That same night McTeague was awakened by a shrill scream, and woke
to find Trina's arms around his neck. She was trembling so that the
bed-springs creaked.
“Huh?” cried the dentist, sitting up in bed, raising his clinched fists.
“Huh? What? What? What is it? What is it?”
“Oh, Mac,” gasped his wife, “I had such an awful dream. I dreamed about
Maria. I thought she was chasing me, and I couldn't run, and her throat
was--Oh, she was all covered with blood. Oh-h, I am so frightened!”
Trina had borne up very well for the first day or so after the affair,
and had given her testimony to the coroner with far greater calmness
than Heise. It was only a week later that the horror of the thing came
upon her again. She was so nervous that she hardly dared to be alone in
the daytime, and almost every night woke with a cry of terror, trembling
with the recollection of some dreadful nightmare. The dentist was
irritated beyond all expression by her nervousness, and especially was
he exasperated when her cries woke him suddenly in the middle of the
night. He would sit up in bed, rolling his eyes wildly, throwing out
his huge fists--at what, he did not know--exclaiming, “What what--”
bewildered and hopelessly confused. Then when he realized that it was
only Trina, his anger kindled abruptly.
“Oh, you and your dreams! You go to sleep, or I'll give you a dressing
down.” Sometimes he would hit her a great thwack with his open palm, or
catch her hand and bite the tips of her fingers. Trina would lie awake
for hours afterward, crying softly to herself. Then, by and by, “Mac,”
she would say timidly.
“Huh?”
“Mac, do you love me?”
“Huh? What? Go to sleep.”
“Don't you love me any more, Mac?”
“Oh, go to sleep. Don't bother me.”
“Well, do you LOVE me, Mac?”
“I guess so.”
“Oh, Mac, I've only you now, and if you don't love me, what is going to
become of me?”
“Shut up, an' let me go to sleep.”
“Well, just tell me that you love me.”
The dentist would turn abruptly away from her, burying his big blond
head in the pillow, and covering up his ears with the blankets. Then
Trina would sob herself to sleep.
The dentist had long since given up looking for a job. Between breakfast
and supper time Trina saw but little of him. Once the morning meal over,
McTeague bestirred himself, put on his cap--he had given up wearing even
a hat since his wife had made him sell his silk hat--and went out. He
had fallen into the habit of taking long and solitary walks beyond the
suburbs of the city. Sometimes it was to the Cliff House, occasionally
to the Park (where he would sit on the sun-warmed benches, smoking his
pipe and reading ragged ends of old newspapers), but more often it was
to the Presidio Reservation. McTeague would walk out to the end of the
Union Street car line, entering the Reservation at the terminus, then
he would work down to the shore of the bay, follow the shore line to
the Old Fort at the Golden Gate, and, turning the Point here, come out
suddenly upon the full sweep of the Pacific. Then he would follow the
beach down to a certain point of rocks that he knew. Here he would turn
inland, climbing the bluffs to a rolling grassy down sown with blue iris
and a yellow flower that he did not know the name of. On the far side of
this down was a broad, well-kept road. McTeague would keep to this road
until he reached the city again by the way of the Sacramento Street car
line. The dentist loved these walks. He liked to be alone. He liked the
solitude of the tremendous, tumbling ocean; the fresh, windy downs; he
liked to feel the gusty Trades flogging his face, and he would remain
for hours watching the roll and plunge of the breakers with the silent,
unreasoned enjoyment of a child. All at once he developed a passion for
fishing. He would sit all day nearly motionless upon a point of rocks,
his fish-line between his fingers, happy if he caught three perch in
twelve hours. At noon he would retire to a bit of level turf around an
angle of the shore and cook his fish, eating them without salt or knife
or fork. He thrust a pointed stick down the mouth of the perch, and
turned it slowly over the blaze. When the grease stopped dripping, he
knew that it was done, and would devour it slowly and with tremendous
relish, picking the bones clean, eating even the head. He remembered
how often he used to do this sort of thing when he was a boy in the
mountains of Placer County, before he became a car-boy at the mine. The
dentist enjoyed himself hugely during these days. The instincts of the
old-time miner were returning. In the stress of his misfortune McTeague
was lapsing back to his early estate.
One evening as he reached home after such a tramp, he was surprised to
find Trina standing in front of what had been Zerkow's house, looking at
it thoughtfully, her finger on her lips.
“What you doing here'?” growled the dentist as he came up. There was a
“Rooms-to-let” sign on the street door of the house.
“Now we've found a place to move to,” exclaimed Trina.
“What?” cried McTeague. “There, in that dirty house, where you found
Maria?”
“I can't afford that room in the flat any more, now that you can't get
any work to do.”
“But there's where Zerkow killed Maria--the very house--an' you wake up
an' squeal in the night just thinking of it.”
“I know. I know it will be bad at first, but I'll get used to it, an'
it's just half again as cheap as where we are now. I was looking at a
room; we can have it dirt cheap. It's a back room over the kitchen. A
German family are going to take the front part of the house and sublet
the rest. I'm going to take it. It'll be money in my pocket.”
“But it won't be any in mine,” vociferated the dentist, angrily. “I'll
have to live in that dirty rat hole just so's you can save money. I
ain't any the better off for it.”
“Find work to do, and then we'll talk,” declared Trina. “I'M going to
save up some money against a rainy day; and if I can save more by living
here I'm going to do it, even if it is the house Maria was killed in. I
don't care.”
“All right,” said McTeague, and did not make any further protest. His
wife looked at him surprised. She could not understand this sudden
acquiescence. Perhaps McTeague was so much away from home of late that
he had ceased to care where or how he lived. But this sudden change
troubled her a little for all that.
The next day the McTeagues moved for a second time. It did not take them
long. They were obliged to buy the bed from the landlady, a circumstance
which nearly broke Trina's heart; and this bed, a couple of chairs,
Trina's trunk, an ornament or two, the oil stove, and some plates and
kitchen ware were all that they could call their own now; and this back
room in that wretched house with its grisly memories, the one window
looking out into a grimy maze of back yards and broken sheds, was what
they now knew as their home.
The McTeagues now began to sink rapidly lower and lower. They became
accustomed to their surroundings. Worst of all, Trina lost her pretty
ways and her good looks. The combined effects of hard work, avarice,
poor food, and her husband's brutalities told on her swiftly. Her
charming little figure grew coarse, stunted, and dumpy. She who had once
been of a catlike neatness, now slovened all day about the room in
a dirty flannel wrapper, her slippers clap-clapping after her as she
walked. At last she even neglected her hair, the wonderful swarthy
tiara, the coiffure of a queen, that shaded her little pale forehead.
In the morning she braided it before it was half combed, and piled and
coiled it about her head in haphazard fashion. It came down half a dozen
times a day; by evening it was an unkempt, tangled mass, a veritable
rat's nest.
Ah, no, it was not very gay, that life of hers, when one had to rustle
for two, cook and work and wash, to say nothing of paying the rent. What
odds was it if she was slatternly, dirty, coarse? Was there time to make
herself look otherwise, and who was there to be pleased when she was all
prinked out? Surely not a great brute of a husband who bit you like a
dog, and kicked and pounded you as though you were made of iron. Ah, no,
better let things go, and take it as easy as you could. Hump your back,
and it was soonest over.
The one room grew abominably dirty, reeking with the odors of cooking
and of “non-poisonous” paint. The bed was not made until late in the
afternoon, sometimes not at all. Dirty, unwashed crockery, greasy
knives, sodden fragments of yesterday's meals cluttered the table, while
in one corner was the heap of evil-smelling, dirty linen. Cockroaches
appeared in the crevices of the woodwork, the wall-paper bulged from the
damp walls and began to peel. Trina had long ago ceased to dust or to
wipe the furniture with a bit of rag. The grime grew thick upon the
window panes and in the corners of the room. All the filth of the alley
invaded their quarters like a rising muddy tide.
Between the windows, however, the faded photograph of the couple in
their wedding finery looked down upon the wretchedness, Trina still
holding her set bouquet straight before her, McTeague standing at her
side, his left foot forward, in the attitude of a Secretary of State;
while near by hung the canary, the one thing the dentist clung to
obstinately, piping and chittering all day in its little gilt prison.
And the tooth, the gigantic golden molar of French gilt, enormous and
ungainly, sprawled its branching prongs in one corner of the room, by
the footboard of the bed. The McTeague's had come to use it as a sort
of substitute for a table. After breakfast and supper Trina piled the
plates and greasy dishes upon it to have them out of the way.
One afternoon the Other Dentist, McTeague's old-time rival, the wearer
of marvellous waistcoats, was surprised out of all countenance to
receive a visit from McTeague. The Other Dentist was in his operating
room at the time, at work upon a plaster-of-paris mould. To his call
of “'Come right in. Don't you see the sign, 'Enter without knocking'?”
McTeague came in. He noted at once how airy and cheerful was the room. A
little fire coughed and tittered on the hearth, a brindled greyhound
sat on his haunches watching it intently, a great mirror over the mantle
offered to view an array of actresses' pictures thrust between the glass
and the frame, and a big bunch of freshly-cut violets stood in a glass
bowl on the polished cherrywood table. The Other Dentist came forward
briskly, exclaiming cheerfully:
“Oh, Doctor--Mister McTeague, how do? how do?”
The fellow was actually wearing a velvet smoking jacket. A cigarette
was between his lips; his patent leather boots reflected the firelight.
McTeague wore a black surah neglige shirt without a cravat; huge buckled
brogans, hob-nailed, gross, encased his feet; the hems of his trousers
were spotted with mud; his coat was frayed at the sleeves and a button
was gone. In three days he had not shaved; his shock of heavy blond hair
escaped from beneath the visor of his woollen cap and hung low over his
forehead. He stood with awkward, shifting feet and uncertain eyes before
the dapper young fellow who reeked of the barber shop, and whom he had
once ordered from his rooms.
“What can I do for you this morning, Mister McTeague? Something wrong
with the teeth, eh?”
“No, no.” McTeague, floundering in the difficulties of his speech,
forgot the carefully rehearsed words with which he had intended to begin
this interview.
“I want to sell you my sign,” he said, stupidly. “That big tooth of
French gilt--YOU know--that you made an offer for once.”
“Oh, I don't want that now,” said the other loftily. “I prefer a little
quiet signboard, nothing pretentious--just the name, and 'Dentist' after
it. These big signs are vulgar. No, I don't want it.”
McTeague remained, looking about on the floor, horribly embarrassed, not
knowing whether to go or to stay.
“But I don't know,” said the Other Dentist, reflectively. “If it will
help you out any--I guess you're pretty hard up--I'll--well, I tell you
what--I'll give you five dollars for it.”
“All right, all right.”
On the following Thursday morning McTeague woke to hear the eaves
dripping and the prolonged rattle of the rain upon the roof.
“Raining,” he growled, in deep disgust, sitting up in bed, and winking
at the blurred window.
“It's been raining all night,” said Trina. She was already up and
dressed, and was cooking breakfast on the oil stove.
McTeague dressed himself, grumbling, “Well, I'll go, anyhow. The fish
will bite all the better for the rain.”
“Look here, Mac,” said Trina, slicing a bit of bacon as thinly as she
could. “Look here, why don't you bring some of your fish home sometime?”
“Huh!” snorted the dentist, “so's we could have 'em for breakfast. Might
save you a nickel, mightn't it?”
“Well, and if it did! Or you might fish for the market. The fisherman
across the street would buy 'em of you.”
“Shut up!” exclaimed the dentist, and Trina obediently subsided.
“Look here,” continued her husband, fumbling in his trousers pocket
and bringing out a dollar, “I'm sick and tired of coffee and bacon and
mashed potatoes. Go over to the market and get some kind of meat for
breakfast. Get a steak, or chops, or something.
“Why, Mac, that's a whole dollar, and he only gave you five for your
sign. We can't afford it. Sure, Mac. Let me put that money away against
a rainy day. You're just as well off without meat for breakfast.”
“You do as I tell you. Get some steak, or chops, or something.”
“Please, Mac, dear.”
“Go on, now. I'll bite your fingers again pretty soon.”
“But----”
The dentist took a step towards her, snatching at her hand.
“All right, I'll go,” cried Trina, wincing and shrinking. “I'll go.”
She did not get the chops at the big market, however. Instead, she
hurried to a cheaper butcher shop on a side street two blocks away, and
bought fifteen cents' worth of chops from a side of mutton some two or
three days old. She was gone some little time.
“Give me the change,” exclaimed the dentist as soon as she returned.
Trina handed him a quarter; and when McTeague was about to protest,
broke in upon him with a rapid stream of talk that confused him upon
the instant. But for that matter, it was never difficult for Trina to
deceive the dentist. He never went to the bottom of things. He would
have believed her if she had told him the chops had cost a dollar.
“There's sixty cents saved, anyhow,” thought Trina, as she clutched the
money in her pocket to keep it from rattling.
Trina cooked the chops, and they breakfasted in silence. “Now,” said
McTeague as he rose, wiping the coffee from his thick mustache with the
hollow of his palm, “now I'm going fishing, rain or no rain. I'm going
to be gone all day.”
He stood for a moment at the door, his fish-line in his hand, swinging
the heavy sinker back and forth. He looked at Trina as she cleared away
the breakfast things.
“So long,” said he, nodding his huge square-cut head. This amiability
in the matter of leave taking was unusual. Trina put the dishes down and
came up to him, her little chin, once so adorable, in the air:
“Kiss me good-by, Mac,” she said, putting her arms around his neck. “You
DO love me a little yet, don't you, Mac? We'll be happy again some day.
This is hard times now, but we'll pull out. You'll find something to do
pretty soon.”
“I guess so,” growled McTeague, allowing her to kiss him.
The canary was stirring nimbly in its cage, and just now broke out into
a shrill trilling, its little throat bulging and quivering. The dentist
stared at it. “Say,” he remarked slowly, “I think I'll take that bird of
mine along.”
“Sell it?” inquired Trina.
“Yes, yes, sell it.”
“Well, you ARE coming to your senses at last,” answered Trina,
approvingly. “But don't you let the bird-store man cheat you. That's a
good songster; and with the cage, you ought to make him give you five
dollars. You stick out for that at first, anyhow.”
McTeague unhooked the cage and carefully wrapped it in an old newspaper,
remarking, “He might get cold. Well, so long,” he repeated, “so long.”
“Good-by, Mac.”
When he was gone, Trina took the sixty cents she had stolen from him out
of her pocket and recounted it. “It's sixty cents, all right,” she said
proudly. “But I DO believe that dime is too smooth.” She looked at it
critically. The clock on the power-house of the Sutter Street cable
struck eight. “Eight o'clock already,” she exclaimed. “I must get to
work.” She cleared the breakfast things from the table, and drawing up
her chair and her workbox began painting the sets of Noah's ark animals
she had whittled the day before. She worked steadily all the morning.
At noon she lunched, warming over the coffee left from breakfast, and
frying a couple of sausages. By one she was bending over her table
again. Her fingers--some of them lacerated by McTeague's teeth--flew,
and the little pile of cheap toys in the basket at her elbow grew
steadily.
“Where DO all the toys go to?” she murmured. “The thousands and
thousands of these Noah's arks that I have made--horses and chickens and
elephants--and always there never seems to be enough. It's a good thing
for me that children break their things, and that they all have to have
birthdays and Christmases.” She dipped her brush into a pot of Vandyke
brown and painted one of the whittled toy horses in two strokes. Then a
touch of ivory black with a small flat brush created the tail and mane,
and dots of Chinese white made the eyes. The turpentine in the paint
dried it almost immediately, and she tossed the completed little horse
into the basket.
At six o'clock the dentist had not returned. Trina waited until seven,
and then put her work away, and ate her supper alone.
“I wonder what's keeping Mac,” she exclaimed as the clock from the
power-house on Sutter Street struck half-past seven. “I KNOW he's
drinking somewhere,” she cried, apprehensively. “He had the money from
his sign with him.”
At eight o'clock she threw a shawl over her head and went over to the
harness shop. If anybody would know where McTeague was it would be
Heise. But the harness-maker had seen nothing of him since the day
before.
“He was in here yesterday afternoon, and we had a drink or two at
Frenna's. Maybe he's been in there to-day.”
“Oh, won't you go in and see?” said Trina. “Mac always came home to his
supper--he never likes to miss his meals--and I'm getting frightened
about him.”
Heise went into the barroom next door, and returned with no definite
news. Frenna had not seen the dentist since he had come in with the
harness-maker the previous afternoon. Trina even humbled herself to ask
of the Ryers--with whom they had quarrelled--if they knew anything of
the dentist's whereabouts, but received a contemptuous negative.
“Maybe he's come in while I've been out,” said Trina to herself. She
went down Polk Street again, going towards the flat. The rain had
stopped, but the sidewalks were still glistening. The cable cars
trundled by, loaded with theatregoers. The barbers were just closing
their shops. The candy store on the corner was brilliantly lighted and
was filling up, while the green and yellow lamps from the drug store
directly opposite threw kaleidoscopic reflections deep down into the
shining surface of the asphalt. A band of Salvationists began to play
and pray in front of Frenna's saloon. Trina hurried on down the gay
street, with its evening's brilliancy and small activities, her shawl
over her head, one hand lifting her faded skirt from off the wet
pavements. She turned into the alley, entered Zerkow's old home by the
ever-open door, and ran up-stairs to the room. Nobody.
“Why, isn't this FUNNY,” she exclaimed, half aloud, standing on the
threshold, her little milk-white forehead curdling to a frown, one sore
finger on her lips. Then a great fear seized upon her. Inevitably she
associated the house with a scene of violent death.
“No, no,” she said to the darkness, “Mac is all right. HE can take
care of himself.” But for all that she had a clear-cut vision of her
husband's body, bloated with seawater, his blond hair streaming like
kelp, rolling inertly in shifting waters.
“He couldn't have fallen off the rocks,” she declared firmly.
“There--THERE he is now.” She heaved a great sigh of relief as a heavy
tread sounded in the hallway below. She ran to the banisters, looking
over, and calling, “Oh, Mac! Is that you, Mac?” It was the German whose
family occupied the lower floor. The power-house clock struck nine.
“My God, where is Mac?” cried Trina, stamping her foot.
She put the shawl over her head again, and went out and stood on the
corner of the alley and Polk Street, watching and waiting, craning her
neck to see down the street. Once, even, she went out upon the sidewalk
in front of the flat and sat down for a moment upon the horse-block
there. She could not help remembering the day when she had been driven
up to that horse-block in a hack. Her mother and father and Owgooste and
the twins were with her. It was her wedding day. Her wedding dress was
in a huge tin trunk on the driver's seat. She had never been happier
before in all her life. She remembered how she got out of the hack
and stood for a moment upon the horse-block, looking up at McTeague's
windows. She had caught a glimpse of him at his shaving, the lather
still on his cheek, and they had waved their hands at each other.
Instinctively Trina looked up at the flat behind her; looked up at the
bay window where her husband's “Dental Parlors” had been. It was all
dark; the windows had the blind, sightless appearance imparted by
vacant, untenanted rooms. A rusty iron rod projected mournfully from one
of the window ledges.
“There's where our sign hung once,” said Trina. She turned her head and
looked down Polk Street towards where the Other Dentist had his rooms,
and there, overhanging the street from his window, newly furbished and
brightened, hung the huge tooth, her birthday present to her husband,
flashing and glowing in the white glare of the electric lights like a
beacon of defiance and triumph.
“Ah, no; ah, no,” whispered Trina, choking back a sob. “Life isn't so
gay. But I wouldn't mind, no I wouldn't mind anything, if only Mac was
home all right.” She got up from the horse-block and stood again on the
corner of the alley, watching and listening.
It grew later. The hours passed. Trina kept at her post. The noise of
approaching footfalls grew less and less frequent. Little by little
Polk Street dropped back into solitude. Eleven o'clock struck from the
power-house clock; lights were extinguished; at one o'clock the cable
stopped, leaving an abrupt and numbing silence in the air. All at once
it seemed very still. The only noises were the occasional footfalls of
a policeman and the persistent calling of ducks and geese in the closed
market across the way. The street was asleep.
When it is night and dark, and one is awake and alone, one's thoughts
take the color of the surroundings; become gloomy, sombre, and very
dismal. All at once an idea came to Trina, a dark, terrible idea; worse,
even, than the idea of McTeague's death.
“Oh, no,” she cried. “Oh, no. It isn't true. But suppose--suppose.”
She left her post and hurried back to the house.
“No, no,” she was saying under her breath, “it isn't possible.
Maybe he's even come home already by another way. But
suppose--suppose--suppose.”
She ran up the stairs, opened the door of the room, and paused, out of
breath. The room was dark and empty. With cold, trembling fingers she
lighted the lamp, and, turning about, looked at her trunk. The lock was
burst.
“No, no, no,” cried Trina, “it's not true; it's not true.” She dropped
on her knees before the trunk, and tossed back the lid, and plunged
her hands down into the corner underneath her wedding dress, where she
always kept the savings. The brass match-safe and the chamois-skin bag
were there. They were empty.
Trina flung herself full length upon the floor, burying her face in her
arms, rolling her head from side to side. Her voice rose to a wail.
“No, no, no, it's not true; it's not true; it's not true. Oh, he
couldn't have done it. Oh, how could he have done it? All my money, all
my little savings--and deserted me. He's gone, my money's gone, my dear
money--my dear, dear gold pieces that I've worked so hard for. Oh, to
have deserted me--gone for good--gone and never coming back--gone with
my gold pieces. Gone-gone--gone. I'll never see them again, and I've
worked so hard, so so hard for him--for them. No, no, NO, it's not true.
It IS true. What will become of me now? Oh, if you'll only come back you
can have all the money--half of it. Oh, give me back my money. Give me
back my money, and I'll forgive you. You can leave me then if you want
to. Oh, my money. Mac, Mac, you've gone for good. You don't love me any
more, and now I'm a beggar. My money's gone, my husband's gone, gone,
gone, gone!”
Her grief was terrible. She dug her nails into her scalp, and clutching
the heavy coils of her thick black hair tore it again and again. She
struck her forehead with her clenched fists. Her little body shook from
head to foot with the violence of her sobbing. She ground her small
teeth together and beat her head upon the floor with all her strength.
Her hair was uncoiled and hanging a tangled, dishevelled mass far below
her waist; her dress was torn; a spot of blood was upon her forehead;
her eyes were swollen; her cheeks flamed vermilion from the fever that
raged in her veins. Old Miss Baker found her thus towards five o'clock
the next morning.
What had happened between one o'clock and dawn of that fearful night
Trina never remembered. She could only recall herself, as in a picture,
kneeling before her broken and rifled trunk, and then--weeks later, so
it seemed to her--she woke to find herself in her own bed with an iced
bandage about her forehead and the little old dressmaker at her side,
stroking her hot, dry palm.
The facts of the matter were that the German woman who lived below
had been awakened some hours after midnight by the sounds of Trina's
weeping. She had come upstairs and into the room to find Trina stretched
face downward upon the floor, half-conscious and sobbing, in the throes
of an hysteria for which there was no relief. The woman, terrified, had
called her husband, and between them they had got Trina upon the bed.
Then the German woman happened to remember that Trina had friends in
the big flat near by, and had sent her husband to fetch the retired
dressmaker, while she herself remained behind to undress Trina and put
her to bed. Miss Baker had come over at once, and began to cry herself
at the sight of the dentist's poor little wife. She did not stop to ask
what the trouble was, and indeed it would have been useless to attempt
to get any coherent explanation from Trina at that time. Miss Baker
had sent the German woman's husband to get some ice at one of the
“all-night” restaurants of the street; had kept cold, wet towels on
Trina's head; had combed and recombed her wonderful thick hair; and had
sat down by the side of the bed, holding her hot hand, with its poor
maimed fingers, waiting patiently until Trina should be able to speak.
Towards morning Trina awoke--or perhaps it was a mere regaining of
consciousness--looked a moment at Miss Baker, then about the room until
her eyes fell upon her trunk with its broken lock. Then she turned over
upon the pillow and began to sob again. She refused to answer any of
the little dressmaker's questions, shaking her head violently, her face
hidden in the pillow.
By breakfast time her fever had increased to such a point that Miss
Baker took matters into her own hands and had the German woman call
a doctor. He arrived some twenty minutes later. He was a big, kindly
fellow who lived over the drug store on the corner. He had a deep voice
and a tremendous striding gait less suggestive of a physician than of a
sergeant of a cavalry troop.
By the time of his arrival little Miss Baker had divined intuitively
the entire trouble. She heard the doctor's swinging tramp in the entry
below, and heard the German woman saying:
“Righd oop der stairs, at der back of der halle. Der room mit der door
oppen.”
Miss Baker met the doctor at the landing, she told him in a whisper of
the trouble.
“Her husband's deserted her, I'm afraid, doctor, and took all of her
money--a good deal of it. It's about killed the poor child. She was out
of her head a good deal of the night, and now she's got a raging fever.”
The doctor and Miss Baker returned to the room and entered, closing the
door. The big doctor stood for a moment looking down at Trina rolling
her head from side to side upon the pillow, her face scarlet, her
enormous mane of hair spread out on either side of her. The little
dressmaker remained at his elbow, looking from him to Trina.
“Poor little woman!” said the doctor; “poor little woman!”
Miss Baker pointed to the trunk, whispering:
“See, there's where she kept her savings. See, he broke the lock.”
“Well, Mrs. McTeague,” said the doctor, sitting down by the bed, and
taking Trina's wrist, “a little fever, eh?”
Trina opened her eyes and looked at him, and then at Miss Baker. She did
not seem in the least surprised at the unfamiliar faces. She appeared to
consider it all as a matter of course.
“Yes,” she said, with a long, tremulous breath, “I have a fever, and my
head--my head aches and aches.”
The doctor prescribed rest and mild opiates. Then his eye fell upon the
fingers of Trina's right hand. He looked at them sharply. A deep
red glow, unmistakable to a physician's eyes, was upon some of them,
extending from the finger tips up to the second knuckle.
“Hello,” he exclaimed, “what's the matter here?” In fact something was
very wrong indeed. For days Trina had noticed it. The fingers of her
right hand had swollen as never before, aching and discolored. Cruelly
lacerated by McTeague's brutality as they were, she had nevertheless
gone on about her work on the Noah's ark animals, constantly in contact
with the “non-poisonous” paint. She told as much to the doctor in answer
to his questions. He shook his head with an exclamation.
“Why, this is blood-poisoning, you know,” he told her; “the worst kind.
You'll have to have those fingers amputated, beyond a doubt, or lose the
entire hand--or even worse.”
“And my work!” exclaimed Trina.