McTeague

F >> Frank Norris >> McTeague


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
their 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. Helplessly,
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.

"Oh, won't you--won't you please--" He turned his head, looking
appealingly at the little old dressmaker.

"Wait, I'll help you," she said. She came into the room, up to the
table, and moved the pamphlets to one side.

"Thanks, thanks," murmured Old Grannis, setting down the tray.

"Now--now--now I will go back," she exclaimed, hurriedly.

"No--no," returned the old Englishman. "Don't go, don't go. I've been
so lonely to-night--and last night too--all this year--all my life," he
suddenly cried.

"I--I--I've forgotten the sugar."

"But I never take sugar in my tea."

"But it's rather cold, and I've spilled it--almost all of it."

"I'll drink it from the saucer." Old Grannis had drawn up his armchair
for her.

"Oh, I shouldn't. This is--this is SO--You must think ill of me."
Suddenly she sat down, and resting her elbows on the table, hid her face
in her hands.

"Think ILL of you?" cried Old Grannis, "think ILL of you? Why, you don't
know--you have no idea--all these years--living so close to you, I--I--"
he paused suddenly. It seemed to him as if the beating of his heart was
choking him.

"I thought you were binding your books to-night," said Miss Baker,
suddenly, "and you looked tired. I thought you looked tired when I last
saw you, and a cup of tea, you know, it--that--that does you so much
good when you're tired. But you weren't binding books."

"No, no," returned Old Grannis, drawing up a chair and sitting down.
"No, I--the fact is, I've sold my apparatus; a firm of booksellers has
bought the rights of it."

"And aren't you going to bind books any more?" exclaimed the little
dressmaker, a shade of disappointment in her manner. "I thought you
always did about four o'clock. I used to hear you when I was making
tea."

It hardly seemed possible to Miss Baker that she was actually talking to
Old Grannis, that the two were really chatting together, face to face,
and without the dreadful embarrassment that used to overwhelm them both
when they met on the stairs. She had often dreamed of this, but had
always put it off to some far-distant day. It was to come gradually,
little by little, instead of, as now, abruptly and with no preparation.
That she should permit herself the indiscretion of actually intruding
herself into his room had never so much as occurred to her. Yet here she
was, IN HIS ROOM, and they were talking together, and little by little
her embarrassment was wearing away.

"Yes, yes, I always heard you when you were making tea," returned the
old Englishman; "I heard the tea things. Then I used to draw my chair
and my work-table close to the wall on my side, and sit there and work
while you drank your tea just on the other side; and I used to feel very
near to you then. I used to pass the whole evening that way."

"And, yes--yes--I did too," she answered. "I used to make tea just at
that time and sit there for a whole hour."

"And didn't you sit close to the partition on your side? Sometimes I
was sure of it. I could even fancy that I could hear your dress brushing
against the wall-paper close beside me. Didn't you sit close to the
partition?"

"I--I don't know where I sat."

Old Grannis shyly put out his hand and took hers as it lay upon her lap.

"Didn't you sit close to the partition on your side?" he insisted.

"No--I don't know--perhaps--sometimes. Oh, yes," she exclaimed, with a
little gasp, "Oh, yes, I often did."

Then Old Grannis put his arm about her, and kissed her faded cheek, that
flushed to pink upon the instant.

After that they spoke but little. The day lapsed slowly into twilight,
and the two old people sat there in the gray evening, quietly, quietly,
their hands in each other's hands, "keeping company," but now with
nothing to separate them. It had come at last. After all these years
they were together; they understood each other. They stood at length in
a little Elysium of their own creating. They walked hand in hand in
a delicious garden where it was always autumn. Far from the world
and together they entered upon the long retarded romance of their
commonplace and uneventful lives.



CHAPTER 18


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.