That summer passed, then the winter. The wet season began in the last
days of September and continued all through October, November, and
December. At long intervals would come a week of perfect days, the
sky without a cloud, the air motionless, but touched with a certain
nimbleness, a faint effervescence that was exhilarating. Then, without
warning, during a night when a south wind blew, a gray scroll of cloud
would unroll and hang high over the city, and the rain would come
pattering down again, at first in scattered showers, then in an
uninterrupted drizzle.
All day long Trina sat in the bay window of the sitting-room that
commanded a view of a small section of Polk Street. As often as she
raised her head she could see the big market, a confectionery store,
a bell-hanger's shop, and, farther on, above the roofs, the glass
skylights and water tanks of the big public baths. In the nearer
foreground ran the street itself; the cable cars trundled up and down,
thumping heavily over the joints of the rails; market carts by the score
came and went, driven at a great rate by preoccupied young men in their
shirt sleeves, with pencils behind their ears, or by reckless boys in
blood-stained butcher's aprons. Upon the sidewalks the little world of
Polk Street swarmed and jostled through its daily round of life. On
fine days the great ladies from the avenue, one block above, invaded
the street, appearing before the butcher stalls, intent upon their day's
marketing. On rainy days their servants--the Chinese cooks or the second
girls--took their places. These servants gave themselves great airs,
carrying their big cotton umbrellas as they had seen their mistresses
carry their parasols, and haggling in supercilious fashion with the
market men, their chins in the air.
The rain persisted. Everything in the range of Trina's vision, from the
tarpaulins on the market-cart horses to the panes of glass in the roof
of the public baths, looked glazed and varnished. The asphalt of the
sidewalks shone like the surface of a patent leather boot; every hollow
in the street held its little puddle, that winked like an eye each time
a drop of rain struck into it.
Trina still continued to work for Uncle Oelbermann. In the mornings she
busied herself about the kitchen, the bedroom, and the sitting-room; but
in the afternoon, for two or three hours after lunch, she was occupied
with the Noah's ark animals. She took her work to the bay window,
spreading out a great square of canvas underneath her chair, to catch
the chips and shavings, which she used afterwards for lighting fires.
One after another she caught up the little blocks of straight-grained
pine, the knife flashed between her fingers, the little figure grew
rapidly under her touch, was finished and ready for painting in a
wonderfully short time, and was tossed into the basket that stood at her
elbow.
But very often during that rainy winter after her marriage Trina would
pause in her work, her hands falling idly into her lap, her eyes--her
narrow, pale blue eyes--growing wide and thoughtful as she gazed,
unseeing, out into the rain-washed street.
She loved McTeague now with a blind, unreasoning love that admitted of
no doubt or hesitancy. Indeed, it seemed to her that it was only AFTER
her marriage with the dentist that she had really begun to love him.
With the absolute final surrender of herself, the irrevocable, ultimate
submission, had come an affection the like of which she had never
dreamed in the old B Street days. But Trina loved her husband, not
because she fancied she saw in him any of those noble and generous
qualities that inspire affection. The dentist might or might not possess
them, it was all one with Trina. She loved him because she had given
herself to him freely, unreservedly; had merged her individuality into
his; she was his, she belonged to him forever and forever. Nothing that
he could do (so she told herself), nothing that she herself could do,
could change her in this respect. McTeague might cease to love her,
might leave her, might even die; it would be all the same, SHE WAS HIS.
But it had not been so at first. During those long, rainy days of the
fall, days when Trina was left alone for hours, at that time when the
excitement and novelty of the honeymoon were dying down, when the new
household was settling into its grooves, she passed through many an hour
of misgiving, of doubt, and even of actual regret.
Never would she forget one Sunday afternoon in particular. She had been
married but three weeks. After dinner she and little Miss Baker had gone
for a bit of a walk to take advantage of an hour's sunshine and to look
at some wonderful geraniums in a florist's window on Sutter Street. They
had been caught in a shower, and on returning to the flat the little
dressmaker had insisted on fetching Trina up to her tiny room and
brewing her a cup of strong tea, “to take the chill off.” The two women
had chatted over their teacups the better part of the afternoon, then
Trina had returned to her rooms. For nearly three hours McTeague had
been out of her thoughts, and as she came through their little
suite, singing softly to herself, she suddenly came upon him quite
unexpectedly. Her husband was in the “Dental Parlors,” lying back in his
operating chair, fast asleep. The little stove was crammed with coke,
the room was overheated, the air thick and foul with the odors of ether,
of coke gas, of stale beer and cheap tobacco. The dentist sprawled his
gigantic limbs over the worn velvet of the operating chair; his coat and
vest and shoes were off, and his huge feet, in their thick gray socks,
dangled over the edge of the foot-rest; his pipe, fallen from his
half-open mouth, had spilled the ashes into his lap; while on the floor,
at his side stood the half-empty pitcher of steam beer. His head had
rolled limply upon one shoulder, his face was red with sleep, and from
his open mouth came a terrific sound of snoring.
For a moment Trina stood looking at him as he lay thus, prone, inert,
half-dressed, and stupefied with the heat of the room, the steam beer,
and the fumes of the cheap tobacco. Then her little chin quivered and a
sob rose to her throat; she fled from the “Parlors,” and locking herself
in her bedroom, flung herself on the bed and burst into an agony of
weeping. Ah, no, ah, no, she could not love him. It had all been a
dreadful mistake, and now it was irrevocable; she was bound to this
man for life. If it was as bad as this now, only three weeks after her
marriage, how would it be in the years to come? Year after year, month
after month, hour after hour, she was to see this same face, with its
salient jaw, was to feel the touch of those enormous red hands, was
to hear the heavy, elephantine tread of those huge feet--in thick gray
socks. Year after year, day after day, there would be no change, and
it would last all her life. Either it would be one long continued
revulsion, or else--worse than all--she would come to be content with
him, would come to be like him, would sink to the level of steam beer
and cheap tobacco, and all her pretty ways, her clean, trim little
habits, would be forgotten, since they would be thrown away upon
her stupid, brutish husband. “Her husband!” THAT, was her husband
in there--she could yet hear his snores--for life, for life. A great
despair seized upon her. She buried her face in the pillow and thought
of her mother with an infinite longing.
Aroused at length by the chittering of the canary, McTeague had awakened
slowly. After a while he had taken down his concertina and played upon
it the six very mournful airs that he knew.
Face downward upon the bed, Trina still wept. Throughout that little
suite could be heard but two sounds, the lugubrious strains of the
concertina and the noise of stifled weeping.
That her husband should be ignorant of her distress seemed to Trina an
additional grievance. With perverse inconsistency she began to wish
him to come to her, to comfort her. He ought to know that she was in
trouble, that she was lonely and unhappy.
“Oh, Mac,” she called in a trembling voice. But the concertina still
continued to wail and lament. Then Trina wished she were dead, and
on the instant jumped up and ran into the “Dental Parlors,” and threw
herself into her husband's arms, crying: “Oh, Mac, dear, love me, love
me big! I'm so unhappy.”
“What--what--what--” the dentist exclaimed, starting up bewildered, a
little frightened.
“Nothing, nothing, only LOVE me, love me always and always.”
But this first crisis, this momentary revolt, as much a matter of
high-strung feminine nerves as of anything else, passed, and in the end
Trina's affection for her “old bear” grew in spite of herself. She began
to love him more and more, not for what he was, but for what she had
given up to him. Only once again did Trina undergo a reaction against
her husband, and then it was but the matter of an instant, brought
on, curiously enough, by the sight of a bit of egg on McTeague's heavy
mustache one morning just after breakfast.
Then, too, the pair had learned to make concessions, little by little,
and all unconsciously they adapted their modes of life to suit each
other. Instead of sinking to McTeague's level as she had feared, Trina
found that she could make McTeague rise to hers, and in this saw a
solution of many a difficult and gloomy complication.
For one thing, the dentist began to dress a little better, Trina even
succeeding in inducing him to wear a high silk hat and a frock coat of
a Sunday. Next he relinquished his Sunday afternoon's nap and beer in
favor of three or four hours spent in the park with her--the weather
permitting. So that gradually Trina's misgivings ceased, or when
they did assail her, she could at last meet them with a shrug of the
shoulders, saying to herself meanwhile, “Well, it's done now and it
can't be helped; one must make the best of it.”
During the first months of their married life these nervous relapses of
hers had alternated with brusque outbursts of affection when her only
fear was that her husband's love did not equal her own. Without an
instant's warning, she would clasp him about the neck, rubbing her cheek
against his, murmuring:
“Dear old Mac, I love you so, I love you so. Oh, aren't we happy
together, Mac, just us two and no one else? You love me as much as I
love you, don't you, Mac? Oh, if you shouldn't--if you SHOULDN'T.”
But by the middle of the winter Trina's emotions, oscillating at first
from one extreme to another, commenced to settle themselves to an
equilibrium of calmness and placid quietude. Her household duties
began more and more to absorb her attention, for she was an admirable
housekeeper, keeping the little suite in marvellous good order and
regulating the schedule of expenditure with an economy that often
bordered on positive niggardliness. It was a passion with her to save
money. In the bottom of her trunk, in the bedroom, she hid a brass
match-safe that answered the purposes of a savings bank. Each time she
added a quarter or a half dollar to the little store she laughed and
sang with a veritable childish delight; whereas, if the butcher or
milkman compelled her to pay an overcharge she was unhappy for the rest
of the day. She did not save this money for any ulterior purpose, she
hoarded instinctively, without knowing why, responding to the dentist's
remonstrances with:
“Yes, yes, I know I'm a little miser, I know it.”
Trina had always been an economical little body, but it was only
since her great winning in the lottery that she had become especially
penurious. No doubt, in her fear lest their great good luck should
demoralize them and lead to habits of extravagance, she had recoiled too
far in the other direction. Never, never, never should a penny of that
miraculous fortune be spent; rather should it be added to. It was a nest
egg, a monstrous, roc-like nest egg, not so large, however, but that it
could be made larger. Already by the end of that winter Trina had begun
to make up the deficit of two hundred dollars that she had been forced
to expend on the preparations for her marriage.
McTeague, on his part, never asked himself now-a-days whether he loved
Trina the wife as much as he had loved Trina the young girl. There had
been a time when to kiss Trina, to take her in his arms, had thrilled
him from head to heel with a happiness that was beyond words; even the
smell of her wonderful odorous hair had sent a sensation of faintness
all through him. That time was long past now. Those sudden outbursts of
affection on the part of his little woman, outbursts that only increased
in vehemence the longer they lived together, puzzled rather than
pleased him. He had come to submit to them good-naturedly, answering
her passionate inquiries with a “Sure, sure, Trina, sure I love you.
What--what's the matter with you?”
There was no passion in the dentist's regard for his wife. He dearly
liked to have her near him, he took an enormous pleasure in watching her
as she moved about their rooms, very much at home, gay and singing from
morning till night; and it was his great delight to call her into the
“Dental Parlors” when a patient was in the chair and, while he held the
plugger, to have her rap in the gold fillings with the little box-wood
mallet as he had taught her. But that tempest of passion, that
overpowering desire that had suddenly taken possession of him that day
when he had given her ether, again when he had caught her in his arms in
the B Street station, and again and again during the early days of their
married life, rarely stirred him now. On the other hand, he was never
assailed with doubts as to the wisdom of his marriage.
McTeague had relapsed to his wonted stolidity. He never questioned
himself, never looked for motives, never went to the bottom of things.
The year following upon the summer of his marriage was a time of great
contentment for him; after the novelty of the honeymoon had passed he
slipped easily into the new order of things without a question. Thus
his life would be for years to come. Trina was there; he was married and
settled. He accepted the situation. The little animal comforts which for
him constituted the enjoyment of life were ministered to at every
turn, or when they were interfered with--as in the case of his Sunday
afternoon's nap and beer--some agreeable substitute was found. In her
attempts to improve McTeague--to raise him from the stupid animal life
to which he had been accustomed in his bachelor days--Trina was tactful
enough to move so cautiously and with such slowness that the dentist
was unconscious of any process of change. In the matter of the high silk
hat, it seemed to him that the initiative had come from himself.
Gradually the dentist improved under the influence of his little wife.
He no longer went abroad with frayed cuffs about his huge red wrists--or
worse, without any cuffs at all. Trina kept his linen clean and mended,
doing most of his washing herself, and insisting that he should
change his flannels--thick red flannels they were, with enormous bone
buttons--once a week, his linen shirts twice a week, and his collars and
cuffs every second day. She broke him of the habit of eating with his
knife, she caused him to substitute bottled beer in the place of steam
beer, and she induced him to take off his hat to Miss Baker, to Heise's
wife, and to the other women of his acquaintance. McTeague no longer
spent an evening at Frenna's. Instead of this he brought a couple
of bottles of beer up to the rooms and shared it with Trina. In his
“Parlors” he was no longer gruff and indifferent to his female patients;
he arrived at that stage where he could work and talk to them at the
same time; he even accompanied them to the door, and held it open for
them when the operation was finished, bowing them out with great nods of
his huge square-cut head.
Besides all this, he began to observe the broader, larger interests of
life, interests that affected him not as an individual, but as a member
of a class, a profession, or a political party. He read the papers, he
subscribed to a dental magazine; on Easter, Christmas, and New Year's
he went to church with Trina. He commenced to have opinions,
convictions--it was not fair to deprive tax-paying women of the
privilege to vote; a university education should not be a prerequisite
for admission to a dental college; the Catholic priests were to be
restrained in their efforts to gain control of the public schools.
But most wonderful of all, McTeague began to have ambitions--very
vague, very confused ideas of something better--ideas for the most part
borrowed from Trina. Some day, perhaps, he and his wife would have a
house of their own. What a dream! A little home all to themselves, with
six rooms and a bath, with a grass plat in front and calla-lilies.
Then there would be children. He would have a son, whose name would
be Daniel, who would go to High School, and perhaps turn out to be a
prosperous plumber or house painter. Then this son Daniel would marry a
wife, and they would all live together in that six-room-and-bath house;
Daniel would have little children. McTeague would grow old among them
all. The dentist saw himself as a venerable patriarch surrounded by
children and grandchildren.
So the winter passed. It was a season of great happiness for the
McTeagues; the new life jostled itself into its grooves. A routine
began.
On weekdays they rose at half-past six, being awakened by the boy who
brought the bottled milk, and who had instructions to pound upon the
bedroom door in passing. Trina made breakfast--coffee, bacon and eggs,
and a roll of Vienna bread from the bakery. The breakfast was eaten in
the kitchen, on the round deal table covered with the shiny oilcloth
table-spread tacked on. After breakfast the dentist immediately betook
himself to his “Parlors” to meet his early morning appointments--those
made with the clerks and shop girls who stopped in for half an hour on
their way to their work.
Trina, meanwhile, busied herself about the suite, clearing away the
breakfast, sponging off the oilcloth table-spread, making the bed,
pottering about with a broom or duster or cleaning rag. Towards ten
o'clock she opened the windows to air the rooms, then put on her drab
jacket, her little round turban with its red wing, took the butcher's
and grocer's books from the knife basket in the drawer of the kitchen
table, and descended to the street, where she spent a delicious
hour--now in the huge market across the way, now in the grocer's
store with its fragrant aroma of coffee and spices, and now before the
counters of the haberdasher's, intent on a bit of shopping, turning
over ends of veiling, strips of elastic, or slivers of whalebone. On the
street she rubbed elbows with the great ladies of the avenue in their
beautiful dresses, or at intervals she met an acquaintance or two--Miss
Baker, or Heise's lame wife, or Mrs. Ryer. At times she passed the flat
and looked up at the windows of her home, marked by the huge golden
molar that projected, flashing, from the bay window of the “Parlors.”
She saw the open windows of the sitting-room, the Nottingham lace
curtains stirring and billowing in the draft, and she caught sight of
Maria Macapa's towelled head as the Mexican maid-of-all-work went to and
fro in the suite, sweeping or carrying away the ashes. Occasionally in
the windows of the “Parlors” she beheld McTeague's rounded back as he
bent to his work. Sometimes, even, they saw each other and waved their
hands gayly in recognition.
By eleven o'clock Trina returned to the flat, her brown net
reticule--once her mother's--full of parcels. At once she set about
getting lunch--sausages, perhaps, with mashed potatoes; or last
evening's joint warmed over or made into a stew; chocolate, which
Trina adored, and a side dish or two--a salted herring or a couple of
artichokes or a salad. At half-past twelve the dentist came in from the
“Parlors,” bringing with him the smell of creosote and of ether. They
sat down to lunch in the sitting-room. They told each other of their
doings throughout the forenoon; Trina showed her purchases, McTeague
recounted the progress of an operation. At one o'clock they separated,
the dentist returning to the “Parlors,” Trina settling to her work on
the Noah's ark animals. At about three o'clock she put this work away,
and for the rest of the afternoon was variously occupied--sometimes it
was the mending, sometimes the wash, sometimes new curtains to be put
up, or a bit of carpet to be tacked down, or a letter to be written, or
a visit--generally to Miss Baker--to be returned. Towards five o'clock
the old woman whom they had hired for that purpose came to cook supper,
for even Trina was not equal to the task of preparing three meals a day.
This woman was French, and was known to the flat as Augustine, no one
taking enough interest in her to inquire for her last name; all that
was known of her was that she was a decayed French laundress, miserably
poor, her trade long since ruined by Chinese competition. Augustine
cooked well, but she was otherwise undesirable, and Trina lost
patience with her at every moment. The old French woman's most marked
characteristic was her timidity. Trina could scarcely address her a
simple direction without Augustine quailing and shrinking; a reproof,
however gentle, threw her into an agony of confusion; while Trina's
anger promptly reduced her to a state of nervous collapse, wherein she
lost all power of speech, while her head began to bob and nod with an
incontrollable twitching of the muscles, much like the oscillations
of the head of a toy donkey. Her timidity was exasperating, her very
presence in the room unstrung the nerves, while her morbid eagerness
to avoid offence only served to develop in her a clumsiness that was at
times beyond belief. More than once Trina had decided that she could no
longer put up with Augustine but each time she had retained her as she
reflected upon her admirably cooked cabbage soups and tapioca puddings,
and--which in Trina's eyes was her chiefest recommendation--the pittance
for which she was contented to work.
Augustine had a husband. He was a spirit-medium--a “professor.” At times
he held seances in the larger rooms of the flat, playing vigorously upon
a mouth-organ and invoking a familiar whom he called “Edna,” and whom he
asserted was an Indian maiden.
The evening was a period of relaxation for Trina and McTeague. They had
supper at six, after which McTeague smoked his pipe and read the papers
for half an hour, while Trina and Augustine cleared away the table and
washed the dishes. Then, as often as not, they went out together. One of
their amusements was to go “down town” after dark and promenade
Market and Kearney Streets. It was very gay; a great many others were
promenading there also. All of the stores were brilliantly lighted and
many of them still open. They walked about aimlessly, looking into
the shop windows. Trina would take McTeague's arm, and he, very much
embarrassed at that, would thrust both hands into his pockets and
pretend not to notice. They stopped before the jewellers' and milliners'
windows, finding a great delight in picking out things for each other,
saying how they would choose this and that if they were rich. Trina did
most of the talking. McTeague merely approving by a growl or a movement
of the head or shoulders; she was interested in the displays of some of
the cheaper stores, but he found an irresistible charm in an enormous
golden molar with four prongs that hung at a corner of Kearney Street.
Sometimes they would look at Mars or at the moon through the street
telescopes or sit for a time in the rotunda of a vast department store
where a band played every evening.
Occasionally they met Heise the harness-maker and his wife, with
whom they had become acquainted. Then the evening was concluded by a
four-cornered party in the Luxembourg, a quiet German restaurant under
a theatre. Trina had a tamale and a glass of beer, Mrs. Heise (who was
a decayed writing teacher) ate salads, with glasses of grenadine and
currant syrups. Heise drank cocktails and whiskey straight, and urged
the dentist to join him. But McTeague was obstinate, shaking his head.
“I can't drink that stuff,” he said. “It don't agree with me, somehow;
I go kinda crazy after two glasses.” So he gorged himself with beer and
frankfurter sausages plastered with German mustard.
When the annual Mechanic's Fair opened, McTeague and Trina often spent
their evenings there, studying the exhibits carefully (since in Trina's
estimation education meant knowing things and being able to talk about
them). Wearying of this they would go up into the gallery, and, leaning
over, look down into the huge amphitheatre full of light and color and
movement.
There rose to them the vast shuffling noise of thousands of feet and
a subdued roar of conversation like the sound of a great mill. Mingled
with this was the purring of distant machinery, the splashing of a
temporary fountain, and the rhythmic jangling of a brass band, while
in the piano exhibit a hired performer was playing upon a concert
grand with a great flourish. Nearer at hand they could catch ends of
conversation and notes of laughter, the noise of moving dresses, and
the rustle of stiffly starched skirts. Here and there school children
elbowed their way through the crowd, crying shrilly, their hands full of
advertisement pamphlets, fans, picture cards, and toy whips, while the
air itself was full of the smell of fresh popcorn.
They even spent some time in the art gallery. Trina's cousin Selina,
who gave lessons in hand painting at two bits an hour, generally had an
exhibit on the walls, which they were interested to find. It usually was
a bunch of yellow poppies painted on black velvet and framed in gilt.
They stood before it some little time, hazarding their opinions, and
then moved on slowly from one picture to another. Trina had McTeague buy
a catalogue and made a duty of finding the title of every picture. This,
too, she told McTeague, as a kind of education one ought to cultivate.
Trina professed to be fond of art, having perhaps acquired a taste for
painting and sculpture from her experience with the Noah's ark animals.
“Of course,” she told the dentist, “I'm no critic, I only know what
I like.” She knew that she liked the “Ideal Heads,” lovely girls with
flowing straw-colored hair and immense, upturned eyes. These always had
for title, “Reverie,” or “An Idyll,” or “Dreams of Love.”
“I think those are lovely, don't you, Mac?” she said.
“Yes, yes,” answered McTeague, nodding his head, bewildered, trying to
understand. “Yes, yes, lovely, that's the word. Are you dead sure now,
Trina, that all that's hand-painted just like the poppies?”
Thus the winter passed, a year went by, then two. The little life
of Polk Street, the life of small traders, drug clerks, grocers,
stationers, plumbers, dentists, doctors, spirit-mediums, and the like,
ran on monotonously in its accustomed grooves. The first three years
of their married life wrought little change in the fortunes of the
McTeagues. In the third summer the branch post-office was moved from the
ground floor of the flat to a corner farther up the street in order
to be near the cable line that ran mail cars. Its place was taken by
a German saloon, called a “Wein Stube,” in the face of the protests
of every female lodger. A few months later quite a little flurry of
excitement ran through the street on the occasion of “The Polk Street
Open Air Festival,” organized to celebrate the introduction there of
electric lights. The festival lasted three days and was quite an affair.
The street was garlanded with yellow and white bunting; there were
processions and “floats” and brass bands. Marcus Schouler was in his
element during the whole time of the celebration. He was one of the
marshals of the parade, and was to be seen at every hour of the
day, wearing a borrowed high hat and cotton gloves, and galloping a
broken-down cab-horse over the cobbles. He carried a baton covered with
yellow and white calico, with which he made furious passes and gestures.
His voice was soon reduced to a whisper by continued shouting, and he
raged and fretted over trifles till he wore himself thin. McTeague was
disgusted with him. As often as Marcus passed the window of the flat the
dentist would mutter:
“Ah, you think you're smart, don't you?”
The result of the festival was the organizing of a body known as the
“Polk Street Improvement Club,” of which Marcus was elected secretary.
McTeague and Trina often heard of him in this capacity through Heise the
harness-maker. Marcus had evidently come to have political aspirations.
It appeared that he was gaining a reputation as a maker of speeches,
delivered with fiery emphasis, and occasionally reprinted in the
“Progress,” the organ of the club--“outraged constituencies,” “opinions
warped by personal bias,” “eyes blinded by party prejudice,” etc.
Of her family, Trina heard every fortnight in letters from her mother.
The upholstery business which Mr. Sieppe had bought was doing poorly,
and Mrs. Sieppe bewailed the day she had ever left B Street. Mr. Sieppe
was losing money every month. Owgooste, who was to have gone to school,
had been forced to go to work in “the store,” picking waste. Mrs. Sieppe
was obliged to take a lodger or two. Affairs were in a very bad way.
Occasionally she spoke of Marcus. Mr. Sieppe had not forgotten him
despite his own troubles, but still had an eye out for some one whom
Marcus could “go in with” on a ranch.
It was toward the end of this period of three years that Trina and
McTeague had their first serious quarrel. Trina had talked so much about
having a little house of their own at some future day, that McTeague had
at length come to regard the affair as the end and object of all their
labors. For a long time they had had their eyes upon one house in
particular. It was situated on a cross street close by, between Polk
Street and the great avenue one block above, and hardly a Sunday
afternoon passed that Trina and McTeague did not go and look at it.
They stood for fully half an hour upon the other side of the street,
examining every detail of its exterior, hazarding guesses as to
the arrangement of the rooms, commenting upon its immediate
neighborhood--which was rather sordid. The house was a wooden two-story
arrangement, built by a misguided contractor in a sort of hideous
Queen Anne style, all scrolls and meaningless mill work, with a cheap
imitation of stained glass in the light over the door. There was a
microscopic front yard full of dusty calla-lilies. The front door
boasted an electric bell. But for the McTeagues it was an ideal home.
Their idea was to live in this little house, the dentist retaining
merely his office in the flat. The two places were but around the corner
from each other, so that McTeague could lunch with his wife, as usual,
and could even keep his early morning appointments and return to
breakfast if he so desired.
However, the house was occupied. A Hungarian family lived in it.
The father kept a stationery and notion “bazaar” next to Heise's
harness-shop on Polk Street, while the oldest son played a third violin
in the orchestra of a theatre. The family rented the house unfurnished
for thirty-five dollars, paying extra for the water.
But one Sunday as Trina and McTeague on their way home from their
usual walk turned into the cross street on which the little house was
situated, they became promptly aware of an unwonted bustle going on
upon the sidewalk in front of it. A dray was back against the curb,
an express wagon drove away loaded with furniture; bedsteads,
looking-glasses, and washbowls littered the sidewalks. The Hungarian
family were moving out.
“Oh, Mac, look!” gasped Trina.
“Sure, sure,” muttered the dentist.
After that they spoke but little. For upwards of an hour the two stood
upon the sidewalk opposite, watching intently all that went forward,
absorbed, excited.
On the evening of the next day they returned and visited the house,
finding a great delight in going from room to room and imagining
themselves installed therein. Here would be the bedroom, here the
dining-room, here a charming little parlor. As they came out upon the
front steps once more they met the owner, an enormous, red-faced fellow,
so fat that his walking seemed merely a certain movement of his feet by
which he pushed his stomach along in front of him. Trina talked with him
a few moments, but arrived at no understanding, and the two went away
after giving him their address. At supper that night McTeague said:
“Huh--what do you think, Trina?”
Trina put her chin in the air, tilting back her heavy tiara of swarthy
hair.
“I am not so sure yet. Thirty-five dollars and the water extra. I don't
think we can afford it, Mac.”
“Ah, pshaw!” growled the dentist, “sure we can.”
“It isn't only that,” said Trina, “but it'll cost so much to make the
change.”
“Ah, you talk's though we were paupers. Ain't we got five thousand
dollars?”
Trina flushed on the instant, even to the lobes of her tiny pale ears,
and put her lips together.
“Now, Mac, you know I don't want you should talk like that. That money's
never, never to be touched.”
“And you've been savun up a good deal, besides,” went on McTeague,
exasperated at Trina's persistent economies. “How much money have you
got in that little brass match-safe in the bottom of your trunk? Pretty
near a hundred dollars, I guess--ah, sure.” He shut his eyes and nodded
his great head in a knowing way.
Trina had more than that in the brass match-safe in question, but her
instinct of hoarding had led her to keep it a secret from her husband.
Now she lied to him with prompt fluency.
“A hundred dollars! What are you talking of, Mac? I've not got fifty.
I've not got THIRTY.”
“Oh, let's take that little house,” broke in McTeague. “We got the
chance now, and it may never come again. Come on, Trina, shall we? Say,
come on, shall we, huh?”
“We'd have to be awful saving if we did, Mac.”
“Well, sure, I say let's take it.”
“I don't know,” said Trina, hesitating. “Wouldn't it be lovely to have a
house all to ourselves? But let's not decide until to-morrow.”
The next day the owner of the house called. Trina was out at her
morning's marketing and the dentist, who had no one in the chair at the
time, received him in the “Parlors.” Before he was well aware of it,
McTeague had concluded the bargain. The owner bewildered him with a
world of phrases, made him believe that it would be a great saving to
move into the little house, and finally offered it to him “water free.”
“All right, all right,” said McTeague, “I'll take it.”
The other immediately produced a paper.
“Well, then, suppose you sign for the first month's rent, and we'll
call it a bargain. That's business, you know,” and McTeague, hesitating,
signed.
“I'd like to have talked more with my wife about it first,” he said,
dubiously.
“Oh, that's all right,” answered the owner, easily. “I guess if the head
of the family wants a thing, that's enough.”
McTeague could not wait until lunch time to tell the news to Trina. As
soon as he heard her come in, he laid down the plaster-of-paris mould
he was making and went out into the kitchen and found her chopping up
onions.
“Well, Trina,” he said, “we got that house. I've taken it.”
“What do you mean?” she answered, quickly. The dentist told her.
“And you signed a paper for the first month's rent?”
“Sure, sure. That's business, you know.”
“Well, why did you DO it?” cried Trina. “You might have asked ME
something about it. Now, what have you done? I was talking with Mrs.
Ryer about that house while I was out this morning, and she said the
Hungarians moved out because it was absolutely unhealthy; there's water
been standing in the basement for months. And she told me, too,” Trina
went on indignantly, “that she knew the owner, and she was sure we could
get the house for thirty if we'd bargain for it. Now what have you gone
and done? I hadn't made up my mind about taking the house at all. And
now I WON'T take it, with the water in the basement and all.”
“Well--well,” stammered McTeague, helplessly, “we needn't go in if it's
unhealthy.”
“But you've signed a PAPER,” cried Trina, exasperated. “You've got
to pay that first month's rent, anyhow--to forfeit it. Oh, you are so
stupid! There's thirty-five dollars just thrown away. I SHAN'T go into
that house; we won't move a FOOT out of here. I've changed my mind about
it, and there's water in the basement besides.”
“Well, I guess we can stand thirty-five dollars,” mumbled the dentist,
“if we've got to.”
“Thirty-five dollars just thrown out of the window,” cried Trina, her
teeth clicking, every instinct of her parsimony aroused. “Oh, you the
thick-wittedest man that I ever knew. Do you think we're millionaires?
Oh, to think of losing thirty-five dollars like that.” Tears were in her
eyes, tears of grief as well as of anger. Never had McTeague seen his
little woman so aroused. Suddenly she rose to her feet and slammed the
chopping-bowl down upon the table. “Well, I won't pay a nickel of it,”
she exclaimed.
“Huh? What, what?” stammered the dentist, taken all aback by her
outburst.
“I say that you will find that money, that thirty-five dollars,
yourself.”
“Why--why----”
“It's your stupidity got us into this fix, and you'll be the one that'll
suffer by it.”
“I can't do it, I WON'T do it. We'll--we'll share and share alike. Why,
you said--you told me you'd take the house if the water was free.”
“I NEVER did. I NEVER did. How can you stand there and say such a
thing?”
“You did tell me that,” vociferated McTeague, beginning to get angry in
his turn.
“Mac, I didn't, and you know it. And what's more, I won't pay a nickel.
Mr. Heise pays his bill next week, it's forty-three dollars, and you can
just pay the thirty-five out of that.”
“Why, you got a whole hundred dollars saved up in your match-safe,”
shouted the dentist, throwing out an arm with an awkward gesture. “You
pay half and I'll pay half, that's only fair.”
“No, no, NO,” exclaimed Trina. “It's not a hundred dollars. You won't
touch it; you won't touch my money, I tell you.”
“Ah, how does it happen to be yours, I'd like to know?”
“It's mine! It's mine! It's mine!” cried Trina, her face scarlet, her
teeth clicking like the snap of a closing purse.
“It ain't any more yours than it is mine.”
“Every penny of it is mine.”
“Ah, what a fine fix you'd get me into,” growled the dentist. “I've
signed the paper with the owner; that's business, you know, that's
business, you know; and now you go back on me. Suppose we'd taken the
house, we'd 'a' shared the rent, wouldn't we, just as we do here?”
Trina shrugged her shoulders with a great affectation of indifference
and began chopping the onions again.
“You settle it with the owner,” she said. “It's your affair; you've got
the money.” She pretended to assume a certain calmness as though the
matter was something that no longer affected her. Her manner exasperated
McTeague all the more.
“No, I won't; no, I won't; I won't either,” he shouted. “I'll pay my
half and he can come to you for the other half.” Trina put a hand over
her ear to shut out his clamor.
“Ah, don't try and be smart,” cried McTeague. “Come, now, yes or no,
will you pay your half?”
“You heard what I said.”
“Will you pay it?”
“No.”
“Miser!” shouted McTeague. “Miser! you're worse than old Zerkow. All
right, all right, keep your money. I'll pay the whole thirty-five. I'd
rather lose it than be such a miser as you.”
“Haven't you got anything to do,” returned Trina, “instead of staying
here and abusing me?”
“Well, then, for the last time, will you help me out?” Trina cut the
heads of a fresh bunch of onions and gave no answer.
“Huh? will you?”
“I'd like to have my kitchen to myself, please,” she said in a mincing
way, irritating to a last degree. The dentist stamped out of the room,
banging the door behind him.
For nearly a week the breach between them remained unhealed. Trina only
spoke to the dentist in monosyllables, while he, exasperated at her
calmness and frigid reserve, sulked in his “Dental Parlors,” muttering
terrible things beneath his mustache, or finding solace in his
concertina, playing his six lugubrious airs over and over again, or
swearing frightful oaths at his canary. When Heise paid his bill,
McTeague, in a fury, sent the amount to the owner of the little house.
There was no formal reconciliation between the dentist and his little
woman. Their relations readjusted themselves inevitably. By the end
of the week they were as amicable as ever, but it was long before they
spoke of the little house again. Nor did they ever revisit it of a
Sunday afternoon. A month or so later the Ryers told them that the owner
himself had moved in. The McTeagues never occupied that little house.
But Trina suffered a reaction after the quarrel. She began to be sorry
she had refused to help her husband, sorry she had brought matters
to such an issue. One afternoon as she was at work on the Noah's ark
animals, she surprised herself crying over the affair. She loved her
“old bear” too much to do him an injustice, and perhaps, after all, she
had been in the wrong. Then it occurred to her how pretty it would be
to come up behind him unexpectedly, and slip the money, thirty-five
dollars, into his hand, and pull his huge head down to her and kiss his
bald spot as she used to do in the days before they were married.
Then she hesitated, pausing in her work, her knife dropping into her
lap, a half-whittled figure between her fingers. If not thirty-five
dollars, then at least fifteen or sixteen, her share of it. But a
feeling of reluctance, a sudden revolt against this intended generosity,
arose in her.
“No, no,” she said to herself. “I'll give him ten dollars. I'll tell him
it's all I can afford. It IS all I can afford.”
She hastened to finish the figure of the animal she was then at work
upon, putting in the ears and tail with a drop of glue, and tossing it
into the basket at her side. Then she rose and went into the bedroom and
opened her trunk, taking the key from under a corner of the carpet where
she kept it hid.
At the very bottom of her trunk, under her bridal dress, she kept her
savings. It was all in change--half dollars and dollars for the most
part, with here and there a gold piece. Long since the little brass
match-box had overflowed. Trina kept the surplus in a chamois-skin
sack she had made from an old chest protector. Just now, yielding to
an impulse which often seized her, she drew out the match-box and
the chamois sack, and emptying the contents on the bed, counted them
carefully. It came to one hundred and sixty-five dollars, all told. She
counted it and recounted it and made little piles of it, and rubbed the
gold pieces between the folds of her apron until they shone.
“Ah, yes, ten dollars is all I can afford to give Mac,” said Trina,
“and even then, think of it, ten dollars--it will be four or five months
before I can save that again. But, dear old Mac, I know it would make
him feel glad, and perhaps,” she added, suddenly taken with an idea,
“perhaps Mac will refuse to take it.”
She took a ten-dollar piece from the heap and put the rest away. Then
she paused:
“No, not the gold piece,” she said to herself. “It's too pretty. He can
have the silver.” She made the change and counted out ten silver dollars
into her palm. But what a difference it made in the appearance and
weight of the little chamois bag! The bag was shrunken and withered,
long wrinkles appeared running downward from the draw-string. It was a
lamentable sight. Trina looked longingly at the ten broad pieces in her
hand. Then suddenly all her intuitive desire of saving, her instinct
of hoarding, her love of money for the money's sake, rose strong within
her.
“No, no, no,” she said. “I can't do it. It may be mean, but I can't help
it. It's stronger than I.” She returned the money to the bag and locked
it and the brass match-box in her trunk, turning the key with a long
breath of satisfaction.
She was a little troubled, however, as she went back into the
sitting-room and took up her work.
“I didn't use to be so stingy,” she told herself. “Since I won in the
lottery I've become a regular little miser. It's growing on me, but
never mind, it's a good fault, and, anyhow, I can't help it.”