McTEAGUEA Story of San Francisco

by Frank Norris

  "Well, what did you tell him about your gold dishes for in the first place?" cried Marcus.

  "I never told him," protested Maria, with the greatest energy. "I never told him; I never heard of any gold dishes. I don' know where he got the idea; he must be crazy."

  By this time Trina and McTeague, Old Grannis, and little Miss Baker — all the lodgers on the upper floors of the flat — had gathered about Maria. Trina and the dentist, who had gone to bed, were partially dressed, and Trina's enormous mane of black hair was hanging in two thick braids far down her back. But, late as it was, Old Grannis and the retired dressmaker had still been up and about when Maria had aroused them.

  "Why, Maria," said Trina, "you always used to tell us about your gold dishes. You said your folks used to have them."

  "Never, never, never!" exclaimed Maria, vehemently. "You folks must all be crazy. I never HEARD of any gold dishes."

  "Well," spoke up Miss Baker, "you're a queer girl, Maria; that's all I can say." She left the group and returned to her room. Old Grannis watched her go from the corner of his eye, and in a few moments followed her, leaving the group as unnoticed as he had joined it. By degrees the flat quieted down again. Trina and McTeague returned to their rooms.

  "I guess I'll go back now," said Maria. "He's all right now. I ain't afraid of him so long as he ain't got his knife."

  "Well, say," Marcus called to her as she went down stairs, "if he gets funny again, you just yell out; I'LL hear you. I won't let him hurt you."

  Marcus went into his room again and resumed his wrangle with the refractory boots. His eye fell on Zerkow's knife, a long, keen-bladed hunting-knife, with a buckhorn handle. "I'll take you along with me," he exclaimed, suddenly. "I'll just need you where I'm going."

  Meanwhile, old Miss Baker was making tea to calm her nerves after the excitement of Maria's incursion. This evening she went so far as to make tea for two, laying an extra place on the other side of her little tea-table, setting out a cup and saucer and one of the Gorham silver spoons. Close upon the other side of the partition Old Grannis bound uncut numbers of the "Nation."

  "Do you know what I think, Mac?" said Trina, when the couple had returned to their rooms. "I think Marcus is going away."

  "What? What?" muttered the dentist, very sleepy and stupid, "what you saying? What's that about Marcus?"

  "I believe Marcus has been packing up, the last two or three days. I wonder if he's going away."

  "Who's going away?" said McTeague, blinking at her.

  "Oh, go to bed," said Trina, pushing him goodnaturedly. "Mac, you're the stupidest man I ever knew."

  But it was true. Marcus was going away. Trina received a letter the next morning from her mother. The carpet-cleaning and upholstery business in which Mr. Sieppe had involved himself was going from bad to worse. Mr. Sieppe had even been obliged to put a mortgage upon their house. Mrs. Sieppe didn't know what was to become of them all. Her husband had even begun to talk of emigrating to New Zealand. Meanwhile, she informed Trina that Mr. Sieppe had finally come across a man with whom Marcus could "go in with on a ranch," a cattle ranch in the southeastern portion of the State. Her ideas were vague upon the subject, but she knew that Marcus was wildly enthusiastic at the prospect, and was expected down before the end of the month. In the meantime, could Trina send them fifty dollars?

  "Marcus IS going away, after all, Mac," said Trina to her husband that day as he came out of his "Parlors" and sat down to the lunch of sausages, mashed potatoes, and chocolate in the sitting-room.

  "Huh?" said the dentist, a little confused. "Who's going away? Schouler going away? Why's Schouler going away?"

  Trina explained. "Oh!" growled McTeague, behind his thick mustache, "he can go far before I'LL stop him."

  "And, say, Mac," continued Trina, pouring the chocolate, "what do you think? Mamma wants me — wants us to send her fifty dollars. She says they're hard up."

  "Well," said the dentist, after a moment, "well, I guess we can send it, can't we?"

  "Oh, that's easy to say," complained Trina, her little chin in the air, her small pale lips pursed. "I wonder if mamma thinks we're millionaires?"

  "Trina, you're getting to be regular stingy," muttered McTeague. "You're getting worse and worse every day."

  "But fifty dollars is fifty dollars, Mac. Just think how long it takes you to earn fifty dollars. Fifty dollars! That's two months of our interest."

  "Well," said McTeague, easily, his mouth full of mashed potato, "you got a lot saved up."

  Upon every reference to that little hoard in the brass match-safe and chamois-skin bag at the bottom of her trunk, Trina bridled on the instant.

  "Don't TALK that way, Mac. 'A lot of money.' What do you call a lot of money? I don't believe I've got fifty dollars saved."

  "Hoh!" exclaimed McTeague. "Hoh! I guess you got nearer a hundred AN' fifty. That's what I guess YOU got."

  "I've NOT, I've NOT," declared Trina, "and you know I've not. I wish mamma hadn't asked me for any money. Why can't she be a little more economical? I manage all right. No, no, I can't possibly afford to send her fifty."

  "Oh, pshaw! What WILL you do, then?" grumbled her husband.

  "I'll send her twenty-five this month, and tell her I'll send the rest as soon as I can afford it."

  "Trina, you're a regular little miser," said McTeague.

  "I don't care," answered Trina, beginning to laugh. "I guess I am, but I can't help it, and it's a good fault."

  Trina put off sending this money for a couple of weeks, and her mother made no mention of it in her next letter. "Oh, I guess if she wants it so bad," said Trina, "she'll speak about it again." So she again postponed the sending of it. Day by day she put it off. When her mother asked her for it a second time, it seemed harder than ever for Trina to part with even half the sum requested. She answered her mother, telling her that they were very hard up themselves for that month, but that she would send down the amount in a few weeks.

  "I'll tell you what we'll do, Mac," she said to her husband, "you send half and I'll send half; we'll send twenty-five dollars altogether. Twelve and a half apiece. That's an idea. How will that do?"

  "Sure, sure," McTeague had answered, giving her the money. Trina sent McTeague's twelve dollars, but never sent the twelve that was to be her share. One day the dentist happened to ask her about it.

  "You sent that twenty-five to your mother, didn't you?" said he.

  "Oh, long ago," answered Trina, without thinking.

  In fact, Trina never allowed herself to think very much of this affair. And, in fact, another matter soon came to engross her attention.

  One Sunday evening Trina and her husband were in their sitting-room together. It was dark, but the lamp had not been lit. McTeague had brought up some bottles of beer from the "Wein Stube" on the ground floor, where the branch post-office used to be. But they had not opened the beer. It was a warm evening in summer. Trina was sitting on McTeague's lap in the bay window, and had looped back the Nottingham curtains so the two could look out into the darkened street and watch the moon coming up over the glass roof of the huge public baths. On occasions they sat like this for an hour or so, "philandering," Trina cuddling herself down upon McTeague's enormous body, rubbing her cheek against the grain of his unshaven chin, kissing the bald spot on the top of his head, or putting her fingers into his ears and eyes. At times, a brusque access of passion would seize upon her, and, with a nervous little sigh, she would clasp his thick red neck in both her small arms and whisper in his ear:

  "Do you love me, Mac, dear? Love me BIG, BIG? Sure, do you love me as much as you did when we were married?"

  Puzzled, McTeague would answer: "Well, you know it, don't you, Trina?"

  "But I want you to SAY so; say so always and always."

  "Well, I do, of course I do."

  "Say it, then."

  "Well, then, I love you."

  "But you don't say it of your own accord."

  "Well, what — what �
�� what — I don't understand," stammered the dentist, bewildered.

  There was a knock on the door. Confused and embarrassed, as if they were not married, Trina scrambled off McTeague's lap, hastening to light the lamp, whispering, "Put on your coat, Mac, and smooth your hair," and making gestures for him to put the beer bottles out of sight. She opened the door and uttered an exclamation.

  "Why, Cousin Mark!" she said. McTeague glared at him, struck speechless, confused beyond expression. Marcus Schouler, perfectly at his ease, stood in the doorway, smiling with great affability.

  "Say," he remarked, "can I come in?"

  Taken all aback, Trina could only answer:

  "Why — I suppose so. Yes, of course — come in."

  "Yes, yes, come in," exclaimed the dentist, suddenly, speaking without thought. "Have some beer?" he added, struck with an idea.

  "No, thanks, Doctor," said Marcus, pleasantly.

  McTeague and Trina were puzzled. What could it all mean? Did Marcus want to become reconciled to his enemy? "I know." Trina said to herself. "He's going away, and he wants to borrow some money. He won't get a penny, not a penny." She set her teeth together hard.

  "Well," said Marcus, "how's business, Doctor?"

  "Oh," said McTeague, uneasily, "oh, I don' know. I guess — I guess," he broke off in helpless embarrassment. They had all sat down by now. Marcus continued, holding his hat and his cane — the black wand of ebony with the gold top presented to him by the "Improvement Club."

  "Ah!" said he, wagging his head and looking about the sitting-room, "you people have got the best fixed rooms in the whole flat. Yes, sir; you have, for a fact." He glanced from the lithograph framed in gilt and red plush — the two little girls at their prayers — to the "I'm Grandpa" and "I'm Grandma" pictures, noted the clean white matting and the gay worsted tidies over the chair backs, and appeared to contemplate in ecstasy the framed photograph of McTeague and Trina in their wedding finery.

  "Well, you two are pretty happy together, ain't you?" said he, smiling good-humoredly.

  "Oh, we don't complain," answered Trina.

  "Plenty of money, lots to do, everything fine, hey?"

  "We've got lots to do," returned Trina, thinking to head him off, "but we've not got lots of money."

  But evidently Marcus wanted no money.

  "Well, Cousin Trina," he said, rubbing his knee, "I'm going away."

  "Yes, mamma wrote me; you're going on a ranch."

  "I'm going in ranching with an English duck," corrected Marcus. "Mr. Sieppe has fixed things. We'll see if we can't raise some cattle. I know a lot about horses, and he's ranched some before — this English duck. And then I'm going to keep my eye open for a political chance down there. I got some introductions from the President of the Improvement Club. I'll work things somehow, oh, sure."

  "How long you going to be gone?" asked Trina.

  Marcus stared.

  "Why, I ain't EVER coming back," he vociferated. "I'm going to-morrow, and I'm going for good. I come to say good-by."

  Marcus stayed for upwards of an hour that evening. He talked on easily and agreeably, addressing himself as much to McTeague as to Trina. At last he rose.

  "Well, good-by, Doc."

  "Good-by, Marcus," returned McTeague. The two shook hands.

  "Guess we won't ever see each other again," continued Marcus. "But good luck to you, Doc. Hope some day you'll have the patients standing in line on the stairs."

  "Huh! I guess so, I guess so," said the dentist.

  "Good-by, Cousin Trina."

  "Good-by, Marcus," answered Trina. "You be sure to remember me to mamma, and papa, and everybody. I'm going to make two great big sets of Noah's ark animals for the twins on their next birthday; August is too old for toys. But you can tell the twins that I'll make them some great big animals. Good-by, success to you, Marcus."

  "Good-by, good-by. Good luck to you both."

  "Good-by, Cousin Mark."

  "Good-by, Marcus."

  He was gone.

  CHAPTER 13

  One morning about a week after Marcus had left for the southern part of the State, McTeague found an oblong letter thrust through the letter-drop of the door of his "Parlors." The address was typewritten. He opened it. The letter had been sent from the City Hall and was stamped in one corner with the seal of the State of California, very official; the form and file numbers superscribed.

  McTeague had been making fillings when this letter arrived. He was in his "Parlors," pottering over his movable rack underneath the bird cage in the bay window. He was making "blocks" to be used in large proximal cavities and "cylinders" for commencing fillings. He heard the postman's step in the hall and saw the envelopes begin to shuttle themselves through the slit of his letter-drop. Then came the fat oblong envelope, with its official seal, that dropped flatwise to the floor with a sodden, dull impact.

  The dentist put down the broach and scissors and gathered up his mail. There were four letters altogether. One was for Trina, in Selina's "elegant" handwriting; another was an advertisement of a new kind of operating chair for dentists; the third was a card from a milliner on the next block, announcing an opening; and the fourth, contained in the fat oblong envelope, was a printed form with blanks left for names and dates, and addressed to McTeague, from an office in the City Hall. McTeague read it through laboriously. "I don' know, I don' know," he muttered, looking stupidly at the rifle manufacturer's calendar. Then he heard Trina, from the kitchen, singing as she made a clattering noise with the breakfast dishes. "I guess I'll ask Trina about it," he muttered.

  He went through the suite, by the sitting-room, where the sun was pouring in through the looped backed Nottingham curtains upon the clean white matting and the varnished surface of the melodeon, passed on through the bedroom, with its framed lithographs of round-cheeked English babies and alert fox terriers, and came out into the brick-paved kitchen. The kitchen was clean as a new whistle; the freshly blackened cook stove glowed like a negro's hide; the tins and porcelain-lined stew-pans might have been of silver and of ivory. Trina was in the centre of the room, wiping off, with a damp sponge, the oilcloth table-cover, on which they had breakfasted. Never had she looked so pretty. Early though it was, her enormous tiara of swarthy hair was neatly combed and coiled, not a pin was so much as loose. She wore a blue calico skirt with a white figure, and a belt of imitation alligator skin clasped around her small, firmly-corseted waist; her shirt waist was of pink linen, so new and crisp that it crackled with every movement, while around the collar, tied in a neat knot, was one of McTeague's lawn ties which she had appropriated. Her sleeves were carefully rolled up almost to her shoulders, and nothing could have been more delicious than the sight of her small round arms, white as milk, moving back and forth as she sponged the table-cover, a faint touch of pink coming and going at the elbows as they bent and straightened. She looked up quickly as her husband entered, her narrow eyes alight, her adorable little chin in the air; her lips rounded and opened with the last words of her song, so that one could catch a glint of gold in the fillings of her upper teeth.

  The whole scene — the clean kitchen and its clean brick floor; the smell of coffee that lingered in the air; Trina herself, fresh as if from a bath, and singing at her work; the morning sun, striking obliquely through the white muslin half-curtain of the window and spanning the little kitchen with a bridge of golden mist — gave off, as it were, a note of gayety that was not to be resisted. Through the opened top of the window came the noises of Polk Street, already long awake. One heard the chanting of street cries, the shrill calling of children on their way to school, the merry rattle of a butcher's cart, the brisk noise of hammering, or the occasional prolonged roll of a cable car trundling heavily past, with a vibrant whirring of its jostled glass and the joyous clanging of its bells.

  "What is it, Mac, dear?" said Trina.

  McTeague shut the door behind him with his heel and handed her the letter. Trina read it through. Then suddenly her
small hand gripped tightly upon the sponge, so that the water started from it and dripped in a little pattering deluge upon the bricks.

  The letter — or rather printed notice — informed McTeague that he had never received a diploma from a dental college, and that in consequence he was forbidden to practise his profession any longer. A legal extract bearing upon the case was attached in small type.

  "Why, what's all this?" said Trina, calmly, without thought as yet.

  "I don' know, I don' know," answered her husband.

  "You can't practise any longer," continued Trina, — "'is herewith prohibited and enjoined from further continuing—'" She re-read the extract, her forehead lifting and puckering. She put the sponge carefully away in its wire rack over the sink, and drew up a chair to the table, spreading out the notice before her. "Sit down," she said to McTeague. "Draw up to the table here, Mac, and let's see what this is."

  "I got it this morning," murmured the dentist. "It just now came. I was making some fillings — there, in the 'Parlors,' in the window — and the postman shoved it through the door. I thought it was a number of the 'American System of Dentistry' at first, and when I'd opened it and looked at it I thought I'd better—"

  "Say, Mac," interrupted Trina, looking up from the notice, "DIDN'T you ever go to a dental college?"

  "Huh? What? What?" exclaimed McTeague.

  "How did you learn to be a dentist? Did you go to a college?"