McTeague

F >> Frank Norris >> McTeague


"Yes, ah, yes!" he shouted, rising to his feet, shaking his finger in
the other's face. "Yes, I'd go to jail; but because I--I am crushed by a
tyranny, does that make the tyranny right? Does might make right?"

"You must make less noise in here, Mister Schouler," said Frenna, from
behind the bar.

"Well, it makes me mad," answered Marcus, subsiding into a growl and
resuming his chair. "Hullo, Mac."

"Hullo, Mark."

But McTeague's presence made Marcus uneasy, rousing in him at once a
sense of wrong. He twisted to and fro in his chair, shrugging first one
shoulder and then another. Quarrelsome at all times, the heat of
the previous discussion had awakened within him all his natural
combativeness. Besides this, he was drinking his fourth cocktail.

McTeague began filling his big porcelain pipe. He lit it, blew a great
cloud of smoke into the room, and settled himself comfortably in his
chair. The smoke of his cheap tobacco drifted into the faces of
the group at the adjoining table, and Marcus strangled and coughed.
Instantly his eyes flamed.

"Say, for God's sake," he vociferated, "choke off on that pipe! If
you've got to smoke rope like that, smoke it in a crowd of muckers;
don't come here amongst gentlemen."

"Shut up, Schouler!" observed Heise in a low voice.

McTeague was stunned by the suddenness of the attack. He took his pipe
from his mouth, and stared blankly at Marcus; his lips moved, but he
said no word. Marcus turned his back on him, and the dentist resumed his
pipe.

But Marcus was far from being appeased. McTeague could not hear the talk
that followed between him and the harnessmaker, but it seemed to him
that Marcus was telling Heise of some injury, some grievance, and that
the latter was trying to pacify him. All at once their talk grew louder.
Heise laid a retaining hand upon his companion's coat sleeve, but Marcus
swung himself around in his chair, and, fixing his eyes on McTeague,
cried as if in answer to some protestation on the part of Heise:

"All I know is that I've been soldiered out of five thousand dollars."

McTeague gaped at him, bewildered. He removed his pipe from his mouth
a second time, and stared at Marcus with eyes full of trouble and
perplexity.

"If I had my rights," cried Marcus, bitterly, "I'd have part of that
money. It's my due--it's only justice." The dentist still kept silence.

"If it hadn't been for me," Marcus continued, addressing himself
directly to McTeague, "you wouldn't have had a cent of it--no, not a
cent. Where's my share, I'd like to know? Where do I come in? No, I
ain't in it any more. I've been played for a sucker, an' now that you've
got all you can out of me, now that you've done me out of my girl and
out of my money, you give me the go-by. Why, where would you have
been TO-DAY if it hadn't been for me?" Marcus shouted in a sudden
exasperation, "You'd a been plugging teeth at two bits an hour. Ain't
you got any gratitude? Ain't you got any sense of decency?"

"Ah, hold up, Schouler," grumbled Heise. "You don't want to get into a
row."

"No, I don't, Heise," returned Marcus, with a plaintive, aggrieved air.
"But it's too much sometimes when you think of it. He stole away my
girl's affections, and now that he's rich and prosperous, and has got
five thousand dollars that I might have had, he gives me the go-by; he's
played me for a sucker. Look here," he cried, turning again to McTeague,
"do I get any of that money?"

"It ain't mine to give," answered McTeague. "You're drunk, that's what
you are."

"Do I get any of that money?" cried Marcus, persistently.

The dentist shook his head. "No, you don't get any of it."

"Now--NOW," clamored the other, turning to the harnessmaker, as though
this explained everything. "Look at that, look at that. Well, I've done
with you from now on." Marcus had risen to his feet by this time and
made as if to leave, but at every instant he came back, shouting his
phrases into McTeague's face, moving off again as he spoke the last
words, in order to give them better effect.

"This settles it right here. I've done with you. Don't you ever dare
speak to me again"--his voice was shaking with fury--"and don't you sit
at my table in the restaurant again. I'm sorry I ever lowered myself
to keep company with such dirt. Ah, one-horse dentist! Ah, ten-cent
zinc-plugger--hoodlum--MUCKER! Get your damn smoke outa my face."

Then matters reached a sudden climax. In his agitation the dentist had
been pulling hard on his pipe, and as Marcus for the last time thrust
his face close to his own, McTeague, in opening his lips to reply,
blew a stifling, acrid cloud directly in Marcus Schouler's eyes. Marcus
knocked the pipe from his fingers with a sudden flash of his hand; it
spun across the room and broke into a dozen fragments in a far corner.

McTeague rose to his feet, his eyes wide. But as yet he was not angry,
only surprised, taken all aback by the suddenness of Marcus Schouler's
outbreak as well as by its unreasonableness. Why had Marcus broken his
pipe? What did it all mean, anyway? As he rose the dentist made a vague
motion with his right hand. Did Marcus misinterpret it as a gesture of
menace? He sprang back as though avoiding a blow. All at once there was
a cry. Marcus had made a quick, peculiar motion, swinging his arm upward
with a wide and sweeping gesture; his jack-knife lay open in his palm;
it shot forward as he flung it, glinted sharply by McTeague's head, and
struck quivering into the wall behind.

A sudden chill ran through the room; the others stood transfixed, as at
the swift passage of some cold and deadly wind. Death had stooped there
for an instant, had stooped and past, leaving a trail of terror and
confusion. Then the door leading to the street slammed; Marcus had
disappeared.

Thereon a great babel of exclamation arose. The tension of that all but
fatal instant snapped, and speech became once more possible.

"He would have knifed you."

"Narrow escape."

"What kind of a man do you call THAT?"

"'Tain't his fault he ain't a murderer."

"I'd have him up for it."

"And they two have been the greatest kind of friends."

"He didn't touch you, did he?"

"No--no--no."

"What a--what a devil! What treachery! A regular greaser trick!"

"Look out he don't stab you in the back. If that's the kind of man he
is, you never can tell."

Frenna drew the knife from the wall.

"Guess I'll keep this toad-stabber," he observed. "That fellow won't
come round for it in a hurry; goodsized blade, too." The group examined
it with intense interest.

"Big enough to let the life out of any man," observed Heise.

"What--what--what did he do it for?" stammered McTeague. "I got no
quarrel with him."

He was puzzled and harassed by the strangeness of it all. Marcus would
have killed him; had thrown his knife at him in the true, uncanny
"greaser" style. It was inexplicable. McTeague sat down again, looking
stupidly about on the floor. In a corner of the room his eye encountered
his broken pipe, a dozen little fragments of painted porcelain and the
stem of cherry wood and amber.

At that sight his tardy wrath, ever lagging behind the original affront,
suddenly blazed up. Instantly his huge jaws clicked together.

"He can't make small of ME," he exclaimed, suddenly. "I'll show Marcus
Schouler--I'll show him--I'll----"

He got up and clapped on his hat.

"Now, Doctor," remonstrated Heise, standing between him and the door,
"don't go make a fool of yourself."

"Let 'um alone," joined in Frenna, catching the dentist by the arm;
"he's full, anyhow."

"He broke my pipe," answered McTeague.

It was this that had roused him. The thrown knife, the attempt on
his life, was beyond his solution; but the breaking of his pipe he
understood clearly enough.

"I'll show him," he exclaimed.

As though they had been little children, McTeague set Frenna and the
harness-maker aside, and strode out at the door like a raging elephant.
Heise stood rubbing his shoulder.

"Might as well try to stop a locomotive," he muttered. "The man's made
of iron."

Meanwhile, McTeague went storming up the street toward the flat, wagging
his head and grumbling to himself. Ah, Marcus would break his pipe,
would he? Ah, he was a zinc-plugger, was he? He'd show Marcus Schouler.
No one should make small of him. He tramped up the stairs to Marcus's
room. The door was locked. The dentist put one enormous hand on the knob
and pushed the door in, snapping the wood-work, tearing off the lock.
Nobody--the room was dark and empty. Never mind, Marcus would have to
come home some time that night. McTeague would go down and wait for him
in his "Parlors." He was bound to hear him as he came up the stairs.

As McTeague reached his room he stumbled over, in the darkness, a big
packing-box that stood in the hallway just outside his door. Puzzled, he
stepped over it, and lighting the gas in his room, dragged it inside and
examined it.

It was addressed to him. What could it mean? He was expecting nothing.
Never since he had first furnished his room had packing-cases been left
for him in this fashion. No mistake was possible. There were his name
and address unmistakably. "Dr. McTeague, dentist--Polk Street, San
Francisco, Cal.," and the red Wells Fargo tag.

Seized with the joyful curiosity of an overgrown boy, he pried off the
boards with the corner of his fireshovel. The case was stuffed full
of excelsior. On the top lay an envelope addressed to him in Trina's
handwriting. He opened it and read, "For my dear Mac's birthday, from
Trina;" and below, in a kind of post-script, "The man will be round
to-morrow to put it in place." McTeague tore away the excelsior.
Suddenly he uttered an exclamation.

It was the Tooth--the famous golden molar with its huge prongs--his
sign, his ambition, the one unrealized dream of his life; and it was
French gilt, too, not the cheap German gilt that was no good. Ah, what
a dear little woman was this Trina, to keep so quiet, to remember his
birthday!

"Ain't she--ain't she just a--just a JEWEL," exclaimed McTeague under
his breath, "a JEWEL--yes, just a JEWEL; that's the word."

Very carefully he removed the rest of the excelsior, and lifting the
ponderous Tooth from its box, set it upon the marble-top centre table.
How immense it looked in that little room! The thing was tremendous,
overpowering--the tooth of a gigantic fossil, golden and dazzling.
Beside it everything seemed dwarfed. Even McTeague himself, big boned
and enormous as he was, shrank and dwindled in the presence of the
monster. As for an instant he bore it in his hands, it was like a puny
Gulliver struggling with the molar of some vast Brobdingnag.

The dentist circled about that golden wonder, gasping with delight
and stupefaction, touching it gingerly with his hands as if it were
something sacred. At every moment his thought returned to Trina.
No, never was there such a little woman as his--the very thing he
wanted--how had she remembered? And the money, where had that come from?
No one knew better than he how expensive were these signs; not another
dentist on Polk Street could afford one. Where, then, had Trina found
the money? It came out of her five thousand dollars, no doubt.

But what a wonderful, beautiful tooth it was, to be sure, bright as a
mirror, shining there in its coat of French gilt, as if with a light of
its own! No danger of that tooth turning black with the weather, as did
the cheap German gilt impostures. What would that other dentist, that
poser, that rider of bicycles, that courser of greyhounds, say when he
should see this marvellous molar run out from McTeague's bay window like
a flag of defiance? No doubt he would suffer veritable convulsions of
envy; would be positively sick with jealousy. If McTeague could only see
his face at the moment!

For a whole hour the dentist sat there in his little "Parlor," gazing
ecstatically at his treasure, dazzled, supremely content. The whole room
took on a different aspect because of it. The stone pug dog before the
little stove reflected it in his protruding eyes; the canary woke and
chittered feebly at this new gilt, so much brighter than the bars of its
little prison. Lorenzo de' Medici, in the steel engraving, sitting in
the heart of his court, seemed to ogle the thing out of the corner of
one eye, while the brilliant colors of the unused rifle manufacturer's
calendar seemed to fade and pale in the brilliance of this greater
glory.

At length, long after midnight, the dentist started to go to bed,
undressing himself with his eyes still fixed on the great tooth. All at
once he heard Marcus Schouler's foot on the stairs; he started up with
his fists clenched, but immediately dropped back upon the bed-lounge
with a gesture of indifference.

He was in no truculent state of mind now. He could not reinstate himself
in that mood of wrath wherein he had left the corner grocery. The tooth
had changed all that. What was Marcus Schouler's hatred to him, who had
Trina's affection? What did he care about a broken pipe now that he had
the tooth? Let him go. As Frenna said, he was not worth it. He heard
Marcus come out into the hall, shouting aggrievedly to anyone within
sound of his voice:

"An' now he breaks into my room--into my room, by damn! How do I know
how many things he's stolen? It's come to stealing from me, now, has
it?" He went into his room, banging his splintered door.

McTeague looked upward at the ceiling, in the direction of the voice,
muttering:

"Ah, go to bed, you."

He went to bed himself, turning out the gas, but leaving the
window-curtains up so that he could see the tooth the last thing before
he went to sleep and the first thing as he arose in the morning.

But he was restless during the night. Every now and then he was awakened
by noises to which he had long since become accustomed. Now it was the
cackling of the geese in the deserted market across the street; now it
was the stoppage of the cable, the sudden silence coming almost like
a shock; and now it was the infuriated barking of the dogs in the back
yard--Alec, the Irish setter, and the collie that belonged to the branch
post-office raging at each other through the fence, snarling their
endless hatred into each other's faces. As often as he woke, McTeague
turned and looked for the tooth, with a sudden suspicion that he
had only that moment dreamed the whole business. But he always found
it--Trina's gift, his birthday from his little woman--a huge, vague
bulk, looming there through the half darkness in the centre of the room,
shining dimly out as if with some mysterious light of its own.



CHAPTER 9


Trina and McTeague were married on the first day of June, in the
photographer's rooms that the dentist had rented. All through May the
Sieppe household had been turned upside down. The little box of a
house vibrated with excitement and confusion, for not only were the
preparations for Trina's marriage to be made, but also the preliminaries
were to be arranged for the hegira of the entire Sieppe family.

They were to move to the southern part of the State the day after
Trina's marriage, Mr. Sieppe having bought a third interest in an
upholstering business in the suburbs of Los Angeles. It was possible
that Marcus Schouler would go with them.

Not Stanley penetrating for the first time into the Dark Continent,
not Napoleon leading his army across the Alps, was more weighted with
responsibility, more burdened with care, more overcome with the sense
of the importance of his undertaking, than was Mr. Sieppe during this
period of preparation. From dawn to dark, from dark to early dawn, he
toiled and planned and fretted, organizing and reorganizing, projecting
and devising. The trunks were lettered, A, B, and C, the packages and
smaller bundles numbered. Each member of the family had his especial
duty to perform, his particular bundles to oversee. Not a detail was
forgotten--fares, prices, and tips were calculated to two places of
decimals. Even the amount of food that it would be necessary to carry
for the black greyhound was determined. Mrs. Sieppe was to look after
the lunch, "der gomisariat." Mr. Sieppe would assume charge of the
checks, the money, the tickets, and, of course, general supervision. The
twins would be under the command of Owgooste, who, in turn, would report
for orders to his father.

Day in and day out these minutiae were rehearsed. The children were
drilled in their parts with a military exactitude; obedience and
punctuality became cardinal virtues. The vast importance of the
undertaking was insisted upon with scrupulous iteration. It was a
manoeuvre, an army changing its base of operations, a veritable tribal
migration.

On the other hand, Trina's little room was the centre around which
revolved another and different order of things. The dressmaker came
and went, congratulatory visitors invaded the little front parlor,
the chatter of unfamiliar voices resounded from the front steps;
bonnet-boxes and yards of dress-goods littered the beds and chairs;
wrapping paper, tissue paper, and bits of string strewed the floor;
a pair of white satin slippers stood on a corner of the toilet table;
lengths of white veiling, like a snow-flurry, buried the little
work-table; and a mislaid box of artificial orange blossoms was finally
discovered behind the bureau.

The two systems of operation often clashed and tangled. Mrs. Sieppe was
found by her harassed husband helping Trina with the waist of her gown
when she should have been slicing cold chicken in the kitchen. Mr.
Sieppe packed his frock coat, which he would have to wear at the
wedding, at the very bottom of "Trunk C." The minister, who called to
offer his congratulations and to make arrangements, was mistaken for the
expressman.

McTeague came and went furtively, dizzied and made uneasy by all this
bustle. He got in the way; he trod upon and tore breadths of silk; he
tried to help carry the packing-boxes, and broke the hall gas fixture;
he came in upon Trina and the dress-maker at an ill-timed moment, and
retiring precipitately, overturned the piles of pictures stacked in the
hall.

There was an incessant going and coming at every moment of the day,
a great calling up and down stairs, a shouting from room to room, an
opening and shutting of doors, and an intermittent sound of hammering
from the laundry, where Mr. Sieppe in his shirt sleeves labored among
the packing-boxes. The twins clattered about on the carpetless floors of
the denuded rooms. Owgooste was smacked from hour to hour, and wept upon
the front stairs; the dressmaker called over the banisters for a hot
flatiron; expressmen tramped up and down the stairway. Mrs. Sieppe
stopped in the preparation of the lunches to call "Hoop, Hoop" to the
greyhound, throwing lumps of coal. The dog-wheel creaked, the front door
bell rang, delivery wagons rumbled away, windows rattled--the little
house was in a positive uproar.

Almost every day of the week now Trina was obliged to run over to town
and meet McTeague. No more philandering over their lunch now-a-days. It
was business now. They haunted the house-furnishing floors of the great
department houses, inspecting and pricing ranges, hardware, china,
and the like. They rented the photographer's rooms furnished, and
fortunately only the kitchen and dining-room utensils had to be bought.

The money for this as well as for her trousseau came out of Trina's
five thousand dollars. For it had been finally decided that two hundred
dollars of this amount should be devoted to the establishment of the
new household. Now that Trina had made her great winning, Mr. Sieppe
no longer saw the necessity of dowering her further, especially when he
considered the enormous expense to which he would be put by the voyage
of his own family.

It had been a dreadful wrench for Trina to break in upon her precious
five thousand. She clung to this sum with a tenacity that
was surprising; it had become for her a thing miraculous, a
god-from-the-machine, suddenly descending upon the stage of her humble
little life; she regarded it as something almost sacred and inviolable.
Never, never should a penny of it be spent. Before she could be induced
to part with two hundred dollars of it, more than one scene had been
enacted between her and her parents.

Did Trina pay for the golden tooth out of this two hundred? Later on,
the dentist often asked her about it, but Trina invariably laughed in
his face, declaring that it was her secret. McTeague never found out.

One day during this period McTeague told Trina about his affair with
Marcus. Instantly she was aroused.

"He threw his knife at you! The coward! He wouldn't of dared stand up to
you like a man. Oh, Mac, suppose he HAD hit you?"

"Came within an inch of my head," put in McTeague, proudly.

"Think of it!" she gasped; "and he wanted part of my money. Well, I do
like his cheek; part of my five thousand! Why, it's mine, every single
penny of it. Marcus hasn't the least bit of right to it. It's mine,
mine.--I mean, it's ours, Mac, dear."

The elder Sieppes, however, made excuses for Marcus. He had probably
been drinking a good deal and didn't know what he was about. He had a
dreadful temper, anyhow. Maybe he only wanted to scare McTeague.

The week before the marriage the two men were reconciled. Mrs. Sieppe
brought them together in the front parlor of the B Street house.

"Now, you two fellers, don't be dot foolish. Schake hands und maig ut
oop, soh."

Marcus muttered an apology. McTeague, miserably embarrassed, rolled
his eyes about the room, murmuring, "That's all right--that's all
right--that's all right."

However, when it was proposed that Marcus should be McTeague's best man,
he flashed out again with renewed violence. Ah, no! ah, NO! He'd make up
with the dentist now that he was going away, but he'd be damned--yes, he
would--before he'd be his best man. That was rubbing it in. Let him get
Old Grannis.

"I'm friends with um all right," vociferated Marcus, "but I'll not stand
up with um. I'll not be ANYBODY'S best man, I won't."

The wedding was to be very quiet; Trina preferred it that way. McTeague
would invite only Miss Baker and Heise the harness-maker. The Sieppes
sent cards to Selina, who was counted on to furnish the music; to
Marcus, of course; and to Uncle Oelbermann.

At last the great day, the first of June, arrived. The Sieppes had
packed their last box and had strapped the last trunk. Trina's
two trunks had already been sent to her new home--the remodelled
photographer's rooms. The B Street house was deserted; the whole family
came over to the city on the last day of May and stopped over night at
one of the cheap downtown hotels. Trina would be married the following
evening, and immediately after the wedding supper the Sieppes would
leave for the South.

McTeague spent the day in a fever of agitation, frightened out of his
wits each time that Old Grannis left his elbow.

Old Grannis was delighted beyond measure at the prospect of acting the
part of best man in the ceremony. This wedding in which he was to figure
filled his mind with vague ideas and half-formed thoughts. He found
himself continually wondering what Miss Baker would think of it. During
all that day he was in a reflective mood.

"Marriage is a--a noble institution, is it not, Doctor?" he observed
to McTeague. "The--the foundation of society. It is not good that man
should be alone. No, no," he added, pensively, "it is not good."

"Huh? Yes, yes," McTeague answered, his eyes in the air, hardly hearing
him. "Do you think the rooms are all right? Let's go in and look at them
again."

They went down the hall to where the new rooms were situated, and the
dentist inspected them for the twentieth time.

The rooms were three in number--first, the sitting-room, which was also
the dining-room; then the bedroom, and back of this the tiny kitchen.

The sitting-room was particularly charming. Clean matting covered the
floor, and two or three bright colored rugs were scattered here and
there. The backs of the chairs were hung with knitted worsted tidies,
very gay. The bay window should have been occupied by Trina's sewing
machine, but this had been moved to the other side of the room to give
place to a little black walnut table with spiral legs, before which
the pair were to be married. In one corner stood the parlor melodeon, a
family possession of the Sieppes, but given now to Trina as one of her
parents' wedding presents. Three pictures hung upon the walls. Two were
companion pieces. One of these represented a little boy wearing huge
spectacles and trying to smoke an enormous pipe. This was called "I'm
Grandpa," the title being printed in large black letters; the companion
picture was entitled "I'm Grandma," a little girl in cap and "specs,"
wearing mitts, and knitting. These pictures were hung on either side of
the mantelpiece. The other picture was quite an affair, very large and
striking. It was a colored lithograph of two little golden-haired girls
in their nightgowns. They were kneeling down and saying their prayers;
their eyes--very large and very blue--rolled upward. This picture had
for name, "Faith," and was bordered with a red plush mat and a frame of
imitation beaten brass.