 CHAPTER VIII. The next two months were delightful. Trina and McTig saw each other regularly, three times a week. The dentist went over to B Street Sunday and Wednesday afternoons as usual, but on Fridays it was Trina who came to the city. She spent the morning between 9 and 12 o'clock downtown for the most part in the cheap department stores doing the weekly shopping for herself and the family. At noon, she took an uptown car and met McTig at the corner of Polk Street. The two lunched together at a small uptown hotel just around the corner on Sutter Street. They were given a little room to themselves. Nothing could have been more delicious. They had but to close the sliding door to shut themselves off from the whole world. Trina would arrive breathless from her raids upon the bargain counters, her pale cheeks flushed, her hair blown about her face and into the corners of her lips, her mother's net reticule stuffed to bursting. Once in their tiny private room, she would drop into her chair with a little groan. Oh, Mac, I am so tired. I've just been all over town. Oh, it's good to sit down. Just think. I had to stand up in the car all the way, after being on my feet the whole blessed morning. Look here what I've bought, just things and things. Look, there's some dotted veiling I got for myself. See now, do you think it looks pretty? She spread it over her face. And I got a box of writing paper and a roll of crepe paper to make a lampshade for the front parlor. And what do you suppose? I saw a pair of Nottingham lace curtains for forty-nine cents, isn't that cheap? And some chenille porters for two-and-a-half. Now what have you been doing since I last saw you? Did Mr. High's finally get up enough courage to have his tooth pulled yet? Trina took off her hat and veil and rearranged her hair before the looking glass. No. No. Not yet. I went down to the sign painters yesterday afternoon to see about that big gold tooth for a sign. It costs too much. I can't get it yet a while. There's two kinds, one German guilt and the other French guilt. The German guilt is no good. McTig sighed and wagged his head. Even Trina and the $5,000 could not make him forget this one unsatisfied longing. At other times they would talk at length over their plans, while Trina sipped her chocolate and McTig devoured huge chunks of butterless bread. They were to be married at the end of May, and the dentist already had his eye on a couple of rooms, part of the suite of a bankrupt photographer. They were situated in the flat, just back of his parlours, and he believed the photographer would sublet them furnished. McTig and Trina had no apprehensions as to their finances. They could be sure, in fact, of a tidy little income. The dentist's practice was fairly good, and they could count upon the interest of Trina's $5,000. To McTig's mind, this interest seemed woefully small. He had had uncertain ideas about that $5,000, had imagined that they would spend it in some lavish fashion, would buy a house perhaps, or would furnish their new rooms with overwhelming luxury, luxury that implied red velvet carpets and continued feasting. The old-time miner's idea of wealth easily gained and quickly spent persisted in his mind. But when Trina had begun to talk of investments and interests and percents, he was troubled and not a little disappointed. The lump sum of $5,000 was one thing. A miserable little twenty or twenty-five a month was quite another, and then someone else had the money. "'But don't you see, Mac,' explained Trina, "'it's ours just the same. We could get it back whenever we wanted it, and then it's the reasonable way to do. We mustn't let it turn our heads, Mac, dear, like that man that spent all he won in buying more tickets. How foolish we'd feel after we'd spent it all! We ought to go on just the same as before, as if we hadn't won. We must be sensible about it, mustn't we?' "'Well, well, I guess perhaps that's right,' the dentist would answer, looking slowly about on the floor. Just what should ultimately be done with the money was the subject of endless discussion in the SIPA family. The savings bank would allow only three percent, but Trina's parents believed that something better could be got. "'There's Uncle Oberman,' Trina had suggested, remembering the rich relative who had the wholesale toy store in the mission. Mr. SIPA struck his hand to his forehead. Ah, an idea,' he cried. In the end, an agreement was made. The money was invested in Mr. Oberman's business. He gave Trina six percent. Invested in this fashion, Trina's winning would bring in $25 a month. But besides this, Trina had her own little trade. She made Noah's Ark animals for Uncle Oberman's store. Trina's ancestors on both sides were German Swiss, and some long-forgotten forefather of the 16th century, some worsted leg into wood cover of the Tyrol, had handed down the talent of the national industry to reappear in this strangely distorted guise. She made Noah's Ark animals, whittling them out of a block of soft wood with a sharp jackknife, the only instrument she used. Trina was very proud to explain her work to McTeague, as he had already explained his own to her. You see, I take a block of straight-grain pine and cut out the shape, roughly at first, with the big blade. Then I go over it a second time with the little blade, more carefully. Then I put in the ears and tail with a drop of glue, and paint it with a non-poisonous paint, van dyke brown for the horses, foxes, and cows, slight gray for the elephants and camels, burnt umber for the chickens, zebras, and so on. Then last, a dot of Chinese white for the eyes, and there you are, all finished. They sell for nine cents a dozen. Only I can't make the mannequins. The little figures, you know, Noah and his wife, and Shem, and all the others. It was true. Trina could not whittle them fast enough and cheap enough to compete with a turning lathe that could throw off whole tribes and peoples of mannequins while she was fashioning one family. Everything else, however, she made. The ark itself, all windows, and no door, the box in which the hole was packed, even down to pasting on the label which read made in France. She earned from three to four dollars a week. The income from these three sources, McTig's profession, the interest of the five thousand dollars, and Trina's whittling, made a respectable little sum taken all together. Trina declared they could even lay by something, adding to the five thousand dollars little by little. It soon became apparent that Trina would be an extraordinarily good housekeeper. Economy was her strong point. A good deal of peasant blood still ran undiluted in her veins, and she had all the instinct of a hardy and penurious mountain race, the instinct which saves without any thought, without idea of consequence, saving for the sake of saving, hoarding without knowing why. Even McTig did not know how closely Trina held to her new found wealth. But they did not always pass their lunch an hour in this discussion of incomes and economies. As the dentist came to know his little woman better, she grew to be more and more of a puzzle and a joy to him. She would suddenly interrupt a grave discourse upon the rinse of rooms and the cost of light and fuel, with a brusque outburst of affection and set him all a tremble with delight. All at once she would set down her chocolate and, leaning across the narrow table, would exclaim, Never mind all that. Oh, Mac, do you truly really love me? Love me big? McTig would stammer something, gasping and wacking his head beside himself for the lack of words. Old bear, Trina would answer, grasping him by both huge ears and swaying his head from side to side. Kiss me then. Tell me, Mac, did you think any less of me that first time I let you kiss me there in the station? Oh, Mac, dear, what a funny nose you've got, all full of hairs inside. And Mac, do you know you've got a bald spot? She dragged his head down towards her, right on top of your head. Then she would seriously kiss the bald spot in question, declaring, That'll make the hair grow. Trina took an infinite enjoyment in playing with MacTig's great square-cut head, rumbling his hair till it stood on end, putting her fingers in his eyes or stretching his ears out straight and watching the effect with her head on one side. It was like a little child playing with some gigantic good-natured Saint Bernard. One particular amusement they never worried of. The two would lean across the table towards each other, MacTig folding his arms under his breast. Then Trina, resting on her elbows, would part his mustache, the great blonde mustache of a viking with her two hands, pushing it up from his lips, causing his face to assume the appearance of a Greek mask. She would curl it around either forefinger, drawing it to a fine end. Then all at once, MacTig would make a fearful snorting noise through his nose. Invariably, though she was expecting this, though it was part of the game, Trina would jump with a stifled shriek. MacTig would bellow with laughter till his eyes watered. Then they would recommence upon the instant, Trina protesting with a nervous tremulousness. Now, now, now, Mac, don't you scare me so. But these delicious taillettes with Trina were offset by a certain coolness that Marcus Scholler began to affect towards the dentist. At first, MacTig was unaware of it, but by this time, even his slow wits began to perceive that his best friend, his pal, was not the same to him as formerly. They continued to meet at lunch nearly every day, but Friday at the car conductor's coffee joint. But Marcus was sulky. There could be no doubt about that. He avoided talking to MacTig, read the paper continually, answering the dentist's timid efforts at conversation in gruff monosyllables. Sometimes even, he turned sideways to the table and talked at great length to highs the harness maker, whose table was next to theirs. They took no more long walks together when Marcus went out to exercise the dogs. Nor did Marcus ever again recur to his generosity in renouncing Trina. One Tuesday, as MacTig took his place at the table in the coffee joint, he found Marcus already there. Hello, Mark, said the dentist. You hear already? Hello, returned the other, indifferently, helping himself to tomato ketchup. There was a silence. After a long while, Marcus suddenly looked up. Say, Mac, he exclaimed. When you're going to pay me that money, you owe me. MacTig was astonished. Huh? What? I don't. Do I owe you any money, Mark? Well, you owe me four bits, returned Marcus doggedly. I paid for you and Trina that day at the picnic and you never gave it back. Oh, oh, answered MacTig in distress. That's so, that's so. I, you ought to have told me before. Here's your money and I'm obliged to you. It ain't much, observed Marcus sullenly. But I need all I can get nowadays. Are you, are you broke, inquired MacTig? And I ain't saying anything about your sleeping at the hospital that night either, muttered Marcus, as he pocketed the coin. Well, well, do you mean, should I have paid for that? Well, you'd have had to sleep somewhere, as wouldn't you, flashed out Marcus? You'd have had to pay half a dollar for a bed at the flat. All right, all right, cried the dentist hastily, feeling in his pockets. I don't want you should be out anything on my account, old man. Here, will four bits do? I don't want your damn money. Shouted Marcus in a sudden rage, throwing back the coin. I ain't no beggar. MacTig was miserable. How had he offended his pal? Well, I want you should take it, Mark, he said, pushing it towards him. I tell you, I won't touch your money, exclaimed the other through his clenched teeth, white with passion. I've been played for a sucker long enough. What's the matter with you lately, Mark? Remonstrated MacTig. You've got a grouch about something. Is there anything I've done? Well, that's all right, that's all right, returned Marcus as he rose from the table. That's all right. I've been played for a sucker long enough, that's all. I've been played for a sucker long enough. He went away with a parting malevolent glance. At the corner of Polk Street between the flat and the car conductor's coffee joint was Frenna's. It was a corner grocery. Advertisements for cheap butter and eggs painted in green marking ink upon wrapping paper stood about on the sidewalk outside. The doorway was decorated with a huge Milwaukee beer sign. Back of the store proper was a bar where white sand covered the floor. A few tables and chairs were scattered here and there. The walls were hung with gorgeously colored tobacco advertisements and colored lithographs of trotting horses. On the wall behind the bar was a model of a full rigged ship enclosed in a bottle. It was at this place that the dentist used to leave his picture to be filled on Sunday afternoons. Since his engagement to Trina, he had discontinued this habit. However, he still dropped into Frenna's one or two nights in the week. He spent a pleasant hour there, smoking his huge porcelain pipe and drinking his beer. He never joined any of the groups of paquette players around the tables. In fact, he hardly spoke to anyone but the bartender and Marcus. For Frenna's was one of Marcus Scholler's haunts. A great deal of his time was spent there. He involved himself in fearful, political and social discussions with Heis, the harness maker, and with one or two old German habituaries of the place. These discussions Marcus carried on, as was his custom, at the top of his voice, gesticulating fiercely, banging the table with his fists, brandishing the plates and glasses, exciting himself with his own climber. On a certain Saturday evening, a few days after the scene of the coffee joint, the dentist bethought him to spend a quiet evening at Frenna's. He had not been there for some time and besides that, it occurred to him that the day was his birthday. He would permit himself an extra pipe and a few glasses of beer. When Mekteig entered Frenna's back room by the street door, he found Marcus and Heis already installed at one of the tables. Two or three of the old Germans sat opposite them, gulping their beer from time to time. Heis was smoking a cigar, but Marcus had before him his fourth whiskey cocktail. At the moment of Mekteig's entrance, Marcus had the floor. It can't be proven, he was yelling. I defy any sane politician whose eyes are not blinded by party prejudices, whose opinions are not warped by a personal bias to substantiate such a statement. Look at your facts, look at your figures. I am a free American citizen, ain't I? I pay my taxes to support a good government, don't I? It's a contract between me and the government, ain't it? Well then, by dam, if the authorities do not or will not afford me protection for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then my obligations are at an end. I withhold my taxes, I do. I say I do, what? He glared about him, seeking opposition. That's nonsense, observed highs, quietly. Try it once, you'll get jugged. But this observation of the harness makers roused Marcus to the last pitch of frenzy. 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, Mr. Shoulder, said Frenna, from behind the bar. Well, it makes me mad, answered Marcus, subsiding into a growl and resuming his chair. Hello, Mac. Hello, Mark. But McTig'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. Curlsome 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. McTig 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, Schuller, observed Heiss in a low voice. McTig 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. McTig could not hear the talk that followed between him and the harness maker, but it seemed to him that Marcus was telling Heiss of some injury, some grievance, and that the latter was trying to pacify him. All at once their talk grew louder. Heiss laid a retaining hand upon his companion's coat sleeve, but Marcus swung himself around in his chair and fixing his eyes on McTig, cried as if in answer to some protestation on the part of Heiss. All I know is that I've been soldiered out of $5,000. McTig 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 dentists still kept silence. If it hadn't been for me, Marcus continued, addressing himself directly to McTig, you wouldn't have 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 anymore. I've been played for a sucker, and 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 today if it hadn't been for me? Marcus shouted in a sudden exasperation. You'd have 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, Scholar, grumbled Heiss. You don't want to get into a row. No, I don't, Heiss, 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 $5,000 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 McTig. Do I get any of that money? It ain't mine to give, answered McTig. 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 harness maker, 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 McTig'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, 10 cents zinc-plugger, hoodlum mucker. Get your damn smoke out of 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, McTig, in opening his lips to reply, blew a stifling, accurate cloud directly in Marcus Scholler'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. McTig rose to his feet, his eyes wide, but as yet he was not angry, only surprised, taken all the back by the suddenness of Marcus Scholler'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 jackknife lay open in his palm. It shot forward as he flung it, glinted sharply by McTig'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 passed, leaving a trail of terror and confusion. Then the door leading to the street slammed. Marcus had disappeared. Thereon a great babble of exclamation arose. The tension of that all but fatal instance snapped and speech became once more possible. He would have knifed you. Narrow escape. What kind of a man do you call that? Taint his faulty ain't a murderer. I'd have him up for it. And they too 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. Good-sized blade, too. The group examined it with intense interest. Big enough to let the life out of any man, observed highs. What, what, what did he do it for, stammered McTig? 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. McTig 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 Scholler, I'll show him, I'll. He got up and clapped on his hat. Now doctor, remonstrated highs, standing between him and the door, don't make a fool of yourself. Let him alone, joined in Frenna, catching the dentist by the arm, he's full anyhow. He broke my pipe, answered McTig. 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 it clearly enough. I'll show him, he exclaimed. As though they had been little children, McTig set Frenna and the harness-maker aside, and strode out at the door like a raging elephant, highs stood, rubbing his shoulder. Might as well try to stop a locomotive, he muttered. The man's made of iron. Meanwhile, McTig went storming up the streets toward the flat, whacking 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 Scholler. 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 woodwork, tearing off the lock. Nobody, the room was dark and empty. Nevermind, Marcus would have to come home sometime that night. McTig would go down and wait for him in his parlors. He was bound to hear him as he came up the stairs. As McTig 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. McTig, dentist, Polk Street, San Francisco, California, 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 fire shovel. 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 Max birthday, from Trina,' and below, in a kind of post script, the man will be round tomorrow to put it in place." McTig 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 guilt too, not the cheap German guilt 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 McTig 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 center 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 McTig himself, big boned and enormous as he was, shrank and dwindled in the presence of the monster. As for an incident he borne in his hands, it was like a puny gulliver struggling with the molar of some vast brobding nag. 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 would 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 a $5,000, no doubt. But what a wonderful beautiful tooth it was, to be sure. Bright as a mirror, shining there in its coat of French guilt, as if with the light of its own. No danger of that tooth turning black with the weather, as did the cheap German guilt imposters. What would that other dentist, that poser, that writer of bicycles, that coarser of Greyhounds say, when he should see this marvelous molar run out from McTigg's bay window like a flag of defiance? No doubt he would suffer veritable convulsions of envy, would be positively sick with jealousy, if McTigg 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 guilt, 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 Scholler'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 Scholler's hatred to him, who had treen his 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 agreeably to anyone within sound of his voice. And 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 backyard. 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 center of the room, shining dimly out as if with some mysterious light of its own. End of chapter eight. Chapter nine of McTeague. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. McTeague by Frank Norris. Chapter nine. 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 SIPA 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 hedgera of the entire SIPA family. They were to move to the southern part of the state the day after Trina's marriage. Mr. SIPA, having bought a third interest in an upholstering business in the suburbs of Los Angeles, it was possible that Marcus Schuller 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 burden with care, more overcome with the sense of the importance of his undertaking than was Mr. SIPA 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 a special duty to perform, his particular bundles to oversee. Not a detail was forgotten. Fairs, 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. SIPA was to look after the lunch, Durgomiseriat. Mr. SIPA would assume charge of the checks, the money, the tickets and of course, general supervision. The twins would be under the command of Auguste 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 maneuver, an army changing its base of operations, a veritable tribal migration. On the other hand, Trina's little room was the center 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. Sipa was found by her harassed husband helping Trina with the waste of her gown when she should have been slicing cold chicken in the kitchen. Mr. Sipa 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 expressmen. Nectig came and went furtively, dizzyed and made uneasy by all this bustle. He got in the way. He trod upon and tore breaths of silk. He tried to help carry the packing boxes and broke the haul gas fixture. He came in upon Trina and the dressmaker at an ill-timed moment and retiring precipitately, overturned the piles of pictures stacked in the haul. 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. Sipa and his shirt sleeves labored among the packing boxes. The twins clattered about on the carpetless floors of the denuded rooms. August was smacked from hour to hour and wept upon the front stairs. The dressmaker called over the banisters for a hot flat iron. Expressmen tramped up and down the stairway. Mrs. Sipa stopped in the preparation of the lunches to call hoop hoop to the greyhound, throwing lumps of coal. The dog wheel creaked, the front doorbell 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 McTig. No more philandering over their lunch nowadays. 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 $5,000. For it had been finally decided that $200 of this amount should be devoted to the establishment of the new household. Now that Trina had made her great winning, Mr. Sipa no longer saw the necessity of douring 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 $5,000. She clung to the 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 apart with $200 of it, more than one scene had been enacted between her and her parents. Did Trina pay for the golden tooth out of this $200? Later on, the dentist often asked her about it, but Trina invariably laughed in his face, declaring that it was her secret. McTig never found out. One day during this period, McTig told Trina about his affair with Marcus. Instantly, she was aroused. He threw his knife at you, the coward. He wouldn't have dared stand up to you like a man. Oh, Max, suppose he had hit you. Came within an inch of my head, put in McTig proudly. Think of it, she gasped. And he wanted part of my money. Well, I do like his cheek, part of my $5,000. 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 Sipas, 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 McTig. The week before the marriage, the two men were reconciled. Mrs. Sipa brought them together in the front parlor of the B Street house. Now, you two fellas, don't be dot foolish. Shake hands and make a dup, so. Marcus muttered an apology. McTig, 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 McTig'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 Granus. I'm friends with him, all right, vociferated Marcus, but I'll not stand up with him. I'll not be anybody's best man, I won't. The wedding was to be very quiet. Trina preferred it that way. McTig would invite only Ms. Baker and highs the harness maker. The Sipas sent cards to Selena, who was counted on to furnish the music, to Marcus, of course, and to Uncle Oberman. At last, the great day, the first of June, arrived. The Sipas had packed their last box and had strapped the last trunk. Trina's two trunks had already been sent to her new home, the remodeled 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 overnight at one of the cheap downtown hotels. Trina would be married the following evening and immediately after the wedding supper, the Sipas would leave for the South. McTig 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 Ms. Baker would think of. During all that day, he was in a reflective mood. Marriage is a noble institution, is it not, doctor? He observed to McTig, 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, McTig 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 20th 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 Melodian, a family possession of the Sipas, 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 forename Faith and was bordered with a red plush mat and a frame of imitation beaten brass. A door hung with chenille portiers, a bargain at $2 and a half admitted one to the bedroom. The bedroom could boast a carpet, three-ply ingrain, the design being bunches of red and green flowers and yellow baskets on a white ground. The wallpaper was admirable, hundreds and hundreds of tiny Japanese mandarins all identically alike, helping hundreds of almond-eyed ladies into hundreds of impossible junks, while hundreds of bamboo palms overshadowed the pair and hundreds of long-legged storks trailed contemptuously away from the scene. This room was prolific in pictures. Most of them were framed colored prints from Christmas editions of the London graphic and illustrated news, the subject of each picture inevitably involving very alert fox terriers and very pretty moon-faced little girls. Back of the bedroom was the kitchen, a creation of Trina's, a dream of a kitchen. With its range, its porcelain-lined sink, its copper boiler, and its overpowering array of flashing tinware. Everything was new, everything was complete. Maria Makapa and a waiter from one of the restaurants in the street were to prepare the wedding supper here. Maria had already put in an appearance. The fire was crackling in the new stove that smoked badly, a smell of cooking was in the air. She drove McTig and old Granis from the room with great gestures of her bare arms. This kitchen was the only one of the three rooms they had been obliged to furnish throughout. Most of the sitting room and bedroom furniture went with the suite. A few pieces they had bought, the remainder Trina had brought over from the B Street house. The presents have been set out on the extension table in the sitting room. Besides the parlor melodian, Trina's parents had given her an ice water set and a carving knife and fork with elk horn handles. Selena had painted a view of the Golden Gate upon a polished slice of redwood that answered the purposes of a paperweight. Marcus Schuller, after impressing upon Trina that his gift was to her and not to McTig, had sent a chattelin watch of German silver. Uncle Olberman's present, however, had been awaited with a good deal of curiosity. What would he send? He was very rich and, in a sense, Trina was his protege. A couple of days before that, upon which the wedding was to take place, two boxes arrived with his card. Trina and McTig, assisted by old Grannis, had opened them. The first was a box of all sorts of toys. But what? What? I don't make it out, McTig had exclaimed. Why should he send us toys? We have no need of toys. Scarlet to her hair, Trina dropped into a chair and laughed till she cried behind her handkerchief. We've no use of toys, but we have a mothered McTig looking at her in perplexity. Old Grannis smiled discreetly, raising a tremulous hand to his chin. The other box was heavy, bound with widows at the edges. The letters and stamps burnt in. I think, I really think it's champagne, said Old Grannis in a whisper. So it was, a full case of monopole. What a wonder, none of them had seen the like before. Ah, this Uncle Olberman. That's what it was to be rich. None of the other presents produced so deep an impression as this. After Old Grannis and the dentist had gone through the rooms, giving a last look around to see that everything was ready, they returned to McTig's parlors. At the door, Old Grannis excused himself. At four o'clock, McTig began to dress, shaving himself first before the hand glass that was hung against the woodwork of the bay window. While he shaved, he sang with strange inappropriateness. No one to love, none to caress, left all alone in this world's wilderness. But as he stood before the mirror, intent upon his shaving, there came a roll of wheels over the cobbles in front of the house. He rushed to the window. Trina had arrived with her father and mother. He saw her get out, and as she glanced upward at his window, their eyes met. Ah, there she was. There she was, his little woman looking up at him, her adorable little chin thrust upward with that familiar movement of innocence and confidence. The dentist saw again, as if for the first time, her small pale face looking out from beneath her royal tiara of black hair. He saw again her long, narrow blue eyes, her lips, nose, and tiny ears, pale and bloodless, and suggestive of anemia, as if all the vitality that should have lent them color had been sucked up into the strands and coils of that wonderful hair. As their eyes met, they waved their hands gaily to each other. Then McTig heard Trina and her mother come up the stairs and go into the bedroom of the photographer's suite, where Trina was to dress. No, no. Surely there could be no longer any hesitation. He knew that he loved her. What was the matter with him that he should have doubted it for an instant? The great difficulty was that she was too good, too adorable, too sweet, too delicate for him, who was so huge, so clumsy, so brutal. There was a knock at the door. It was old granus. He was dressed in his one black suit of broadcloth, much wrinkled. His hair was carefully brushed over his bald forehead. Miss Trina has come, he announced, and the minister. You have an hour yet. The dinners finished dressing. He wore a suit bought for the occasion. A ready-made Prince Albert coat, too short in the sleeves, striped blue trousers and new patent leather shoes, veritable instruments of torture. Around his collar was a wonderful necktie that Trina had given him. It was of salmon pink satin in its center, so Lina had painted a knot of blue forget-me-nots. At length, after an interminable period of waiting, Mr. Sipa appeared at the door. Are you ready? He asked in a sepulchral whisper, gom din. It was like King Charles summoned to execution. Mr. Sipa proceeded them into the hall, moving at a funereal pace. He paused. Suddenly, in the direction of the sitting room, came the strains of the parlor melodian. Mr. Sipa flung his arm in the air. Forward, he cried. He left them at the door of the sitting room. He himself going into the bedroom where Trina was waiting, entering by the hall door. He was in a tremendous state of nervous tension, fearful that something should go wrong. He had employed the period of waiting in going through his part for the 50th time, repeating what he had to say in a low voice. He had even made chalk marks on the matting in the places where he was to take positions. The dentist and old Grannis entered the sitting room. The minister stood behind the little table in the bay window, holding a book, one finger marking the place. He was rigid, erect, impassive. On either side of him in a semi-circle stood the invited guests, a little pockmarked gentlemen in glasses, no doubt the famous Uncle Oberman, Miss Baker in her black grenadine, false curls and coral brooch. Marcus Schuller, his arms folded, his brows bent, grand and gloomy, hies the harness maker in yellow gloves, intently studying the pattern of the matting, and Auguste in his Fauntleroi costume, stupefied and a little frightened, rolling his eyes from face to face. Selena sat at the parlor melodian, fingering the keys. Her glance wandering to the chenille portiers. She stopped playing as McTig and old Grannis entered and took their places. A profound silence ensued. Uncle Oberman's shirt front could be heard creaking as he breathed. The most solemn expression pervaded every face. All at once the portiers were shaken violently. It was a signal. Selena pulled open the stops and swung into the wedding march. Trina entered. She was dressed in white silk. A crown of orange blossoms was around her swarthy hair, dressed high for the first time. Her veil reached to the floor. Her face was pink, but otherwise she was calm. She looked quietly around the room as she crossed it until her glance rested on McTig, smiling at him then very prettily and with perfect self-possession. She was on her father's arm. The twins, dressed exactly alike, walked in front, each carrying an enormous bouquet of cut flowers in a lace paper holder. Mrs. Sipa followed in the rear. She was crying. Her handkerchief was rolled into a wad. From time to time, she looked at the train of Trina's dress through her tears. Mr. Sipa marched his daughter to the exact middle of the floor, wheeled at right angles, and brought her up to the minister. He stepped back three paces and stood planted upon one of his chalk marks, his face glistening with perspiration. Then Trina and the dentist were married. The guests stood in constrained attitudes, looking furtively out of the corners of their eyes. Mr. Sipa never moved a muscle. Mrs. Sipa cried into her handkerchief all the time. At the melodian, Selena played, call me thine own, very softly. The tremolo stop pulled out. She looked over her shoulder from time to time. Between the pauses of the music, one could hear the low tones of the minister, the responses of the participants, and the suppressed sounds of Mrs. Sipa's weeping. Outside, the noises of the street rose to the windows and muffled undertones. A cable car rumbled past. A newsboy went by chanting the evening papers. From somewhere in the building itself came a persistent noise of song. Trina and McTeague knelt. The dentist's knees thutted on the floor, and he presented to view the soles of his shoes, painfully new and unworn. The leather, still yellow. The brass nail heads still glittering. Trina sank at his side very gracefully, setting her dress and train with a little gesture of her free hand. The company bowed their heads. Mr. Sipa shutting his eyes tight. But Mrs. Sipa took advantage of the moment to stop crying and make furtive gestures towards August, citing him to pull down his coat. But August gave no heed. His eyes were starting from their sockets. His chin had dropped upon his lace collar, and his head turned vaguely from side to side with a continued and maniacal motion. All at once the ceremony was over before anyone expected it. The guests kept their positions for a moment, eyeing one another, each fearing to make the first move, not quite certain as to whether or not everything were finished. But the couple faced the room, Trina throwing back her veil. She, perhaps McTeague as well, felt that there was a certain inadequateness about the ceremony. Was that all there was to it? Did just those few muttered phrases make them man and wife? It had been over in a few moments, but it had bound them for life. Had not something been left out? Was not the whole affair cursory superficial? It was disappointing. But Trina had no time to dwell upon this. Marcus Schuller, in the manner of a man of the world, who knew how to act in every situation, stepped forward, and even before Mr. or Mrs. Sipa took Trina's hand. Let me be the first to congratulate Mrs. McTeague, he said, feeling very noble and heroic. The strain of the previous moments was relaxed immediately. The guests crowded around the pair, shaking hands. A babble of talk arose. August, will you pull down your goat den? Well, my dear, now you're married and happy. When I first saw you two together, I said, what a pair. Where to be neighbors now? You must come up and see me very often and we'll have tea together. Did you hear that song going on all the time? I declare it regularly got on my nerves. Trina kissed her father and mother, crying a little herself as she saw the tears in Mrs. Sipa's eyes. Marcus came forward a second time and with an air of great gravity, kissed his cousin upon the forehead. Hies was introduced to Trina and Uncle Oberman to the dentist. For upwards of half an hour, the guests stood about in groups, filling the little sitting room with a great chatter of talk. Then it was time to make ready for supper. This was a tremendous task in which nearly all the guests were obliged to assist. The sitting room was transformed into a dining room. The presents were removed from the extension table and the table drawn out to its full length. The cloth was laid, the chairs rented from the Dancing Academy hard buy, drawn up, the dishes set out and the two bouquets of cut flowers taken from the twins under their shrill protests and arranged in vases at either end of the table. There was a great coming and going between the kitchen and the sitting room. Trina, who was allowed to do nothing, sat in the bay window and fretted, calling to her mother from time to time. The napkins are in the right-hand drawer of the pantry. Yes, yes, I got them. Where do you keep their soup plates? The soup plates are here already. Say, cousin Trina, is there a corkscrew? What is home without a corkscrew? In the kitchen table drawer in the left-hand corner. Are these the forks you want to use, Mrs. McTeague? No, no, there's some silver forks. Mama knows where. They were all very gay, laughing over their mistakes, getting in one another's way, rushing into the sitting room, their hands full of plates or knives or glasses, and darting out again after more. Marcus and Mr. Sipa took their coats off. Old Grannis and Miss Baker passed each other in the hall in a constrained silence, her grenadine brushing against the elbow of his wrinkled frock coat. Uncle Ulberman's superintendent highs opening the case of champagne with the gravity of a magistrate. August was assigned the task of filling the new salt and pepper canisters of red and blue glass. In a wonderfully short time, everything was ready. Marcus Shuller resumed his coat, wiping his forehead and remarking, I tell you, I've been doing chores for my board. To their table, commanded Mr. Sipa. The company sat down with a great clatter. Trina at the foot, the dentist at the head, the others arranged themselves in half hazard fashion. But it happened that Marcus Shuller crowded into the seat beside Selena towards which Old Grannis was directing himself. There was but one other chair vacant and that at the side of Miss Baker. Old Grannis hesitated, putting his hand to his chin. However, there was no escape. In great trepidation, he sat down beside the retired dressmaker. None of them spoke. Old Grannis dared not move, but sat rigid, his eyes riveted on his empty soup plate. All at once there was a report like a pistol. The men started in their places. Mrs. Sipa uttered a muffled shriek. The waiter from the cheap restaurant hired as Marie's assistant rose from a bending posture, a champagne bottle frothing in his hand. He was grinning from ear to ear. Don't get scared, he said reassuringly. It ain't loaded. When all their glasses had been filled, Marcus proposed the health of the bride. Standing up, the guests rose and drank. Hardly one of them had ever tasted champagne before. The moment silence after the toast was broken by mctig, exclaiming with a long breath of satisfaction, that's the best beer I ever drank. There was a roar of laughter, especially it was Marcus tickled over the dentist blunder. He went off in a very spasm of mirth, banging the table with his fist, laughing until his eyes watered. All through the meal he kept breaking out into cackling imitations of mctig's words. That's the best beer I ever drank. Oh Lord, ain't that a break? What a wonderful supper that was. There was oyster soup, there were sea bass and barracuda. There was a gigantic roast goose stuffed with chestnuts. There were eggplant and sweet potatoes. Miss Baker called them yams. There was calf's head and oil, over which Mr. Sipah went into ecstasies. There was lobster salad, there were rice pudding and strawberry ice cream and wine jelly and stewed prunes and coconuts and mixed nuts and raisins and fruit and tea and coffee and mineral waters and lemonade. For two hours, the guests ate. Their faces red, their elbows wide, the perspiration beating their foreheads. All around the table, one saw the same incessant movement of jaws and heard the same uninterrupted sound of chewing. Three times, highs passed his plate for more roast goose. Mr. Sipah devoured the calf's head with long breaths of contentment. McTig ate for the sake of eating, without choice. Everything within reach of his hands found its way into his enormous mouth. There was but little conversation and that only of the food. One exchanged opinions with one's neighbor as to the soup, the eggplant or the stewed prunes. Soon the room became very warm. A faint moisture appeared upon the windows. The air was heavy with the smell of cooked food. At every moment, Trina or Mrs. Sipah urged someone of the company to have his or her plate refilled. They were constantly employed in dishing potatoes or carving the goose or ladling gravy. The hired waiter circled around the room, his limp napkin over his arm, his hands full of plates and dishes. He was a great joker. He had names of his own for different articles of food that sent gales of laughter around the table. When he spoke of a bunch of parsley as scenery, highs all but strangled himself over a mouthful of potato. Out in the kitchen, Maria Macapa did the work of three. Her face scarlet, her sleeves rolled up. Every now and then she uttered shrill but unintelligible outcry supposedly addressed to the waiter. Uncle Oberman said, Trina, let me give you another helping of prunes. The Sipahs paid great deference to Uncle Oberman as indeed did the whole company. Even Marcus Scholler lowered his voice when he addressed him. At the beginning of the meal, he had nudged the harness maker and had whispered behind his hand, nodding his head toward the wholesale toy dealer. Got $30,000 in the bank, has for a fact. Don't have much to say, observed highs. No, no, that's his way, never opens his face. As the evening wore on, the gas and two lamps were lit. The company were still eating. The men, gorged with food, had unbuttoned their vests. McTig's cheeks were distended, his eyes wide. His huge salient jaw moved with a machine-like regularity. At intervals, he drew a series of short breaths over his nose. Mrs. Sipah wiped her forehead with her napkin. Hey, there, boy, give me some more of that, what you called bubble water. That was how the waiter had spoken of the champagne. Bubble water. The guests had shouted applause. Out of sight! He was a heavy josher, was that waiter? Bottle after bottle was opened, the women stopping their ears as the corks were drawn. All of a sudden, the dentist uttered an exclamation, clapping his hand to his nose, his face twisting sharply. Mac, what is it? cried Trina in an alarm. That champagne came to my nose, he cried, his eyes watering, it stings like everything. Great beer, ain't it? shouted Marcus. Now, Mark, remonstrated Trina in a low voice. Now, Mark, you just shut up, that isn't funny anymore. I don't want you to make fun of Mac. He called it beer on purpose, I guess he knows. Throughout the meal, old Miss Baker had occupied herself largely without goose and the twins who had been given a table by themselves, the black walnut table, before which the ceremony had taken place. The little dressmaker was continually turning about in her place, inquiring of the children if they wanted for anything, inquiries they rarely answered other than by stare, fixed, ox-like, expressionless. Suddenly, the little dressmaker turned to old Grannis and exclaimed, I'm so very fond of little children. Yes, yes, they're very interesting, I'm very fond of them too. The next instant, both of the old people were overwhelmed with confusion. What? They had spoken to each other after all these years of silence they had for the first time addressed remarks to each other. The old dressmaker was in a torment of embarrassment. How was it she had come to speak? She had neither planned nor wished it. Suddenly the words had escaped her, he had answered, and it was all over, over before they knew it. Old Grannis' fingers trembled on the table ledge, his heart beat heavily, his breath fell short, he had actually talked to the little dressmaker. That possibility to which he had looked forward, it seemed to him for years, that companionship, that intimacy with his fellow lodger, that delightful acquaintance, which was only to ripen at some far distant time, he could not exactly say when. Behold, it had suddenly come to a head, here in this overcrowded, overheated room in the midst of all this feeding, surrounded by odors of hot dishes, accompanied by the sounds of incessant mastication. How different he had imagined it would be. They were to be alone, he and Miss Baker, in the evening somewhere, withdrawn from the world, very quiet, very calm and peaceful. Their talk was to be of their lives, their lost illusions, not of other people's children. The two old people did not speak again. They sat there side by side, nearer than they had ever been before, motionless, abstracted, their thoughts far away from that scene of feasting. They were thinking of each other, and they were conscious of it. Timid, with the timidity of their second childhood, constrained and embarrassed by each other's presence, they were, nevertheless, in a little elysium of their own creating. They walked hand in hand in a delicious garden, where it was always autumn. Together and alone, they entered upon the long, retarded romance of their commonplace and uneventful lives. At last, that great supper was over. Everything had been eaten. The enormous roast goose had dwindled to a very skeleton. Mr. Sipa had reduced the calf's head to a mere skull, a row of empty champagne bottles, dead soldiers, as the facetious waiter had called them, lined the mantelpiece. None of the stewed prunes remained, but the juice, which was given to our goose and the twins. The platters were as clean as if they had been washed. Crumbs of bread, potato pairings, nutshells and bits of cake littered the table. Coffee and ice cream stains and spots of congealed gravy marked the position of each plate. It was a devastation, a pillage. The table presented the appearance of an abandoned battlefield. Oof, cried Mrs. Sipa, pushing back. I've eaten and eaten. Ah, goat. How I have eaten. Ah, that calf's head. Murmured her husband, passing his tongue over his lips. The facetious waiter had disappeared. He and Maria Makapa foregathered in the kitchen. They drew up to the washboard of the sink, feasting off the remnants of the supper, slices of goose, the remains of the lobster salad and half a bottle of champagne. They were obliged to drink the latter from teacups. Here's how, said the waiter gallantly as he raced his teacup, bowing to Maria across the sink. Hark, he added, they're singing outside. The company had left the table and had assembled about the melodian where Selena was seated. At first they attempted some of the popular songs of the day, but were obliged to give over as none of them knew any of the words beyond the first line of the chorus. Finally, they pitched upon nearer, my God to thee as the only song which they all knew. Selena sang the alto very much off the key. Marcus intoned the bass, scowling fiercely, his chin drawn into his collar. They sang in very slow time. The song became a dirge, a lamentable prolonged wail of distress. Nearer, my God to thee, nearer to thee. At the end of the song, uncle Oberman put on his hat without a word of warning. Instantly there was a hush, the guests rose. Not going so soon, uncle Oberman protested Trina politely. He only nodded. Marcus sprang forward to help him with his overcoat. Mr. Sipa came up and the two men shook hands. Then uncle Oberman delivered himself of an oracular phrase. No doubt he had been meditating it during the supper. Addressing Mr. Sipa, he said, you have not lost a daughter, but have gained a son. These were the only words he had spoken the entire evening. He departed. The company was profoundly impressed. About 20 minutes later, when Marcus Schuller was entertaining the guests by eating almonds, shells and all, Mr. Sipa started to his feet, watch in hand. Half bust 11, he shouted. Attention, der Daim half arrive, stop everything. We depart. This was a signal for tremendous confusion. Mr. Sipa immediately threw off his previous air of relaxation. The calf's head was forgotten. He was once again the leader of vast enterprises. To me, to me, he cried. Mama Durvin's August. He marshaled his tribe together with tremendous commanding gestures. The sleeping twins were suddenly shaken into a dazed consciousness. August, whom the almond eating of Marcus Schuller had petrified with admiration, was smacked to a realization of his surroundings. Old Granus, with a certain delicacy that was one of his characteristics, felt instinctively that the guests, the mere outsiders, should depart before the family began its leave taking of Trina. He withdrew unobtrusively after a hasty good night to the bride and groom. The rest followed almost immediately. Well, Mr. Sipa, explained Marcus, we won't see each other for some time. Marcus had given up his first intention of joining in the Sipa migration. He spoke in a large way of certain affairs that would keep him in San Francisco till the fall. Of late, he had entertained ambitions of a ranch life. He would breed cattle. He had a little money and was only looking for someone to go in with. He dreamed of a cowboy's life and saw himself in an entrancing vision involving silver spurs and untamed Broncos. He told himself that Trina had cast him off, that his best friend had played him for a sucker, that the proper caper was to withdraw from the world entirely. If you hear of anybody down there, he went on speaking to Mr. Sipa that wants to go in for ranching, why, just let me know. So, so, answered Mr. Sipa abstractedly, peering out for Auguste's cap. Marcus bade the Sipa's farewell. He and Hies went out together. One heard them as they descended the stairs, discussing the possibility of Frenna's place being still open. Then Miss Baker departed after kissing Trina on both cheeks. Selena went with her. There was only the family left. Trina watched them go one by one with an increasing feeling of uneasiness and vague apprehension. Soon they would all be gone. Well, Trina, exclaimed Mr. Sipa, goodbye, perhaps you come visit us sometime. Mrs. Sipa began crying again. Ah, Trina, when shall I ever see you again? Tears came to Trina's eyes in spite of herself. She put her arms around her mother. Oh, sometime, sometime, she cried. The twins and Auguste clung to Trina's skirts, fretting and whippering. McTeague was miserable. He stood apart from the group in a corner. None of them seemed to think of him. He was not of them. Right to me very often, Mama, and tell me about everything, about Auguste and the twins. It is time, cried Mr. Sipa nervously. Goodbye, Trina. Mama, Auguste, say goodbye, then we must go. Goodbye, Trina. He kissed her. Auguste and the twins were lifted up. Go, go, insisted Mr. Sipa, moving toward the door. Goodbye, Trina, exclaimed Mrs. Sipa, crying harder than ever. Doctor, where is the doctor? Doctor, be good to her, eh? Be very good, eh, won't you? Someday, doctor, you will have a daughter. Then you know perhaps how I feel, yes. They were standing at the door by this time. Mr. Sipa, halfway down the stairs, kept calling, go, go, we missed the train. Mrs. Sipa released Trina and started down the hall. The twins and Auguste following. Trina stood in the doorway, looking after them through her tears. They were going, going. When would she ever see them again? She was to be left alone with this man to whom she had just been married. A sudden, vague terror seized her. She left McTeague and ran down the hall and caught her mother around the neck. I don't want you to go, she whispered in her mother's ear, sobbing, oh, mama, I, I'm afraid. Ah, Trina, you break my heart. Don't cry, poor little girl. She rocked Trina in her arms, as though she were a child again. Poor little scared girl, don't cry, so, so, so. There's nothing to be afraid of. There, go to your husband. Listen, Papa's calling again. Go then, goodbye. She loosened Trina's arms and started down the stairs. Trina leaned over the banisters, straining her eyes after her mother. What is it, Trina? Oh, goodbye, goodbye, come, come, we missed the train. Mama, oh, mama, what is it, Trina? Goodbye, goodbye, little daughter. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. The street door closed, the silence was profound. For another moment, Trina stood leaning over the banisters, looking down into the empty stairway. It was dark, there was nobody. They, her father, her mother, the children had left her, left her alone. She faced about toward the rooms, faced her husband, faced her new home, the new life that was to begin now. The hall was empty and deserted. The great flat around her seemed new and huge and strange. She felt horribly alone. Even Maria and the hired waiter were gone. On one of the floors above, she heard a baby crying. She stood there an instant in the dark hall, in her wedding finery, looking about her, listening. From the open door of the sitting room streamed a gold bar of light. She went down the hall by the open door of the sitting room, going on toward the hall door of the bedroom. As she softly passed the sitting room, she glanced hastily in. The lamps and the gas were burning brightly. The chairs were pushed back from the table just as the guests had left them. And the table itself, abandoned, deserted, presented to view the vague confusion of its dishes, its knives and forks, its empty platters, and crumpled napkins. The dentist sat there leaning on his elbows, his back toward her. Against the white blur of the table, he looked colossal. Above his giant shoulders rose his thick red neck and mane of yellow hair. The light shone pink through the gristle of his enormous ears. Trina entered the bedroom, closing the door after her. At the sound, she heard mctig start and rise. Is that you, Trina? She did not answer, but paused in the middle of the room, holding her breath, trembling. The dentist crossed the outside room, parted the chenille portiers and came in. He came toward her quickly, making as if to take her in his arms. His eyes were light. No, no, cried Trina, shrinking from him. Suddenly, seized with the fear of him, the intuitive feminine fear of the male, her whole being quailed before him. She was terrified at his huge square cut head, his powerful salient jaw, his huge red hands, his enormous, resistless strength. No, no, I'm afraid. She cried, drawing back from him to the other side of the room. Afraid, answered the dentist in perplexity. What are you afraid of, Trina? I'm not going to hurt you. What are you afraid of? What indeed was Trina afraid of, she could not tell. But what did she know of mctig after all? Who was this man that had come into her life who had taken her from her home and from her parents, and with whom she was now left alone here in this strange, vast flat? Oh, I'm afraid, I'm afraid, she cried. Mctig came nearer, sat down beside her and put one arm around her. What are you afraid of, Trina? He said reassuringly. I don't want to frighten you. She looked at him wildly, her adorable little chin, quivering, the tears brimming in her narrow blue eyes. Then her glance took on a certain intendness and she peered curiously into his face, saying almost in a whisper, I'm afraid of you. But the dentist did not heed her. An immense joy seized upon him, the joy of possession. Trina was his very own now. She lay there in the hollow of his arm, helpless and very pretty. Those instincts that in him were so close to the surface suddenly leaped to life, shouting and clamoring, not to be resisted. He loved her. Ah, did he not love her? The smell of her hair, of her neck, rose to him. Suddenly he caught her in both his huge arms, crushing down her struggle with his immense strength, kissing her full upon the mouth. Then her great love for Biktiq suddenly flashed up and Trina's breast. She gave up to him as she had done before, yielding all at once to that strange desire of being conquered and subdued. She clung to him, her hands clasped behind his neck, whispering in his ear. Oh, you must be good to me. Very, very good to me, dear, for you're all that I have in this world now. End of Chapter 9. Chapter 10 of Biktiq. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Biktiq by Frank Norris. Chapter 10. That summer passed, then the winter. The wet season began in the last days of September and continued all through October, November and December. At long intervals would come a week of perfect days. The sky without a cloud, the air motionless, but touched with a certain nimbleness, a faint effervescence that was exhilarating. Then without warning during a night when a south wind blew, a gray scroll of cloud would unroll and hang high over the city. And the rain would come pattering down again at first in scattered showers, then in an uninterrupted drizzle. All day long, Trina sat in the bay window of the sitting room that commanded a view of a small section of Polk Street. As often as she raised her head, she could see the big market, a confectionery store, a bell hanger shop, and farther on above the roofs, the glass skylights and water tanks of the big public baths. In the near foreground ran the street itself. The cable cars trundled up and down, thumping heavily over the joints of the rails. Market carts by the score came and went, driven at a great rate by preoccupied young men in their shirt sleeves with pencils behind their ears or by reckless boys in blood-stained butcher's aprons. Upon the sidewalks, the little world of Polk Street swarmed and jostled through its daily round of life. On fine days, the great ladies from the avenue, one block above, invaded the street, appearing before the butcher stalls, intent upon their day's marketing. On rainy days, their servants, the Chinese cooks or the second girls took their places. These servants gave themselves great heirs, carrying their big cotton umbrellas as they had seen their mistresses carry their parasols and haggling in supercilious fashion with the market men, their chins up in the air. The rain persisted. Everything in the range of Trina's vision, from the tarpaulins on the market cart horses to the panes of glass in the roof of the public baths, looked glazed and varnished. The asphalt of the sidewalk shone like the service of a patent leather boot. Every hollow in the street held its little puddle that winked like an eye, each time a drop of rain struck into it. Trina still continued to work for Uncle Oberman. In the morning, she busied herself about the kitchen, the bedroom and the sitting room. But in the afternoon, for two or three hours after lunch, she was occupied with the Noah's Ark animals. She took her work to the bay window, spreading out a great square of canvas underneath her chair to catch the chips and shavings, which she used afterwards for lighting fires. One after another, she caught up the little blocks of straight-grained pine. The knife flashed between her fingers. The little figure grew rapidly under her touch, was finished and ready for painting in a wonderfully short time, and was tossed into the basket that stood at her elbow. But very often during that rainy winter after her marriage, Trina would pause in her work, her hands falling idly into her lap, her eyes, her narrow pale blue eyes, growing wide and thoughtful as she gazed unseeing out into the rain-washed street. She loved meek teak now with a blind, unreasoning love that admitted of no doubt or hesitancy. Indeed, it seemed to her that it was only after her marriage with the dentist that she had really begun to love him. With the absolute final surrender of herself, the irrevocable ultimate submission had come in affection the like of which she had never dreamed in the old B Street days. But Trina loved her husband, not because she fancied she saw in him any of those noble and generous qualities that inspire affection. The dentist might or might not possess them. It was all one with Trina. She loved him because she had given herself to him freely, unreservedly, had merged her individuality into his. She was his. She belonged to him forever and ever. Nothing that he could do, so she told herself, nothing that she herself could do could change her in this respect. Mek teak might cease to love her, might leave her, might even die. It would be all the same. She was his. But it had not been so at first. During those long rainy days of the fall, days when Trina was left alone for hours, at that time when the excitement and novelty of the honeymoon were dying down, when the new household was settling into its grooves, she passed through many an hour of misgiving, of doubt, and even of actual regret. Never would she forget one Sunday afternoon in particular. She had been married but three weeks. After dinner, she and little Miss Baker had gone for a bit of a walk to take advantage of an hour's sunshine and to look at some wonderful geraniums in a florist's window on Sutter Street. They had been caught in a shower and on returning to the flat, the little dressmaker had insisted on fetching Trina up to her tiny room and brewing her a cup of strong tea to take the chill off. The two women had chatted over their tea cups, the better part of the afternoon, then Trina had returned to her rooms. For nearly three hours, Mek teak had been out of her thoughts and as she came through their little suite singing softly to herself, she suddenly came upon him quite unexpectedly. Her husband was in the dental parlors lying back in his operating chair fast asleep. The little stove was crammed with coke. The room was overheated, the air thick and foul with the odors of ether, of coke gas, of stale beer and cheap tobacco. The dentist sprawled his gigantic limbs over the worn velvet of the operating chair. His coat and vest and shoes were off and his huge feet in their thick gray socks dangled over the edge of the footrest. His pipe, fallen from his half open mouth, had spilled the ashes into his lap while on the floor at his sides to the half empty pitcher of steam beer. His head had rolled limply upon one shoulder. His face was red with sleep and from his open mouth came a terrific sound of snoring. For a moment, Trina stood looking at him as he lay thus, prone, inert, half dressed and stupefied with the heat of the room, the steam beer and the fumes of the cheap tobacco. Then her little chin quivered and a sob rose to her throat. She fled from the parlors and locking herself in her bedroom, flung herself on the bed and burst into an agony of weeping. Ah, no, ah, no, she could not love him. It had all been a dreadful mistake and now it was irrevocable. She was bound to this man for life. If it was as bad as this now, only three weeks after her marriage, how would it be in the years to come? Year after year, month after month, hour after hour, she was to see this same face with its salient jaw, was to feel the touch of those enormous red hands, was to hear the heavy elephantine tread of those huge feet in thick gray socks. Year after year, day after day, there would be no change and it would last all her life. Either it would be one long continued revulsion or else worse than all, she would come to be content with him, would come to be like him, would sink to the level of steam beer and cheap tobacco and all her pretty ways, her clean, trim little habits would be forgotten since they would be thrown away upon her stupid, brutish husband. Her husband, that was her husband in there. She could yet hear his snores for life, for life. A great despair seized upon her. She buried her face in the pillow and thought of her mother with an infinite longing. Aroused at length by the chittering of the canary, McTeague had awakened slowly. After a while, he had taken down his concertina and played upon it the six very mournful heirs that he knew. Faced downward upon the bed, Trina still wept. Throughout that little sweet could be heard but two sounds, the lugubrious strains of the concertina and the noise of stifled weeping. That her husband should be ignorant of her distress seemed to Trina an additional grievance. With perverse inconsistency she began to wish him to come to her, to comfort her. He ought to know that she was in trouble, that she was lonely and unhappy. Oh, Mac, she called in a trembling voice but the concertina still continued to wail and lament. Then Trina wished she were dead and on the instant jumped up and ran into the dental parlors and threw herself into her husband's arms crying, Oh, Mac, dear, love me, love me big. I'm so unhappy. What, what, what? The dentist exclaimed, staring up bewildered, a little frightened. Nothing, nothing, only love me, love me always and always. But this first crisis, this momentary revolt as much a matter of high strung feminine nerves as of anything else passed and in the end Trina's affection for her old bear grew in spite of herself. She began to love him more and more not for what he was, but for what she had given up to him. Only once again did Trina undergo a reaction against her husband and then it was but the matter of an instant, brought on curiously enough by the sight of a bit of egg on Mac Teague's heavy mustache one morning just after breakfast. Then too, the pair had learned to make concessions little by little and all unconsciously they adapted their modes of life to suit each other. Instead of sinking to Mac Teague's level as she had feared, Trina found that she could make Mac Teague rise to hers and in this saw a solution of many a difficult and gloomy complication. For one thing, the dentist began to dress a little better. Trina even succeeding in inducing him to wear a high silk hat and a frock coat of a Sunday. Next he relinquished his Sunday afternoon's nap and beer in favor of three or four hours spent in the park with her, the weather permitting. So that gradually Trina's misgiving seized or when they did a sailor, she could at last meet them with a shrug of the shoulders saying to herself meanwhile, well it's done now and it can't be helped. One must make the best of it. During the first months of their married life these nervous relapses of hers had alternated with brusque outbursts of affection when her only fear was that her husband's love did not equal her own. Without an instance warning, she would clasp him about the neck rubbing her cheek against his, murmuring, dear old Mac, I love you so, I love you so. Oh, aren't we happy together Mac? Just us two and no one else? You love me as much as I love you, don't you Mac? Oh, if you shouldn't, if you shouldn't. But by the middle of the winter Trina's emotions oscillating at first from one extreme to another commenced to settle themselves to an equilibrium of calmness and placid quietude. Her household duties began more and more to absorb her attention for she was an admirable housekeeper keeping the little sweet and marvelous good order and regulating the schedule of expenditure with an economy that often bordered on positive niggardliness. It was a passion with her to save money. In the bottom of her trunk in the bedroom, she hit a brass match safe that answered the purposes of a savings bank. Each time she added a quarter or a half dollar to the little store, she laughed and sang with a veritable childish delight. Whereas if the butcher or milkman compelled her to pay an overcharge, she was unhappy for the rest of the day. She did not save this money for any ulterior purpose. She hoarded instinctively without knowing why, responding to the dentist's remonstruses with, yes, yes, I know, I'm a little miser, I know it. Trina had always been an economical little body, but it was only since her great winning in the lottery that she had become especially penurious. No doubt in her fear, lest their great good luck should demoralize them and lead to habits of extravagance, she had recoiled too far in the other direction. Never, never, never should a penny of that miraculous fortune be spent. Rather, should it be added to? It was a nest egg, a monstrous rock-like nest egg, not so large, however, but that it could be made larger. Already by the end of that winter, Trina had begun to make up the deficit of $200 that she had been forced to expend on the preparations for her marriage. McTig, on his part, never asked himself nowadays whether he loved Trina the wife as much as he had loved Trina the young girl. There had been a time when to kiss Trina, to take her in his arms had thrilled him from head to heel with a happiness that was beyond words. Even the smell of her wonderful, odorous hair had sent a sensation of faintness all through him. That time was long past now, though sudden outburst of affection on the part of his little woman, outburst that only increased in vehemence the longer they lived together, puzzled rather than pleased him. He had come to submit to them good-naturedly, answering her passionate inquiries with a, sure, sure Trina, sure I love you. What's the matter with you? There was no passion in the dentist's regard for his wife. He dearly liked to have her near him. He took an enormous pleasure in watching her as she moved about their rooms, very much at home, gay and singing from morning till night. And it was his great delight to call her into the dental parlors when a patient was in the chair and while he held the plugger to have her wrap in the gold fillings with the little boxwood mallet as he had taught her. But that tempest of passion, that overpowering desire that had suddenly taken possession of him that day when he had given her ether, again when he had caught her in his arms in the B Street station and again and again during the early days of their married life, rarely stirred him now. On the other hand, he was never assailed with doubts as to the wisdom of his marriage. Mekteig had relapsed to his wanted stilidity. He never questioned himself, never looked for motives, never went to the bottom of things. The year following upon the summer of his marriage was a time of great contentment for him. After the novelty of the honeymoon had passed, he slipped easily into the new order of things without a question. Thus his life would be for years to come. Trina was there, he was married and settled. He accepted the situation. The little animal comforts which for him constituted the enjoyment of life were ministered to at every turn or when they were interfered with, as in the case of his Sunday afternoon snap and beer, some agreeable substitute was found. In her attempts to improve Mekteig, to raise him from the stupid animal life to which he had been accustomed in his bachelor days, Trina was tactful enough to move so cautiously and with such slowness that the dentist was unconscious of any process of change. In the matter of the high silk hat, it seemed to him that the initiative had come from himself. Gradually the dentist improved under the influence of his little wife. He no longer went abroad with frayed cuffs about his huge red wrists or worse without any cuffs at all. Trina kept his linen clean and mended doing most of his washing herself and insisting that he should change his flannels, thick red flannels they were with enormous bone buttons once a week, his linen shirts twice a week, and his collars and cuffs every second day. She broke him of the habit of eating with his knife. She caused him to substitute bottled beer in the place of steam beer and she induced him to take off his hat to Miss Baker, to Heize's wife, and to the other women of his acquaintance. Mekteig no longer spent an evening at Frennitz. Instead of this, he brought a couple of bottles of beer up to the rooms and shared it with Trina. In his parlors, he was no longer gruff and indifferent to his female patients. He arrived at that stage where he could work and talk to them at the same time. He even accompanied them to the door and held it open for them when the operation was finished, bowing them out with great nods of his huge square cut head. Besides all this, he began to observe the broader, larger interests of life, interests that affected him not as an individual, but as a member of a class, a profession or a political party. He read the papers, he subscribed to a dental magazine, on Easter, Christmas and New Years, he went to church with Trina. He commenced to have opinions, convictions. It was not fair to deprive tax-paying women of the privilege to vote. A university education should not be a prerequisite for admission to a dental college. The Catholic priests were to be restrained in their efforts to gain control of the public schools. But most wonderful of all, Mekteig began to have ambitions, very vague, very confused ideas of something better, ideas for the most part borrowed from Trina. Someday perhaps he and his wife would have a house of their own. What a dream. A little home all to themselves, with six rooms and a bath, with a grass-plat in front and kyla lilies. Then there would be children. He would have a son whose name would be Daniel, who would go to high school and perhaps turn out to be a prosperous plumber or house painter. Then the son Daniel would marry a wife and they would all live together in that six room and bath house. Daniel would have little children. Mekteig would grow old among them all. The dentist saw himself as a venerable patriarch surrounded by children and grandchildren. So the winter passed. It was a season of great happiness for the Mekteigs. The new life jostled itself into its grooves. A routine began. On weekdays they rose at half past six being awakened by the boy who brought the bottled milk and who had instructions to pound upon the bedroom door in passing. Trina made breakfast, coffee, bacon and eggs, and a roll of Vienna bread from the bakery. The breakfast was eaten in the kitchen on the round deal table covered with the shiny oil cloth table spread tacked on. After breakfast, the dentist immediately betook himself to his parlors to meet his early morning appointments. Those made with the clerks and shop girls who stopped in for half an hour on their way to their work. Trina meanwhile, busied herself about the suite clearing away the breakfast, sponging off the oil cloth table spread, making the bed, pottering about with a broom or duster or cleaning rack. Towards 10 o'clock, she opened the windows to air the rooms, then put on her drab jacket, her little round turban with its red wing, took the butchers and grocers books from the knife basket in the drawer of the kitchen table and ascended to the street where she spent a delicious hour, now in the huge market across the way, now in the grocers store with its fragrant aroma of coffee and spices, and now before the counters of the haberdasher and tent on a bit of shopping, turning over ends of veiling, strips of elastic or silvers of whale bone. On the street, she rubbed elbows with the great ladies of the avenue in their beautiful dresses or at intervals she met an acquaintance or two. Miss Baker or Heise's lame life or Mrs. Ryre. At time, she passed the flat and looked up at the windows of her home, marked by the huge golden muller that projected flashing from the bay window of the parlors. She saw the open windows of the sitting room, the Nottingham lace curtain stirring and billowing in the draught, and she caught sight of Maria Macapa's toweled head as the Mexican maid of all work went to and fro in the suite, sweeping or carrying away the ashes. Occasionally in the windows of the parlors, she beheld nictiques rounded back as he bent to his work. Sometimes even they saw each other and waved their hands gaily in recognition. By 11 o'clock, Trina returned to the flat, her brown net reticule, once her mother's, full of parcels. At once she set about getting lunch, sausages perhaps with mashed potatoes, or last evening's joint warmed over or made into a stew, chocolate which Trina adored, and a side dish or two, a salted herring or a couple of artichokes or a salad. At half past 12, the dentist came in from the parlors, bringing with him the smell of creosote and of ether. They sat down to lunch in the sitting room. They told each other of their doings throughout the forenoon. Trina showed her purchases. Nictique recounted the progress of an operation. At one o'clock they separated. The dentist returning to the parlors, Trina settling to her work on the Noah's Ark animals. At about three o'clock, she put this work away, and for the rest of the afternoon was variously occupied. Sometimes it was the mending, sometimes a wash, sometimes new curtains to be put up, or a bit of carpet to be tacked down, or a letter to be written, or a visit generally to Miss Baker to be returned. Towards five o'clock the old woman whom they had hired for that purpose came to cook supper, for even Trina was not equal to the task of preparing three meals a day. This woman was French and was known to the flat as Augustine. No one taking enough interest in her to inquire for her last name. All that was known of her was that she was a decayed French laundress. Miserably poor, her trade long since ruined by Chinese competition. Augustine cooked well, but she was otherwise undesirable, and Trina lost patience with her at every moment. The old French woman's most marked characteristic was her timidity. Trina could scarcely address her a simple direction without Augustine quailing and shrinking. A reproof, however gentle, threw her into an agony of confusion. While Trina's anger promptly reduced her to a state of nervous collapse, wherein she lost all power of speech while her head began to bob and nod with an incontrollable twitching of the muscles, much like the oscillations of the head of a toy donkey. Her timidity was exasperating. Her very presence in the room unstrung the nerves while her morbid eagerness to avoid offense only served to develop in her a clumsiness that was at times beyond belief. More than once Trina had decided that she could no longer put up with Augustine, but each time she retained her as she reflected upon her admirably cooked cabbage soups and tapioca puddings and which in Trina's eyes was her chiefest recommendation, the pittance for which she was contented to work. Augustine had a husband. He was a spirit medium, a professor. At times he held séances in the larger rooms of the flat playing vigorously upon a mouth organ and invoking a familiar whom he called Edna and whom he asserted was an Indian maiden. The evening was a period of relaxation for Trina and McTig. They had separate six after which McTig smoked his pipe and read the papers for half an hour while Trina and Augustine cleared away the table and washed the dishes. Then as often as not, they went out together. One of their amusements was to go downtown after dark and promenade market and Kearney streets. It was very gay. A great many others were promenading there also. All of the stores were brilliantly lighted and many of them still open. They walked about aimlessly, looking into the shop windows. Trina would take McTig's arm and he very much embarrassed at that would thrust both hands into his pockets and pretend not to notice. They stopped before the jewelers and milliner's windows, finding a great delight in picking up thanks for each other, saying how they would choose this and that if they were rich. Trina did most of the talking. McTig merely approving by a growl or a movement of the head or shoulders, she was interested in the displays of some of the cheaper stores, but he found an irresistible charm in an enormous golden molar with four prongs that hung at a corner of Kearney street. Sometimes they would look at Mars or at the moon through the street telescopes or sit for a time in the rotunda of a vast department store where a band played every evening. Occasionally they met Heis the harness maker and his wife with whom they had become acquainted. Then the evening was concluded by a four cornered party in the Luxembourg, a quiet German restaurant under a theater. Trina had a tamale and a glass of beer. Mrs. Heis, who was a decayed writing teacher, ate salads with glasses of grenadine and currant syrups. Heis drank cocktails and whiskey straight and urged a dentist to join him. But McTig was obstinate, shaking his head. I can't drink that stuff, he said. It don't agree with me somehow. I go kinda crazy after two glasses. So he gorged himself with beer and Frankfurter sausages plastered with German mustard. When the annual mechanics fair opened, McTig and Trina often spent their evenings there, studying the exhibits carefully. Since in Trina's estimation, education meant knowing things and being able to talk about them. Wearing of this, they would go up into the gallery and leaning over, looked down into the huge amphitheater full of light and color and movement. There rose to them the vast shuffling noise of thousands of feet and a subdued roar of conversation like the sound of a great mill. Mingled with this was the purring of distant machinery, the splashing of a temporary fountain and the rhythmic jangling of a brass band. While in the piano exhibit, a hired performer was playing upon a concert grand with a great flourish. Nearer at hand they could catch ends of conversation and notes of laughter, the noise of moving dresses and the rustle of stiffly starched skirts. Here in their school children elbowed their way through the crowd, crying shrilly, their hands full of advertisement pamphlets, fans, picture cards and toy whips while the air itself was full of the smell of fresh popcorn. They even spent some time in the art gallery. Trina's cousin, Selena, who gave lessons in hand painting at two bits an hour, generally had an exhibit on the walls which they were interested to find. It usually was a bunch of yellow poppies painted on black velvet and framed in guilt. They stood before it some little time, hazarding their opinions and then moved on slowly from one picture to another. Trina had mcteague by a catalog and made a duty of finding the title of every picture. This too, she told mcteague, as a kind of education one ought to cultivate. Trina professed to be fond of art, having perhaps acquired a taste for painting and sculpture from her experience with the Noah's Ark animals. 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 idol 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 brought 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 male cars. Its place was taken by a German saloon called a Weinstube 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 Schuller 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 or 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 highs 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, outrage constituencies, opinions warped by personal bias, eyes blinded by party prejudice, et cetera. Of her family, Trina heard every fortnight in letters from her mother. The upholstery business which Mr. Sipa had bought was doing poorly and Mrs. Sipa bewailed the day she had ever left B Street. Mr. Sipa was losing money every month. August who was to have gone to school had been forced to go work in the store picking waste. Mrs. Sipa was obliged to take a lodger or two. Affairs were in a very bad way. Occasionally she spoke of Marcus. Mr. Sipa had not forgotten him despite his own troubles but still had an eye out for someone 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 ended 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 pass 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 sorted. The house was a wooden two story arrangement built by a misguided contractor and 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 calor lilies. The front door boasted an electric bell but for the McTeague's 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 butt 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 stationary and notion bizarre next to Heise's Harner shop on Polk Street while the oldest son played a third violin in the orchestra of the theater. The family rented the house unfurnished for $35 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 unwanted 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 wash bowls littered the sidewalks. The Hungarian family were moving out. Oh, Mac, look, guest 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, McTig 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. $35 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 talks though we were paupers. Ain't we got $5,000? 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 saving up a good deal besides, went on McTig, 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 $100, 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. $100. What are you talking of, Mac? I've not got 50. I've not got 30. Oh, let's take that little house, broken McTig. 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 tomorrow. 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, McTig had 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 McTig, 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 McTig 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. McTig could not wait until lunchtime to tell the news to Trina. As soon as he heard her come in, he laid down the plaster of Paris mold he was making and went out into the kitchen and found her chopping up onions. Well, Trina, he said, we've 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 30 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 at all. Well, well, Stammer and 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 $35 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 $35, mumbled the dentist if we've got to. $35 just thrown out the window, cried Trina, her teeth clicking. Every instinct of her parsimony aroused. Oh, you the thick wittiest man that I ever knew. Do you think we're millionaires? Oh, to think of losing $35 like that. Tears were in her eyes. Tears of grief as well as of anger. Never had McTeague seen as 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 the back by her outburst. I say that you will find that money, that $35 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 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. Hies pays his bill next week. It's $43 and you can just pay the $35 out of that. Why, you got a whole hundred dollars saved up in your match safe, shattered the dentist, throwing at 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 have 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. Mizer, shouted McTeague. Mizer, you're worse than old Zerkow. All right, all right, keep your money. I'll pay the whole 35. 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 funding solace in his concertina, playing his six legubrious heirs over and over again, or swearing frightful oaths at his canary. When highs 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 McTeague's 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, $35 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 $35, then at least 15 or 16, 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 $10. 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 her 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 matchbox 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 matchbox in 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 shimmy bag. The bag was shrunken and withered, long wrinkles appeared running downward from the drawstring. 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 matchbox in her trunk, turning the key with the 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 used 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. End of chapter 10.