by Frank Norris
“Oh, Mrs. McTeague, that subject — if you would please — Miss Baker is such an estimable lady.”
“Fiddlesticks!” said Trina. “You’re in love with each other, and the whole flat knows it; and you two have been living here side by side year in and year out, and you’ve never said a word to each other. It’s all nonsense. Now, I want you should go right in and speak to her just as soon as she comes home, and say you’ve come into money and you want her to marry you.”
“Impossible — impossible!” exclaimed the old Englishman, alarmed and perturbed. “It’s quite out of the question. I wouldn’t presume.”
“Well, do you love her, or not?”
“Really, Mrs. McTeague, I — I — you must excuse me. It’s a matter so personal — so — I — Oh, yes, I love her. Oh, yes, indeed,” he exclaimed, suddenly.
“Well, then, she loves you. She told me so.”
“Oh!”
“She did. She said those very words.”
Miss Baker had said nothing of the kind — would have died sooner than have made such a confession; but Trina had drawn her own conclusions, like every other lodger of the flat, and thought the time was come for decided action.
“Now you do just as I tell you, and when she comes home, go right in and see her, and have it over with. Now, don’t say another word. I’m going; but you do just as I tell you.”
Trina turned about and went down-stairs. She had decided, since Miss Baker was not at home, that she would run over and see Maria; possibly she could have lunch there. At any rate, Maria would offer her a cup of tea.
Old Grannis stood for a long time just as Trina had left him, his hands trembling, the blood coming and going in his withered cheeks.
“She said, she — she — she told her — she said that — that — —” he could get no farther.
Then he faced about and entered his room, closing the door behind him. For a long time he sat in his armchair, drawn close to the wall in front of the table on which stood his piles of pamphlets and his little binding apparatus.
“I wonder,” said Trina, as she crossed the yard back of Zerkow’s house, “I wonder what rent Zerkow and Maria pay for this place. I’ll bet it’s cheaper than where Mac and I are.”
Trina found Maria sitting in front of the kitchen stove, her chin upon her breast. Trina went up to her. She was dead. And as Trina touched her shoulder, her head rolled sideways and showed a fearful gash in her throat under her ear. All the front of her dress was soaked through and through.
Trina backed sharply away from the body, drawing her hands up to her very shoulders, her eyes staring and wide, an expression of unutterable horror twisting her face.
“Oh-h-h!” she exclaimed in a long breath, her voice hardly rising above a whisper. “Oh-h, isn’t that horrible!” Suddenly she turned and fled through the front part of the house to the street door, that opened upon the little alley. She looked wildly about her. Directly across the way a butcher’s boy was getting into his two-wheeled cart drawn up in front of the opposite house, while near by a peddler of wild game was coming down the street, a brace of ducks in his hand.
“Oh, say — say,” gasped Trina, trying to get her voice, “say, come over here quick.”
The butcher’s boy paused, one foot on the wheel, and stared. Trina beckoned frantically.
“Come over here, come over here quick.”
The young fellow swung himself into his seat.
“What’s the matter with that woman?” he said, half aloud.
“There’s a murder been done,” cried Trina, swaying in the doorway.
The young fellow drove away, his head over his shoulder, staring at Trina with eyes that were fixed and absolutely devoid of expression.
“What’s the matter with that woman?” he said again to himself as he turned the corner.
Trina wondered why she didn’t scream, how she could keep from it — how, at such a moment as this, she could remember that it was improper to make a disturbance and create a scene in the street. The peddler of wild game was looking at her suspiciously. It would not do to tell him. He would go away like the butcher’s boy.
“Now, wait a minute,” Trina said to herself, speaking aloud. She put her hands to her head. “Now, wait a minute. It won’t do for me to lose my wits now. What must I do?” She looked about her. There was the same familiar aspect of Polk Street. She could see it at the end of the alley. The big market opposite the flat, the delivery carts rattling up and down, the great ladies from the avenue at their morning shopping, the cable cars trundling past, loaded with passengers. She saw a little boy in a flat leather cap whistling and calling for an unseen dog, slapping his small knee from time to time. Two men came out of Frenna’s saloon, laughing heartily. Heise the harness-maker stood in the vestibule of his shop, a bundle of whittlings in his apron of greasy ticking. And all this was going on, people were laughing and living, buying and selling, walking about out there on the sunny sidewalks, while behind her in there — in there — in there ——
Heise started back from the sudden apparition of a white-lipped woman in a blue dressing-gown that seemed to rise up before him from his very doorstep.
“Well, Mrs. McTeague, you did scare me, for — —”
“Oh, come over here quick.” Trina put her hand to her neck; swallowing something that seemed to be choking her. “Maria’s killed — Zerkow’s wife — I found her.”
“Get out!” exclaimed Heise, “you’re joking.”
“Come over here — over into the house — I found her — she’s dead.”
Heise dashed across the street on the run, with Trina at his heels, a trail of spilled whittlings marking his course. The two ran down the alley. The wild-game peddler, a woman who had been washing down the steps in a neighboring house, and a man in a broad-brimmed hat stood at Zerkow’s doorway, looking in from time to time, and talking together. They seemed puzzled.
“Anything wrong in here?” asked the wild-game peddler as Heise and Trina came up. Two more men stopped on the corner of the alley and Polk Street and looked at the group. A woman with a towel round her head raised a window opposite Zerkow’s house and called to the woman who had been washing the steps, “What is it, Mrs. Flint?”
Heise was already inside the house. He turned to Trina, panting from his run.
“Where did you say — where was it — where?”
“In there,” said Trina, “farther in — the next room.” They burst into the kitchen.
“LORD!” ejaculated Heise, stopping a yard or so from the body, and bending down to peer into the gray face with its brown lips.
“By God! he’s killed her.”
“Who?”
“Zerkow, by God! he’s killed her. Cut her throat. He always said he would.”
“Zerkow?”
“He’s killed her. Her throat’s cut. Good Lord, how she did bleed! By God! he’s done for her in good shape this time.”
“Oh, I told her — I TOLD her,” cried Trina.
“He’s done for her SURE this time.”
“She said she could always manage — Oh-h! It’s horrible.”
“He’s done for her sure this trip. Cut her throat. LORD, how she has BLED! Did you ever see so much — that’s murder — that’s cold-blooded murder. He’s killed her. Say, we must get a policeman. Come on.”
They turned back through the house. Half a dozen people — the wild-game peddler, the man with the broad-brimmed hat, the washwoman, and three other men — were in the front room of the junk shop, a bank of excited faces surged at the door. Beyond this, outside, the crowd was packed solid from one end of the alley to the other. Out in Polk Street the cable cars were nearly blocked and were bunting a way slowly through the throng with clanging bells. Every window had its group. And as Trina and the harness-maker tried to force the way from the door of the junk shop the throng suddenly parted right and left before the passage of two blue-coated policemen who clove a passage through the press, working thei
r elbows energetically. They were accompanied by a third man in citizen’s clothes.
Heise and Trina went back into the kitchen with the two policemen, the third man in citizen’s clothes cleared the intruders from the front room of the junk shop and kept the crowd back, his arm across the open door.
“Whew!” whistled one of the officers as they came out into the kitchen, “cutting scrape? By George! SOMEBODY’S been using his knife all right.” He turned to the other officer. “Better get the wagon. There’s a box on the second corner south. Now, then,” he continued, turning to Trina and the harness-maker and taking out his note-book and pencil, “I want your names and addresses.”
It was a day of tremendous excitement for the entire street. Long after the patrol wagon had driven away, the crowd remained. In fact, until seven o’clock that evening groups collected about the door of the junk shop, where a policeman stood guard, asking all manner of questions, advancing all manner of opinions.
“Do you think they’ll get him?” asked Ryer of the policeman. A dozen necks craned forward eagerly.
“Hoh, we’ll get him all right, easy enough,” answered the other, with a grand air.
“What? What’s that? What did he say?” asked the people on the outskirts of the group. Those in front passed the answer back.
“He says they’ll get him all right, easy enough.”
The group looked at the policeman admiringly.
“He’s skipped to San Jose.”
Where the rumor started, and how, no one knew. But every one seemed persuaded that Zerkow had gone to San Jose.
“But what did he kill her for? Was he drunk?”
“No, he was crazy, I tell you — crazy in the head. Thought she was hiding some money from him.”
Frenna did a big business all day long. The murder was the one subject of conversation. Little parties were made up in his saloon — parties of twos and threes — to go over and have a look at the outside of the junk shop. Heise was the most important man the length and breadth of Polk Street; almost invariably he accompanied these parties, telling again and again of the part he had played in the affair.
“It was about eleven o’clock. I was standing in front of the shop, when Mrs. McTeague — you know, the dentist’s wife — came running across the street,” and so on and so on.
The next day came a fresh sensation. Polk Street read of it in the morning papers. Towards midnight on the day of the murder Zerkow’s body had been found floating in the bay near Black Point. No one knew whether he had drowned himself or fallen from one of the wharves. Clutched in both his hands was a sack full of old and rusty pans, tin dishes — fully a hundred of them — tin cans, and iron knives and forks, collected from some dump heap.
“And all this,” exclaimed Trina, “on account of a set of gold dishes that never existed.”
CHAPTER 17
One day, about a fortnight after the coroner’s inquest had been held, and when the excitement of the terrible affair was calming down and Polk Street beginning to resume its monotonous routine, Old Grannis sat in his clean, well-kept little room, in his cushioned armchair, his hands lying idly upon his knees. It was evening; not quite time to light the lamps. Old Grannis had drawn his chair close to the wall — so close, in fact, that he could hear Miss Baker’s grenadine brushing against the other side of the thin partition, at his very elbow, while she rocked gently back and forth, a cup of tea in her hands.
Old Grannis’s occupation was gone. That morning the bookselling firm where he had bought his pamphlets had taken his little binding apparatus from him to use as a model. The transaction had been concluded. Old Grannis had received his check. It was large enough, to be sure, but when all was over, he returned to his room and sat there sad and unoccupied, looking at the pattern in the carpet and counting the heads of the tacks in the zinc guard that was fastened to the wall behind his little stove. By and by he heard Miss Baker moving about. It was five o’clock, the time when she was accustomed to make her cup of tea and “keep company” with him on her side of the partition. Old Grannis drew up his chair to the wall near where he knew she was sitting. The minutes passed; side by side, and separated by only a couple of inches of board, the two old people sat there together, while the afternoon grew darker.
But for Old Grannis all was different that evening. There was nothing for him to do. His hands lay idly in his lap. His table, with its pile of pamphlets, was in a far corner of the room, and, from time to time, stirred with an uncertain trouble, he turned his head and looked at it sadly, reflecting that he would never use it again. The absence of his accustomed work seemed to leave something out of his life. It did not appear to him that he could be the same to Miss Baker now; their little habits were disarranged, their customs broken up. He could no longer fancy himself so near to her. They would drift apart now, and she would no longer make herself a cup of tea and “keep company” with him when she knew that he would never again sit before his table binding uncut pamphlets. He had sold his happiness for money; he had bartered all his tardy romance for some miserable banknotes. He had not foreseen that it would be like this. A vast regret welled up within him. What was that on the back of his hand? He wiped it dry with his ancient silk handkerchief.
Old Grannis leant his face in his hands. Not only did an inexplicable regret stir within him, but a certain great tenderness came upon him. The tears that swam in his faded blue eyes were not altogether those of unhappiness. No, this long-delayed affection that had come upon him in his later years filled him with a joy for which tears seemed to be the natural expression. For thirty years his eyes had not been wet, but tonight he felt as if he were young again. He had never loved before, and there was still a part of him that was only twenty years of age. He could not tell whether he was profoundly sad or deeply happy; but he was not ashamed of the tears that brought the smart to his eyes and the ache to his throat. He did not hear the timid rapping on his door, and it was not until the door itself opened that he looked up quickly and saw the little retired dressmaker standing on the threshold, carrying a cup of tea on a tiny Japanese tray. She held it toward him.
“I was making some tea,” she said, “and I thought you would like to have a cup.”
Never after could the little dressmaker understand how she had brought herself to do this thing. One moment she had been sitting quietly on her side of the partition, stirring her cup of tea with one of her Gorham spoons. She was quiet, she was peaceful. The evening was closing down tranquilly. Her room was the picture of calmness and order. The geraniums blooming in the starch boxes in the window, the aged goldfish occasionally turning his iridescent flank to catch a sudden glow of the setting sun. The next moment she had been all trepidation. It seemed to her the most natural thing in the world to make a steaming cup of tea and carry it in to Old Grannis next door. It seemed to her that he was wanting her, that she ought to go to him. With the brusque resolve and intrepidity that sometimes seizes upon very timid people — the courage of the coward greater than all others — she had presented herself at the old Englishman’s half-open door, and, when he had not heeded her knock, had pushed it open, and at last, after all these years, stood upon the threshold of his room. She had found courage enough to explain her intrusion.
“I was making some tea, and I thought you would like to have a cup.”
Old Grannis dropped his hands upon either arm of his chair, and, leaning forward a little, looked at her blankly. He did not speak.
The retired dressmaker’s courage had carried her thus far; now it deserted her as abruptly as it had come. Her cheeks became scarlet; her funny little false curls trembled with her agitation. What she had done seemed to her indecorous beyond expression. It was an enormity. Fancy, she had gone into his room, INTO HIS ROOM — Mister Grannis’s room. She had done this — she who could not pass him on the stairs without a qualm. What to do she did not know. She stood, a fixture, on the threshold of his room, without even resolution enough to beat a retreat. Helpl
essly, and with a little quaver in her voice, she repeated obstinately:
“I was making some tea, and I thought you would like to have a cup of tea.” Her agitation betrayed itself in the repetition of the word. She felt that she could not hold the tray out another instant. Already she was trembling so that half the tea was spilled.
Old Grannis still kept silence, still bending forward, with wide eyes, his hands gripping the arms of his chair.
Then with the tea-tray still held straight before her, the little dressmaker exclaimed tearfully:
“Oh, I didn’t mean — I didn’t mean — I didn’t know it would seem like this. I only meant to be kind and bring you some tea; and now it seems SO improper. I — I — I’m SO ashamed! I don’t know what you will think of me. I—” she caught her breath— “improper” — she managed to exclaim, “unlady-like — you can never think well of me — I’ll go. I’ll go.” She turned about.
“Stop,” cried Old Grannis, finding his voice at last. Miss Baker paused, looking at him over her shoulder, her eyes very wide open, blinking through her tears, for all the world like a frightened child.
“Stop,” exclaimed the old Englishman, rising to his feet. “I didn’t know it was you at first. I hadn’t dreamed — I couldn’t believe you would be so good, so kind to me. Oh,” he cried, with a sudden sharp breath, “oh, you ARE kind. I — I — you have — have made me very happy.”
“No, no,” exclaimed Miss Baker, ready to sob. “It was unlady-like. You will — you must think ill of me.” She stood in the hall. The tears were running down her cheeks, and she had no free hand to dry them.
“Let me — I’ll take the tray from you,” cried Old Grannis, coming forward. A tremulous joy came upon him. Never in his life had he been so happy. At last it had come — come when he had least expected it. That which he had longed for and hoped for through so many years, behold, it was come to-night. He felt his awkwardness leaving him. He was almost certain that the little dressmaker loved him, and the thought gave him boldness. He came toward her and took the tray from her hands, and, turning back into the room with it, made as if to set it upon his table. But the piles of his pamphlets were in the way. Both of his hands were occupied with the tray; he could not make a place for it on the table. He stood for a moment uncertain, his embarrassment returning.