by Frank Norris
“Oh, won’t you — won’t you please—” He turned his head, looking appealingly at the little old dressmaker.
“Wait, I’ll help you,” she said. She came into the room, up to the table, and moved the pamphlets to one side.
“Thanks, thanks,” murmured Old Grannis, setting down the tray.
“Now — now — now I will go back,” she exclaimed, hurriedly.
“No — no,” returned the old Englishman. “Don’t go, don’t go. I’ve been so lonely to-night — and last night too — all this year — all my life,” he suddenly cried.
“I — I — I’ve forgotten the sugar.”
“But I never take sugar in my tea.”
“But it’s rather cold, and I’ve spilled it — almost all of it.”
“I’ll drink it from the saucer.” Old Grannis had drawn up his armchair for her.
“Oh, I shouldn’t. This is — this is SO — You must think ill of me.” Suddenly she sat down, and resting her elbows on the table, hid her face in her hands.
“Think ILL of you?” cried Old Grannis, “think ILL of you? Why, you don’t know — you have no idea — all these years — living so close to you, I — I—” he paused suddenly. It seemed to him as if the beating of his heart was choking him.
“I thought you were binding your books to-night,” said Miss Baker, suddenly, “and you looked tired. I thought you looked tired when I last saw you, and a cup of tea, you know, it — that — that does you so much good when you’re tired. But you weren’t binding books.”
“No, no,” returned Old Grannis, drawing up a chair and sitting down. “No, I — the fact is, I’ve sold my apparatus; a firm of booksellers has bought the rights of it.”
“And aren’t you going to bind books any more?” exclaimed the little dressmaker, a shade of disappointment in her manner. “I thought you always did about four o’clock. I used to hear you when I was making tea.”
It hardly seemed possible to Miss Baker that she was actually talking to Old Grannis, that the two were really chatting together, face to face, and without the dreadful embarrassment that used to overwhelm them both when they met on the stairs. She had often dreamed of this, but had always put it off to some far-distant day. It was to come gradually, little by little, instead of, as now, abruptly and with no preparation. That she should permit herself the indiscretion of actually intruding herself into his room had never so much as occurred to her. Yet here she was, IN HIS ROOM, and they were talking together, and little by little her embarrassment was wearing away.
“Yes, yes, I always heard you when you were making tea,” returned the old Englishman; “I heard the tea things. Then I used to draw my chair and my work-table close to the wall on my side, and sit there and work while you drank your tea just on the other side; and I used to feel very near to you then. I used to pass the whole evening that way.”
“And, yes — yes — I did too,” she answered. “I used to make tea just at that time and sit there for a whole hour.”
“And didn’t you sit close to the partition on your side? Sometimes I was sure of it. I could even fancy that I could hear your dress brushing against the wall-paper close beside me. Didn’t you sit close to the partition?”
“I — I don’t know where I sat.”
Old Grannis shyly put out his hand and took hers as it lay upon her lap.
“Didn’t you sit close to the partition on your side?” he insisted.
“No — I don’t know — perhaps — sometimes. Oh, yes,” she exclaimed, with a little gasp, “Oh, yes, I often did.”
Then Old Grannis put his arm about her, and kissed her faded cheek, that flushed to pink upon the instant.
After that they spoke but little. The day lapsed slowly into twilight, and the two old people sat there in the gray evening, quietly, quietly, their hands in each other’s hands, “keeping company,” but now with nothing to separate them. It had come at last. After all these years they were together; they understood each other. They stood at length in a little Elysium of their own creating. They walked hand in hand in a delicious garden where it was always autumn. Far from the world and together they entered upon the long retarded romance of their commonplace and uneventful lives.
CHAPTER 18
That same night McTeague was awakened by a shrill scream, and woke to find Trina’s arms around his neck. She was trembling so that the bed-springs creaked.
“Huh?” cried the dentist, sitting up in bed, raising his clinched fists. “Huh? What? What? What is it? What is it?”
“Oh, Mac,” gasped his wife, “I had such an awful dream. I dreamed about Maria. I thought she was chasing me, and I couldn’t run, and her throat was — Oh, she was all covered with blood. Oh-h, I am so frightened!”
Trina had borne up very well for the first day or so after the affair, and had given her testimony to the coroner with far greater calmness than Heise. It was only a week later that the horror of the thing came upon her again. She was so nervous that she hardly dared to be alone in the daytime, and almost every night woke with a cry of terror, trembling with the recollection of some dreadful nightmare. The dentist was irritated beyond all expression by her nervousness, and especially was he exasperated when her cries woke him suddenly in the middle of the night. He would sit up in bed, rolling his eyes wildly, throwing out his huge fists — at what, he did not know — exclaiming, “What what—” bewildered and hopelessly confused. Then when he realized that it was only Trina, his anger kindled abruptly.
“Oh, you and your dreams! You go to sleep, or I’ll give you a dressing down.” Sometimes he would hit her a great thwack with his open palm, or catch her hand and bite the tips of her fingers. Trina would lie awake for hours afterward, crying softly to herself. Then, by and by, “Mac,” she would say timidly.
“Huh?”
“Mac, do you love me?”
“Huh? What? Go to sleep.”
“Don’t you love me any more, Mac?”
“Oh, go to sleep. Don’t bother me.”
“Well, do you LOVE me, Mac?”
“I guess so.”
“Oh, Mac, I’ve only you now, and if you don’t love me, what is going to become of me?”
“Shut up, an’ let me go to sleep.”
“Well, just tell me that you love me.”
The dentist would turn abruptly away from her, burying his big blond head in the pillow, and covering up his ears with the blankets. Then Trina would sob herself to sleep.
The dentist had long since given up looking for a job. Between breakfast and supper time Trina saw but little of him. Once the morning meal over, McTeague bestirred himself, put on his cap — he had given up wearing even a hat since his wife had made him sell his silk hat — and went out. He had fallen into the habit of taking long and solitary walks beyond the suburbs of the city. Sometimes it was to the Cliff House, occasionally to the Park (where he would sit on the sun-warmed benches, smoking his pipe and reading ragged ends of old newspapers), but more often it was to the Presidio Reservation. McTeague would walk out to the end of the Union Street car line, entering the Reservation at the terminus, then he would work down to the shore of the bay, follow the shore line to the Old Fort at the Golden Gate, and, turning the Point here, come out suddenly upon the full sweep of the Pacific. Then he would follow the beach down to a certain point of rocks that he knew. Here he would turn inland, climbing the bluffs to a rolling grassy down sown with blue iris and a yellow flower that he did not know the name of. On the far side of this down was a broad, well-kept road. McTeague would keep to this road until he reached the city again by the way of the Sacramento Street car line. The dentist loved these walks. He liked to be alone. He liked the solitude of the tremendous, tumbling ocean; the fresh, windy downs; he liked to feel the gusty Trades flogging his face, and he would remain for hours watching the roll and plunge of the breakers with the silent, unreasoned enjoyment of a child. All at once he developed a passion for fishing. He would sit all day nearly motionl
ess upon a point of rocks, his fish-line between his fingers, happy if he caught three perch in twelve hours. At noon he would retire to a bit of level turf around an angle of the shore and cook his fish, eating them without salt or knife or fork. He thrust a pointed stick down the mouth of the perch, and turned it slowly over the blaze. When the grease stopped dripping, he knew that it was done, and would devour it slowly and with tremendous relish, picking the bones clean, eating even the head. He remembered how often he used to do this sort of thing when he was a boy in the mountains of Placer County, before he became a car-boy at the mine. The dentist enjoyed himself hugely during these days. The instincts of the old-time miner were returning. In the stress of his misfortune McTeague was lapsing back to his early estate.
One evening as he reached home after such a tramp, he was surprised to find Trina standing in front of what had been Zerkow’s house, looking at it thoughtfully, her finger on her lips.
“What you doing here’?” growled the dentist as he came up. There was a “Rooms-to-let” sign on the street door of the house.
“Now we’ve found a place to move to,” exclaimed Trina.
“What?” cried McTeague. “There, in that dirty house, where you found Maria?”
“I can’t afford that room in the flat any more, now that you can’t get any work to do.”
“But there’s where Zerkow killed Maria — the very house — an’ you wake up an’ squeal in the night just thinking of it.”
“I know. I know it will be bad at first, but I’ll get used to it, an’ it’s just half again as cheap as where we are now. I was looking at a room; we can have it dirt cheap. It’s a back room over the kitchen. A German family are going to take the front part of the house and sublet the rest. I’m going to take it. It’ll be money in my pocket.”
“But it won’t be any in mine,” vociferated the dentist, angrily. “I’ll have to live in that dirty rat hole just so’s you can save money. I ain’t any the better off for it.”
“Find work to do, and then we’ll talk,” declared Trina. “I’M going to save up some money against a rainy day; and if I can save more by living here I’m going to do it, even if it is the house Maria was killed in. I don’t care.”
“All right,” said McTeague, and did not make any further protest. His wife looked at him surprised. She could not understand this sudden acquiescence. Perhaps McTeague was so much away from home of late that he had ceased to care where or how he lived. But this sudden change troubled her a little for all that.
The next day the McTeagues moved for a second time. It did not take them long. They were obliged to buy the bed from the landlady, a circumstance which nearly broke Trina’s heart; and this bed, a couple of chairs, Trina’s trunk, an ornament or two, the oil stove, and some plates and kitchen ware were all that they could call their own now; and this back room in that wretched house with its grisly memories, the one window looking out into a grimy maze of back yards and broken sheds, was what they now knew as their home.
The McTeagues now began to sink rapidly lower and lower. They became accustomed to their surroundings. Worst of all, Trina lost her pretty ways and her good looks. The combined effects of hard work, avarice, poor food, and her husband’s brutalities told on her swiftly. Her charming little figure grew coarse, stunted, and dumpy. She who had once been of a catlike neatness, now slovened all day about the room in a dirty flannel wrapper, her slippers clap-clapping after her as she walked. At last she even neglected her hair, the wonderful swarthy tiara, the coiffure of a queen, that shaded her little pale forehead. In the morning she braided it before it was half combed, and piled and coiled it about her head in haphazard fashion. It came down half a dozen times a day; by evening it was an unkempt, tangled mass, a veritable rat’s nest.
Ah, no, it was not very gay, that life of hers, when one had to rustle for two, cook and work and wash, to say nothing of paying the rent. What odds was it if she was slatternly, dirty, coarse? Was there time to make herself look otherwise, and who was there to be pleased when she was all prinked out? Surely not a great brute of a husband who bit you like a dog, and kicked and pounded you as though you were made of iron. Ah, no, better let things go, and take it as easy as you could. Hump your back, and it was soonest over.
The one room grew abominably dirty, reeking with the odors of cooking and of “non-poisonous” paint. The bed was not made until late in the afternoon, sometimes not at all. Dirty, unwashed crockery, greasy knives, sodden fragments of yesterday’s meals cluttered the table, while in one corner was the heap of evil-smelling, dirty linen. Cockroaches appeared in the crevices of the woodwork, the wall-paper bulged from the damp walls and began to peel. Trina had long ago ceased to dust or to wipe the furniture with a bit of rag. The grime grew thick upon the window panes and in the corners of the room. All the filth of the alley invaded their quarters like a rising muddy tide.
Between the windows, however, the faded photograph of the couple in their wedding finery looked down upon the wretchedness, Trina still holding her set bouquet straight before her, McTeague standing at her side, his left foot forward, in the attitude of a Secretary of State; while near by hung the canary, the one thing the dentist clung to obstinately, piping and chittering all day in its little gilt prison.
And the tooth, the gigantic golden molar of French gilt, enormous and ungainly, sprawled its branching prongs in one corner of the room, by the footboard of the bed. The McTeague’s had come to use it as a sort of substitute for a table. After breakfast and supper Trina piled the plates and greasy dishes upon it to have them out of the way.
One afternoon the Other Dentist, McTeague’s old-time rival, the wearer of marvellous waistcoats, was surprised out of all countenance to receive a visit from McTeague. The Other Dentist was in his operating room at the time, at work upon a plaster-of-paris mould. To his call of “‘Come right in. Don’t you see the sign, ‘Enter without knocking’?” McTeague came in. He noted at once how airy and cheerful was the room. A little fire coughed and tittered on the hearth, a brindled greyhound sat on his haunches watching it intently, a great mirror over the mantle offered to view an array of actresses’ pictures thrust between the glass and the frame, and a big bunch of freshly-cut violets stood in a glass bowl on the polished cherrywood table. The Other Dentist came forward briskly, exclaiming cheerfully:
“Oh, Doctor — Mister McTeague, how do? how do?”
The fellow was actually wearing a velvet smoking jacket. A cigarette was between his lips; his patent leather boots reflected the firelight. McTeague wore a black surah neglige shirt without a cravat; huge buckled brogans, hob-nailed, gross, encased his feet; the hems of his trousers were spotted with mud; his coat was frayed at the sleeves and a button was gone. In three days he had not shaved; his shock of heavy blond hair escaped from beneath the visor of his woollen cap and hung low over his forehead. He stood with awkward, shifting feet and uncertain eyes before the dapper young fellow who reeked of the barber shop, and whom he had once ordered from his rooms.
“What can I do for you this morning, Mister McTeague? Something wrong with the teeth, eh?”
“No, no.” McTeague, floundering in the difficulties of his speech, forgot the carefully rehearsed words with which he had intended to begin this interview.
“I want to sell you my sign,” he said, stupidly. “That big tooth of French gilt — YOU know — that you made an offer for once.”
“Oh, I don’t want that now,” said the other loftily. “I prefer a little quiet signboard, nothing pretentious — just the name, and ‘Dentist’ after it. These big signs are vulgar. No, I don’t want it.”
McTeague remained, looking about on the floor, horribly embarrassed, not knowing whether to go or to stay.
“But I don’t know,” said the Other Dentist, reflectively. “If it will help you out any — I guess you’re pretty hard up — I’ll — well, I tell you what — I’ll give you five dollars for it.”
“All right, all right.”
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On the following Thursday morning McTeague woke to hear the eaves dripping and the prolonged rattle of the rain upon the roof.
“Raining,” he growled, in deep disgust, sitting up in bed, and winking at the blurred window.
“It’s been raining all night,” said Trina. She was already up and dressed, and was cooking breakfast on the oil stove.
McTeague dressed himself, grumbling, “Well, I’ll go, anyhow. The fish will bite all the better for the rain.”
“Look here, Mac,” said Trina, slicing a bit of bacon as thinly as she could. “Look here, why don’t you bring some of your fish home sometime?”
“Huh!” snorted the dentist, “so’s we could have ’em for breakfast. Might save you a nickel, mightn’t it?”
“Well, and if it did! Or you might fish for the market. The fisherman across the street would buy ’em of you.”
“Shut up!” exclaimed the dentist, and Trina obediently subsided.
“Look here,” continued her husband, fumbling in his trousers pocket and bringing out a dollar, “I’m sick and tired of coffee and bacon and mashed potatoes. Go over to the market and get some kind of meat for breakfast. Get a steak, or chops, or something.
“Why, Mac, that’s a whole dollar, and he only gave you five for your sign. We can’t afford it. Sure, Mac. Let me put that money away against a rainy day. You’re just as well off without meat for breakfast.”
“You do as I tell you. Get some steak, or chops, or something.”
“Please, Mac, dear.”
