. Marcus was
his best friend, his only friend. They were “pals” and McTeague was very
fond of him. Yet they were both in love, presumably, with the same girl,
and now Marcus would try and force the secret out of him; would rush
blindly at the rock upon which the two must split, stirred by the very
best of motives, wishing only to be of service. Besides this, there was
nobody to whom McTeague would have better preferred to tell his troubles
than to Marcus, and yet about this trouble, the greatest trouble of his
life, he must keep silent; must refrain from speaking of it to Marcus
above everybody.

McTeague began dimly to feel that life was too much for him. How had it
all come about? A month ago he was perfectly content; he was calm and
peaceful, taking his little pleasures as he found them. His life had
shaped itself; was, no doubt, to continue always along these same lines.
A woman had entered his small world and instantly there was discord. The
disturbing element had appeared. Wherever the woman had put her foot a
score of distressing complications had sprung up, like the sudden growth
of strange and puzzling flowers.

“Say, Mac, go on; let's have ut straight,” urged Marcus, leaning toward
him. “Has any duck been doing you dirt?” he cried, his face crimson on
the instant.

“No,” said McTeague, helplessly.

“Come along, old man,” persisted Marcus; “let's have ut. What is the
row? I'll do all I can to help you.”

It was more than McTeague could bear. The situation had got beyond
him. Stupidly he spoke, his hands deep in his pockets, his head rolled
forward.

“It's--it's Miss Sieppe,” he said.

“Trina, my cousin? How do you mean?” inquired Marcus sharply.

“I--I--I don' know,” stammered McTeague, hopelessly confounded.

“You mean,” cried Marcus, suddenly enlightened, “that you are--that you,
too.”

McTeague stirred in his chair, looking at the walls of the room,
avoiding the other's glance. He nodded his head, then suddenly broke
out:

“I can't help it. It ain't my fault, is it?”

Marcus was struck dumb; he dropped back in his chair breathless.
Suddenly McTeague found his tongue.

“I tell you, Mark, I can't help it. I don't know how it happened. It
came on so slow that I was, that--that--that it was done before I knew
it, before I could help myself. I know we're pals, us two, and I knew
how--how you and Miss Sieppe were. I know now, I knew then; but that
wouldn't have made any difference. Before I knew it--it--it--there I
was. I can't help it. I wouldn't 'a' had ut happen for anything, if
I could 'a' stopped it, but I don' know, it's something that's just
stronger than you are, that's all. She came there--Miss Sieppe came to
the parlors there three or four times a week, and she was the first
girl I had ever known,--and you don' know! Why, I was so close to her I
touched her face every minute, and her mouth, and smelt her hair and her
breath--oh, you don't know anything about it. I can't give you any idea.
I don' know exactly myself; I only know how I'm fixed. I--I--it's
been done; it's too late, there's no going back. Why, I can't think
of anything else night and day. It's everything. It's--it's--oh, it's
everything! I--I--why, Mark, it's everything--I can't explain.” He made
a helpless movement with both hands.

Never had McTeague been so excited; never had he made so long a speech.
His arms moved in fierce, uncertain gestures, his face flushed, his
enormous jaws shut together with a sharp click at every pause. It was
like some colossal brute trapped in a delicate, invisible mesh, raging,
exasperated, powerless to extricate himself.

Marcus Schouler said nothing. There was a long silence. Marcus got up
and walked to the window and stood looking out, but seeing nothing.
“Well, who would have thought of this?” he muttered under his breath.
Here was a fix. Marcus cared for Trina. There was no doubt in his
mind about that. He looked forward eagerly to the Sunday afternoon
excursions. He liked to be with Trina. He, too, felt the charm of the
little girl--the charm of the small, pale forehead; the little chin
thrust out as if in confidence and innocence; the heavy, odorous crown
of black hair. He liked her immensely. Some day he would speak; he would
ask her to marry him. Marcus put off this matter of marriage to some
future period; it would be some time--a year, perhaps, or two. The thing
did not take definite shape in his mind. Marcus “kept company” with his
cousin Trina, but he knew plenty of other girls. For the matter of that,
he liked all girls pretty well. Just now the singleness and strength of
McTeague's passion startled him. McTeague would marry Trina that very
afternoon if she would have him; but would he--Marcus? No, he would not;
if it came to that, no, he would not. Yet he knew he liked Trina. He
could say--yes, he could say--he loved her. She was his “girl.” The
Sieppes acknowledged him as Trina's “young man.” Marcus came back to the
table and sat down sideways upon it.

“Well, what are we going to do about it, Mac?” he said.

“I don' know,” answered McTeague, in great distress. “I don' want
anything to--to come between us, Mark.”

“Well, nothun will, you bet!” vociferated the other. “No, sir; you bet
not, Mac.”

Marcus was thinking hard. He could see very clearly that McTeague loved
Trina more than he did; that in some strange way this huge, brutal
fellow was capable of a greater passion than himself, who was twice as
clever. Suddenly Marcus jumped impetuously to a resolution.

“Well, say, Mac,” he cried, striking the table with his fist, “go ahead.
I guess you--you want her pretty bad. I'll pull out; yes, I will. I'll
give her up to you, old man.”

The sense of his own magnanimity all at once overcame Marcus. He saw
himself as another man, very noble, self-sacrificing; he stood apart
and watched this second self with boundless admiration and with infinite
pity. He was so good, so magnificent, so heroic, that he almost sobbed.
Marcus made a sweeping gesture of resignation, throwing out both his
arms, crying:

“Mac, I'll give her up to you. I won't stand between you.” There were
actually tears in Marcus's eyes as he spoke. There was no doubt he
thought himself sincere. At that moment he almost believed he loved
Trina conscientiously, that he was sacrificing himself for the sake of
his friend. The two stood up and faced each other, gripping hands. It
was a great moment; even McTeague felt the drama of it. What a fine
thing was this friendship between men! the dentist treats his friend
for an ulcerated tooth and refuses payment; the friend reciprocates by
giving up his girl. This was nobility. Their mutual affection and esteem
suddenly increased enormously. It was Damon and Pythias; it was David
and Jonathan; nothing could ever estrange them. Now it was for life or
death.

“I'm much obliged,” murmured McTeague. He could think of nothing better
to say. “I'm much obliged,” he repeated; “much obliged, Mark.”

“That's all right, that's all right,” returned Marcus Schouler, bravely,
and it occurred to him to add, “You'll be happy together. Tell her
for me--tell her---tell her----” Marcus could not go on. He wrung the
dentist's hand silently.

It had not appeared to either of them that Trina might refuse McTeague.
McTeague's spirits rose at once. In Marcus's withdrawal he fancied he
saw an end to all his difficulties. Everything would come right, after
all. The strained, exalted state of Marcus's nerves ended by putting
him into fine humor as well. His grief suddenly changed to an excess of
gaiety. The afternoon was a success. They slapped each other on the back
with great blows of the open palms, and they drank each other's health
in a third round of beer.

Ten minutes after his renunciation of Trina Sieppe, Marcus astounded
McTeague with a tremendous feat.

“Looka here, Mac. I know somethun you can't do. I'll bet you two bits
I'll stump you.” They each put a quarter on the table. “Now watch me,”
 cried Marcus. He caught up a billiard ball from the rack, poised it a
moment in front of his face, then with a sudden, horrifying distension
of his jaws crammed it into his mouth, and shut his lips over it.

For an instant McTeague was stupefied, his eyes bulging. Then an
enormous laugh shook him. He roared and shouted, swaying in his chair,
slapping his knee. What a josher was this Marcus! Sure, you never could
tell what he would do next. Marcus slipped the ball out, wiped it on the
tablecloth, and passed it to McTeague.

“Now let's see you do it.”

McTeague fell suddenly grave. The matter was serious. He parted his
thick mustaches and opened his enormous jaws like an anaconda. The ball
disappeared inside his mouth. Marcus applauded vociferously, shouting,
“Good work!” McTeague reached for the money and put it in his vest
pocket, nodding his head with a knowing air.

Then suddenly his face grew purple, his jaws moved convulsively, he
pawed at his cheeks with both hands. The billiard ball had slipped into
his mouth easily enough; now, however, he could not get it out again.

It was terrible. The dentist rose to his feet, stumbling about among the
dogs, his face working, his eyes starting. Try as he would, he could not
stretch his jaws wide enough to slip the ball out. Marcus lost his
wits, swearing at the top of his voice. McTeague sweated with terror;
inarticulate sounds came from his crammed mouth; he waved his arms
wildly; all the four dogs caught the excitement and began to bark. A
waiter rushed in, the two billiard players returned, a little crowd
formed. There was a veritable scene.

All at once the ball slipped out of McTeague's jaws as easily as it had
gone in. What a relief! He dropped into a chair, wiping his forehead,
gasping for breath.

On the strength of the occasion Marcus Schouler invited the entire group
to drink with him.

By the time the affair was over and the group dispersed it was after
five. Marcus and McTeague decided they would ride home on the cars.
But they soon found this impossible. The dogs would not follow. Only
Alexander, Marcus's new setter, kept his place at the rear of the car.
The other three lost their senses immediately, running wildly about
the streets with their heads in the air, or suddenly starting off at a
furious gallop directly away from the car. Marcus whistled and shouted
and lathered with rage in vain. The two friends were obliged to walk.
When they finally reached Polk Street, Marcus shut up the three dogs in
the hospital. Alexander he brought back to the flat with him.

There was a minute back yard in the rear, where Marcus had made a kennel
for Alexander out of an old water barrel. Before he thought of his own
supper Marcus put Alexander to bed and fed him a couple of dog biscuits.
McTeague had followed him to the yard to keep him company. Alexander
settled to his supper at once, chewing vigorously at the biscuit, his
head on one side.

“What you going to do about this--about that--about--about my cousin
now, Mac?” inquired Marcus.

McTeague shook his head helplessly. It was dark by now and cold. The
little back yard was grimy and full of odors. McTeague was tired with
their long walk. All his uneasiness about his affair with Trina had
returned. No, surely she was not for him. Marcus or some other man would
win her in the end. What could she ever see to desire in him--in him, a
clumsy giant, with hands like wooden mallets? She had told him once that
she would not marry him. Was that not final?

“I don' know what to do, Mark,” he said.

“Well, you must make up to her now,” answered Marcus. “Go and call on
her.”

McTeague started. He had not thought of calling on her. The idea
frightened him a little.

“Of course,” persisted Marcus, “that's the proper caper. What did you
expect? Did you think you was never going to see her again?”

“I don' know, I don' know,” responded the dentist, looking stupidly at
the dog.

“You know where they live,” continued Marcus Schouler. “Over at B Street
station, across the bay. I'll take you over there whenever you want to
go. I tell you what, we'll go over there Washington's Birthday. That's
this next Wednesday; sure, they'll be glad to see you.” It was good of
Marcus. All at once McTeague rose to an appreciation of what his friend
was doing for him. He stammered:

“Say, Mark--you're--you're all right, anyhow.”

“Why, pshaw!” said Marcus. “That's all right, old man. I'd like to see
you two fixed, that's all. We'll go over Wednesday, sure.”

They turned back to the house. Alexander left off eating and watched
them go away, first with one eye, then with the other. But he was too
self-respecting to whimper. However, by the time the two friends had
reached the second landing on the back stairs a terrible commotion was
under way in the little yard. They rushed to an open window at the end
of the hall and looked down.

A thin board fence separated the flat's back yard from that used by
the branch post-office. In the latter place lived a collie dog. He and
Alexander had smelt each other out, blowing through the cracks of the
fence at each other. Suddenly the quarrel had exploded on either side of
the fence. The dogs raged at each other, snarling and barking, frantic
with hate. Their teeth gleamed. They tore at the fence with their front
paws. They filled the whole night with their clamor.

“By damn!” cried Marcus, “they don't love each other. Just listen;
wouldn't that make a fight if the two got together? Have to try it some
day.”



CHAPTER 5


Wednesday morning, Washington's Birthday, McTeague rose very early and
shaved himself. Besides the six mournful concertina airs, the dentist
knew one song. Whenever he shaved, he sung this song; never at any other
time. His voice was a bellowing roar, enough to make the window sashes
rattle. Just now he woke up all the lodgers in his hall with it. It was
a lamentable wail:

     “No one to love, none to caress,
     Left all alone in this world's wilderness.”

As he paused to strop his razor, Marcus came into his room,
half-dressed, a startling phantom in red flannels.

Marcus often ran back and forth between his room and the dentist's
“Parlors” in all sorts of undress. Old Miss Baker had seen him thus
several times through her half-open door, as she sat in her room
listening and waiting. The old dressmaker was shocked out of all
expression. She was outraged, offended, pursing her lips, putting up her
head. She talked of complaining to the landlady. “And Mr. Grannis right
next door, too. You can understand how trying it is for both of us.” She
would come out in the hall after one of these apparitions, her little
false curls shaking, talking loud and shrill to any one in reach of her
voice.

“Well,” Marcus would shout, “shut your door, then, if you don't want to
see. Look out, now, here I come again. Not even a porous plaster on me
this time.”

On this Wednesday morning Marcus called McTeague out into the hall, to
the head of the stairs that led down to the street door.

“Come and listen to Maria, Mac,” said he.

Maria sat on the next to the lowest step, her chin propped by her
two fists. The red-headed Polish Jew, the ragman Zerkow, stood in the
doorway. He was talking eagerly.

“Now, just once more, Maria,” he was saying. “Tell it to us just once
more.” Maria's voice came up the stairway in a monotone. Marcus and
McTeague caught a phrase from time to time.

“There were more than a hundred pieces, and every one of them gold--just
that punch-bowl was worth a fortune-thick, fat, red gold.”

“Get onto to that, will you?” observed Marcus. “The old skin has got her
started on the plate. Ain't they a pair for you?”

“And it rang like bells, didn't it?” prompted Zerkow.

“Sweeter'n church bells, and clearer.”

“Ah, sweeter'n bells. Wasn't that punch-bowl awful heavy?”

“All you could do to lift it.”

“I know. Oh, I know,” answered Zerkow, clawing at his lips. “Where did
it all go to? Where did it go?”

Maria shook her head.

“It's gone, anyhow.”

“Ah, gone, gone! Think of it! The punch-bowl gone, and the engraved
ladle, and the plates and goblets. What a sight it must have been all
heaped together!”

“It was a wonderful sight.”

“Yes, wonderful; it must have been.”

On the lower steps of that cheap flat, the Mexican woman and the
red-haired Polish Jew mused long over that vanished, half-mythical gold
plate.

Marcus and the dentist spent Washington's Birthday across the bay. The
journey over was one long agony to McTeague. He shook with a formless,
uncertain dread; a dozen times he would have turned back had not Marcus
been with him. The stolid giant was as nervous as a schoolboy. He
fancied that his call upon Miss Sieppe was an outrageous affront. She
would freeze him with a stare; he would be shown the door, would be
ejected, disgraced.

As they got off the local train at B Street station they suddenly
collided with the whole tribe of Sieppes--the mother, father, three
children, and Trina--equipped for one of their eternal picnics. They
were to go to Schuetzen Park, within walking distance of the station.
They were grouped about four lunch baskets. One of the children, a
little boy, held a black greyhound by a rope around its neck. Trina wore
a blue cloth skirt, a striped shirt waist, and a white sailor; about her
round waist was a belt of imitation alligator skin.

At once Mrs. Sieppe began to talk to Marcus. He had written of their
coming, but the picnic had been decided upon after the arrival of his
letter. Mrs. Sieppe explained this to him. She was an immense old lady
with a pink face and wonderful hair, absolutely white. The Sieppes were
a German-Swiss family.

“We go to der park, Schuetzen Park, mit alle dem childern, a little
eggs-kursion, eh not soh? We breathe der freshes air, a celubration, a
pignic bei der seashore on. Ach, dot wull be soh gay, ah?”

“You bet it will. It'll be outa sight,” cried Marcus, enthusiastic in
an instant. “This is m' friend Doctor McTeague I wrote you about, Mrs.
Sieppe.”

“Ach, der doktor,” cried Mrs. Sieppe.

McTeague was presented, shaking hands gravely as Marcus shouldered him
from one to the other.

Mr. Sieppe was a little man of a military aspect, full of importance,
taking himself very seriously. He was a member of a rifle team. Over his
shoulder was slung a Springfield rifle, while his breast was decorated
by five bronze medals.

Trina was delighted. McTeague was dumfounded. She appeared positively
glad to see him.

“How do you do, Doctor McTeague,” she said, smiling at him and shaking
his hand. “It's nice to see you again. Look, see how fine my filling
is.” She lifted a corner of her lip and showed him the clumsy gold
bridge.

Meanwhile, Mr. Sieppe toiled and perspired. Upon him devolved the
responsibility of the excursion. He seemed to consider it a matter of
vast importance, a veritable expedition.

“Owgooste!” he shouted to the little boy with the black greyhound, “you
will der hound und basket number three carry. Der tervins,” he added,
calling to the two smallest boys, who were dressed exactly alike, “will
releef one unudder mit der camp-stuhl und basket number four. Dat
is comprehend, hay? When we make der start, you childern will in der
advance march. Dat is your orders. But we do not start,” he exclaimed,
excitedly; “we remain. Ach Gott, Selina, who does not arrive.”

Selina, it appeared, was a niece of Mrs. Sieppe's. They were on the
point of starting without her, when she suddenly arrived, very much out
of breath. She was a slender, unhealthy looking girl, who overworked
herself giving lessons in hand-painting at twenty-five cents an hour.
McTeague was presented. They all began to talk at once, filling the
little station-house with a confusion of tongues.

“Attention!” cried Mr. Sieppe, his gold-headed cane in one hand, his
Springfield in the other. “Attention! We depart.” The four little boys
moved off ahead; the greyhound suddenly began to bark, and tug at his
leash. The others picked up their bundles.

“Vorwarts!” shouted Mr. Sieppe, waving his rifle and assuming the
attitude of a lieutenant of infantry leading a charge. The party set off
down the railroad track.

Mrs. Sieppe walked with her husband, who constantly left her side
to shout an order up and down the line. Marcus followed with Selina.
McTeague found himself with Trina at the end of the procession.

“We go off on these picnics almost every week,” said Trina, by way of a
beginning, “and almost every holiday, too. It is a custom.”

“Yes, yes, a custom,” answered McTeague, nodding; “a custom--that's the
word.”

“Don't you think picnics are fine fun, Doctor McTeague?” she continued.
“You take your lunch; you leave the dirty city all day; you race about
in the open air, and when lunchtime comes, oh, aren't you hungry? And
the woods and the grass smell so fine!”

“I don' know, Miss Sieppe,” he answered, keeping his eyes fixed on the
ground between the rails. “I never went on a picnic.”

“Never went on a picnic?” she cried, astonished. “Oh, you'll see what
fun we'll have. In the morning father and the children dig clams in the
mud by the shore, an' we bake them, and--oh, there's thousands of things
to do.”

“Once I went sailing on the bay,” said McTeague. “It was in a tugboat;
we fished off the heads. I caught three codfishes.”

“I'm afraid to go out on the bay,” answered Trina, shaking her head,
“sailboats tip over so easy. A cousin of mine, Selina's brother, was
drowned one Decoration Day. They never found his body. Can you swim,
Doctor McTeague?”

“I used to at the mine.”

“At the mine? Oh, yes, I remember, Marcus told me you were a miner
once.”

“I was a car-boy; all the car-boys used to swim in the reservoir by the
ditch every Thursday evening. One of them was bit by a rattlesnake once
while he was dressing. He was a Frenchman, named Andrew. He swelled up
and began to twitch.”

“Oh, how I hate snakes! They're so crawly and graceful--but, just the
same, I like to watch them. You know that drug store over in town that
has a showcase full of live ones?”

“We killed the rattler with a cart whip.”

“How far do you think you could swim? Did you ever try? D'you think you
could swim a mile?”

“A mile? I don't know. I never tried. I guess I could.”

“I can swim a little. Sometimes we all go out to the Crystal Baths.”

“The Crystal Baths, huh? Can you swim across the tank?”

“Oh, I can swim all right as long as papa holds my chin up. Soon as
he takes his hand away, down I go. Don't you hate to get water in your
ears?”

“Bathing's good for you.”

“If the water's too warm, it isn't. It weakens you.”

Mr. Sieppe came running down the tracks, waving his cane.

“To one side,” he shouted, motioning them off the track; “der drain
gomes.” A local passenger train was just passing B Street station, some
quarter of a mile behind them. The party stood to one side to let it
pass. Marcus put a nickel and two crossed pins upon the rail, and waved
his hat to the passengers as the train roared past. The children shouted
shrilly. When the train was gone, they all rushed to see the nickel and
the crossed pins. The nickel had been jolted off, but the pins had been
flattened out so that they bore a faint resemblance to opened scissors.
A great contention arose among the children for the possession of these
“scissors.” Mr. Sieppe was obliged to intervene. He reflected gravely.
It was a matter of tremendous moment. The whole party halted, awaiting
his decision.

“Attend now,” he suddenly exclaimed. “It will not be soh soon. At der
end of der day, ven we shall have home gecommen, den wull it pe adjudge,
eh? A REward of merit to him who der bes' pehaves. It is an order.
Vorwarts!”

“That was a Sacramento train,” said Marcus to Selina as they started
off; “it was, for a fact.”

“I know a girl in Sacramento,” Trina told McTeague. “She's forewoman in
a glove store, and she's got consumption.”

“I was in Sacramento once,” observed McTeague, “nearly eight years ago.”

“Is it a nice place--as nice as San Francisco?”

“It's hot. I practised there for a while.”

“I like San Francisco,” said Trina, looking across the bay to where the
city piled itself upon its hills.

“So do I,” answered McTeague. “Do you like it better than living over
here?”

“Oh, sure, I wish we lived in the city. If you want to go across for
anything it takes up the whole day.”

“Yes, yes, the whole day--almost.”

“Do you know many people in the city? Do you know anybody named
Oelbermann? That's my uncle. He has a wholesale toy store in the
Mission. They say he's awful rich.”

“No, I don' know him.”

“His stepdaughter wants to be a nun. Just fancy! And Mr. Oelbermann
won't have it. He says it would be just like burying his child. Yes,
she wants to enter the convent of the Sacred Heart. Are you a Catholic,
Doctor McTeague?”

“No. No, I--”

“Papa is a Catholic. He goes to Mass on the feast days once in a while.
But mamma's Lutheran.”

“The Catholics are trying to get control of the schools,” observed
McTeague, suddenly remembering one of Marcus's political tirades.

“That's what cousin Mark says. We are going to send the twins to the
kindergarten next month.”

“What's the kindergarten?”

“Oh, they teach them to make things out of straw and toothpicks--kind of
a play place to keep them off the street.”

“There's one up on Sacramento Street, not far from Polk Street. I saw
the sign.”

“I know where. Why, Selina used to play the piano there.”

“Does she play the piano?”

“Oh, you ought to hear her. She plays fine. Selina's very accomplished.
She paints, too.”

“I can play on the concertina.”

“Oh, can you? I wish you'd brought it along. Next time you will. I hope
you'll come often on our picnics. You'll see what fun we'll have.”

“Fine day for a picnic, ain't it? There ain't a cloud.”

“That's so,” exclaimed Trina, looking up, “not a single cloud. Oh, yes;
there is one, just over Telegraph Hill.”

“That's smoke.”

“No, it's a cloud. Smoke isn't white that way.”

“'Tis a cloud.”

“I knew I was right. I never say a thing unless I'm pretty sure.”

“It looks like a dog's head.”

“Don't it? Isn't Marcus fond of dogs?”

“He got a new dog last week--a setter.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. He and I took a lot of dogs from his hospital out for a walk
to the Cliff House last Sunday, but we had to walk all the way home,
because they wouldn't follow. You've been out to the Cliff House?”

“Not for a long time. We had a picnic there one Fourth of July, but it
rained. Don't you love the ocean?”

“Yes--yes, I like it pretty well.”

“Oh, I'd like to go off in one of those big sailing ships. Just away,
and away, and away, anywhere. They're different from a little yacht. I'd
love to travel.”

“Sure; so would I.”

“Papa and mamma came over in a sailing ship. They were twenty-one days.
Mamma's uncle used to be a sailor. He was captain of a steamer on Lake
Geneva, in Switzerland.”

“Halt!” shouted Mr. Sieppe, brandishing his rifle. They had arrived at
the gates of the park. All at once McTeague turned cold. He had only
a quarter in his pocket. What was he expected to do--pay for the whole
party, or for Trina and himself, or merely buy his own ticket? And even
in this latter case would a quarter be enough? He lost his wits,
rolling his eyes helplessly. Then it occurred to him to feign a great
abstraction, pretending not to know that the time was come to pay. He
looked intently up and down the tracks; perhaps a train was coming.
“Here we are,” cried Trina, as they came up to the rest of the party,
crowded about the entrance. “Yes, yes,” observed McTeague, his head in
the air.

“Gi' me four bits, Mac,” said Marcus, coming up. “Here's where we shell
out.”

“I--I--I only got a quarter,” mumbled the dentist, miserably. He felt
that he had ruined himself forever with Trina. What was the use of
trying to win her? Destiny was against him. “I only got a quarter,” he
stammered. He was on the point of adding that he would not go in the
park. That seemed to be the only alternative.

“Oh, all right!” said Marcus, easily. “I'll pay for you, and you can
square with me when we go home.”

They filed into the park, Mr. Sieppe counting them off as they entered.

“Ah,” said Trina, with a long breath, as she and McTeague pushed through
the wicket, “here we are once more, Doctor.” She had not appeared to
notice McTeague's embarrassment. The difficulty had been tided over
somehow. Once more McTeague felt himself saved.

“To der beach!” shouted Mr. Sieppe. They had checked their baskets at
the peanut stand. The whole party trooped down to the seashore. The
greyhound was turned loose. The children raced on ahead.

From one of the larger parcels Mrs. Sieppe had drawn forth a small tin
steamboat--August's birthday present--a gaudy little toy which could be
steamed up and navigated by means of an alcohol lamp. Her trial trip was
to be made this morning.

“Gi' me it, gi' me it,” shouted August, dancing around his father.

“Not soh, not soh,” cried Mr. Sieppe, bearing it aloft. “I must first
der eggsperimunt make.”

“No, no!” wailed August. “I want to play with ut.”

“Obey!” thundered Mr. Sieppe. August subsided. A little jetty ran part
of the way into the water. Here, after a careful study of the directions
printed on the cover of the box, Mr. Sieppe began to fire the little
boat.

“I want to put ut in the wa-ater,” cried August.

“Stand back!” shouted his parent. “You do not know so well as me; dere
is dandger. Mitout attention he will eggsplode.”

“I want to play with ut,” protested August, beginning to cry.

“Ach, soh; you cry, bube!” vociferated Mr. Sieppe. “Mommer,” addressing
Mrs. Sieppe, “he will soh soon be ge-whipt, eh?”

“I want my boa-wut,” screamed August, dancing.

“Silence!” roared Mr. Sieppe. The little boat began to hiss and smoke.

“Soh,” observed the father, “he gommence. Attention! I put him in der
water.” He was very excited. The perspiration dripped from the back of
his neck. The little boat was launched. It hissed more furiously than
ever. Clouds of steam rolled from it, but it refused to move.

“You don't know how she wo-rks,” sobbed August.

“I know more soh mudge as der grossest liddle fool as you,” cried Mr.
Sieppe, fiercely, his face purple.

“You must give it sh--shove!” exclaimed the boy.

“Den he eggsplode, idiot!” shouted his father. All at once the boiler of
the steamer blew up with a sharp crack. The little tin toy turned over
and sank out of sight before any one could interfere.

“Ah--h! Yah! Yah!” yelled August. “It's go-one!”

Instantly Mr. Sieppe boxed his ears. There was a lamentable scene.
August rent the air with his outcries; his father shook him till his
boots danced on the jetty, shouting into his face:

“Ach, idiot! Ach, imbecile! Ach, miserable! I tol' you he eggsplode.
Stop your cry. Stop! It is an order. Do you wish I drow you in der
water, eh? Speak. Silence, bube! Mommer, where ist mein stick? He will
der grossest whippun ever of his life receive.”

Little by little the boy subsided, swallowing his sobs, knuckling his
eyes, gazing ruefully at the spot where the boat had sunk. “Dot is
better soh,” commented Mr. Sieppe, finally releasing him. “Next dime
berhaps you will your fat'er better pelief. Now, no more. We will
der glams ge-dig, Mommer, a fire. Ach, himmel! we have der pfeffer
forgotten.”

The work of clam digging began at once, the little boys taking off their
shoes and stockings. At first August refused to be comforted, and it was
not until his father drove him into the water with his gold-headed cane
that he consented to join the others.

What a day that was for McTeague! What a never-to-be-forgotten day! He
was with Trina constantly. They laughed together--she demurely, her lips
closed tight, her little chin thrust out, her small pale nose, with its
adorable little freckles, wrinkling; he roared with all the force of his
lungs, his enormous mouth distended, striking sledge-hammer blows upon
his knee with his clenched fist.

The lunch was delicious. Trina and her mother made a clam chowder that
melted in one's mouth. The lunch baskets were emptied. The party were
fully two hours eating. There were huge loaves of rye bread full of
grains of chickweed. There were weiner-wurst and frankfurter sausages.
There was unsalted butter. There were pretzels. There was cold underdone
chicken, which one ate in slices, plastered with a wonderful kind of
mustard that did not sting. There were dried apples, that gave Mr.
Sieppe the hiccoughs. There were a dozen bottles of beer, and, last of
all, a crowning achievement, a marvellous Gotha truffle. After lunch
came tobacco. Stuffed to the eyes, McTeague drowsed over his pipe, prone
on his back in the sun, while Trina, Mrs. Sieppe, and Selina washed the
dishes. In the afternoon Mr. Sieppe disappeared. They heard the reports
of his rifle on the range. The others swarmed over the park, now around
the swings, now in the Casino, now in the museum, now invading the
merry-go-round.

At half-past five o'clock Mr. Sieppe marshalled the party together. It
was time to return home.

The family insisted that Marcus and McTeague should take supper with
them at their home and should stay over night. Mrs. Sieppe argued they
could get no decent supper if they went back to the city at that hour;
that they could catch an early morning boat and reach their business in
good time. The two friends accepted.

The Sieppes lived in a little box of a house at the foot of B Street,
the first house to the right as one went up from the station. It was two
stories high, with a funny red mansard roof of oval slates. The interior
was cut up into innumerable tiny rooms, some of them so small as to be
hardly better than sleeping closets. In the back yard was a contrivance
for pumping water from the cistern that interested McTeague at once.
It was a dog-wheel, a huge revolving box in which the unhappy black
greyhound spent most of his waking hours. It was his kennel; he slept
in it. From time to time during the day Mrs. Sieppe appeared on the back
doorstep, crying shrilly, “Hoop, hoop!” She threw lumps of coal at him,
waking him to his work.

They were all very tired, and went to bed early. After great discussion
it was decided that Marcus would sleep upon the lounge in the front
parlor. Trina would sleep with August, giving up her room to McTeague.
Selina went to her home, a block or so above the Sieppes's. At nine
o'clock Mr. Sieppe showed McTeague to his room and left him to himself
with a newly lighted candle.

For a long time after Mr. Sieppe had gone McTeague stood motionless in
the middle of the room, his elbows pressed close to his sides, looking
obliquely from the corners of his eyes. He hardly dared to move. He was
in Trina's room.

It was an ordinary little room. A clean white matting was on the floor;
gray paper, spotted with pink and green flowers, covered the walls. In
one corner, under a white netting, was a little bed, the woodwork gayly
painted with knots of bright flowers. Near it, against the wall, was a
black walnut bureau. A work-table with spiral legs stood by the window,
which was hung with a green and gold window curtain. Opposite the window
the closet door stood ajar, while in the corner across from the bed was
a tiny washstand with two clean towels.

And that was all. But it was Trina's room. McTeague was in his lady's
bower; it seemed to him a little nest, intimate, discreet. He felt
hideously out of place. He was an intruder; he, with his enormous feet,
his colossal bones, his crude, brutal gestures. The mere weight of his
limbs, he was sure, would crush the little bed-stead like an eggshell.

Then, as this first sensation wore off, he began to feel the charm of
the little chamber. It was as though Trina were close by, but invisible.
McTeague felt all the delight of her presence without the embarrassment
that usually accompanied it. He was near to her--nearer than he had ever
been before. He saw into her daily life, her little ways and manners,
her habits, her very thoughts. And was there not in the air of that room
a certain faint perfume that he knew, that recalled her to his mind with
marvellous vividness?

As he put the candle down upon the bureau he saw her hairbrush lying
there. Instantly he picked it up, and, without knowing why, held it
to his face. With what a delicious odor was it redolent! That heavy,
enervating odor of her hair--her wonderful, royal hair! The smell of
that little hairbrush was talismanic. He had but to close his eyes to
see her as distinctly as in a mirror. He saw her tiny, round figure,
dressed all in black--for, curiously enough, it was his very first
impression of Trina that came back to him now--not the Trina of the
later occasions, not the Trina of the blue cloth skirt and white sailor.
He saw her as he had seen her the day that Marcus had introduced them:
saw her pale, round face; her narrow, half-open eyes, blue like the
eyes of a baby; her tiny, pale ears, suggestive of anaemia; the freckles
across the bridge of her nose; her pale lips; the tiara of royal black
hair; and, above all, the delicious poise of the head, tipped back as
though by the weight of all that hair--the poise that thrust out her
chin a little, with the movement that was so confiding, so innocent, so
nearly infantile.

McTeague went softly about the room from one object to another,
beholding Trina in everything he touched or looked at. He came at last
to the closet door. It was ajar. He opened it wide, and paused upon the
threshold.

Trina's clothes were hanging there--skirts and waists, jackets, and
stiff white petticoats. What a vision! For an instant McTeague caught
his breath, spellbound. If he had suddenly discovered Trina herself
there, smiling at him, holding out her hands, he could hardly have been
more overcome. Instantly he recognized the black dress she had worn on
that famous first day. There it was, the little jacket she had
carried over her arm the day he had terrified her with his blundering
declaration, and still others, and others--a whole group of Trinas
faced him there. He went farther into the closet, touching the clothes
gingerly, stroking them softly with his huge leathern palms. As he
stirred them a delicate perfume disengaged itself from the folds. Ah,
that exquisite feminine odor! It was not only her hair now, it was
Trina herself--her mouth, her hands, her neck; the indescribably sweet,
fleshly aroma that was a part of her, pure and clean, and redolent of
youth and freshness. All at once, seized with an unreasoned impulse,
McTeague opened his huge arms and gathered the little garments close to
him, plunging his face deep amongst them, savoring their delicious odor
with long breaths of luxury and supreme content.

* * * * *

The picnic at Schuetzen Park decided matters. McTeague began to call
on Trina regularly Sunday and Wednesday afternoons. He took Marcus
Schouler's place. Sometimes Marcus accompanied him, but it was generally
to meet Selina by appointment at the Sieppes's house.

But Marcus made the most of his renunciation of his cousin. He
remembered his pose from time to time. He made McTeague unhappy and
bewildered by wringing his hand, by venting sighs that seemed to tear
his heart out, or by giving evidences of an infinite melancholy. “What
is my life!” he would exclaim. “What is left for me? Nothing, by damn!”
 And when McTeague would attempt remonstrance, he would cry: “Never mind,
old man. Never mind me. Go, be happy. I forgive you.”

Forgive what? McTeague was all at sea, was harassed with the thought of
some shadowy, irreparable injury he had done his friend.

“Oh, don't think of me!” Marcus would exclaim at other times, even when
Trina was by. “Don't think of me; I don't count any more. I ain't in
it.” Marcus seemed to take great pleasure in contemplating the wreck of
his life. There is no doubt he enjoyed himself hugely during these days.

The Sieppes were at first puzzled as well over this change of front.

“Trina has den a new younge man,” cried Mr. Sieppe. “First Schouler, now
der doktor, eh? What die tevil, I say!”

Weeks passed, February went, March came in very rainy, putting a stop to
all their picnics and Sunday excursions.

One Wednesday afternoon in the second week in March McTeague came over
to call on Trina, bringing his concertina with him, as was his custom
nowadays. As he got off the train at the station he was surprised to
find Trina waiting for him.

“This is the first day it hasn't rained in weeks,” she explained, “an' I
thought it would be nice to walk.”

“Sure, sure,” assented McTeague.

B Street station was nothing more than a little shed. There was no
ticket office, nothing but a couple of whittled and carven benches. It
was built close to the railroad tracks, just across which was the dirty,
muddy shore of San Francisco Bay. About a quarter of a mile back from
the station was the edge of the town of Oakland. Between the station
and the first houses of the town lay immense salt flats, here and there
broken by winding streams of black water. They were covered with a
growth of wiry grass, strangely discolored in places by enormous stains
of orange yellow.

Near the station a bit of fence painted with a cigar advertisement
reeled over into the mud, while under its lee lay an abandoned gravel
wagon with dished wheels. The station was connected with the town by
the extension of B Street, which struck across the flats geometrically
straight, a file of tall poles with intervening wires marching along
with it. At the station these were headed by an iron electric-light pole
that, with its supports and outriggers, looked for all the world like an
immense grasshopper on its hind legs.

Across the flats, at the fringe of the town, were the dump heaps, the
figures of a few Chinese rag-pickers moving over them. Far to the left
the view was shut off by the immense red-brown drum of the gas-works;
to the right it was bounded by the chimneys and workshops of an iron
foundry.

Across the railroad tracks, to seaward, one saw the long stretch of
black mud bank left bare by the tide, which was far out, nearly half a
mile. Clouds of sea-gulls were forever rising and settling upon this mud
bank; a wrecked and abandoned wharf crawled over it on tottering legs;
close in an old sailboat lay canted on her bilge.

But farther on, across the yellow waters of the bay, beyond Goat Island,
lay San Francisco, a blue line of hills, rugged with roofs and spires.
Far to the westward opened the Golden Gate, a bleak cutting in the
sand-hills, through which one caught a glimpse of the open Pacific.

The station at B Street was solitary; no trains passed at this hour;
except the distant rag-pickers, not a soul was in sight. The wind blew
strong, carrying with it the mingled smell of salt, of tar, of dead
seaweed, and of bilge. The sky hung low and brown; at long intervals a
few drops of rain fell.

Near the station Trina and McTeague sat on the roadbed of the tracks, at
the edge of the mud bank, making the most out of the landscape, enjoying
the open air, the salt marshes, and the sight of the distant water. From
time to time McTeague played his six mournful airs upon his concertina.

After a while they began walking up and down the tracks, McTeague
talking about his profession, Trina listening, very interested and
absorbed, trying to understand.

“For pulling the roots of the upper molars we use the cowhorn forceps,”
 continued the dentist, monotonously. “We get the inside beak over the
palatal roots and the cow-horn beak over the buccal roots--that's the
roots on the outside, you see. Then we close the forceps, and that
breaks right through the alveolus--that's the part of the socket in the
jaw, you understand.”

At another moment he told her of his one unsatisfied desire. “Some day
I'm going to have a big gilded tooth outside my window for a sign. Those
big gold teeth are beautiful, beautiful--only they cost so much, I can't
afford one just now.”

“Oh, it's raining,” suddenly exclaimed Trina, holding out her palm.
They turned back and reached the station in a drizzle. The afternoon was
closing in dark and rainy. The tide was coming back, talking and lapping
for miles along the mud bank. Far off across the flats, at the edge of
the town, an electric car went by, stringing out a long row of diamond
sparks on the overhead wires.

“Say, Miss Trina,” said McTeague, after a while, “what's the good of
waiting any longer? Why can't us two get married?”

Trina still shook her head, saying “No” instinctively, in spite of
herself.

“Why not?” persisted McTeague. “Don't you like me well enough?”

“Yes.”

“Then why not?”

“Because.”

“Ah, come on,” he said, but Trina still shook her head.

“Ah, come on,” urged McTeague. He could think of nothing else to say,
repeating the same phrase over and over again to all her refusals.

“Ah, come on! Ah, come on!”

Suddenly he took her in his enormous arms, crushing down her struggle
with his immense strength. Then Trina gave up, all in an instant,
turning her head to his. They kissed each other, grossly, full in the
mouth.

A roar and a jarring of the earth suddenly grew near and passed them
in a reek of steam and hot air. It was the Overland, with its flaming
headlight, on its way across the continent.

The passage of the train startled them both. Trina struggled to free
herself from McTeague. “Oh, please! please!” she pleaded, on the point
of tears. McTeague released her, but in that moment a slight, a barely
perceptible, revulsion of feeling had taken place in him. The instant
that Trina gave up, the instant she allowed him to kiss her, he thought
less of her. She was not so desirable, after all. But this reaction
was so faint, so subtle, so intangible, that in another moment he
had doubted its occurrence. Yet afterward it returned. Was there not
something gone from Trina now? Was he not disappointed in her for doing
that very thing for which he had longed? Was Trina the submissive, the
compliant, the attainable just the same, just as delicate and adorable
as Trina the inaccessible? Perhaps he dimly saw that this must be so,
that it belonged to the changeless order of things--the man desiring
the woman only for what she withholds; the woman worshipping the man for
that which she yields up to him. With each concession gained the man's
desire cools; with every surrender made the woman's adoration increases.
But why should it be so?

Trina wrenched herself free and drew back from McTeague, her little
chin quivering; her face, even to the lobes of her pale ears, flushed
scarlet; her narrow blue eyes brimming. Suddenly she put her head
between her hands and began to sob.

“Say, say, Miss Trina, listen--listen here, Miss Trina,” cried McTeague,
coming forward a step.

“Oh, don't!” she gasped, shrinking. “I must go home,” she cried,
springing to her feet. “It's late. I must. I must. Don't come with
me, please. Oh, I'm so--so,”--she could not find any words. “Let me go
alone,” she went on. “You may--you come Sunday. Good-by.”

“Good-by,” said McTeague, his head in a whirl at this sudden,
unaccountable change. “Can't I kiss you again?” But Trina was firm now.
When it came to his pleading--a mere matter of words--she was strong
enough.

“No, no, you must not!” she exclaimed, with energy. She was gone in
another instant. The dentist, stunned, bewildered, gazed stupidly after
her as she ran up the extension of B Street through the rain.

But suddenly a great joy took possession of him. He had won her. Trina
was to be for him, after all. An enormous smile distended his thick
lips; his eyes grew wide, and flashed; and he drew his breath quickly,
striking his mallet-like fist upon his knee, and exclaiming under his
breath:

“I got her, by God! I got her, by God!” At the same time he thought
better of himself; his self-respect increased enormously. The man that
could win Trina Sieppe was a man of extraordinary ability.

Trina burst in upon her mother while the latter was setting a mousetrap
in the kitchen.

“Oh, mamma!”

“Eh? Trina? Ach, what has happun?”

Trina told her in a breath.

“Soh soon?” was Mrs. Sieppe's first comment. “Eh, well, what you cry
for, then?”

“I don't know,” wailed Trina, plucking at the end of her handkerchief.

“You loaf der younge doktor?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, what for you kiss him?”

“I don't know.”

“You don' know, you don' know? Where haf your sensus gone, Trina? You
kiss der doktor. You cry, and you don' know. Is ut Marcus den?”

“No, it's not Cousin Mark.”

“Den ut must be der doktor.”

Trina made no answer.

“Eh?”

“I--I guess so.”

“You loaf him?”

“I don't know.”

Mrs. Sieppe set down the mousetrap with such violence that it sprung
with a sharp snap.



CHAPTER 6


No, Trina did not know. “Do I love him? Do I love him?” A thousand times
she put the question to herself during the next two or three days. At
night she hardly slept, but lay broad awake for hours in her little,
gayly painted bed, with its white netting, torturing herself with doubts
and questions. At times she remembered the scene in the station with a
veritable agony of shame, and at other times she was ashamed to recall
it with a thrill of joy. Nothing could have been more sudden, more
unexpected, than that surrender of herself. For over a year she had
thought that Marcus would some day be her husband. They would be
married, she supposed, some time in the future, she did not know exactly
when; the matter did not take definite shape in her mind. She liked
Cousin Mark very well. And then suddenly this cross-current had set
in; this blond giant had appeared, this huge, stolid fellow, with
his immense, crude strength. She had not loved him at first, that was
certain. The day he had spoken to her in his “Parlors” she had only been
terrified. If he had confined himself to merely speaking, as did Marcus,
to pleading with her, to wooing her at a distance, forestalling her
wishes, showing her little attentions, sending her boxes of candy, she
could have easily withstood him. But he had only to take her in his
arms, to crush down her struggle with his enormous strength, to subdue
her, conquer her by sheer brute force, and she gave up in an instant.

But why--why had she done so? Why did she feel the desire, the necessity
of being conquered by a superior strength? Why did it please her? Why
had it suddenly thrilled her from head to foot with a quick, terrifying
gust of passion, the like of which she had never known? Never at his
best had Marcus made her feel like that, and yet she had always thought
she cared for Cousin Mark more than for any one else.

When McTeague had all at once caught her in his huge arms, something
had leaped to life in her--something that had hitherto lain dormant,
something strong and overpowering. It frightened her now as she thought
of it, this second self that had wakened within her, and that shouted
and clamored for recognition. And yet, was it to be feared? Was it
something to be ashamed of? Was it not, after all, natural, clean,
spontaneous? Trina knew that she was a pure girl; knew that this sudden
commotion within her carried with it no suggestion of vice.

Dimly, as figures seen in a waking dream, these ideas floated through
Trina's mind. It was quite beyond her to realize them clearly; she could
not know what they meant. Until that rainy day by the shore of the bay
Trina had lived her life with as little self-consciousness as a tree.
She was frank, straightforward, a healthy, natural human being,
without sex as yet. She was almost like a boy. At once there had been a
mysterious disturbance. The woman within her suddenly awoke.

Did she love McTeague? Difficult question. Did she choose him for better
or for worse, deliberately, of her own free will, or was Trina herself
allowed even a choice in the taking of that step that was to make or mar
her life? The Woman is awakened, and, starting from her sleep, catches
blindly at what first her newly opened eyes light upon. It is a spell, a
witchery, ruled by chance alone, inexplicable--a fairy queen enamored of
a clown with ass's ears.

McTeague had awakened the Woman, and, whether she would or no, she was
his now irrevocably; struggle against it as she would, she belonged to
him, body and soul, for life or for death. She had not sought it, she
had not desired it. The spell was laid upon her. Was it a blessing? Was
it a curse? It was all one; she was his, indissolubly, for evil or for
good.

And he? The very act of submission that bound the woman to him forever
had made her seem less desirable in his eyes. Their undoing had already
begun. Yet neither of them was to blame. From the first they had not
sought each other. Chance had brought them face to face, and mysterious
instincts as ungovernable as the winds of heaven were at work knitting
their lives together. Neither of them had asked that this thing should
be--that their destinies, their very souls, should be the sport of
chance. If they could have known, they would have shunned the fearful
risk. But they were allowed no voice in the matter. Why should it all
be?

It had been on a Wednesday that the scene in the B Street station had
taken place. Throughout the rest of the week, at every hour of the day,
Trina asked herself the same question: “Do I love him? Do I really love
him? Is this what love is like?” As she recalled McTeague--recalled his
huge, square-cut head, his salient jaw, his shock of yellow hair, his
heavy, lumbering body, his slow wits--she found little to admire in him
beyond his physical strength, and at such moments she shook her head
decisively. “No, surely she did not love him.” Sunday afternoon,
however, McTeague called. Trina had prepared a little speech for him.
She was to tell him that she did not know what had been the matter with
her that Wednesday afternoon; that she had acted like a bad girl; that
she did not love him well enough to marry him; that she had told him as
much once before.

McTeague saw her alone in the little front parlor. The instant she
appeared he came straight towards her. She saw what he was bent upon
doing. “Wait a minute,” she cried, putting out her hands. “Wait. You
don't understand. I have got something to say to you.” She might as
well have talked to the wind. McTeague put aside her hands with a single
gesture, and gripped her to him in a bearlike embrace that all but
smothered her. Trina was but a reed before that giant strength. McTeague
turned her face to his and kissed her again upon the mouth. Where
was all Trina's resolve then? Where was her carefully prepared little
speech? Where was all her hesitation and torturing doubts of the last
few days? She clasped McTeague's huge red neck with both her slender
arms; she raised her adorable little chin and kissed him in return,
exclaiming: “Oh, I do love you! I do love you!” Never afterward were the
two so happy as at that moment.

A little later in that same week, when Marcus and McTeague were
taking lunch at the car conductors' coffee-joint, the former suddenly
exclaimed:

“Say, Mac, now that you've got Trina, you ought to do more for her. By
damn! you ought to, for a fact. Why don't you take her out somewhere--to
the theatre, or somewhere? You ain't on to your job.”

Naturally, McTeague had told Marcus of his success with Trina. Marcus
had taken on a grand air.

“You've got her, have you? Well, I'm glad of it, old man. I am, for a
fact. I know you'll be happy with her. I know how I would have been. I
forgive you; yes, I forgive you, freely.”

McTeague had not thought of taking Trina to the theatre.

“You think I ought to, Mark?” he inquired, hesitating. Marcus answered,
with his mouth full of suet pudding:

“Why, of course. That's the proper caper.”

“Well--well, that's so. The theatre--that's the word.”

“Take her to the variety show at the Orpheum. There's a good show there
this week; you'll have to take Mrs. Sieppe, too, of course,” he added.
Marcus was not sure of himself as regarded certain proprieties, nor, for
that matter, were any of the people of the little world of Polk Street.
The shop girls, the plumbers' apprentices, the small tradespeople, and
their like, whose social position was not clearly defined, could never
be sure how far they could go and yet preserve their “respectability.”
 When they wished to be “proper,” they invariably overdid the thing.
It was not as if they belonged to the “tough” element, who had no
appearances to keep up. Polk Street rubbed elbows with the “avenue”
 one block above. There were certain limits which its dwellers could not
overstep; but unfortunately for them, these limits were poorly defined.
They could never be sure of themselves. At an unguarded moment they
might be taken for “toughs,” so they generally erred in the other
direction, and were absurdly formal. No people have a keener eye for the
amenities than those whose social position is not assured.

“Oh, sure, you'll have to take her mother,” insisted Marcus. “It
wouldn't be the proper racket if you didn't.”

McTeague undertook the affair. It was an ordeal. Never in his life had
he been so perturbed, so horribly anxious. He called upon Trina the
following Wednesday and made arrangements. Mrs. Sieppe asked if little
August might be included. It would console him for the loss of his
steamboat.

“Sure, sure,” said McTeague. “August too--everybody,” he added, vaguely.

“We always have to leave so early,” complained Trina, “in order to catch
the last boat. Just when it's becoming interesting.”

At this McTeague, acting upon a suggestion of Marcus Schouler's,
insisted they should stay at the flat over night. Marcus and the dentist
would give up their rooms to them and sleep at the dog hospital. There
was a bed there in the sick ward that old Grannis sometimes occupied
when a bad case needed watching. All at once McTeague had an idea, a
veritable inspiration.

“And we'll--we'll--we'll have--what's the matter with having something
to eat afterward in my 'Parlors'?”

“Vairy goot,” commented Mrs. Sieppe. “Bier, eh? And some damales.”

“Oh, I love tamales!” exclaimed Trina, clasping her hands.

McTeague returned to the city, rehearsing his instructions over and
over. The theatre party began to assume tremendous proportions. First of
all, he was to get the seats, the third or fourth row from the front, on
the left-hand side, so as to be out of the hearing of the drums in the
orchestra; he must make arrangements about the rooms with Marcus, must
get in the beer, but not the tamales; must buy for himself a white lawn
tie--so Marcus directed; must look to it that Maria Macapa put his room
in perfect order; and, finally, must meet the Sieppes at the ferry slip
at half-past seven the following Monday night.

The real labor of the affair began with the buying of the tickets. At
the theatre McTeague got into wrong entrances; was sent from one wicket
to another; was bewildered, confused; misunderstood directions; was at
one moment suddenly convinced that he had not enough money with him,
and started to return home. Finally he found himself at the box-office
wicket.

“Is it here you buy your seats?”

“How many?”

“Is it here--”

“What night do you want 'em? Yes, sir, here's the place.”

McTeague gravely delivered himself of the formula he had been reciting
for the last dozen hours.

“I want four seats for Monday night in the fourth row from the front,
and on the right-hand side.”

“Right hand as you face the house or as you face the stage?” McTeague
was dumfounded.

“I want to be on the right-hand side,” he insisted, stolidly; adding,
“in order to be away from the drums.”

“Well, the drums are on the right of the orchestra as you face the
stage,” shouted the other impatiently; “you want to the left, then, as
you face the house.”

“I want to be on the right-hand side,” persisted the dentist.

Without a word the seller threw out four tickets with a magnificent,
supercilious gesture.

“There's four seats on the right-hand side, then, and you're right up
against the drums.”

“But I don't want to be near the drums,” protested McTeague, beginning
to perspire.

“Do you know what you want at all?” said the ticket seller with
calmness, thrusting his head at McTeague. The dentist knew that he had
hurt this young man's feelings.

“I want--I want,” he stammered. The seller slammed down a plan of the
house in front of him and began to explain excitedly. It was the one
thing lacking to complete McTeague's confusion.

“There are your seats,” finished the seller, shoving the tickets into
McTeague's hands. “They are the fourth row from the front, and away from
the drums. Now are you satisfied?”

“Are they on the right-hand side? I want on the right--no, I want on the
left. I want--I don' know, I don' know.”

The seller roared. McTeague moved slowly away, gazing stupidly at the
blue slips of pasteboard. Two girls took his place at the wicket. In
another moment McTeague came back, peering over the girls' shoulders and
calling to the seller:

“Are these for Monday night?”

The other disdained reply. McTeague retreated again timidly, thrusting
the tickets into his immense wallet. For a moment he stood thoughtful
on the steps of the entrance. Then all at once he became enraged, he
did not know exactly why; somehow he felt himself slighted. Once more he
came back to the wicket.

“You can't make small of me,” he shouted over the girls' shoulders;
“you--you can't make small of me. I'll thump you in the head, you
little--you little--you little--little--little pup.” The ticket seller
shrugged his shoulders wearily. “A dollar and a half,” he said to the
two girls.

McTeague glared at him and breathed loudly. Finally he decided to let
the matter drop. He moved away, but on the steps was once more seized
with a sense of injury and outraged dignity.

“You can't make small of me,” he called back a last time, wagging his
head and shaking his fist. “I will--I will--I will--yes, I will.” He
went off muttering.

At last Monday night came. McTeague met the Sieppes at the ferry,
dressed in a black Prince Albert coat and his best slate-blue trousers,
and wearing the made-up lawn necktie that Marcus had selected for him.
Trina was very pretty in the black dress that McTeague knew so well.
She wore a pair of new gloves. Mrs. Sieppe had on lisle-thread mits, and
carried two bananas and an orange in a net reticule. “For Owgooste,” she
confided to him. Owgooste was in a Fauntleroy “costume” very much too
small for him. Already he had been crying.

“Woult you pelief, Doktor, dot bube has torn his stockun alreatty? Walk
in der front, you; stop cryun. Where is dot berliceman?”

At the door of the theatre McTeague was suddenly seized with a panic
terror. He had lost the tickets. He tore through his pockets, ransacked
his wallet. They were nowhere to be found. All at once he remembered,
and with a gasp of relief removed his hat and took them out from beneath
the sweatband.

The party entered and took their places. It was absurdly early. The
lights were all darkened, the ushers stood under the galleries in
groups, the empty auditorium echoing with their noisy talk. Occasionally
a waiter with his tray and clean white apron sauntered up and doun
the aisle. Directly in front of them was the great iron curtain of the
stage, painted with all manner of advertisements. From behind this came
a noise of hammering and of occasional loud voices.

While waiting they studied their programmes. First was an overture by
the orchestra, after which came “The Gleasons, in their mirth-moving
musical farce, entitled 'McMonnigal's Court-ship.'” This was to be
followed by “The Lamont Sisters, Winnie and Violet, serio-comiques and
skirt dancers.” And after this came a great array of other “artists” and
“specialty performers,” musical wonders, acrobats, lightning artists,
ventriloquists, and last of all, “The feature of the evening, the
crowning scientific achievement of the nineteenth century, the
kinetoscope.” McTeague was excited, dazzled. In five years he had not
been twice to the theatre. Now he beheld himself inviting his “girl” and
her mother to accompany him. He began to feel that he was a man of the
world. He ordered a cigar.

Meanwhile the house was filling up. A few side brackets were turned on.
The ushers ran up and down the aisles, stubs of tickets between their
thumb and finger, and from every part of the auditorium could be heard
the sharp clap-clapping of the seats as the ushers flipped them down. A
buzz of talk arose. In the gallery a street gamin whistled shrilly, and
called to some friends on the other side of the house.

“Are they go-wun to begin pretty soon, ma?” whined Owgooste for the
fifth or sixth time; adding, “Say, ma, can't I have some candy?” A
cadaverous little boy had appeared in their aisle, chanting, “Candies,
French mixed candies, popcorn, peanuts and candy.” The orchestra
entered, each man crawling out from an opening under the stage, hardly
larger than the gate of a rabbit hutch. At every instant now the crowd
increased; there were but few seats that were not taken. The waiters
hurried up and down the aisles, their trays laden with beer glasses.
A smell of cigar-smoke filled the air, and soon a faint blue haze rose
from all corners of the house.

“Ma, when are they go-wun to begin?” cried Owgooste. As he spoke
the iron advertisement curtain rose, disclosing the curtain proper
underneath. This latter curtain was quite an affair. Upon it was painted
a wonderful picture. A flight of marble steps led down to a stream of
water; two white swans, their necks arched like the capital letter S,
floated about. At the head of the marble steps were two vases filled
with red and yellow flowers, while at the foot was moored a gondola.
This gondola was full of red velvet rugs that hung over the side
and trailed in the water. In the prow of the gondola a young man in
vermilion tights held a mandolin in his left hand, and gave his right to
a girl in white satin. A King Charles spaniel, dragging a leading-string
in the shape of a huge pink sash, followed the girl. Seven scarlet
roses were scattered upon the two lowest steps, and eight floated in the
water.

“Ain't that pretty, Mac?” exclaimed Trina, turning to the dentist.

“Ma, ain't they go-wun to begin now-wow?” whined Owgooste. Suddenly the
lights all over the house blazed up. “Ah!” said everybody all at once.

“Ain't ut crowdut?” murmured Mr. Sieppe. Every seat was taken; many were
even standing up.

“I always like it better when there is a crowd,” said Trina. She was in
great spirits that evening. Her round, pale face was positively pink.

The orchestra banged away at the overture, suddenly finishing with a
great flourish of violins. A short pause followed. Then the orchestra
played a quick-step strain, and the curtain rose on an interior
furnished with two red chairs and a green sofa. A girl in a short blue
dress and black stockings entered in a hurry and began to dust the
two chairs. She was in a great temper, talking very fast, disclaiming
against the “new lodger.” It appeared that this latter never paid
his rent; that he was given to late hours. Then she came down to the
footlights and began to sing in a tremendous voice, hoarse and flat,
almost like a man's. The chorus, of a feeble originality, ran:

     “Oh, how happy I will be,
     When my darling's face I'll see;
     Oh, tell him for to meet me in the moonlight,
     Down where the golden lilies bloom.”

The orchestra played the tune of this chorus a second time, with certain
variations, while the girl danced to it. She sidled to one side of the
stage and kicked, then sidled to the other and kicked again. As she
finished with the song, a man, evidently the lodger in question, came
in. Instantly McTeague exploded in a roar of laughter. The man
was intoxicated, his hat was knocked in, one end of his collar was
unfastened and stuck up into his face, his watch-chain dangled from
his pocket, and a yellow satin slipper was tied to a button-hole of his
vest; his nose was vermilion, one eye was black and blue. After a short
dialogue with the girl, a third actor appeared. He was dressed like a
little boy, the girl's younger brother. He wore an immense turned-down
collar, and was continually doing hand-springs and wonderful back
somersaults. The “act” devolved upon these three people; the lodger
making love to the girl in the short blue dress, the boy playing all
manner of tricks upon him, giving him tremendous digs in the ribs or
slaps upon the back that made him cough, pulling chairs from under him,
running on all fours between his legs and upsetting him, knocking him
over at inopportune moments. Every one of his falls was accentuated by a
bang upon the bass drum. The whole humor of the “act” seemed to consist
in the tripping up of the intoxicated lodger.

This horse-play delighted McTeague beyond measure. He roared and shouted
every time the lodger went down, slapping his knee, wagging his head.
Owgooste crowed shrilly, clapping his hands and continually
asking, “What did he say, ma? What did he say?” Mrs. Sieppe laughed
immoderately, her huge fat body shaking like a mountain of jelly. She
exclaimed from time to time, “Ach, Gott, dot fool!” Even Trina was
moved, laughing demurely, her lips closed, putting one hand with its new
glove to her mouth.

The performance went on. Now it was the “musical marvels,” two men
extravagantly made up as negro minstrels, with immense shoes and
plaid vests. They seemed to be able to wrestle a tune out of almost
anything--glass bottles, cigar-box fiddles, strings of sleigh-bells,
even graduated brass tubes, which they rubbed with resined fingers.
McTeague was stupefied with admiration.

“That's what you call musicians,” he announced gravely. “'Home, Sweet
Home,' played upon a trombone. Think of that! Art could go no farther.”

The acrobats left him breathless. They were dazzling young men with
beautifully parted hair, continually making graceful gestures to the
audience. In one of them the dentist fancied he saw a strong resemblance
to the boy who had tormented the intoxicated lodger and who had turned
such marvellous somersaults. Trina could not bear to watch their antics.
She turned away her head with a little shudder. “It always makes me
sick,” she explained.

The beautiful young lady, “The Society Contralto,” in evening dress, who
sang the sentimental songs, and carried the sheets of music at which she
never looked, pleased McTeague less. Trina, however, was captivated. She
grew pensive over

     “You do not love me--no;
     Bid me good-by and go;”

and split her new gloves in her enthusiasm when it was finished.

“Don't you love sad music, Mac?” she murmured.

Then came the two comedians. They talked with fearful rapidity; their
wit and repartee seemed inexhaustible.

“As I was going down the street yesterday--”

“Ah! as YOU were going down the street--all right.”

“I saw a girl at a window----”

“YOU saw a girl at a window.”

“And this girl she was a corker----”

“Ah! as YOU were going down the street yesterday YOU saw a girl at a
window, and this girl she was a corker. All right, go on.”

The other comedian went on. The joke was suddenly evolved. A certain
phrase led to a song, which was sung with lightning rapidity, each
performer making precisely the same gestures at precisely the same
instant. They were irresistible. McTeague, though he caught but a third
of the jokes, could have listened all night.

After the comedians had gone out, the iron advertisement curtain was let
down.

“What comes now?” said McTeague, bewildered.

“It's the intermission of fifteen minutes now.”

The musicians disappeared through the rabbit hutch, and the audience
stirred and stretched itself. Most of the young men left their seats.

During this intermission McTeague and his party had “refreshments.” Mrs.
Sieppe and Trina had Queen Charlottes, McTeague drank a glass of beer,
Owgooste ate the orange and one of the bananas. He begged for a glass of
lemonade, which was finally given him.

“Joost to geep um quiet,” observed Mrs. Sieppe.

But almost immediately after drinking his lemonade Owgooste was seized
with a sudden restlessness. He twisted and wriggled in his seat,
swinging his legs violently, looking about him with eyes full of a vague
distress. At length, just as the musicians were returning, he stood
up and whispered energetically in his mother's ear. Mrs. Sieppe was
exasperated at once.

“No, no,” she cried, reseating him brusquely.

The performance was resumed. A lightning artist appeared, drawing
caricatures and portraits with incredible swiftness. He even went so far
as to ask for subjects from the audience, and the names of prominent
men were shouted to him from the gallery. He drew portraits of the
President, of Grant, of Washington, of Napoleon Bonaparte, of Bismarck,
of Garibaldi, of P. T. Barnum.

And so the evening passed. The hall grew very hot, and the smoke of
innumerable cigars made the eyes smart. A thick blue mist hung low over
the heads of the audience. The air was full of varied smells--the
smell of stale cigars, of flat beer, of orange peel, of gas, of sachet
powders, and of cheap perfumery.

One “artist” after another came upon the stage. McTeague's attention
never wandered for a minute. Trina and her mother enjoyed themselves
hugely. At every moment they made comments to one another, their eyes
never leaving the stage.

“Ain't dot fool joost too funny?”

“That's a pretty song. Don't you like that kind of a song?”

“Wonderful! It's wonderful! Yes, yes, wonderful! That's the word.”

Owgooste, however, lost interest. He stood up in his place, his back to
the stage, chewing a piece of orange peel and watching a little girl in
her father's lap across the aisle, his eyes fixed in a glassy, ox-like
stare. But he was uneasy. He danced from one foot to the other, and at
intervals appealed in hoarse whispers to his mother, who disdained an
answer.

“Ma, say, ma-ah,” he whined, abstractedly chewing his orange peel,
staring at the little girl.

“Ma-ah, say, ma.” At times his monotonous plaint reached his mother's
consciousness. She suddenly realized what this was that was annoying
her.

“Owgooste, will you sit down?” She caught him up all at once, and jammed
him down into his place. “Be quiet, den; loog; listun at der yunge
girls.”

Three young women and a young man who played a zither occupied the
stage. They were dressed in Tyrolese costume; they were yodlers, and
sang in German about “mountain tops” and “bold hunters” and the like.
The yodling chorus was a marvel of flute-like modulations. The girls
were really pretty, and were not made up in the least. Their “turn” had
a great success. Mrs. Sieppe was entranced. Instantly she remembered her
girlhood and her native Swiss village.

“Ach, dot is heavunly; joost like der old country. Mein gran'mutter used
to be one of der mos' famous yodlers. When I was leedle, I haf seen dem
joost like dat.”

“Ma-ah,” began Owgooste fretfully, as soon as the yodlers had departed.
He could not keep still an instant; he twisted from side to side,
swinging his legs with incredible swiftness.

“Ma-ah, I want to go ho-ome.”

“Pehave!” exclaimed his mother, shaking him by the arm; “loog, der
leedle girl is watchun you. Dis is der last dime I take you to der blay,
you see.”

“I don't ca-are; I'm sleepy.” At length, to their great relief, he went
to sleep, his head against his mother's arm.

The kinetoscope fairly took their breaths away.

“What will they do next?” observed Trina, in amazement. “Ain't that
wonderful, Mac?”

McTeague was awe-struck.

“Look at that horse move his head,” he cried excitedly, quite carried
away. “Look at that cable car coming--and the man going across the
street. See, here comes a truck. Well, I never in all my life! What
would Marcus say to this?”

“It's all a drick!” exclaimed Mrs. Sieppe, with sudden conviction. “I
ain't no fool; dot's nothun but a drick.”

“Well, of course, mamma,” exclaimed Trina, “it's----”

But Mrs. Sieppe put her head in the air.

“I'm too old to be fooled,” she persisted. “It's a drick.” Nothing more
could be got out of her than this.

The party stayed to the very end of the show, though the kinetoscope was
the last number but one on the programme, and fully half the audience
left immediately afterward. However, while the unfortunate Irish
comedian went through his “act” to the backs of the departing people,
Mrs. Sieppe woke Owgooste, very cross and sleepy, and began getting
her “things together.” As soon as he was awake Owgooste began fidgeting
again.

“Save der brogramme, Trina,” whispered Mrs. Sieppe. “Take ut home to
popper. Where is der hat of Owgooste? Haf you got mein handkerchief,
Trina?”

But at this moment a dreadful accident happened to Owgooste; his
distress reached its climax; his fortitude collapsed. What a misery!
It was a veritable catastrophe, deplorable, lamentable, a thing beyond
words! For a moment he gazed wildly about him, helpless and petrified
with astonishment and terror. Then his grief found utterance, and the
closing strains of the orchestra were mingled with a prolonged wail of
infinite sadness.

“Owgooste, what is ut?” cried his mother eyeing him with dawning
suspicion; then suddenly, “What haf you done? You haf ruin your new
Vauntleroy gostume!” Her face blazed; without more ado she smacked him
soundly. Then it was that Owgooste touched the limit of his misery,
his unhappiness, his horrible discomfort; his utter wretchedness was
complete. He filled the air with his doleful outcries. The more he was
smacked and shaken, the louder he wept.

“What--what is the matter?” inquired McTeague.

Trina's face was scarlet. “Nothing, nothing,” she exclaimed hastily,
looking away. “Come, we must be going. It's about over.” The end of the
show and the breaking up of the audience tided over the embarrassment of
the moment.

The party filed out at the tail end of the audience. Already the lights
were being extinguished and the ushers spreading druggeting over the
upholstered seats.

McTeague and the Sieppes took an uptown car that would bring them near
Polk Street. The car was crowded; McTeague and Owgooste were obliged to
stand. The little boy fretted to be taken in his mother's lap, but Mrs.
Sieppe emphatically refused.

On their way home they discussed the performance.

“I--I like best der yodlers.”

“Ah, the soloist was the best--the lady who sang those sad songs.”

“Wasn't--wasn't that magic lantern wonderful, where the figures moved?
Wonderful--ah, wonderful! And wasn't that first act funny, where the
fellow fell down all the time? And that musical act, and the fellow with
the burnt-cork face who played 'Nearer, My God, to Thee' on the beer
bottles.”

They got off at Polk Street and walked up a block to the flat. The
street was dark and empty; opposite the flat, in the back of the
deserted market, the ducks and geese were calling persistently.

As they were buying their tamales from the half-breed Mexican at the
street corner, McTeague observed:

“Marcus ain't gone to bed yet. See, there's a light in his window.
There!” he exclaimed at once, “I forgot the doorkey. Well, Marcus can
let us in.”

Hardly had he rung the bell at the street door of the flat when the
bolt was shot back. In the hall at the top of the long, narrow staircase
there was the sound of a great scurrying. Maria Macapa stood there,
her hand upon the rope that drew the bolt; Marcus was at her side;
Old Grannis was in the background, looking over their shoulders; while
little Miss Baker leant over the banisters, a strange man in a drab
overcoat at her side. As McTeague's party stepped into the doorway a
half-dozen voices cried:

“Yes, it's them.”

“Is that you, Mac?”

“Is that you, Miss Sieppe?”

“Is your name Trina Sieppe?”

Then, shriller than all the rest, Maria Macapa screamed:

“Oh, Miss Sieppe, come up here quick. Your lottery ticket has won five
thousand dollars!”



CHAPTER 7


“What nonsense!” answered Trina.

“Ach Gott! What is ut?” cried Mrs. Sieppe, misunderstanding, supposing a
calamity.

“What--what--what,” stammered the dentist, confused by the lights, the
crowded stairway, the medley of voices. The party reached the landing.
The others surrounded them. Marcus alone seemed to rise to the occasion.

“Le' me be the first to congratulate you,” he cried, catching Trina's
hand. Every one was talking at once.

“Miss Sieppe, Miss Sieppe, your ticket has won five thousand dollars,”
 cried Maria. “Don't you remember the lottery ticket I sold you in Doctor
McTeague's office?”

“Trina!” almost screamed her mother. “Five tausend thalers! five tausend
thalers! If popper were only here!”

“What is it--what is it?” exclaimed McTeague, rolling his eyes.

“What are you going to do with it, Trina?” inquired Marcus.

“You're a rich woman, my dear,” said Miss Baker, her little false curls
quivering with excitement, “and I'm glad for your sake. Let me kiss you.
To think I was in the room when you bought the ticket!”

“Oh, oh!” interrupted Trina, shaking her head, “there is a mistake.
There must be. Why--why should I win five thousand dollars? It's
nonsense!”

“No mistake, no mistake,” screamed Maria. “Your number was 400,012. Here
it is in the paper this evening. I remember it well, because I keep an
account.”

“But I know you're wrong,” answered Trina, beginning to tremble in spite
of herself. “Why should I win?”

“Eh? Why shouldn't you?” cried her mother.

In fact, why shouldn't she? The idea suddenly occurred to Trina. After
all, it was not a question of effort or merit on her part. Why should
she suppose a mistake? What if it were true, this wonderful fillip of
fortune striking in there like some chance-driven bolt?

“Oh, do you think so?” she gasped.

The stranger in the drab overcoat came forward.

“It's the agent,” cried two or three voices, simultaneously.

“I guess you're one of the lucky ones, Miss Sieppe,” he said. “I suppose
you have kept your ticket.”

“Yes, yes; four three oughts twelve--I remember.”

“That's right,” admitted the other. “Present your ticket at the local
branch office as soon as possible--the address is printed on the back
of the ticket--and you'll receive a check on our bank for five thousand
dollars. Your number will have to be verified on our official list, but
there's hardly a chance of a mistake. I congratulate you.”

All at once a great shrill of gladness surged up in Trina. She was to
possess five thousand dollars. She was carried away with the joy of her
good fortune, a natural, spontaneous joy--the gaiety of a child with a
new and wonderful toy.

“Oh, I've won, I've won, I've won!” she cried, clapping her hands.
“Mamma, think of it. I've won five thousand dollars, just by buying a
ticket. Mac, what do you say to that? I've got five thousand dollars.
August, do you hear what's happened to sister?”

“Kiss your mommer, Trina,” suddenly commanded Mrs. Sieppe. “What efer
will you do mit all dose money, eh, Trina?”

“Huh!” exclaimed Marcus. “Get married on it for one thing.” Thereat
they all shouted with laughter. McTeague grinned, and looked about
sheepishly. “Talk about luck,” muttered Marcus, shaking his head at the
dentist; then suddenly he added:

“Well, are we going to stay talking out here in the hall all night?
Can't we all come into your 'Parlors', Mac?”

“Sure, sure,” exclaimed McTeague, hastily unlocking his door.

“Efery botty gome,” cried Mrs. Sieppe, genially. “Ain't ut so, Doktor?”

“Everybody,” repeated the dentist. “There's--there's some beer.”

“We'll celebrate, by damn!” exclaimed Marcus. “It ain't every day you
win five thousand dollars. It's only Sundays and legal holidays.” Again
he set the company off into a gale of laughter. Anything was funny at a
time like this. In some way every one of them felt elated. The wheel of
fortune had come spinning close to them. They were near to this great
sum of money. It was as though they too had won.

“Here's right where I sat when I bought that ticket,” cried Trina, after
they had come into the “Parlors,” and Marcus had lit the gas. “Right
here in this chair.” She sat down in one of the rigid chairs under the
steel engraving. “And, Marcus, you sat here----”

“And I was just getting out of the operating chair,” interposed Miss
Baker.

“Yes, yes. That's so; and you,” continued Trina, pointing to Maria,
“came up and said, 'Buy a ticket in the lottery; just a dollar.' Oh, I
remember it just as plain as though it was yesterday, and I wasn't going
to at first----”

“And don't you know I told Maria it was against the law?”

“Yes, I remember, and then I gave her a dollar and put the ticket in my
pocketbook. It's in my pocketbook now at home in the top drawer of my
bureau--oh, suppose it should be stolen now,” she suddenly exclaimed.

“It's worth big money now,” asserted Marcus.

“Five thousand dollars. Who would have thought it? It's wonderful.”
 Everybody started and turned. It was McTeague. He stood in the middle of
the floor, wagging his huge head. He seemed to have just realized what
had happened.

“Yes, sir, five thousand dollars!” exclaimed Marcus, with a sudden
unaccountable mirthlessness. “Five thousand dollars! Do you get on to
that? Cousin Trina and you will be rich people.”

“At six per cent, that's twenty-five dollars a month,” hazarded the
agent.

“Think of it. Think of it,” muttered McTeague. He went aimlessly about
the room, his eyes wide, his enormous hands dangling.

“A cousin of mine won forty dollars once,” observed Miss Baker. “But he
spent every cent of it buying more tickets, and never won anything.”

Then the reminiscences began. Maria told about the butcher on the next
block who had won twenty dollars the last drawing. Mrs. Sieppe knew a
gasfitter in Oakland who had won several times; once a hundred dollars.
Little Miss Baker announced that she had always believed that lotteries
were wrong; but, just the same, five thousand was five thousand.

“It's all right when you win, ain't it, Miss Baker?” observed Marcus,
with a certain sarcasm. What was the matter with Marcus? At moments he
seemed singularly out of temper.

But the agent was full of stories. He told his experiences, the legends
and myths that had grown up around the history of the lottery; he told
of the poor newsboy with a dying mother to support who had drawn a prize
of fifteen thousand; of the man who was driven to suicide through want,
but who held (had he but known it) the number that two days after his
death drew the capital prize of thirty thousand dollars; of the little
milliner who for ten years had played the lottery without success, and
who had one day declared that she would buy but one more ticket and then
give up trying, and of how this last ticket had brought her a fortune
upon which she could retire; of tickets that had been lost or destroyed,
and whose numbers had won fabulous sums at the drawing; of criminals,
driven to vice by poverty, and who had reformed after winning
competencies; of gamblers who played the lottery as they would play
a faro bank, turning in their winnings again as soon as made, buying
thousands of tickets all over the country; of superstitions as to
terminal and initial numbers, and as to lucky days of purchase; of
marvellous coincidences--three capital prizes drawn consecutively by the
same town; a ticket bought by a millionaire and given to his boot-black,
who won a thousand dollars upon it; the same number winning the same
amount an indefinite number of times; and so on to infinity. Invariably
it was the needy who won, the destitute and starving woke to wealth and
plenty, the virtuous toiler suddenly found his reward in a ticket bought
at a hazard; the lottery was a great charity, the friend of the people,
a vast beneficent machine that recognized neither rank nor wealth nor
station.

The company began to be very gay. Chairs and tables were brought in from
the adjoining rooms, and Maria was sent out for more beer and tamales,
and also commissioned to buy a bottle of wine and some cake for Miss
Baker, who abhorred beer.

The “Dental Parlors” were in great confusion. Empty beer bottles stood
on the movable rack where the instruments were kept; plates and napkins
were upon the seat of the operating chair and upon the stand of shelves
in the corner, side by side with the concertina and the volumes of
“Allen's Practical Dentist.” The canary woke and chittered crossly, his
feathers puffed out; the husks of tamales littered the floor; the stone
pug dog sitting before the little stove stared at the unusual scene, his
glass eyes starting from their sockets.

They drank and feasted in impromptu fashion. Marcus Schouler assumed
the office of master of ceremonies; he was in a lather of excitement,
rushing about here and there, opening beer bottles, serving the tamales,
slapping McTeague upon the back, laughing and joking continually. He
made McTeague sit at the head of the table, with Trina at his right and
the agent at his left; he--when he sat down at all--occupied the foot,
Maria Macapa at his left, while next to her was Mrs. Sieppe, opposite
Miss Baker. Owgooste had been put to bed upon the bed-lounge.

“Where's Old Grannis?” suddenly exclaimed Marcus. Sure enough, where had
the old Englishman gone? He had been there at first.

“I called him down with everybody else,” cried Maria Macapa, “as soon
as I saw in the paper that Miss Sieppe had won. We all came down to Mr.
Schouler's room and waited for you to come home. I think he must have
gone back to his room. I'll bet you'll find him sewing up his books.”

“No, no,” observed Miss Baker, “not at this hour.”

Evidently the timid old gentleman had taken advantage of the confusion
to slip unobtrusively away.

“I'll go bring him down,” shouted Marcus; “he's got to join us.”

Miss Baker was in great agitation.

“I--I hardly think you'd better,” she murmured; “he--he--I don't think
he drinks beer.”

“He takes his amusement in sewin' up books,” cried Maria.

Marcus brought him down, nevertheless, having found him just preparing
for bed.

“I--I must apologize,” stammered Old Grannis, as he stood in the
doorway. “I had not quite expected--I--find--find myself a little
unprepared.” He was without collar and cravat, owing to Marcus
Schouler's precipitate haste. He was annoyed beyond words that Miss
Baker saw him thus. Could anything be more embarrassing?

Old Grannis was introduced to Mrs. Sieppe and to Trina as Marcus's
employer. They shook hands solemnly.

“I don't believe that he an' Miss Baker have ever been introduced,”
 cried Maria Macapa, shrilly, “an' they've been livin' side by side for
years.”

The two old people were speechless, avoiding each other's gaze. It had
come at last; they were to know each other, to talk together, to touch
each other's hands.

Marcus brought Old Grannis around the table to little Miss Baker,
dragging him by the coat sleeve, exclaiming: “Well, I thought you two
people knew each other long ago. Miss Baker, this is Mr. Grannis; Mr.
Grannis, this is Miss Baker.” Neither spoke. Like two little children
they faced each other, awkward, constrained, tongue-tied with
embarrassment. Then Miss Baker put out her hand shyly. Old Grannis
touched it for an instant and let it fall.

“Now you know each other,” cried Marcus, “and it's about time.” For the
first time their eyes met; Old Grannis trembled a little, putting his
hand uncertainly to his chin. Miss Baker flushed ever so slightly, but
Maria Macapa passed suddenly between them, carrying a half empty beer
bottle. The two old people fell back from one another, Miss Baker
resuming her seat.

“Here's a place for you over here, Mr. Grannis,” cried Marcus,
making room for him at his side. Old Grannis slipped into the chair,
withdrawing at once from the company's notice. He stared fixedly at
his plate and did not speak again. Old Miss Baker began to talk volubly
across the table to Mrs. Sieppe about hot-house flowers and medicated
flannels.

It was in the midst of this little impromptu supper that the engagement
of Trina and the dentist was announced. In a pause in the chatter of
conversation Mrs. Sieppe leaned forward and, speaking to the agent,
said:

“Vell, you know also my daughter Trina get married bretty soon. She and
der dentist, Doktor McTeague, eh, yes?”

There was a general exclamation.

“I thought so all along,” cried Miss Baker, excitedly. “The first time I
saw them together I said, 'What a pair!'”

“Delightful!” exclaimed the agent, “to be married and win a snug little
fortune at the same time.”

“So--So,” murmured Old Grannis, nodding at his plate.

“Good luck to you,” cried Maria.

“He's lucky enough already,” growled Marcus under his breath, relapsing
for a moment into one of those strange moods of sullenness which had
marked him throughout the evening.

Trina flushed crimson, drawing shyly nearer her mother. McTeague grinned
from ear to ear, looking around from one to another, exclaiming “Huh!
Huh!”

But the agent rose to his feet, a newly filled beer glass in his hand.
He was a man of the world, this agent. He knew life. He was suave and
easy. A diamond was on his little finger.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. There was an instant silence. “This
is indeed a happy occasion. I--I am glad to be here to-night; to be a
witness to such good fortune; to partake in these--in this celebration.
Why, I feel almost as glad as if I had held four three oughts twelve
myself; as if the five thousand were mine instead of belonging to our
charming hostess. The good wishes of my humble self go out to Miss
Sieppe in this moment of her good fortune, and I think--in fact, I
am sure I can speak for the great institution, the great company I
represent. The company congratulates Miss Sieppe. We--they--ah--They
wish her every happiness her new fortune can procure her. It has been my
duty, my--ah--cheerful duty to call upon the winners of large prizes
and to offer the felicitation of the company. I have, in my experience,
called upon many such; but never have I seen fortune so happily bestowed
as in this case. The company have dowered the prospective bride. I am
sure I but echo the sentiments of this assembly when I wish all joy and
happiness to this happy pair, happy in the possession of a snug
little fortune, and happy--happy in--” he finished with a sudden
inspiration--“in the possession of each other; I drink to the health,
wealth, and happiness of the future bride and groom. Let us drink
standing up.” They drank with enthusiasm. Marcus was carried away with
the excitement of the moment.

“Outa sight, outa sight,” he vociferated, clapping his hands. “Very well
said. To the health of the bride. McTeague, McTeague, speech, speech!”

In an instant the whole table was clamoring for the dentist to speak.
McTeague was terrified; he gripped the table with both hands, looking
wildly about him.

“Speech, speech!” shouted Marcus, running around the table and
endeavoring to drag McTeague up.

“No--no--no,” muttered the other. “No speech.” The company rattled upon
the table with their beer glasses, insisting upon a speech. McTeague
settled obstinately into his chair, very red in the face, shaking his
head energetically.

“Ah, go on!” he exclaimed; “no speech.”

“Ah, get up and say somethun, anyhow,” persisted Marcus; “you ought to
do it. It's the proper caper.”

McTeague heaved himself up; there was a burst of applause; he looked
slowly about him, then suddenly sat down again, shaking his head
hopelessly.

“Oh, go on, Mac,” cried Trina.

“Get up, say somethun, anyhow,” cried Marcus, tugging at his arm; “you
GOT to.”

Once more McTeague rose to his feet.

“Huh!” he exclaimed, looking steadily at the table. Then he began:

“I don' know what to say--I--I--I ain't never made a speech before; I--I
ain't never made a speech before. But I'm glad Trina's won the prize--”

“Yes, I'll bet you are,” muttered Marcus.

“I--I--I'm glad Trina's won, and I--I want to--I want to--I want
to--want to say that--you're--all--welcome, an' drink hearty, an' I'm
much obliged to the agent. Trina and I are goin' to be married, an'
I'm glad everybody's here to-night, an' you're--all--welcome, an'
drink hearty, an' I hope you'll come again, an' you're always
welcome--an'--I--an'--an'--That's--about--all--I--gotta say.” He sat
down, wiping his forehead, amidst tremendous applause.

Soon after that the company pushed back from the table and relaxed into
couples and groups. The men, with the exception of Old Grannis, began
to smoke, the smell of their tobacco mingling with the odors of ether,
creosote, and stale bedding, which pervaded the “Parlors.” Soon the
windows had to be lowered from the top. Mrs. Sieppe and old Miss Baker
sat together in the bay window exchanging confidences. Miss Baker had
turned back the overskirt of her dress; a plate of cake was in her lap;
from time to time she sipped her wine with the delicacy of a white cat.
The two women were much interested in each other. Miss Baker told Mrs.
Sieppe all about Old Grannis, not forgetting the fiction of the title
and the unjust stepfather.

“He's quite a personage really,” said Miss Baker.

Mrs. Sieppe led the conversation around to her children. “Ach, Trina is
sudge a goote girl,” she said; “always gay, yes, und sing from morgen
to night. Und Owgooste, he is soh smart also, yes, eh? He has der genius
for machines, always making somethun mit wheels und sbrings.”

“Ah, if--if--I had children,” murmured the little old maid a trifle
wistfully, “one would have been a sailor; he would have begun as a
midshipman on my brother's ship; in time he would have been an officer.
The other would have been a landscape gardener.”

“Oh, Mac!” exclaimed Trina, looking up into the dentist's face, “think
of all this money coming to us just at this very moment. Isn't it
wonderful? Don't it kind of scare you?”

“Wonderful, wonderful!” muttered McTeague, shaking his head. “Let's buy
a lot of tickets,” he added, struck with an idea.

“Now, that's how you can always tell a good cigar,” observed the agent
to Marcus as the two sat smoking at the end of the table. “The light end
should be rolled to a point.”

“Ah, the Chinese cigar-makers,” cried Marcus, in a passion, brandishing
his fist. “It's them as is ruining the cause of white labor. They are,
they are for a FACT. Ah, the rat-eaters! Ah, the white-livered curs!”

Over in the corner, by the stand of shelves, Old Grannis was listening
to Maria Macapa. The Mexican woman had been violently stirred over
Trina's sudden wealth; Maria's mind had gone back to her younger days.
She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, her
eyes wide and fixed. Old Grannis listened to her attentively.

“There wa'n't a piece that was so much as scratched,” Maria was saying.
“Every piece was just like a mirror, smooth and bright; oh, bright as a
little sun. Such a service as that was--platters and soup tureens and an
immense big punchbowl. Five thousand dollars, what does that amount to?
Why, that punch-bowl alone was worth a fortune.”

“What a wonderful story!” exclaimed Old Grannis, never for an instant
doubting its truth. “And it's all lost now, you say?”

“Lost, lost,” repeated Maria.

“Tut, tut! What a pity! What a pity!”

Suddenly the agent rose and broke out with:

“Well, I must be going, if I'm to get any car.”

He shook hands with everybody, offered a parting cigar to Marcus,
congratulated McTeague and Trina a last time, and bowed himself out.

“What an elegant gentleman,” commented Miss Baker.

“Ah,” said Marcus, nodding his head, “there's a man of the world for
you. Right on to himself, by damn!”

The company broke up.

“Come along, Mac,” cried Marcus; “we're to sleep with the dogs to-night,
you know.”

The two friends said “Good-night” all around and departed for the little
dog hospital.

Old Grannis hurried to his room furtively, terrified lest he should
again be brought face to face with Miss Baker. He bolted himself in and
listened until he heard her foot in the hall and the soft closing of
her door. She was there close beside him; as one might say, in the same
room; for he, too, had made the discovery as to the similarity of the
wallpaper. At long intervals he could hear a faint rustling as she moved
about. What an evening that had been for him! He had met her, had spoken
to her, had touched her hand; he was in a tremor of excitement. In a
like manner the little old dressmaker listened and quivered. HE was
there in that same room which they shared in common, separated only by
the thinnest board partition. He was thinking of her, she was almost
sure of it. They were strangers no longer; they were acquaintances,
friends. What an event that evening had been in their lives!

Late as it was, Miss Baker brewed a cup of tea and sat down in her
rocking chair close to the partition; she rocked gently, sipping her
tea, calming herself after the emotions of that wonderful evening.

Old Grannis heard the clinking of the tea things and smelt the faint
odor of the tea. It seemed to him a signal, an invitation. He drew his
chair close to his side of the partition, before his work-table. A pile
of half-bound “Nations” was in the little binding apparatus; he threaded
his huge upholsterer's needle with stout twine and set to work.

It was their tete-a-tete. Instinctively they felt each other's presence,
felt each other's thought coming to them through the thin partition.
It was charming; they were perfectly happy. There in the stillness that
settled over the flat in the half hour after midnight the two old people
“kept company,” enjoying after their fashion their little romance that
had come so late into the lives of each.

On the way to her room in the garret Maria Macapa paused under the
single gas-jet that burned at the top of the well of the staircase; she
assured herself that she was alone, and then drew from her pocket one of
McTeague's “tapes” of non-cohesive gold. It was the most valuable steal
she had ever yet made in the dentist's “Parlors.” She told herself that
it was worth at least a couple of dollars. Suddenly an idea occurred
to her, and she went hastily to a window at the end of the hall, and,
shading her face with both hands, looked down into the little alley just
back of the flat. On some nights Zerkow, the red-headed Polish Jew, sat
up late, taking account of the week's ragpicking. There was a dim light
in his window now.

Maria went to her room, threw a shawl around her head, and descended
into the little back yard of the flat by the back stairs. As she let
herself out of the back gate into the alley, Alexander, Marcus's Irish
setter, woke suddenly with a gruff bark. The collie who lived on the
other side of the fence, in the back yard of the branch post-office,
answered with a snarl. Then in an instant the endless feud between
the two dogs was resumed. They dragged their respective kennels to the
fence, and through the cracks raged at each other in a frenzy of hate;
their teeth snapped and gleamed; the hackles on their backs rose and
stiffened. Their hideous clamor could have been heard for blocks around.
What a massacre should the two ever meet!

Meanwhile, Maria was knocking at Zerkow's miserable hovel.

“Who is it? Who is it?” cried the rag-picker from within, in his hoarse
voice, that was half whisper, starting nervously, and sweeping a handful
of silver into his drawer.

“It's me, Maria Macapa;” then in a lower voice, and as if speaking to
herself, “had a flying squirrel an' let him go.”

“Ah, Maria,” cried Zerkow, obsequiously opening the door. “Come in, come
in, my girl; you're always welcome, even as late as this. No junk, hey?
But you're welcome for all that. You'll have a drink, won't you?” He led
her into his back room and got down the whiskey bottle and the broken
red tumbler.

After the two had drunk together Maria produced the gold “tape.”
 Zerkow's eyes glittered on the instant. The sight of gold invariably
sent a qualm all through him; try as he would, he could not repress it.
His fingers trembled and clawed at his mouth; his breath grew short.

“Ah, ah, ah!” he exclaimed, “give it here, give it here; give it to me,
Maria. That's a good girl, come give it to me.”

They haggled as usual over the price, but to-night Maria was too excited
over other matters to spend much time in bickering over a few cents.

“Look here, Zerkow,” she said as soon as the transfer was made, “I got
something to tell you. A little while ago I sold a lottery ticket to a
girl at the flat; the drawing was in this evening's papers. How much do
you suppose that girl has won?”

“I don't know. How much? How much?”

“Five thousand dollars.”

It was as though a knife had been run through the Jew; a spasm of an
almost physical pain twisted his face--his entire body. He raised his
clenched fists into the air, his eyes shut, his teeth gnawing his lip.

“Five thousand dollars,” he whispered; “five thousand dollars. For what?
For nothing, for simply buying a ticket; and I have worked so hard for
it, so hard, so hard. Five thousand dollars, five thousand dollars. Oh,
why couldn't it have come to me?” he cried, his voice choking, the
tears starting to his eyes; “why couldn't it have come to me? To come so
close, so close, and yet to miss me--me who have worked for it, fought
for it, starved for it, am dying for it every day. Think of it, Maria,
five thousand dollars, all bright, heavy pieces----”

“Bright as a sunset,” interrupted Maria, her chin propped on her hands.
“Such a glory, and heavy. Yes, every piece was heavy, and it was all
you could do to lift the punch-bowl. Why, that punch-bowl was worth a
fortune alone----”

“And it rang when you hit it with your knuckles, didn't it?” prompted
Zerkow, eagerly, his lips trembling, his fingers hooking themselves into
claws.

“Sweeter'n any church bell,” continued Maria.

“Go on, go on, go on,” cried Zerkow, drawing his chair closer, and
shutting his eyes in ecstasy.

“There were more than a hundred pieces, and every one of them gold----”

“Ah, every one of them gold.”

“You should have seen the sight when the leather trunk was opened.
There wa'n't a piece that was so much as scratched; every one was like
a mirror, smooth and bright, polished so that it looked black--you know
how I mean.”

“Oh, I know, I know,” cried Zerkow, moistening his lips.

Then he plied her with questions--questions that covered every detail
of that service of plate. It was soft, wasn't it? You could bite into a
plate and leave a dent? The handles of the knives, now, were they gold,
too? All the knife was made from one piece of gold, was it? And the
forks the same? The interior of the trunk was quilted, of course? Did
Maria ever polish the plates herself? When the company ate off this
service, it must have made a fine noise--these gold knives and forks
clinking together upon these gold plates.

“Now, let's have it all over again, Maria,” pleaded Zerkow. “Begin
now with 'There were more than a hundred pieces, and every one of them
gold.' Go on, begin, begin, begin!”

The red-headed Pole was in a fever of excitement. Maria's recital had
become a veritable mania with him. As he listened, with closed eyes and
trembling lips, he fancied he could see that wonderful plate before him,
there on the table, under his eyes, under his hand, ponderous, massive,
gleaming. He tormented Maria into a second repetition of the story--into
a third. The more his mind dwelt upon it, the sharper grew his desire.
Then, with Maria's refusal to continue the tale, came the reaction.
Zerkow awoke as from some ravishing dream. The plate was gone, was
irretrievably lost. There was nothing in that miserable room but grimy
rags and rust-corroded iron. What torment! what agony! to be so near--so
near, to see it in one's distorted fancy as plain as in a mirror. To
know every individual piece as an old friend; to feel its weight; to
be dazzled by its glitter; to call it one's own, own; to have it to
oneself, hugged to the breast; and then to start, to wake, to come down
to the horrible reality.

“And you, YOU had it once,” gasped Zerkow, clawing at her arm; “you had
it once, all your own. Think of it, and now it's gone.”

“Gone for good and all.”

“Perhaps it's buried near your old place somewhere.”

“It's gone--gone--gone,” chanted Maria in a monotone.

Zerkow dug his nails into his scalp, tearing at his red hair.

“Yes, yes, it's gone, it's gone--lost forever! Lost forever!”

Marcus and the dentist walked up the silent street and reached the
little dog hospital. They had hardly spoken on the way. McTeague's brain
was in a whirl; speech failed him. He was busy thinking of the great
thing that had happened that night, and was trying to realize what its
effect would be upon his life--his life and Trina's. As soon as they had
found themselves in the street, Marcus had relapsed at once to a sullen
silence, which McTeague was too abstracted to notice.

They entered the tiny office of the hospital with its red carpet, its
gas stove, and its colored prints of famous dogs hanging against the
walls. In one corner stood the iron bed which they were to occupy.

“You go on an' get to bed, Mac,” observed Marcus. “I'll take a look at
the dogs before I turn in.”

He went outside and passed along into the yard, that was bounded on
three sides by pens where the dogs were kept. A bull terrier dying of
gastritis recognized him and began to whimper feebly.

Marcus paid no attention to the dogs. For the first time that evening he
was alone and could give vent to his thoughts. He took a couple of turns
up and down the yard, then suddenly in a low voice exclaimed:

“You fool, you fool, Marcus Schouler! If you'd kept Trina you'd have
had that money. You might have had it yourself. You've thrown away your
chance in life--to give up the girl, yes--but this,” he stamped his foot
with rage--“to throw five thousand dollars out of the window--to stuff
it into the pockets of someone else, when it might have been yours, when
you might have had Trina AND the money--and all for what? Because we
were pals. Oh, 'pals' is all right--but five thousand dollars--to have
played it right into his hands--God DAMN the luck!”



CHAPTER 8


The next two months were delightful. Trina and McTeague saw each other
regularly, three times a week. The dentist went over to B Street Sunday
and Wednesday afternoons as usual; but on Fridays it was Trina who came
to the city. She spent the morning between nine and twelve o'clock down
town, for the most part in the cheap department stores, doing the weekly
shopping for herself and the family. At noon she took an uptown car and
met McTeague at the corner of Polk Street. The two lunched together at
a small uptown hotel just around the corner on Sutter Street. They
were given a little room to themselves. Nothing could have been more
delicious. They had but to close the sliding door to shut themselves off
from the whole world.

Trina would arrive breathless from her raids upon the bargain counters,
her pale cheeks flushed, her hair blown about her face and into the
corners of her lips, her mother's net reticule stuffed to bursting. Once
in their tiny private room, she would drop into her chair with a little
groan.

“Oh, MAC, I am so tired; I've just been all OVER town. Oh, it's good to
sit down. Just think, I had to stand up in the car all the way, after
being on my feet the whole blessed morning. Look here what I've bought.
Just things and things. Look, there's some dotted veiling I got for
myself; see now, do you think it looks pretty?”--she spread it over her
face--“and I got a box of writing paper, and a roll of crepe paper to
make a lamp shade for the front parlor; and--what do you suppose--I
saw a pair of Nottingham lace curtains for FORTY-NINE CENTS; isn't that
cheap? and some chenille portieres for two and a half. Now what have
YOU been doing since I last saw you? Did Mr. Heise finally get up enough
courage to have his tooth pulled yet?” Trina took off her hat and veil
and rearranged her hair before the looking-glass.

“No, no--not yet. I went down to the sign painter's yesterday afternoon
to see about that big gold tooth for a sign. It costs too much; I can't
get it yet a while. There's two kinds, one German gilt and the other
French gilt; but the German gilt is no good.”

McTeague sighed, and wagged his head. Even Trina and the five thousand
dollars could not make him forget this one unsatisfied longing.

At other times they would talk at length over their plans, while Trina
sipped her chocolate and McTeague devoured huge chunks of butterless
bread. They were to be married at the end of May, and the dentist
already had his eye on a couple of rooms, part of the suite of a
bankrupt photographer. They were situated in the flat, just back of his
“Parlors,” and he believed the photographer would sublet them furnished.

McTeague and Trina had no apprehensions as to their finances. They could
be sure, in fact, of a tidy little income. The dentist's practice was
fairly good, and they could count upon the interest of Trina's five
thousand dollars. To McTeague's mind this interest seemed woefully
small. He had had uncertain ideas about that five thousand dollars; had
imagined that they would spend it in some lavish fashion; would buy
a house, perhaps, or would furnish their new rooms with overwhelming
luxury--luxury that implied red velvet carpets and continued feasting.
The oldtime miner's idea of wealth easily gained and quickly spent
persisted in his mind. But when Trina had begun to talk of investments
and interests and per cents, he was troubled and not a little
disappointed. The lump sum of five thousand dollars was one thing, a
miserable little twenty or twenty-five a month was quite another; and
then someone else had the money.

“But don't you see, Mac,” explained Trina, “it's ours just the same. We
could get it back whenever we wanted it; and then it's the reasonable
way to do. We mustn't let it turn our heads, Mac, dear, like that man
that spent all he won in buying more tickets. How foolish we'd feel
after we'd spent it all! We ought to go on just the same as before; as
if we hadn't won. We must be sensible about it, mustn't we?”

“Well, well, I guess perhaps that's right,” the dentist would answer,
looking slowly about on the floor.

Just what should ultimately be done with the money was the subject of
endless discussion in the Sieppe family. The savings bank would allow
only three per cent., but Trina's parents believed that something better
could be got.

“There's Uncle Oelbermann,” Trina had suggested, remembering the rich
relative who had the wholesale toy store in the Mission.

Mr. Sieppe struck his hand to his forehead. “Ah, an idea,” he cried.
In the end an agreement was made. The money was invested in Mr.
Oelbermann's business. He gave Trina six per cent.

Invested in this fashion, Trina's winning would bring in twenty-five
dollars a month. But, besides this, Trina had her own little trade. She
made Noah's ark animals for Uncle Oelbermann's store. Trina's ancestors
on both sides were German-Swiss, and some long-forgotten forefather of
the sixteenth century, some worsted-leggined wood-carver of the Tyrol,
had handed down the talent of the national industry, to reappear in this
strangely distorted guise.

She made Noah's ark animals, whittling them out of a block of soft wood
with a sharp jack-knife, the only instrument she used. Trina was very
proud to explain her work to McTeague as he had already explained his
own to her.

“You see, I take a block of straight-grained pine and cut out the shape,
roughly at first, with the big blade; then I go over it a second time
with the little blade, more carefully; then I put in the ears and tail
with a drop of glue, and paint it with a 'non-poisonous' paint--Vandyke
brown for the horses, foxes, and cows; slate gray for the elephants and
camels; burnt umber for the chickens, zebras, and so on; then, last, a
dot of Chinese white for the eyes, and there you are, all finished. They
sell for nine cents a dozen. Only I can't make the manikins.”

“The manikins?”

“The little figures, you know--Noah and his wife, and Shem, and all the
others.”

It was true. Trina could not whittle them fast enough and cheap enough
to compete with the turning lathe, that could throw off whole tribes
and peoples of manikins while she was fashioning one family. Everything
else, however, she made--the ark itself, all windows and no door; the
box in which the whole was packed; even down to pasting on the label,
which read, “Made in France.” She earned from three to four dollars a
week.

The income from these three sources, McTeague's profession, the interest
of the five thousand dollars, and Trina's whittling, made a respectable
little sum taken altogether. Trina declared they could even lay by
something, adding to the five thousand dollars little by little.

It soon became apparent that Trina would be an extraordinarily good
housekeeper. Economy was her strong point. A good deal of peasant blood
still ran undiluted in her veins, and she had all the instinct of a
hardy and penurious mountain race--the instinct which saves without any
thought, without idea of consequence--saving for the sake of saving,
hoarding without knowing why. Even McTeague did not know how closely
Trina held to her new-found wealth.

But they did not always pass their luncheon hour in this discussion
of incomes and economies. As the dentist came to know his little woman
better she grew to be more and more of a puzzle and a joy to him. She
would suddenly interrupt a grave discourse upon the rents of rooms and
the cost of light and fuel with a brusque outburst of affection that
set him all a-tremble with delight. All at once she would set down her
chocolate, and, leaning across the narrow table, would exclaim:

“Never mind all that! Oh, Mac, do you truly, really love me--love me
BIG?”

McTeague would stammer something, gasping, and wagging his head, beside
himself for the lack of words.

“Old bear,” Trina would answer, grasping him by both huge ears and
swaying his head from side to side. “Kiss me, then. Tell me, Mac, did
you think any less of me that first time I let you kiss me there in the
station? Oh, Mac, dear, what a funny nose you've got, all full of hairs
inside; and, Mac, do you know you've got a bald spot--” she dragged his
head down towards her--“right on the top of your head.” Then she would
seriously kiss the bald spot in question, declaring:

“That'll make the hair grow.”

Trina took an infinite enjoyment in playing with McTeague's great
square-cut head, rumpling his hair till it stood on end, putting her
fingers in his eyes, or stretching his ears out straight, and watching
the effect with her head on one side. It was like a little child playing
with some gigantic, good-natured Saint Bernard.

One particular amusement they never wearied of. The two would lean
across the table towards each other, McTeague folding his arms under his
breast. Then Trina, resting on her elbows, would part his mustache-the
great blond mustache of a viking--with her two hands, pushing it up from
his lips, causing his face to assume the appearance of a Greek mask. She
would curl it around either forefinger, drawing it to a fine end. Then
all at once McTeague would make a fearful snorting noise through his
nose. Invariably--though she was expecting this, though it was part of
the game--Trina would jump with a stifled shriek. McTeague would bellow
with laughter till his eyes watered. Then they would recommence upon the
instant, Trina protesting with a nervous tremulousness:

“Now--now--now, Mac, DON'T; you SCARE me so.”

But these delicious tete-a-tetes with Trina were offset by a certain
coolness that Marcus Schouler began to affect towards the dentist. At
first McTeague was unaware of it; but by this time even his slow wits
began to perceive that his best friend--his “pal”--was not the same to
him as formerly. They continued to meet at lunch nearly every day but
Friday at the car conductors' coffee-joint. But Marcus was sulky; there
could be no doubt about that. He avoided talking to McTeague, read the
paper continually, answering the dentist's timid efforts at conversation
in gruff monosyllables. Sometimes, even, he turned sideways to the table
and talked at great length to Heise the harness-maker, whose table was
next to theirs. They took no more long walks together when Marcus
went out to exercise the dogs. Nor did Marcus ever again recur to his
generosity in renouncing Trina.

One Tuesday, as McTeague took his place at the table in the
coffee-joint, he found Marcus already there.

“Hello, Mark,” said the dentist, “you here already?”

“Hello,” returned the other, indifferently, helping himself to tomato
catsup. There was a silence. After a long while Marcus suddenly looked
up.

“Say, Mac,” he exclaimed, “when you going to pay me that money you owe
me?”

McTeague was astonished.

“Huh? What? I don't--do I owe you any money, Mark?”

“Well, you owe me four bits,” returned Marcus, doggedly. “I paid for you
and Trina that day at the picnic, and you never gave it back.”

“Oh--oh!” answered McTeague, in distress. “That's so, that's so. I--you
ought to have told me before. Here's your money, and I'm obliged to
you.”

“It ain't much,” observed Marcus, sullenly. “But I need all I can get
now-a-days.”

“Are you--are you broke?” inquired McTeague.

“And I ain't saying anything about your sleeping at the hospital that
night, either,” muttered Marcus, as he pocketed the coin.

“Well--well--do you mean--should I have paid for that?”

“Well, you'd 'a' had to sleep SOMEWHERES, wouldn't you?” flashed out
Marcus. “You 'a' had to pay half a dollar for a bed at the flat.”

“All right, all right,” cried the dentist, hastily, feeling in his
pockets. “I don't want you should be out anything on my account, old
man. Here, will four bits do?”

“I don't WANT your damn money,” shouted Marcus in a sudden rage,
throwing back the coin. “I ain't no beggar.”

McTeague was miserable. How had he offended his pal?

“Well, I want you should take it, Mark,” he said, pushing it towards
him.

“I tell you I won't touch your money,” exclaimed the other through his
clenched teeth, w

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