by Frank Norris
“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 ha
d 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 h
er 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.”