The next two months were delightful. Trina and McTeague saw each other
regularly, three times a week. The dentist went over to B Street Sunday
and Wednesday afternoons as usual; but on Fridays it was Trina who came
to the city. She spent the morning between nine and twelve o'clock down
town, for the most part in the cheap department stores, doing the weekly
shopping for herself and the family. At noon she took an uptown car and
met McTeague at the corner of Polk Street. The two lunched together at
a small uptown hotel just around the corner on Sutter Street. They
were given a little room to themselves. Nothing could have been more
delicious. They had but to close the sliding door to shut themselves off
from the whole world.
Trina would arrive breathless from her raids upon the bargain counters,
her pale cheeks flushed, her hair blown about her face and into the
corners of her lips, her mother's net reticule stuffed to bursting. Once
in their tiny private room, she would drop into her chair with a little
groan.
“Oh, MAC, I am so tired; I've just been all OVER town. Oh, it's good to
sit down. Just think, I had to stand up in the car all the way, after
being on my feet the whole blessed morning. Look here what I've bought.
Just things and things. Look, there's some dotted veiling I got for
myself; see now, do you think it looks pretty?”--she spread it over her
face--“and I got a box of writing paper, and a roll of crepe paper to
make a lamp shade for the front parlor; and--what do you suppose--I
saw a pair of Nottingham lace curtains for FORTY-NINE CENTS; isn't that
cheap? and some chenille portieres for two and a half. Now what have
YOU been doing since I last saw you? Did Mr. Heise finally get up enough
courage to have his tooth pulled yet?” Trina took off her hat and veil
and rearranged her hair before the looking-glass.
“No, no--not yet. I went down to the sign painter's yesterday afternoon
to see about that big gold tooth for a sign. It costs too much; I can't
get it yet a while. There's two kinds, one German gilt and the other
French gilt; but the German gilt is no good.”
McTeague sighed, and wagged his head. Even Trina and the five thousand
dollars could not make him forget this one unsatisfied longing.
At other times they would talk at length over their plans, while Trina
sipped her chocolate and McTeague devoured huge chunks of butterless
bread. They were to be married at the end of May, and the dentist
already had his eye on a couple of rooms, part of the suite of a
bankrupt photographer. They were situated in the flat, just back of his
“Parlors,” and he believed the photographer would sublet them furnished.
McTeague and Trina had no apprehensions as to their finances. They could
be sure, in fact, of a tidy little income. The dentist's practice was
fairly good, and they could count upon the interest of Trina's five
thousand dollars. To McTeague's mind this interest seemed woefully
small. He had had uncertain ideas about that five thousand dollars; had
imagined that they would spend it in some lavish fashion; would buy
a house, perhaps, or would furnish their new rooms with overwhelming
luxury--luxury that implied red velvet carpets and continued feasting.
The oldtime miner's idea of wealth easily gained and quickly spent
persisted in his mind. But when Trina had begun to talk of investments
and interests and per cents, he was troubled and not a little
disappointed. The lump sum of five thousand dollars was one thing, a
miserable little twenty or twenty-five a month was quite another; and
then someone else had the money.
“But don't you see, Mac,” explained Trina, “it's ours just the same. We
could get it back whenever we wanted it; and then it's the reasonable
way to do. We mustn't let it turn our heads, Mac, dear, like that man
that spent all he won in buying more tickets. How foolish we'd feel
after we'd spent it all! We ought to go on just the same as before; as
if we hadn't won. We must be sensible about it, mustn't we?”
“Well, well, I guess perhaps that's right,” the dentist would answer,
looking slowly about on the floor.
Just what should ultimately be done with the money was the subject of
endless discussion in the Sieppe family. The savings bank would allow
only three per cent., but Trina's parents believed that something better
could be got.
“There's Uncle Oelbermann,” Trina had suggested, remembering the rich
relative who had the wholesale toy store in the Mission.
Mr. Sieppe struck his hand to his forehead. “Ah, an idea,” he cried.
In the end an agreement was made. The money was invested in Mr.
Oelbermann's business. He gave Trina six per cent.
Invested in this fashion, Trina's winning would bring in twenty-five
dollars a month. But, besides this, Trina had her own little trade. She
made Noah's ark animals for Uncle Oelbermann's store. Trina's ancestors
on both sides were German-Swiss, and some long-forgotten forefather of
the sixteenth century, some worsted-leggined wood-carver of the Tyrol,
had handed down the talent of the national industry, to reappear in this
strangely distorted guise.
She made Noah's ark animals, whittling them out of a block of soft wood
with a sharp jack-knife, the only instrument she used. Trina was very
proud to explain her work to McTeague as he had already explained his
own to her.
“You see, I take a block of straight-grained pine and cut out the shape,
roughly at first, with the big blade; then I go over it a second time
with the little blade, more carefully; then I put in the ears and tail
with a drop of glue, and paint it with a 'non-poisonous' paint--Vandyke
brown for the horses, foxes, and cows; slate gray for the elephants and
camels; burnt umber for the chickens, zebras, and so on; then, last, a
dot of Chinese white for the eyes, and there you are, all finished. They
sell for nine cents a dozen. Only I can't make the manikins.”
“The manikins?”
“The little figures, you know--Noah and his wife, and Shem, and all the
others.”
It was true. Trina could not whittle them fast enough and cheap enough
to compete with the turning lathe, that could throw off whole tribes
and peoples of manikins while she was fashioning one family. Everything
else, however, she made--the ark itself, all windows and no door; the
box in which the whole was packed; even down to pasting on the label,
which read, “Made in France.” She earned from three to four dollars a
week.
The income from these three sources, McTeague's profession, the interest
of the five thousand dollars, and Trina's whittling, made a respectable
little sum taken altogether. Trina declared they could even lay by
something, adding to the five thousand dollars little by little.
It soon became apparent that Trina would be an extraordinarily good
housekeeper. Economy was her strong point. A good deal of peasant blood
still ran undiluted in her veins, and she had all the instinct of a
hardy and penurious mountain race--the instinct which saves without any
thought, without idea of consequence--saving for the sake of saving,
hoarding without knowing why. Even McTeague did not know how closely
Trina held to her new-found wealth.
But they did not always pass their luncheon hour in this discussion
of incomes and economies. As the dentist came to know his little woman
better she grew to be more and more of a puzzle and a joy to him. She
would suddenly interrupt a grave discourse upon the rents of rooms and
the cost of light and fuel with a brusque outburst of affection that
set him all a-tremble with delight. All at once she would set down her
chocolate, and, leaning across the narrow table, would exclaim:
“Never mind all that! Oh, Mac, do you truly, really love me--love me
BIG?”
McTeague would stammer something, gasping, and wagging his head, beside
himself for the lack of words.
“Old bear,” Trina would answer, grasping him by both huge ears and
swaying his head from side to side. “Kiss me, then. Tell me, Mac, did
you think any less of me that first time I let you kiss me there in the
station? Oh, Mac, dear, what a funny nose you've got, all full of hairs
inside; and, Mac, do you know you've got a bald spot--” she dragged his
head down towards her--“right on the top of your head.” Then she would
seriously kiss the bald spot in question, declaring:
“That'll make the hair grow.”
Trina took an infinite enjoyment in playing with McTeague's great
square-cut head, rumpling his hair till it stood on end, putting her
fingers in his eyes, or stretching his ears out straight, and watching
the effect with her head on one side. It was like a little child playing
with some gigantic, good-natured Saint Bernard.
One particular amusement they never wearied of. The two would lean
across the table towards each other, McTeague folding his arms under his
breast. Then Trina, resting on her elbows, would part his mustache-the
great blond mustache of a viking--with her two hands, pushing it up from
his lips, causing his face to assume the appearance of a Greek mask. She
would curl it around either forefinger, drawing it to a fine end. Then
all at once McTeague would make a fearful snorting noise through his
nose. Invariably--though she was expecting this, though it was part of
the game--Trina would jump with a stifled shriek. McTeague would bellow
with laughter till his eyes watered. Then they would recommence upon the
instant, Trina protesting with a nervous tremulousness:
“Now--now--now, Mac, DON'T; you SCARE me so.”
But these delicious tete-a-tetes with Trina were offset by a certain
coolness that Marcus Schouler began to affect towards the dentist. At
first McTeague was unaware of it; but by this time even his slow wits
began to perceive that his best friend--his “pal”--was not the same to
him as formerly. They continued to meet at lunch nearly every day but
Friday at the car conductors' coffee-joint. But Marcus was sulky; there
could be no doubt about that. He avoided talking to McTeague, read the
paper continually, answering the dentist's timid efforts at conversation
in gruff monosyllables. Sometimes, even, he turned sideways to the table
and talked at great length to Heise the harness-maker, whose table was
next to theirs. They took no more long walks together when Marcus
went out to exercise the dogs. Nor did Marcus ever again recur to his
generosity in renouncing Trina.
One Tuesday, as McTeague took his place at the table in the
coffee-joint, he found Marcus already there.
“Hello, Mark,” said the dentist, “you here already?”
“Hello,” returned the other, indifferently, helping himself to tomato
catsup. There was a silence. After a long while Marcus suddenly looked
up.
“Say, Mac,” he exclaimed, “when you going to pay me that money you owe
me?”
McTeague was astonished.
“Huh? What? I don't--do I owe you any money, Mark?”
“Well, you owe me four bits,” returned Marcus, doggedly. “I paid for you
and Trina that day at the picnic, and you never gave it back.”
“Oh--oh!” answered McTeague, in distress. “That's so, that's so. I--you
ought to have told me before. Here's your money, and I'm obliged to
you.”
“It ain't much,” observed Marcus, sullenly. “But I need all I can get
now-a-days.”
“Are you--are you broke?” inquired McTeague.
“And I ain't saying anything about your sleeping at the hospital that
night, either,” muttered Marcus, as he pocketed the coin.
“Well--well--do you mean--should I have paid for that?”
“Well, you'd 'a' had to sleep SOMEWHERES, wouldn't you?” flashed out
Marcus. “You 'a' had to pay half a dollar for a bed at the flat.”
“All right, all right,” cried the dentist, hastily, feeling in his
pockets. “I don't want you should be out anything on my account, old
man. Here, will four bits do?”
“I don't WANT your damn money,” shouted Marcus in a sudden rage,
throwing back the coin. “I ain't no beggar.”
McTeague was miserable. How had he offended his pal?
“Well, I want you should take it, Mark,” he said, pushing it towards
him.
“I tell you I won't touch your money,” exclaimed the other through his
clenched teeth, white with passion. “I've been played for a sucker long
enough.”
“What's the matter with you lately, Mark?” remonstrated McTeague.
“You've got a grouch about something. Is there anything I've done?”
“Well, that's all right, that's all right,” returned Marcus as he rose
from the table. “That's all right. I've been played for a sucker long
enough, that's all. I've been played for a sucker long enough.” He went
away with a parting malevolent glance.
At the corner of Polk Street, between the flat and the car conductors'
coffee-joint, was Frenna's. It was a corner grocery; advertisements for
cheap butter and eggs, painted in green marking-ink upon wrapping paper,
stood about on the sidewalk outside. The doorway was decorated with a
huge Milwaukee beer sign. Back of the store proper was a bar where white
sand covered the floor. A few tables and chairs were scattered here
and there. The walls were hung with gorgeously-colored tobacco
advertisements and colored lithographs of trotting horses. On the wall
behind the bar was a model of a full-rigged ship enclosed in a bottle.
It was at this place that the dentist used to leave his pitcher to
be filled on Sunday afternoons. Since his engagement to Trina he had
discontinued this habit. However, he still dropped into Frenna's one or
two nights in the week. He spent a pleasant hour there, smoking his huge
porcelain pipe and drinking his beer. He never joined any of the groups
of piquet players around the tables. In fact, he hardly spoke to anyone
but the bartender and Marcus.
For Frenna's was one of Marcus Schouler's haunts; a great deal of his
time was spent there. He involved himself in fearful political and
social discussions with Heise the harness-maker, and with one or two old
German, habitues of the place. These discussions Marcus carried on, as
was his custom, at the top of his voice, gesticulating fiercely, banging
the table with his fists, brandishing the plates and glasses, exciting
himself with his own clamor.
On a certain Saturday evening, a few days after the scene at the
coffee-joint, the dentist bethought him to spend a quiet evening at
Frenna's. He had not been there for some time, and, besides that, it
occurred to him that the day was his birthday. He would permit himself
an extra pipe and a few glasses of beer. When McTeague entered Frenna's
back room by the street door, he found Marcus and Heise already
installed at one of the tables. Two or three of the old Germans sat
opposite them, gulping their beer from time to time. Heise was smoking
a cigar, but Marcus had before him his fourth whiskey cocktail. At the
moment of McTeague's entrance Marcus had the floor.
“It can't be proven,” he was yelling. “I defy any sane politician whose
eyes are not blinded by party prejudices, whose opinions are not warped
by a personal bias, to substantiate such a statement. Look at your
facts, look at your figures. I am a free American citizen, ain't I?
I pay my taxes to support a good government, don't I? It's a contract
between me and the government, ain't it? Well, then, by damn! if the
authorities do not or will not afford me protection for life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, then my obligations are at an end; I
withhold my taxes. I do--I do--I say I do. What?” He glared about him,
seeking opposition.
“That's nonsense,” observed Heise, quietly. “Try it once; you'll get
jugged.” But this observation of the harness-maker's roused Marcus to
the last pitch of frenzy.
“Yes, ah, yes!” he shouted, rising to his feet, shaking his finger in
the other's face. “Yes, I'd go to jail; but because I--I am crushed by a
tyranny, does that make the tyranny right? Does might make right?”
“You must make less noise in here, Mister Schouler,” said Frenna, from
behind the bar.
“Well, it makes me mad,” answered Marcus, subsiding into a growl and
resuming his chair. “Hullo, Mac.”
“Hullo, Mark.”
But McTeague's presence made Marcus uneasy, rousing in him at once a
sense of wrong. He twisted to and fro in his chair, shrugging first one
shoulder and then another. Quarrelsome at all times, the heat of
the previous discussion had awakened within him all his natural
combativeness. Besides this, he was drinking his fourth cocktail.
McTeague began filling his big porcelain pipe. He lit it, blew a great
cloud of smoke into the room, and settled himself comfortably in his
chair. The smoke of his cheap tobacco drifted into the faces of
the group at the adjoining table, and Marcus strangled and coughed.
Instantly his eyes flamed.
“Say, for God's sake,” he vociferated, “choke off on that pipe! If
you've got to smoke rope like that, smoke it in a crowd of muckers;
don't come here amongst gentlemen.”
“Shut up, Schouler!” observed Heise in a low voice.
McTeague was stunned by the suddenness of the attack. He took his pipe
from his mouth, and stared blankly at Marcus; his lips moved, but he
said no word. Marcus turned his back on him, and the dentist resumed his
pipe.
But Marcus was far from being appeased. McTeague could not hear the talk
that followed between him and the harnessmaker, but it seemed to him
that Marcus was telling Heise of some injury, some grievance, and that
the latter was trying to pacify him. All at once their talk grew louder.
Heise laid a retaining hand upon his companion's coat sleeve, but Marcus
swung himself around in his chair, and, fixing his eyes on McTeague,
cried as if in answer to some protestation on the part of Heise:
“All I know is that I've been soldiered out of five thousand dollars.”
McTeague gaped at him, bewildered. He removed his pipe from his mouth
a second time, and stared at Marcus with eyes full of trouble and
perplexity.
“If I had my rights,” cried Marcus, bitterly, “I'd have part of that
money. It's my due--it's only justice.” The dentist still kept silence.
“If it hadn't been for me,” Marcus continued, addressing himself
directly to McTeague, “you wouldn't have had a cent of it--no, not a
cent. Where's my share, I'd like to know? Where do I come in? No, I
ain't in it any more. I've been played for a sucker, an' now that you've
got all you can out of me, now that you've done me out of my girl and
out of my money, you give me the go-by. Why, where would you have
been TO-DAY if it hadn't been for me?” Marcus shouted in a sudden
exasperation, “You'd a been plugging teeth at two bits an hour. Ain't
you got any gratitude? Ain't you got any sense of decency?”
“Ah, hold up, Schouler,” grumbled Heise. “You don't want to get into a
row.”
“No, I don't, Heise,” returned Marcus, with a plaintive, aggrieved air.
“But it's too much sometimes when you think of it. He stole away my
girl's affections, and now that he's rich and prosperous, and has got
five thousand dollars that I might have had, he gives me the go-by; he's
played me for a sucker. Look here,” he cried, turning again to McTeague,
“do I get any of that money?”
“It ain't mine to give,” answered McTeague. “You're drunk, that's what
you are.”
“Do I get any of that money?” cried Marcus, persistently.
The dentist shook his head. “No, you don't get any of it.”
“Now--NOW,” clamored the other, turning to the harnessmaker, as though
this explained everything. “Look at that, look at that. Well, I've done
with you from now on.” Marcus had risen to his feet by this time and
made as if to leave, but at every instant he came back, shouting his
phrases into McTeague's face, moving off again as he spoke the last
words, in order to give them better effect.
“This settles it right here. I've done with you. Don't you ever dare
speak to me again”--his voice was shaking with fury--“and don't you sit
at my table in the restaurant again. I'm sorry I ever lowered myself
to keep company with such dirt. Ah, one-horse dentist! Ah, ten-cent
zinc-plugger--hoodlum--MUCKER! Get your damn smoke outa my face.”
Then matters reached a sudden climax. In his agitation the dentist had
been pulling hard on his pipe, and as Marcus for the last time thrust
his face close to his own, McTeague, in opening his lips to reply,
blew a stifling, acrid cloud directly in Marcus Schouler's eyes. Marcus
knocked the pipe from his fingers with a sudden flash of his hand; it
spun across the room and broke into a dozen fragments in a far corner.
McTeague rose to his feet, his eyes wide. But as yet he was not angry,
only surprised, taken all aback by the suddenness of Marcus Schouler's
outbreak as well as by its unreasonableness. Why had Marcus broken his
pipe? What did it all mean, anyway? As he rose the dentist made a vague
motion with his right hand. Did Marcus misinterpret it as a gesture of
menace? He sprang back as though avoiding a blow. All at once there was
a cry. Marcus had made a quick, peculiar motion, swinging his arm upward
with a wide and sweeping gesture; his jack-knife lay open in his palm;
it shot forward as he flung it, glinted sharply by McTeague's head, and
struck quivering into the wall behind.
A sudden chill ran through the room; the others stood transfixed, as at
the swift passage of some cold and deadly wind. Death had stooped there
for an instant, had stooped and past, leaving a trail of terror and
confusion. Then the door leading to the street slammed; Marcus had
disappeared.
Thereon a great babel of exclamation arose. The tension of that all but
fatal instant snapped, and speech became once more possible.
“He would have knifed you.”
“Narrow escape.”
“What kind of a man do you call THAT?”
“'Tain't his fault he ain't a murderer.”
“I'd have him up for it.”
“And they two have been the greatest kind of friends.”
“He didn't touch you, did he?”
“No--no--no.”
“What a--what a devil! What treachery! A regular greaser trick!”
“Look out he don't stab you in the back. If that's the kind of man he
is, you never can tell.”
Frenna drew the knife from the wall.
“Guess I'll keep this toad-stabber,” he observed. “That fellow won't
come round for it in a hurry; goodsized blade, too.” The group examined
it with intense interest.
“Big enough to let the life out of any man,” observed Heise.
“What--what--what did he do it for?” stammered McTeague. “I got no
quarrel with him.”
He was puzzled and harassed by the strangeness of it all. Marcus would
have killed him; had thrown his knife at him in the true, uncanny
“greaser” style. It was inexplicable. McTeague sat down again, looking
stupidly about on the floor. In a corner of the room his eye encountered
his broken pipe, a dozen little fragments of painted porcelain and the
stem of cherry wood and amber.
At that sight his tardy wrath, ever lagging behind the original affront,
suddenly blazed up. Instantly his huge jaws clicked together.
“He can't make small of ME,” he exclaimed, suddenly. “I'll show Marcus
Schouler--I'll show him--I'll----”
He got up and clapped on his hat.
“Now, Doctor,” remonstrated Heise, standing between him and the door,
“don't go make a fool of yourself.”
“Let 'um alone,” joined in Frenna, catching the dentist by the arm;
“he's full, anyhow.”
“He broke my pipe,” answered McTeague.
It was this that had roused him. The thrown knife, the attempt on
his life, was beyond his solution; but the breaking of his pipe he
understood clearly enough.
“I'll show him,” he exclaimed.
As though they had been little children, McTeague set Frenna and the
harness-maker aside, and strode out at the door like a raging elephant.
Heise stood rubbing his shoulder.
“Might as well try to stop a locomotive,” he muttered. “The man's made
of iron.”
Meanwhile, McTeague went storming up the street toward the flat, wagging
his head and grumbling to himself. Ah, Marcus would break his pipe,
would he? Ah, he was a zinc-plugger, was he? He'd show Marcus Schouler.
No one should make small of him. He tramped up the stairs to Marcus's
room. The door was locked. The dentist put one enormous hand on the knob
and pushed the door in, snapping the wood-work, tearing off the lock.
Nobody--the room was dark and empty. Never mind, Marcus would have to
come home some time that night. McTeague would go down and wait for him
in his “Parlors.” He was bound to hear him as he came up the stairs.
As McTeague reached his room he stumbled over, in the darkness, a big
packing-box that stood in the hallway just outside his door. Puzzled, he
stepped over it, and lighting the gas in his room, dragged it inside and
examined it.
It was addressed to him. What could it mean? He was expecting nothing.
Never since he had first furnished his room had packing-cases been left
for him in this fashion. No mistake was possible. There were his name
and address unmistakably. “Dr. McTeague, dentist--Polk Street, San
Francisco, Cal.,” and the red Wells Fargo tag.
Seized with the joyful curiosity of an overgrown boy, he pried off the
boards with the corner of his fireshovel. The case was stuffed full
of excelsior. On the top lay an envelope addressed to him in Trina's
handwriting. He opened it and read, “For my dear Mac's birthday, from
Trina;” and below, in a kind of post-script, “The man will be round
to-morrow to put it in place.” McTeague tore away the excelsior.
Suddenly he uttered an exclamation.
It was the Tooth--the famous golden molar with its huge prongs--his
sign, his ambition, the one unrealized dream of his life; and it was
French gilt, too, not the cheap German gilt that was no good. Ah, what
a dear little woman was this Trina, to keep so quiet, to remember his
birthday!
“Ain't she--ain't she just a--just a JEWEL,” exclaimed McTeague under
his breath, “a JEWEL--yes, just a JEWEL; that's the word.”
Very carefully he removed the rest of the excelsior, and lifting the
ponderous Tooth from its box, set it upon the marble-top centre table.
How immense it looked in that little room! The thing was tremendous,
overpowering--the tooth of a gigantic fossil, golden and dazzling.
Beside it everything seemed dwarfed. Even McTeague himself, big boned
and enormous as he was, shrank and dwindled in the presence of the
monster. As for an instant he bore it in his hands, it was like a puny
Gulliver struggling with the molar of some vast Brobdingnag.
The dentist circled about that golden wonder, gasping with delight
and stupefaction, touching it gingerly with his hands as if it were
something sacred. At every moment his thought returned to Trina.
No, never was there such a little woman as his--the very thing he
wanted--how had she remembered? And the money, where had that come from?
No one knew better than he how expensive were these signs; not another
dentist on Polk Street could afford one. Where, then, had Trina found
the money? It came out of her five thousand dollars, no doubt.
But what a wonderful, beautiful tooth it was, to be sure, bright as a
mirror, shining there in its coat of French gilt, as if with a light of
its own! No danger of that tooth turning black with the weather, as did
the cheap German gilt impostures. What would that other dentist, that
poser, that rider of bicycles, that courser of greyhounds, say when he
should see this marvellous molar run out from McTeague's bay window like
a flag of defiance? No doubt he would suffer veritable convulsions of
envy; would be positively sick with jealousy. If McTeague could only see
his face at the moment!
For a whole hour the dentist sat there in his little “Parlor,” gazing
ecstatically at his treasure, dazzled, supremely content. The whole room
took on a different aspect because of it. The stone pug dog before the
little stove reflected it in his protruding eyes; the canary woke and
chittered feebly at this new gilt, so much brighter than the bars of its
little prison. Lorenzo de' Medici, in the steel engraving, sitting in
the heart of his court, seemed to ogle the thing out of the corner of
one eye, while the brilliant colors of the unused rifle manufacturer's
calendar seemed to fade and pale in the brilliance of this greater
glory.
At length, long after midnight, the dentist started to go to bed,
undressing himself with his eyes still fixed on the great tooth. All at
once he heard Marcus Schouler's foot on the stairs; he started up with
his fists clenched, but immediately dropped back upon the bed-lounge
with a gesture of indifference.
He was in no truculent state of mind now. He could not reinstate himself
in that mood of wrath wherein he had left the corner grocery. The tooth
had changed all that. What was Marcus Schouler's hatred to him, who had
Trina's affection? What did he care about a broken pipe now that he had
the tooth? Let him go. As Frenna said, he was not worth it. He heard
Marcus come out into the hall, shouting aggrievedly to anyone within
sound of his voice:
“An' now he breaks into my room--into my room, by damn! How do I know
how many things he's stolen? It's come to stealing from me, now, has
it?” He went into his room, banging his splintered door.
McTeague looked upward at the ceiling, in the direction of the voice,
muttering:
“Ah, go to bed, you.”
He went to bed himself, turning out the gas, but leaving the
window-curtains up so that he could see the tooth the last thing before
he went to sleep and the first thing as he arose in the morning.
But he was restless during the night. Every now and then he was awakened
by noises to which he had long since become accustomed. Now it was the
cackling of the geese in the deserted market across the street; now it
was the stoppage of the cable, the sudden silence coming almost like
a shock; and now it was the infuriated barking of the dogs in the back
yard--Alec, the Irish setter, and the collie that belonged to the branch
post-office raging at each other through the fence, snarling their
endless hatred into each other's faces. As often as he woke, McTeague
turned and looked for the tooth, with a sudden suspicion that he
had only that moment dreamed the whole business. But he always found
it--Trina's gift, his birthday from his little woman--a huge, vague
bulk, looming there through the half darkness in the centre of the room,
shining dimly out as if with some mysterious light of its own.