McTeague, by Frank Norris

Part 1 out of 8





{Editor's note: The word can~on has been changed to canyon
in each case.}

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 pre-
occupation, 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 punch-
bowl 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


 


Back to Full Books