“Well, what do you think?” said Trina.
She and McTeague stood in a tiny room at the back of the flat and on
its very top floor. The room was whitewashed. It contained a bed,
three cane-seated chairs, and a wooden washstand with its washbowl and
pitcher. From its single uncurtained window one looked down into the
flat's dirty back yard and upon the roofs of the hovels that bordered
the alley in the rear. There was a rag carpet on the floor. In place
of a closet some dozen wooden pegs were affixed to the wall over the
washstand. There was a smell of cheap soap and of ancient hair-oil in
the air.
“That's a single bed,” said Trina, “but the landlady says she'll put in
a double one for us. You see----”
“I ain't going to live here,” growled McTeague.
“Well, you've got to live somewhere,” said Trina, impatiently. “We've
looked Polk Street over, and this is the only thing we can afford.”
“Afford, afford,” muttered the dentist. “You with your five thousand
dollars, and the two or three hundred you got saved up, talking about
'afford.' You make me sick.”
“Now, Mac,” exclaimed Trina, deliberately, sitting down in one of the
cane-seated chairs; “now, Mac, let's have this thing----”
“Well, I don't figure on living in one room,” growled the dentist,
sullenly. “Let's live decently until we can get a fresh start. We've got
the money.”
“Who's got the money?”
“WE'VE got it.”
“We!”
“Well, it's all in the family. What's yours is mine, and what's mine is
yours, ain't it?”
“No, it's not; no, it's not,” cried Trina, vehemently. “It's all mine,
mine. There's not a penny of it belongs to anybody else. I don't like to
have to talk this way to you, but you just make me. We're not going to
touch a penny of my five thousand nor a penny of that little money I
managed to save--that seventy-five.”
“That TWO hundred, you mean.”
“That SEVENTY-FIVE. We're just going to live on the interest of that
and on what I earn from Uncle Oelbermann--on just that thirty-one or two
dollars.”
“Huh! Think I'm going to do that, an' live in such a room as this?”
Trina folded her arms and looked him squarely in the face.
“Well, what ARE you going to do, then?”
“Huh?”
“I say, what ARE you going to do? You can go on and find something to do
and earn some more money, and THEN we'll talk.”
“Well, I ain't going to live here.”
“Oh, very well, suit yourself. I'M going to live here.”
“You'll live where I TELL you,” the dentist suddenly cried, exasperated
at the mincing tone she affected.
“Then YOU'LL pay the rent,” exclaimed Trina, quite as angry as he.
“Are you my boss, I'd like to know? Who's the boss, you or I?”
“Who's got the MONEY, I'd like to know?” cried Trina, flushing to her
pale lips. “Answer me that, McTeague, who's got the money?”
“You make me sick, you and your money. Why, you're a miser. I never saw
anything like it. When I was practising, I never thought of my fees as
my own; we lumped everything in together.”
“Exactly; and I'M doing the working now. I'm working for Uncle
Oelbermann, and you're not lumping in ANYTHING now. I'm doing it all. Do
you know what I'm doing, McTeague? I'm supporting you.”
“Ah, shut up; you make me sick.”
“You got no RIGHT to talk to me that way. I won't let you. I--I won't
have it.” She caught her breath. Tears were in her eyes.
“Oh, live where you like, then,” said McTeague, sullenly.
“Well, shall we take this room then?”
“All right, we'll take it. But why can't you take a little of your money
an'--an'--sort of fix it up?”
“Not a penny, not a single penny.”
“Oh, I don't care WHAT you do.” And for the rest of the day the dentist
and his wife did not speak.
This was not the only quarrel they had during these days when they were
occupied in moving from their suite and in looking for new quarters.
Every hour the question of money came up. Trina had become more
niggardly than ever since the loss of McTeague's practice. It was not
mere economy with her now. It was a panic terror lest a fraction of a
cent of her little savings should be touched; a passionate eagerness
to continue to save in spite of all that had happened. Trina could have
easily afforded better quarters than the single whitewashed room at the
top of the flat, but she made McTeague believe that it was impossible.
“I can still save a little,” she said to herself, after the room had
been engaged; “perhaps almost as much as ever. I'll have three hundred
dollars pretty soon, and Mac thinks it's only two hundred. It's almost
two hundred and fifty; and I'll get a good deal out of the sale.”
But this sale was a long agony. It lasted a week. Everything
went--everything but the few big pieces that went with the suite, and
that belonged to the photographer. The melodeon, the chairs, the black
walnut table before which they were married, the extension table in
the sitting-room, the kitchen table with its oilcloth cover, the framed
lithographs from the English illustrated papers, the very carpets on
the floors. But Trina's heart nearly broke when the kitchen utensils and
furnishings began to go. Every pot, every stewpan, every knife and fork,
was an old friend. How she had worked over them! How clean she had kept
them! What a pleasure it had been to invade that little brick-paved
kitchen every morning, and to wash up and put to rights after breakfast,
turning on the hot water at the sink, raking down the ashes in the
cook-stove, going and coming over the warm bricks, her head in the air,
singing at her work, proud in the sense of her proprietorship and her
independence! How happy had she been the day after her marriage when she
had first entered that kitchen and knew that it was all her own! And
how well she remembered her raids upon the bargain counters in the
house-furnishing departments of the great down-town stores! And now it
was all to go. Some one else would have it all, while she was relegated
to cheap restaurants and meals cooked by hired servants. Night after
night she sobbed herself to sleep at the thought of her past happiness
and her present wretchedness. However, she was not alone in her
unhappiness.
“Anyhow, I'm going to keep the steel engraving an' the stone pug dog,”
declared the dentist, his fist clenching. When it had come to the
sale of his office effects McTeague had rebelled with the instinctive
obstinacy of a boy, shutting his eyes and ears. Only little by little
did Trina induce him to part with his office furniture. He fought
over every article, over the little iron stove, the bed-lounge, the
marble-topped centre table, the whatnot in the corner, the bound volumes
of “Allen's Practical Dentist,” the rifle manufacturer's calendar, and
the prim, military chairs. A veritable scene took place between him and
his wife before he could bring himself to part with the steel engraving
of “Lorenzo de' Medici and His Court” and the stone pug dog with its
goggle eyes.
“Why,” he would cry, “I've had 'em ever since--ever since I BEGAN; long
before I knew you, Trina. That steel engraving I bought in Sacramento
one day when it was raining. I saw it in the window of a second-hand
store, and a fellow GAVE me that stone pug dog. He was a druggist. It
was in Sacramento too. We traded. I gave him a shaving-mug and a razor,
and he gave me the pug dog.”
There were, however, two of his belongings that even Trina could not
induce him to part with.
“And your concertina, Mac,” she prompted, as they were making out the
list for the second-hand dealer. “The concertina, and--oh, yes, the
canary and the bird cage.”
“No.”
“Mac, you MUST be reasonable. The concertina would bring quite a
sum, and the bird cage is as good as new. I'll sell the canary to the
bird-store man on Kearney Street.”
“No.”
“If you're going to make objections to every single thing, we might as
well quit. Come, now, Mac, the concertina and the bird cage. We'll put
them in Lot D.”
“No.”
“You'll have to come to it sooner or later. I'M giving up everything.
I'm going to put them down, see.”
“No.”
And she could get no further than that. The dentist did not lose his
temper, as in the case of the steel engraving or the stone pug dog;
he simply opposed her entreaties and persuasions with a passive, inert
obstinacy that nothing could move. In the end Trina was obliged to
submit. McTeague kept his concertina and his canary, even going so far
as to put them both away in the bedroom, attaching to them tags on which
he had scrawled in immense round letters, “Not for Sale.”
One evening during that same week the dentist and his wife were in the
dismantled sitting-room. The room presented the appearance of a wreck.
The Nottingham lace curtains were down. The extension table was heaped
high with dishes, with tea and coffee pots, and with baskets of spoons
and knives and forks. The melodeon was hauled out into the middle of the
floor, and covered with a sheet marked “Lot A,” the pictures were in a
pile in a corner, the chenille portieres were folded on top of the black
walnut table. The room was desolate, lamentable. Trina was going over
the inventory; McTeague, in his shirt sleeves, was smoking his pipe,
looking stupidly out of the window. All at once there was a brisk
rapping at the door.
“Come in,” called Trina, apprehensively. Now-a-days at every unexpected
visit she anticipated a fresh calamity. The door opened to let in a
young man wearing a checked suit, a gay cravat, and a marvellously
figured waistcoat. Trina and McTeague recognized him at once. It was the
Other Dentist, the debonair fellow whose clients were the barbers and
the young women of the candy stores and soda-water fountains, the poser,
the wearer of waistcoats, who bet money on greyhound races.
“How'do?” said this one, bowing gracefully to the McTeagues as they
stared at him distrustfully.
“How'do? They tell me, Doctor, that you are going out of the
profession.”
McTeague muttered indistinctly behind his mustache and glowered at him.
“Well, say,” continued the other, cheerily, “I'd like to talk business
with you. That sign of yours, that big golden tooth that you got outside
of your window, I don't suppose you'll have any further use for it.
Maybe I'd buy it if we could agree on terms.”
Trina shot a glance at her husband. McTeague began to glower again.
“What do you say?” said the Other Dentist.
“I guess not,” growled McTeague
“What do you say to ten dollars?”
“Ten dollars!” cried Trina, her chin in the air.
“Well, what figure DO you put on it?”
Trina was about to answer when she was interrupted by McTeague.
“You go out of here.”
“Hey? What?”
“You go out of here.”
The other retreated toward the door.
“You can't make small of me. Go out of here.”
McTeague came forward a step, his great red fist clenching. The young
man fled. But half way down the stairs he paused long enough to call
back:
“You don't want to trade anything for a diploma, do you?”
McTeague and his wife exchanged looks.
“How did he know?” exclaimed Trina, sharply. They had invented and
spread the fiction that McTeague was merely retiring from business,
without assigning any reason. But evidently every one knew the real
cause. The humiliation was complete now. Old Miss Baker confirmed their
suspicions on this point the next day. The little retired dressmaker
came down and wept with Trina over her misfortune, and did what
she could to encourage her. But she too knew that McTeague had been
forbidden by the authorities from practising. Marcus had evidently left
them no loophole of escape.
“It's just like cutting off your husband's hands, my dear,” said Miss
Baker. “And you two were so happy. When I first saw you together I said,
'What a pair!'”
Old Grannis also called during this period of the breaking up of the
McTeague household.
“Dreadful, dreadful,” murmured the old Englishman, his hand going
tremulously to his chin. “It seems unjust; it does. But Mr. Schouler
could not have set them on to do it. I can't quite believe it of him.”
“Of Marcus!” cried Trina. “Hoh! Why, he threw his knife at Mac one time,
and another time he bit him, actually bit him with his teeth, while they
were wrestling just for fun. Marcus would do anything to injure Mac.”
“Dear, dear,” returned Old Grannis, genuinely pained. “I had always
believed Schouler to be such a good fellow.”
“That's because you're so good yourself, Mr. Grannis,” responded Trina.
“I tell you what, Doc,” declared Heise the harness-maker, shaking his
finger impressively at the dentist, “you must fight it; you must appeal
to the courts; you've been practising too long to be debarred now. The
statute of limitations, you know.”
“No, no,” Trina had exclaimed, when the dentist had repeated this advice
to her. “No, no, don't go near the law courts. I know them. The lawyers
take all your money, and you lose your case. We're bad off as it is,
without lawing about it.”
Then at last came the sale. McTeague and Trina, whom Miss Baker had
invited to her room for that day, sat there side by side, holding each
other's hands, listening nervously to the turmoil that rose to them from
the direction of their suite. From nine o'clock till dark the crowds
came and went. All Polk Street seemed to have invaded the suite, lured
on by the red flag that waved from the front windows. It was a fete, a
veritable holiday, for the whole neighborhood. People with no thought
of buying presented themselves. Young women--the candy-store girls and
florist's apprentices--came to see the fun, walking arm in arm from room
to room, making jokes about the pretty lithographs and mimicking the
picture of the two little girls saying their prayers.
“Look here,” they would cry, “look here what she used for
curtains--NOTTINGHAM lace, actually! Whoever thinks of buying Nottingham
lace now-a-days? Say, don't that JAR you?”
“And a melodeon,” another one would exclaim, lifting the sheet. “A
melodeon, when you can rent a piano for a dollar a week; and say, I
really believe they used to eat in the kitchen.”
“Dollarn-half, dollarn-half, dollarn-half, give me two,” intoned the
auctioneer from the second-hand store. By noon the crowd became a jam.
Wagons backed up to the curb outside and departed heavily laden. In
all directions people could be seen going away from the house, carrying
small articles of furniture--a clock, a water pitcher, a towel rack.
Every now and then old Miss Baker, who had gone below to see how things
were progressing, returned with reports of the foray.
“Mrs. Heise bought the chenille portieres. Mister Ryer made a bid for
your bed, but a man in a gray coat bid over him. It was knocked down for
three dollars and a half. The German shoe-maker on the next block
bought the stone pug dog. I saw our postman going away with a lot of the
pictures. Zerkow has come, on my word! the rags-bottles-sacks man; he's
buying lots; he bought all Doctor McTeague's gold tape and some of the
instruments. Maria's there too. That dentist on the corner took the
dental engine, and wanted to get the sign, the big gold tooth,” and so
on and so on. Cruelest of all, however, at least to Trina, was when Miss
Baker herself began to buy, unable to resist a bargain. The last time
she came up she carried a bundle of the gay tidies that used to hang
over the chair backs.
“He offered them, three for a nickel,” she explained to Trina, “and
I thought I'd spend just a quarter. You don't mind, now, do you, Mrs.
McTeague?”
“Why, no, of course not, Miss Baker,” answered Trina, bravely.
“They'll look very pretty on some of my chairs,” went on the little old
dressmaker, innocently. “See.” She spread one of them on a chair back
for inspection. Trina's chin quivered.
“Oh, VERY pretty,” she answered.
At length that dreadful day was over. The crowd dispersed. Even the
auctioneer went at last, and as he closed the door with a bang,
the reverberation that went through the suite gave evidence of its
emptiness.
“Come,” said Trina to the dentist, “let's go down and look--take a last
look.”
They went out of Miss Baker's room and descended to the floor below.
On the stairs, however, they were met by Old Grannis. In his hands
he carried a little package. Was it possible that he too had taken
advantage of their misfortunes to join in the raid upon the suite?
“I went in,” he began, timidly, “for--for a few moments. This”--he
indicated the little package he carried--“this was put up. It was of no
value but to you. I--I ventured to bid it in. I thought perhaps”--his
hand went to his chin, “that you wouldn't mind; that--in fact, I bought
it for you--as a present. Will you take it?” He handed the package to
Trina and hurried on. Trina tore off the wrappings.
It was the framed photograph of McTeague and his wife in their wedding
finery, the one that had been taken immediately after the marriage.
It represented Trina sitting very erect in a rep armchair, holding her
wedding bouquet straight before her, McTeague standing at her side, his
left foot forward, one hand upon her shoulder, and the other thrust into
the breast of his “Prince Albert” coat, in the attitude of a statue of a
Secretary of State.
“Oh, it WAS good of him, it WAS good of him,” cried Trina, her eyes
filling again. “I had forgotten to put it away. Of course it was not for
sale.”
They went on down the stairs, and arriving at the door of the
sitting-room, opened it and looked in. It was late in the afternoon,
and there was just light enough for the dentist and his wife to see the
results of that day of sale. Nothing was left, not even the carpet.
It was a pillage, a devastation, the barrenness of a field after the
passage of a swarm of locusts. The room had been picked and stripped
till only the bare walls and floor remained. Here where they had been
married, where the wedding supper had taken place, where Trina had bade
farewell to her father and mother, here where she had spent those first
few hard months of her married life, where afterward she had grown to
be happy and contented, where she had passed the long hours of the
afternoon at her work of whittling, and where she and her husband had
spent so many evenings looking out of the window before the lamp was
lit--here in what had been her home, nothing was left but echoes and the
emptiness of complete desolation. Only one thing remained. On the wall
between the windows, in its oval glass frame, preserved by some unknown
and fearful process, a melancholy relic of a vanished happiness, unsold,
neglected, and forgotten, a thing that nobody wanted, hung Trina's
wedding bouquet.