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The Complete TVorks of Frank Norris 
 
 McTeague and 
 A Man s Woman 
 
 STORIES OF 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 BY 
 
 Frank Norris 
 
 TORK P. F. COLLIER & SON PUBLISHERS 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY 
 DOUBLEDAY & MC CLURE CO. 
 
 Add l 
 
 ^l , f , 
 GIFT 
 
DEDICATED TO 
 
 L. E. GATES 
 
 OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
 
 M823776 
 
 A III NORMS 
 
 
McTEAGUE 
 
 IT was Sunday, and, according to his custom on that day, Mc- 
 Teague took his dinner at two in the afternoon at the car conduc 
 tors coffee-joint on Polk Street. He had a thick gray soup ; heavy, 
 underdone meat, very hot, on a cold plate ; two kinds of vegetables ; 
 and a sort of suet pudding, full of strong butter and sugar. On 
 his way back to his office, one block above, he stopped at Joe 
 Frenna s saloon and Dcught a pitcher of steam beer. It was his 
 habit to leave the pitcher there on his way to dinner. 
 
 Once in his office, or, as he called it on his sign-board, "Dental 
 Parlors," he took off his coat and shoes, unbuttoned his vest, and, 
 having crammed his little stove full of coke, lay back in his operat 
 ing chair at the bay window, reading the paper, drinking his beer, 
 and smoking his huge porcelain pipe while his food digested; crop- 
 full, stupid, and warm. By and by, gorged with steam beer, and 
 overcome by the heat of the room, the cheap tobacco, and the 
 effects of his heavy meal, he dropped off to sleep. Late in the after 
 noon his canary bird, in its gilt cage just over his head, began to 
 sing. He woke slowly, finished the rest of his beer very flat and 
 stale by this time and taking down his concertina from the book 
 case, where in week days it kept the company of seven volumes of 
 "Allen s Practical Dentist," played upon it some half-dozen very 
 mournful airs. 
 
 McTeague looked forward to these Sunday afternoons as a 
 period of relaxation and enjoyment. He invariably spent them in 
 the same fashion. These were his only pleasures to eat, to smoke, 
 to sleep, and to play upon his concertina. 
 
 The six lugubrious airs that he knew always carried him back 
 to the time when he was a car-boy at the Big Dipper Mine in 
 Placer County, ten years before. He remembered the years he 
 had spent there trundling the heavy cars of ore in and out of the 
 tunnel under the direction of his father. For thirteen days of each 
 
 (3) 
 
4 McTeague 
 
 fortnight his father was a steady, hard-working shift-boss of the 
 mine. Every other Sunday he became an irresponsible animal, a 
 beast, a brute, crazy with alcohol. 
 
 McTeague remembered his mother, too, who, with the help of the 
 Chinaman, cooked for forty miners. She was an overworked drudge, 
 fiery and energetic for all that, filled with the one idea of having her 
 son rise in life and enter a profession. The chance had come at last 
 when the father died, corroded with alcohol, collapsing fn a few 
 hours. Two or three years later a traveling dentist visited the 
 mine and put up his tent near the bunk-house. He was more or 
 less of a charlatan, but he fired Mrs. McTeague s ambition, and 
 young McTeague went away with him to learn his profession. He 
 had learned it after a fashion, mostly by watching the charlatan oper 
 ate. He had-re&d many of the necessary books, but he was too 
 hopelessly stupid to get much benefit from them. 
 
 Then one day at San Francisco had come the news of his 
 mother s death; she had left him some money not much, but 
 enough to set him up in business; so he had cut loose from the 
 charlatan and had opened his "Dental Parlors" on Polk Street, an 
 "accommodation street" of small shops in the residence quarter of 
 the town. Here he had slowly collected a clientele of butcher boys, 
 shop girls, drug clerks, and car conductors. He made but few 
 acquaintances. Polk Street called him the "Doctor" and spoke of 
 his enormous strength. For McTeague was a young giant, carry 
 ing his huge shock of blond hair six feet three inches from the 
 ground; moving his immense limbs, heavy with ropes of muscle, 
 slowly, ponderously. His hands were enormous, red, and covered 
 with a fell of stiff yellow hair; they were hard as wooden mallets, 
 strong as vises, the hands of the old-time car-boy. Often he dis 
 pensed with forceps and extracted a refractory tooth with his thumb 
 and finger. His head was square-cut, angular; the jaw salient, like 
 that of the carnivora. 
 
 McTeague s mind was as his body, heavy, slow to act, sluggish. 
 yet there was nothing vicious about the man. Altogether he su^- 
 gested the (draught horse, immensely strong, stupid, docile, obedient. 
 
 When he opened his "Dental Parlors," he felt that his life was a 
 success, that he could hope for nothing better. In spite of the 
 name, there was but one room. .It was a corner room on the second 
 floor over the branch post-office, and faced the street. McTeague 
 made it do for a bedroom as well, sleeping on the big bed-lounge 
 against the wall opposite the window. There was a washstand 
 
McTeague j 
 
 behind the screen in the corner where he manufactured his molds. 
 In the round bay window were his operating chair, his dental engine, 
 and the movable rack on which he laid out his instruments. Three 
 chairs, a bargain at the second-hand store, ranged themselves against 
 the wall with military precision underneath a steel engraving of the 
 court of Lorenzo de Medici, which he had bought because there 
 were a great many figures in it for the money. Over the bed- 
 lounge hung a rifle manufacturer s advertisement calendar which 
 he never used. The other ornaments were a small marble-topped 
 centre table covered with back numbers of "The American Sys 
 tem of Dentistry," a stone pug dog sitting before the little stove, 
 and a thermometer. A stand of shelves occupied one corner, filled 
 with the seven volumes of "Allen s Practical Dentist." On the top 
 shelf McTeague kept his concertina and a bag of bird seed for the 
 canary. The whole place exhaled a mingled odor of bedding, o*eo- 
 sote, and ether. 
 
 But for one thing McTeague would have been perfectly con- s 
 tented. Just outside his window was his sign-board a modest 
 affair that read: "Doctor McTeague. Dental Parlors. Gas 
 Given"; but that was all. It was his ambition, Jhis__dream, to have 
 projecting from that corner window a huge gilded tooth, a molar 
 with enormous prongs, something gorgeous and attractive. He 
 would have it some day, on that he was resolved; but as yet such 
 a thing was far beyond his means. 
 
 When he had finished the last of his beer, McTeague slowly 
 wipedLhis lips and huge yellow mustache with the side of his hand. 
 Bull-Hke) he heaved himself laboriously up, and, going to the window, 
 "Stood looking down into the street. 
 
 The street never failed to interest him. It was one of those 
 cross streets peculiar to Western cities, situated in the heart of the 
 residence quarter, but occupied by small tradespeople who lived in 
 the rooms above their shops. There were corner drug stores with 
 huge jars of red, yellow, and green liquids in their windows, very 
 brave and gay; stationers stores, where illustrated weeklies were 
 tacked upon bulletin boards ; barber shops with cigar stands in their 
 vestibules ; sad-looking plumbers offices ; cheap restaurants, in whose 
 windows one saw piles of unopened oysters weighted down by cubes 
 of ice, and china pigs and cows knee deep in layers of white beans. 
 At one..end of the _street McTeague could see the huge power-house 
 of th<e cable line. Immediately opposite him was a great market; 
 while further on, over the chimney stacks of the intervening houses, 
 
6 McTeague 
 
 the glass roof of some huge public baths glittered like crystal in 
 the afternoon sun. Underneath him the branch post-office was open 
 ing- its doors, as was its custom between two and three o clock on 
 Sunday afternoons. An acrid odor of ink rose upward to him. 
 Occasionally a cable car passed, trundling heavily, with a strident 
 whirring of jostled glass windows. 
 
 On week days the street was very lively. It woke to its work 
 about seven o clock, at the time when the newsboys made their ap 
 pearance together with the day laborers. The laborers went trudg 
 ing past in a straggling file plumbers apprentices, their pockets 
 stuffed with sections of lead pipe, tweezers, and pliers; carpenters, 
 carrying nothing but their little pasteboard lunch baskets, painted 
 to imitate leather; gangs of street workers, their overalls soiled 
 with yellow clay, their picks and long-handled shovels over their 
 shoulders; plasterers, spotted with lime from head to foot. This 
 little army of workers, tramping steadily in one direction, met and 
 mingled with other toilers of a different description conductors 
 and "swing men" of the cable company going on duty; heavy-eyed 
 night clerks from the drug stores on their way home to sleep; 
 roundsmen returning to the precinct police station to make their 
 ni^ht report, and Chinese market gardeners teetering past under 
 their heavy baskets. The cable cars began to fill up; all along the 
 street could be seen the shopkeepers taking down their shutters. 
 
 Between seven and eight the street breakfasted. Now and then 
 a waiter from one of the cheap restaurants crossed from one side 
 walk to the other, balancing on one palm a tray covered with a 
 napkin. Everywhere was the smell of coffee and of frying steaks. 
 A little later, following in the path of the day laborers, came the 
 clerks and shop girls, dressed with a certain cheap smartness, always 
 in a hurry, glancing apprehensively at the power-house clock. Their 
 employers followed an hour or so later on the cable cars for the 
 most part whiskered gentlemen with huge stomachs, reading the 
 morning papers with great gravity; bank cashiers and insurance 
 clerks with flowers in their buttonholes. 
 
 At the same time the school-children invaded the street, filling 
 the air with a clamor of shrill voices, stopping at the stationers 
 shops, or idling a moment in the doorways of the candy stores. For 
 over half an hour they held possession of the sidewalks, then sud 
 denly disappeared, leaving behind one or two stragglers who hur 
 ried along with great strides of their little thin legs, very anxious 
 and preoccupied. 
 
McTeague 7 
 
 Toward eleven o clock the ladies from the great avenue a block 
 above Polk Street made their appearance, promenading the side 
 walks leisurely, deliberately. They were at their morning s market 
 ing. They were handsome women, beautifully dressed. They knew 
 by name their butchers and grocers and vegetable men. From his 
 window McTeague saw them in front of the stalls, gloved and 
 veiled and daintily shod, the subservient provision men at their 
 elbows, scribbling hastily in the order books. They all seemed to 
 know one another, these grand ladies from the fashionable avenue. 
 Meetings took place here and there; a conversation was begun; 
 others arrived; groups were formed; little impromptu receptions 
 were held before the chopping blocks of butchers stalls, or on the 
 sidewalk, around boxes of berries and fruit. 
 
 From noon to evening the population of the street was of a 
 mixed character. The street was busiest at that time; a vast and 
 prolonged murmur arose the mingled shuffling of feet, the rattle of 
 wheels, the heavy trundling of cable cars. At four o clock the 
 school-children once more swarmed the sidewalks, again disappear 
 ing with surprising suddenness. At six the great homeward march 
 commenced ; the cars were crowded, the laborers thronged the side 
 walks, the newsboys chanted the evening papers. Then all at once 
 the street fell quiet ; hardly a soul was in sight ; the sidewalks were 
 deserted. It was supper hour. Evening began ; and one by one a 
 multitude of lights, from the demoniac glare of the druggists win 
 dows to the dazzling blue whiteness of the electric globes, grew thick 
 from street corner to street corner. Once more the street was 
 crowded. Now there was no thought but for amusement. The 
 cable cars were loaded with theatre-goers men in high hats and 
 young girls in furred opera cloaks. On the sidewalks were groups 
 and couples the plumbers apprentices, the girls of the ribbon 
 counters, the little families that lived on the second stories over 
 their shops, the dressmakers, the small doctors, the harness-makers 
 all the various inhabitants of the street were abroad, strolling idly 
 from shop window to shop window, taking the air after the day s 
 work. Groups of girls collected on the corners, talking and laugh 
 ing very loud, making remarks upon the young men that passed 
 them. The tamale men appeared. A band of Salvationists began 
 to sing before a saloon. 
 
 Then, little by little, Polk Street dropped back to solitude. 
 Eleven o clock struck from the power-house clock. Lights were 
 extinguished. At one o clock the cable stopped, leaving an abrupt 
 
3 McTeague 
 
 silence in the air. All at once it seemed very still. The only 
 noises were the occasional footfalls of a policeman and the per 
 sistent calling of ducks and geese in the closed market. The street 
 was asleep. 
 
 Day after day, McTeague saw the same panorama unroll itself. 
 The bay wndow of his "Dental Parlors" was for him a point of 
 vantage from which he watched the world go past. 
 
 On Sundays, however, all was changed. As he stood in the 
 bay window, after finishing his beer, wiping his lips, and looking out 
 into the street, McTeague was conscious of the difference. Nearly 
 all the stores were closed. No wagons passed. A few people hur 
 ried up and down the sidewalks, dressed in cheap Sunday finery. 
 A cable car went by ; on the outside seats were a party of returning 
 picnickers. The mother, the father, a young man, and a young girl, 
 and three children. The two older people held empty lunch baskets 
 in their laps, while the bands of the children s hats were stuck full 
 of oak leaves. The girl carried a huge bunch of wilting poppies and 
 wild flowers. 
 
 As the car approached McTeague s window the young man got 
 up and swung himself off the platform, waving good-by to the party. 
 Suddenly McTeague recognized him. 
 
 "There s Marcus Schouler," he muttered behind his mustache. 
 
 Marcus Schouler was the dentist s one intimate friend. The ac 
 quaintance had begun at the car conductors coffee-joint, where the 
 two occupied the same table and met at every meal. Then they 
 made the discovery that they both lived in the same flat, Marcus 
 occupying a room on the floor above McTeague. On different 
 occasions McTeague had treated Marcus for an ulcerated tooth and 
 had refused to accept payment. Soon it came to be an understood 
 thing between them. They were "pals." 
 
 McTeague, listening, heard Marcus go upstairs to his room 
 above. In a few minutes his door opened again. McTeague knew 
 that he had come out into the hall and was leaning over the banisters. 
 
 "Oh, Mac !" he called. McTeague came to his door. 
 
 "Hullo! s that you, Mark?" 
 
 "Sure," answered Marcus. "Come on up." 
 
 "You come on down." 
 
 "No, come on up." 
 
 "Oh, you come on down." 
 
 "Oh, you lazy duck !" retorted Marcus, coming down the stairs. 
 
 "Been out to the Cliff House on a picnic," he explained as he 
 
McTeague 9 
 
 sat down on the bed-lounge, "with my uncle and his people the 
 Sieppes, you know. By damn ! it was hot," he suddenly vociferated. 
 "Just look at that! Just look at that!" he cried, dragging at his 
 limp collar. "That s the third one since morning ; it is it is, for a 
 fact and you got your stove going." He began to tell about the 
 picnic, talking very loud and fast, gesturing furiously, very excited 
 over trivial details. Marcus could not talk without getting excited. 
 
 "You ought t have seen, y ought t have seen. I tell you, it was 
 outa sight. It was ; it was, for a fact." 
 
 "Yes, yes," answered McTeague, bewildered, trying to follow. 
 "Yes, that s so." 
 
 In recounting a certain dispute with an awkward bicyclist, in 
 which it appeared he had become involved, Marcus quivered with 
 rage. " Say that again/ says I to um. Just say that once more, 
 and here a rolling explosion of oaths " you ll go back to the 
 city in the Morgue wagon. Ain t I got a right to cross a street 
 even, I d like to know, without being run down what? I say it s 
 outrageous. I d a knifed him in another minute. It was an outrage. 
 I says it was an outrage." 
 
 "Sure it was," McTeague hastened to reply. "Sure, sure." 
 
 "Oh, and we had an accident," shouted the other, suddenly off 
 on another tack. "It was awful. Trina was in the swing there 
 that s my cousin Trina, you know who I mean and she fell out. 
 By damn ! I thought she d killed herself ; struck her face on a rock 
 and knocked out a front tooth. It s a wonder she didn t kill her 
 self. It is a wonder; it is, for a fact. Ain t it now? Huh? Ain t 
 it ? Y ought t have seen." 
 
 McTeague hacj a vague idea that Marcus Schouler was stuck on 
 his cousin Trina. They "kept company" a good deal; Marcus 
 took dinner with the Sieppes every Saturday evening at their home 
 at B Street station, across the bay, and Sunday afternoons he and 
 the family usually made little excursions into the suburbs. Mc 
 Teague began to wonder dimly how it was that on this occasion 
 Marcus had not gone home with his cousin. As sometimes happens, 
 Marcus furnished the explanation upon the instant. 
 
 "I promised a duck up here on the avenue I d call for his dog 
 at four this afternoon." 
 
 Marcus was Old Grannis s assistant in a little dog hospital that 
 the latter had opened in a sort of alley just off Polk Street, some 
 four blocks above. Old Grannis lived in one of the back rooms 
 of McTeague s flat. He was an Englishman and an expert dog 
 
io McTeague 
 
 surgeon, but Marcus Schouler was a Bungler in the profession. 
 His father had been a veterinary surgeon who had kept a livery 
 stable near by, on California Street, and Marcus s knowledge of the 
 diseases of domestic animals had been picked up in a haphazard 
 way, much after the manner of McTeague s education. Somehow 
 he managed to impress Old Grannis, a gentle, simple-minded old 
 man, with a sense of his fitness, bewildering him with a torrent of 
 empty phrases that he delivered with fierce gestures and with a 
 manner of the greatest conviction. 
 
 "You d better come along with me, Mac," observed Marcus. 
 "We ll get the duck s dog, and then we ll take a little walk, huh? 
 You got nothun to do. Come along." 
 
 McTeague went out with him, and the two friends proceeded 
 up the avenue to the house where the dog was to be found. It 
 was a huge mansion-like place, set in an enormous garden that oc 
 cupied a whole third of the block ; and while Marcus tramped up the 
 front steps and rang the doorbell boldly, to show his independence, 
 McTeague remained below on the sidewalk, gazing stupidly at the 
 curtained windows, the marble steps, and the bronze griffins, trou 
 bled and a little confused by all this massive luxury. 
 
 After they had taken the dog to the hospital and had left him 
 to whimper behind the wire netting, they returned to Polk Street 
 and had a glass of beer in the back room of Joe Frenna s corner 
 grocery. 
 
 Ever since they had left the huge mansion on the avenue, Mar 
 cus had been attacking the capitalists, a class which he pretended to 
 execrate. It was a pose which He often assumed, certain of im 
 pressing the dentist. Marcus had picked up a few half-truths of 
 political economy it was impossible to say where and as soon as 
 the two had settled themselves to their beer in Frenna s back room 
 he took up the theme of the labor question. He discussed it at the 
 top of his voice, vociferating, shaking his fists, exciting himself with 
 his own noise. He was continually making use of the stock phrases 
 of the professional politician phrases he had caught at some of the 
 ward "rallies" and "ratification meetings." These rolled off his 
 tongue with incredible emphasis, appearing at every turn of his 
 conversation "Outraged constituencies," "cause of labor," "wage- 
 earners," "opinions biased by personal interests," "eyes blinded by 
 party prejudice." McTeague listened to him, awe-struck. 
 
 "There s where the evil lies," Marcus would cry. "The masses 
 must learn self-control; it stands to reason. Look at the figures, 
 
McTeague 1 1 
 
 look at the figures. Decrease the number of wage-earners and you 
 increase wages, don t you? don t you?" 
 
 Absolutely stupid, and understanding never a word, McTeague 
 would answer: 
 
 "Yes, yes, that s it self-control that s the word." 
 
 "It s the capitalists that s ruining the cause of labor," shouted 
 Marcus, banging the table with his fist till the beer glasses danced ; 
 "white-livered drones, traitors, with their livers white as snow, eatun 
 the bread of widows and orphuns ; there s where the evil lies." 
 
 Stupefied with his clamor, McTeague answered, wagging his 
 head : 
 
 "Yes, that s it; I think it s their livers." 
 
 Suddenly Marcus fell calm again, forgetting his pose all in an 
 instant. 
 
 "Say, Mac, I told my cousin Trina to come round and see you 
 about that tooth of hers. She ll be in to-morrow, I guess." 
 
 II 
 
 AFTER his breakfast the following Monday morning, McTeague 
 looked over the appointments he had written down in the book- 
 slate that hung against the screen. His writing was immense, very 
 clumsy, and very round, with huge, full-bellied 1 s and h s. He saw v 
 that he had made an appointment at one o clock for Miss Baker, the 
 retired dressmaker, a little old maid who had a tiny room a few 
 doors down the hall. It adjoined that of Old Grannis. 
 
 Quite an affair had arisen from this circumstance. Miss Baker 
 and Old Grannis were both over sixty, and yet it was current talk 
 among the lodgers of the flat that the two were in love with each 
 other. Singularly enough, they were not even acquaintances ; never 
 a word had passed between them. At intervals they met on the 
 stairway ; he on his way to his little dog hospital, she returning from 
 a bit of marketing in the street. At such times they passed each 
 other with averted eyes, pretending a certain preoccupation, sud 
 denly seized with a great embarrassment, the timidity of a second 
 childhood. He went on about his business, disturbed and thought 
 ful. She hurried up to her tiny room, her curious little false curls 
 shaking with her agitation, the faintest suggestion of a flush coming 
 and going in her withered cheeks. The emotion of one of these 
 
12 McTeague 
 
 chance meetings remained with them during all the rest of the day. 
 Was it the first romance in the lives of each? Did Old Grannis 
 ever remember a certain face among those that he had known when 
 he was young Grannis the face of some pale-haired girl, such as one 
 sees in the old cathedral towns of England? Did Miss Baker still 
 treasure up in a seldom opened drawer or box some faded daguer 
 reotype, some strange old-fashioned likeness, with its curling hair 
 and high stock ? It was impossible to say. 
 
 Maria Macapa, the Mexican woman who took care of the lodg 
 ers rooms, had been the first to call the flat s attention to the affair, 
 spreading the news of it from room to room, from floor to floor. 
 Of late she had made a great discovery ; all the women folk of the 
 flat were yet vibrant with it. Old Grannis came home from his work 
 at four o clock, and between that time and six Miss Baker would sit 
 in her room, her hands idle in her lap, doing nothing, listening, 
 waiting. Old Grannis did the same, drawing his armchair near to 
 the wall, knowing that Miss Baker was upon the other side, con 
 scious, perhaps, that she was thinking of him; and there the two 
 would sit through the hours of the afternoon, listening and waiting, 
 they did not know exactly for what, but near to each other, sepa 
 rated only by the thin partition of their rooms. They had come to 
 know each other s habits. Old Grannis knew that at quarter of five 
 precisely Miss Baker made a cup of tea over the oil stove on the 
 stand between the bureau and the window. Miss Baker felt instinc 
 tively the exact moment when Ola Grannis took down his little bind 
 ing apparatus from the second shelf of his clothes closet and began 
 his favorite occupation of binding pamphlets pamphlets that he 
 never read, for all that. 
 
 In his "Parlors" McTeague began his week s work. He glanced 
 in the glass saucer in which he kept his sponge-gold, and noticing 
 that he had used up all his pellets, set about making some more. In 
 examining Miss Baker s teeth at the preliminary sitting he had 
 found a cavity in one of the incisors. Miss Baker had decided to 
 have it filled with gold. McTeague remembered now that it was 
 what is called a "proximate case," where there is not sufficient room 
 to fill with large pieces of gold. He told himself that he should 
 have to use "mats" in the filling. He made some dozen of these 
 "mats" from his tape of non-cohesive gold, cutting transversely 
 into small pieces that could be inserted edgewise between the teeth 
 and consolidated by packing. After he had made his "mats" he 
 continued with the other kind of gold fillings, such as he would have 
 
McTeague 13 
 
 occasion to use during the week ; "blocks" to be used in large prox 
 imal cavities, made by folding the tape on itself a number of times 
 and then shaping it with the soldering pliers ; "cylinders" for com 
 mencing fillings, which he formed by rolling the tape around a 
 needle called a "broach," cutting it afterward into different lengths. 
 He worked slowly, mechanically, turning the foil between his fin 
 gers with the manual dexterity that one sometimes sees in stupid/ 
 persons. His head was quite empty of all thought, and he did not 
 whistle over his work as another man might have done. The 
 canary made up for his silence, trilling and chittering continually, 
 spashing about in its morning bath, keeping up an incessant noise 
 and movement that would have been maddening to any one but Mc 
 Teague, who seemed to have no nerves at all. 
 
 After he had finished his fillings, he made a hook broach from 
 a bit of piano wire to replace an old one that he had lost. It was 
 time for his dinner then, and when he returned from the car con 
 ductors coffee- joint, he found Miss Baker waiting for him. 
 
 The ancient little dressmaker was at all times willing to talk 
 of Old Grannis to anybody that would listen, quite unconscious 
 of the gossip of the flat. McTeague found her all a-flutter with ex 
 citement. Something extraordinary had happened. She had found 
 out that the wall-paper in Old Grannis s room was the same as that 
 in hers. 
 
 "It has led me to thinking, Doctor McTeague," she exclaimed, 
 shaking her little false curls at him. "You know my room is so 
 small, anyhow, and the wall-paper being the same the pattern from 
 my room continues right into his I declare, I believe at one time 
 that was all one room. Think of it, do you suppose it was? It 
 almost amounts to our occupying the same room. I don t know 
 why, really do you think I should speak to the landlady about it? 
 He bound pamphlets last night until half-past nine. They say that 
 he s the younger son of a baronet ; that there are reasons for his not 
 coming to the title ; his stepfather wronged him cruelly." 
 
 No one had ever said such a thing. It was preposterous to im 
 agine any mystery connected with Old Grannis. Miss Baker had 
 chosen to invent the little fiction, had created the title and the unjust 
 stepfather from some dim memories of^theThovels of her girlhood. 
 
 She took her place" m fHe"operating cfiair. McTeague began the 
 filling. There was a long silence. It was impossible for McTeague 
 to work and talk at the same time. 
 
 He was just burnishing the last "mat" in Miss Baker s tooth, 
 
14 McTeague 
 
 when the door of the "Parlors" opened, jangling the bell which he 
 had hung over it, and which was absolutely unnecessary. Mc 
 Teague turned, one foot on the pedal of his dental engine, the co 
 rundum disk whirling between his fingers. 
 
 It was Marcus Schouler who came in, ushering a young girl of 
 about twenty. 
 
 "Hello, Mac," exclaimed Marcus; "busy? Brought my cousin 
 round about that broken tooth." 
 
 McTeague nodded his head gravely. 
 
 "In a minute," he answered. 
 
 Marcus and his cousin Trina sat down in the rigid chairs under* 
 neath the steel engraving of the Court of Lorenzo de Medici. They 
 began talking in low tones. The girl looked about the room, notic 
 ing the stone pug dog, the rifle manufacturer s calendar, the canary 
 in its little gilt prison, and the tumbled blankets on the unmade bed- 
 lounge against the wall. Marcus began telling her about Mc 
 Teague. "We re pals," he explained, just above a whisper. "Ah, 
 Mac s all right, you bet. Say, Trina, he s the strongest duck you 
 ever saw. What do you suppose ? He can pull out your teeth with 
 his fingers; yes, he can. What do you think of that? With his 
 fingers, mind you ; he can, for a fact. Get on to the size of him, 
 anyhow. Ah, Mac s all right!" 
 
 Maria Macapa had come into the room while he had been speak- 
 ing. She was making up McTeague s bed. Suddenly Marcus ex 
 claimed under his breath: "Now we ll have some fun. It s the 
 girl that takes care of the rooms. She s a greaser, and she s queer 
 in the head. She ain t regularly crazy, but / don t know, she s queer. 
 Y ought to hear her go on about a gold dinner service she says her 
 folks used to own. Ask her what her name is and see what she ll 
 say." Trina shrank back, a little frightened. 
 
 "No, you ask," she whispered. 
 
 "Ah, go on; what you fraid of?" urged Marcus. Trina shook 
 her head energetically, shutting her Hps together. 
 
 "Well, listen here," answered Marcus, nudging her; then rais 
 ing his voice, he said: 
 
 "How do, Maria?" Maria nodded to him over her shoulder 
 as she bent over the lounge. 
 
 "Workun hard nowadays, Maria?" 
 
 "Pretty hard." 
 
 "Didunt always have to work for your living, though, did you, 
 when you ate offa gold dishes?" Maria didn t answer, except by 
 
McTeague 1 5 
 
 putting her chin in the air and shutting her eyes, as though to say 
 she knew a long story about that if she had a mind to talk. All 
 Marcus s efforts to draw her out on the subject were unavailing. 
 She only responded by movements of her head. 
 
 "Can t always start her going," Marcus told his cousin. 
 
 "What does she do, though, when you ask her about her 
 name ?" 
 
 "Oh, sure," said Marcus, who had forgotten. "Say, Maria, 
 what s your name?" 
 
 "Huh?" asked Maria, straightening up, her hands on her hips. 
 
 "Tell us your name," repeated Marcus. 
 
 "Name is Maria Miranda Macapa." Then, after a pause,^ 
 she added, as though she had but that moment thought of it, "Had 
 a flying squirrel an let him go." 
 
 Invariably Maria Macapa made this answer. It was not always \ 
 she would talk about the famous service of gold plate, but a question 
 as to her name never failed to elicit the same strange answer, de 
 livered in a rapid undertone : "Name is Maria Miranda Macapa." 
 Then, as if struck with an afterthought, "Had a flying squirrel an 
 let him go." 
 
 Why Maria should associate the release of the mythical squirrel 
 with her name could not be said. About Maria the flat knew abso- 
 lutely nothing further than that she was Spanish-American. Miss 
 Baker was the oldest lodger in the flat, amI~Mana was a fixture 
 there as maid of all work when she had come. There was a legend 
 to the effect that Maria s people had been at one time immensely 
 wealthy in Central America. 
 
 Maria turned again to her work. Trina and Marcus watched 
 her curiously. There was a silence. The corundum burr in Mc- 
 Teague s engine hummed in a prolonged monotone. The canary 
 bird chittered occasionally. The room was warm, and the breathing 
 of the five people in the narrow space made the air close and thick. 
 At long intervals an acrid odor of ink floated up from the branch 
 post-office immediately below. 
 
 Maria Macapa finished her work and started to leave. As she 
 passed near Marcus and his cousin she stopped, and drew a bunch 
 of blue tickets furtively from her pocket. "Buy a ticket in the lot 
 tery?" she inquired, looking at the girl. "Just a dollar." 
 
 "Go along with you, Maria," said Marcus, who had but thirty 
 cents in his pocket. "Go along; it s against the law." 
 
 "Buy a ticket," urged Maria, thrusting the bundle toward Trina. 
 
1 6 McTeague 
 
 "Try your luck. The butcher on the next block won twenty dollars 
 the last drawing." 
 
 Very uneasy, Trina bought a ticket for the sake of being rid of 
 her. Maria disappeared. 
 
 "Ain t she a queer bird?" murmured Marcus. He was much 
 embarrassed and disturbed because he had not bought the ticket for 
 
 Trina. 
 
 But there was a sudden movement. McTeague had just finished 
 with Miss Baker. 
 
 "You should notice," the dressmaker said to the dentist, in a 
 low voice, "he always leaves the door a little ajar in the afternoon." 
 When she had gone out, Marcus Schouler brought Trina forward. 
 
 "Say, Mac, this is my cousin, Trina Sieppe." The two shook 
 hands dumbly, McTeague slowly nodding his huge head with its 
 great shock of yellow hair. Trina was very small and prettily 
 made. Her face was round and rather pale ; her eyes long and nar 
 row and blue, like the half-open eyes of a little baby ; her lips and 
 the lobes of her tiny ears were pale, a little suggestive of anaemia; 
 while across the bridge of her nose ran an adorable little line of 
 freckles. But it was to her hair that one s attention was most at 
 tracted. Heaps and heaps of blue-black coils and braids, a royal 
 crown of swarthy bands, a veritable sable tiara, heavy, abundant, 
 odorous. All the vitality that should have given color to her face 
 seemed to have been absorbed by this marvelous hair. It was the 
 coiffure of a queen that shadowed the pale temples of this little 
 bourgeoise. So heavy was it that it tipped her head backward, and 
 the position thrust her chin out a little. It was a charming poise, 
 innocent, confiding, almost infantile. 
 
 She was dressed ail in black, very modest and plain. The effect 
 of her pale face in all this contrasting black was almost monastic. 
 
 "Well," exclaimed Marcus suddenly, "I got to go. Must get 
 back to work. Don t hurt her too much, Mac. S long, Trina." 
 
 McTeague and Trina were left alone. He was embarrassed, 
 troubled. These young girls disturbed and perplexed him. He did 
 not like them, obstinately cherishing that intuitive suspicion of all 
 things feminine the perverse dislike of an overgrown boy. On 
 the other hand, she was perfectly at her ease ; doubtless the woman 
 in her was not yet awakened ; she was yet, as one might say, with 
 out sex. She was almost like a boy, frank, candid, unreserved. 
 
 She took her place in the operating chair and told hirrTwhat was 
 the matter, looking squarely into his face. She had fallen out of a 
 
McTeague 17 
 
 swing the afternoon of the preceding day; one of her teeth had 
 been knocked loose and the other altogether broken out. 
 
 McTeague listened to her with apparent stolidity, nodding his 
 head from time to time as she spoke. The keenness of his dislike of 
 her as a woman began to be blunted. He thought she was rather 
 pretty, that he even liked her because she was so small, so prettily 
 made, so good-natured and straightforward. 
 
 "Let s have a look at your teeth," he said, picking up his mirror. 
 "You better take your hat off." She leaned back in her chair and 
 opened her mouth, showing the rows of little round teeth, as white 
 and even as the kernels of an ear of green corn, except where an 
 ugly gap came at the side. 
 
 McTeague put the mirror into her mouth, touching one and an 
 other of her teeth with the handle of an excavator. By and by he 
 straightened up, wiping the moisture from the mirror on his coat- 
 sleeve. 
 
 "Well, Doctor," said the girl, anxiously, "it s a dreadful disfig 
 urement, isn t it?" adding, "What can you do about it?" 
 
 "Well," answered McTeague, slowly, looking vaguely about on 
 the floor of the room, "the roots of the broken tooth are still in the 
 gum ; they ll have to come out, and I guess I ll have to pull that 
 other bicuspid. Let me look again. Yes," he went on in a mo 
 ment, peering into her mouth with the mirror, "I guess that ll have 
 to come out, too." The tooth was loose, discolored, and evidently 
 dead. "It s a curious case," McTeague went on. "I don t know as 
 I ever had a tooth like that before. It s what s called necrosis. It 
 don t often happen. It ll have to come out, sure." 
 
 Then a discussion was opened on the subject, Trina sitting up in 
 the chair, holding her hat in her lap ; McTeague leaning against the 
 window frame, his hands in his pockets, his eyes wandering about 
 on the floor. Trina did not want the other tooth removed ; one hole 
 like that was bad enough ; but two ah, no, it was not to be thought 
 of. 
 
 But McTeague reasoned with her, tried in vain to make her 
 understand that there was no vascular connection between the root 
 and the gum. Trina was blindly persistent, with the persistency of 
 a girl who has made up her mind. 
 
 McTeague began to like her better and better, and after a while 
 commenced himself to feel that it would be a pity to disfigure such 
 a pretty mouth. He became interested; perhaps he could do some 
 thing, something in the way of a crown or bridge. "Let s look at 
 
1 8 McTeague 
 
 that again," he said, picking up his mirror. He began to study the 
 situation very carefully, really desiring to remedy the blemish. 
 
 It was the first bicuspid that was missing, and though part of 
 the root of the second (the loose one) would remain after its ex 
 traction, he was sure it would not be strong enough to sustain a 
 crown. All at once he grew obstinate, resolving, with all the 
 strength of a crude and primitive man, to conquer the difficulty in 
 spite of everything. He turned over in his mind the technicalities 
 of the case. No, evidently the root was not strong enough to sus 
 tain a crown; besides that, it was placed a little irregularly in the 
 arch. But, fortunately, there were cavities in the two teeth on 
 either side of the gap one in the first molar and one in the palatine 
 surface of the cuspid; might he not drill a socket in the remaining 
 root and sockets in the molar and cuspid, and, partly by bridging, 
 partly by crowning, fill in the gap? He made up his mind to do it. 
 Why he should pledge himself to this hazardous case McTeague 
 was puzzled to know. With most of his clients he would have con 
 tented himself with the extraction of the loose tooth and the roots 
 of the broken one. Why should he risk his reputation in this case? 
 r He could not say why. 
 
 It was the most difficult operation he had ever performed. He 
 bungled it considerably, but in the end he succeeded passably well. 
 He extracted the loose tooth with his bayonet forceps and prepared 
 the roots of the broken one as if for filling, fitting into them a flat 
 tened piece of platinum wire to serve as a dowel. But this was only 
 the beginning; altogether it was a fortnight s work. Trina came 
 nearly every other day, and passed two, and even three, hours in 
 the chair. 
 
 By degrees McTeague s first awkwardness and suspicion van 
 ished entirely. The two became good friends. McTeague even 
 arrived at that point where he could work and talk to her at the 
 same time a thing that had never before been possible for him. 
 
 Never until then had McTeague become so well acquainted with 
 a girl of Trina s age. The younger women of Polk Street the 
 shop girls, the young women of the soda fountains, the waitresses 
 in the cheap restaurants preferred another dentist, a young fellow 
 just graduated from the college, a poser, a rider of bicycles, a man 
 about town, who wore astonishing waistcoats and bet money on 
 greyhound coursing. Trina was McTeague s first experience. With 
 her the feminine element suddenly entered his little world. It was 
 not only her that he saw and felt, it was the woman, the whole sex, 
 
McTeague 19 
 
 an entire new humanity, strange and alluring, that he seemed to 
 have discovered. How had he ignored it so long? It was daz 
 zling, delicious, charming beyond all words. His narrow point of 
 view was at once enlarged and confused, and all at once he saw 
 that there was something else in life besides concertinas and steam 
 beer. Everything had to be made over again. His whole rude 
 idea of life had to be changed. The male virile desire in him, tar 
 dily awakened, aroused itself, strong and brutal. It was resistless, 
 untrained, a thing not to be held in leash an instant. 
 
 Little by little, by gradual, almost imperceptible degrees, the 
 thought of Trina Sieppe occupied his mind from day to day, from 
 hour to hour. He found himself thinking of her constantly; at 
 every instant he saw her round, pale face; her narrow, milk-blue 
 eyes ; her little out-thrust chin ; her heavy, huge tiara of black hair. 
 At night he lay awake for hours under the thick blankets of the 
 bed-lounge, staring upward into the darkness, tormented with the 
 idea of her, exasperated at the delicate, subtle mesh in which he 
 found himself entangled. During the forenoons, while he went 
 about his work, he thought of her. As he made his plaster-of-paris 
 molds at the washstand in the corner behind the screen he turned 
 over in his mind all that had happened, all that had been said at the 
 previous sitting. Her little tooth that he had extracted he kept v ) 
 wrapped in a bit of newspaper in his vest pocket. Often he took it / 
 out and held it in the palm of his immense, horny hand, seized with 
 some strange elephantine sentiment, wagging his head at it, heaving 
 tremendous sighs. What a folly! 
 
 At two o clock on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays Trina 
 arrived and took her place in the operating chair. While at his 
 work McTeague was every minute obliged to bend closely over her ; 
 his hands touched her face, her cheeks, her adorable little chin ; her 
 lips pressed against his fingers. She breathed warmly on his fore 
 head and on his eyelids, while the odor of her hair, a charming 
 feminine perfume, sweet, heavy, enervating, came to his nostrils, so 
 penetrating, so delicious, that his flesh pricked and tingled with it; 
 a veritable sensation of faintness passed over this huge, callous 
 fellow, with his enormous bones and corded muscles. He drew a 
 short breath through his nose; his jaws suddenly gripped together 
 vise-like. 
 
 But this was only at times a strange, vexing spasm, that sub 
 sided almost immediately. For the most part, McTeague enjoyed 
 the pleasure of these sittings with Trina with a certain strong calm- 
 
ao McTeague 
 
 ness, blindly happy that she was there. This poor crude dentist of 
 Polk Street, stupid, ignorant, vulgar, with his sham education and 
 plebeian tastes, whose only relaxations were to eat, to drink^ steam 
 beer, and to play upon his concertina, was living through his first 
 romance, his first idyl. It was delightful. The long hours he 
 passed alone with Trina in the "Dental Parlors," silent, only for the 
 scraping of the instruments and the purring of bud-burrs in the en 
 gine, in the foul atmosphere, overheated by the little stove and 
 heavy with the smell of ether, creosote, and stale bedding, had all 
 the charm of secret appointments and stolen meetings under the 
 moon. 
 
 By degrees the operation progressed. One day, just after Mc 
 Teague had put in the temporary gutta-percha fillings and nothing 
 more could be done at that sitting, Trina asked him to examine the 
 rest of her teeth. They were perfect, with one exception a spot 
 of white caries on the lateral surface of an incisor. McTeague filled 
 it with gold, enlarging the cavity with hard-bits and hoe-ex 
 cavators, and burring in afterward with half-cone burrs. The cav 
 ity was deep, and Trina began to wince and moan. To hurt Trina 
 was a positive anguish for McTeague, yet an anguish which he was 
 obliged to endure at every hour of the sitting. It was harrowing 
 he sweated under it to be forced to torture her, of all women in 
 the world; could anything be worse than that? 
 
 "Hurt?" he inquired, anxiously. 
 
 She answered by frowning, with a sharp intake of breath, put 
 ting her fingers over her closed lips and nodding her head. Mc 
 Teague sprayed the tooth with glycerite of tannin, but without ef 
 fect. Rather than hurt her he found himself forced to the use of 
 anaesthesia, which he hated. He had a notion that the nitrous oxide 
 gas was dangerous, so on this occasion, as on all others, used ether. 
 
 He put the sponge a half dozen times to Trina s face, more 
 nervous than he had ever been before, watching the symptoms close 
 ly. Her breathing became short and irregular; there was a slight 
 twitching of the muscles. When her thumbs turned inward toward 
 the palms, he took the sponge away. She passed off very quickly, 
 and, with a long sigh, sank back into the chair. 
 
 McTeague straightened up, putting the sponge upon the rack 
 behind him, his eyes fixed upon Trina s face. For some time he 
 stood watching her as she lay there, unconscious and helpless, and 
 very pretty. He was alone with her, and she was absolutely with 
 out defence. 
 
McTeague 21 
 
 Suddenly the animal in the man stirred and woke; the evil in 
 stincts that in him were so close to the surface leaped to life, shout 
 ing and clamoring. 
 
 It was a crisis a crisis that had arisen all in an instant; a 
 crisis for which he was totally unprepared. Blindly, and without 
 knowing why, McTeague fought against it, moved by an unreasoned 
 instinct of resistance. Within him, a certain second self, another 
 better McTeague, rose with the brute ; both were strong, with the 
 ~~hnge" crude strengFh of the man himself. The two were at grap 
 ples. There in that cheap and shabby "Dental Parlor" a dreaded 
 struggle began. It was the old battle, old as the world, wide as the 
 world the sudden panther leap of the animal, lips drawn, fangs 
 aflash, hideous, monstrous, not to be resisted, and the simultaneous 
 arousing of the other man, the better self that cries, "Down, down," 
 without knowing why ; that grips the monster ; that fights to stran 
 gle it, to thrust it down and back. 
 
 Dizzied and bewildered with the shock, the like of which he had 
 never known before, McTeague turned from Trina, gazing be- 
 wilderedly about the room. The struggle was bitter; his teeth 
 ground themselves together with a little rasping sound; the blood 
 sang in his ears; his face flushed scarlet; his hands twisted them 
 selves together like the knotting of cables. The fury in him was 
 as the fury of a young bull in the heat of high summer. But for 
 all that he shook his huge head from time to time, muttering : 
 
 "No, by God! No, by God!" 
 
 Dimly he seemed to realize that should he yield now he would 
 never be able to care for Trina again. She would never be the 
 same to him, never so radiant, so sweet, so adorable; her charm 
 for him would vanish in an instant. Across her forehead, her little 
 pale forehead, under the shadow of her royal hair, he would surely 
 see the smudge of a foul ordure, the footprint of the monster. It 
 would be a sacrilege, an abomination. He recoiled from it, banding 
 all his strength to the issue. 
 
 "No, by God! No, by God!" 
 
 He turned to his work, as if seeking a refuge in it. But as he 
 drew near to her again, the charm of her innocence and helplessness 
 came over him afresh. It was a final protest against his resolution. 
 Suddenlyjie^ leaned ovejt^and kissed her ^grossly, ,_full , c_ Jhe_mouth._ 
 The thing was~dorie before he knew it. Terrified at his weakness 
 at the very moment he believed himself strong, he threw himself 
 once more into his work with desperate energy. By the time he 
 
22 McTeague 
 
 was fastening the sheet of rubber upon the tooth, he had himself 
 once more in hand. He was disturbed, still trembling, still vibrat 
 ing with the throes of the crisis, but he was the master ; the animal 
 was downed, was cowed for this time, at least. 
 
 But for all that, the brute was there. Long dormant, it was 
 now at last alive, awake. From now on he would feel its presence 
 continually; would feel it tugging at its chain, watching its oppor 
 tunity. Ah, the pity of it! Why could he not always love her 
 purely, cleanly? What was this perverse, vicious thing that lived 
 within him, knitted to his flesh? 
 
 Below the fine fabric of all that was good in him ran the foul 
 stream of hereditary evil, like a sewer. The vices and sins of his 
 father and of his father s father, to the third and fourth and five 
 hundredth generation, tainted him. The evil of an entire race flowed 
 in his veins. Why should it be ? He did not desire it. Was he to 
 blame ? 
 
 But McTeague could not understand this thing. It had faced 
 him, as soon er, or later it faces every^ child of rnan ; but its significance 
 was not for him. To reason with it was beyond him. He could only 
 opj^se to it an instinctive stubborn resistance, blind, inert. 
 
 cTeague went on with his work. As he was rapping in 
 
 little blocks and cylinders with the mallet, Trina slowly came 
 back to herself with a long sigh. She still felt a little confused, and 
 lay quiet in the chair. There was a long silence, broken only by 
 the uneven tapping of the hardwood mallet. By and by she said, 
 "I never felt a thing," and then she smiled at him very prettily be 
 neath the rubber dam. McTeague turned to her suddenly, his 
 mallet in one hand, his pliers holding a pellet of sponge-gold in the 
 other. All at once he said, with the unreasoned simplicity and 
 directness of a child : "Listen here, Miss Trina, I like you better than 
 any one else; what s the matter with us getting married?" 
 
 Trina sat up in the chair quickly, and then drew back from hini, 
 frightened and bewildered. 
 
 "Will you? Will you?" said McTeague. "Say, Miss Trina, 
 will you?" 
 
 "What is it? What do you mean?" she cried, confusedly, her 
 words muffled beneath the rubber. 
 
 "Will you?" repeated McTeague. 
 
 "No, no," she exclaimed, refusing without knowing why, sud 
 denly seized with a fear of him, the intuitive feminine fear of the 
 male. McTeague could only repeat the same thing over and over 
 
McTeague 23 
 
 again. Trina, more and more frightened at his huge hands the 
 hands of the old-time car-boy his immense square-cut head and his 
 enormous brute strength, cried out: "No, no," behind the rubber 
 dam, shaking her head violently, holding out her hands, and shrink 
 ing down before him in the operating chair. McTeague came 
 nearer to her, repeating the same question. "No, no," she cried, 
 terrified. Then, as she exclaimed, "Oh, I am sick," was suddenly ^ 
 taken with a fit of vomiting. It was the not unusual after effect of 
 the ether, aided now by her excitement and nervousness. McTeague"^ 
 was checked. He poured some bromide of potassium into a gradu 
 ated glass and held it to her lips. 
 "Here, swallow this," he said. 
 
 Ill 
 
 ONCE every two months Maria Macapa set the entire flat in 
 commotion. She roamed the building from garret to cellar, search 
 ing each corner, ferreting through every old box and trunk and 
 barrel, groping about on the top shelves of closets, peering into 
 ragbags, exasperating the lodgers with her persistence and impor 
 tunity. She was collecting junk, bits of iron, stone jugs, glass 
 bottles, old sacks, and cast-off garments. It was one of her per 
 quisites. She sold the junk to Zerkow J _^the_j^^-boltle^sacks man,_ 
 who lived in a filthy den in the alley" just back of the_flat j _jind_who 
 sometimes ^^ pa!3~Tier"as J rnucF"as three .c_ejnfs7a pound. The stone 
 j ugs, however, T^vvere wofth"aTnickel. The money that Zerkow paid 
 her, Maria spent on shirt waists and dotted blue neckties, trying to 
 dress like the girls who tended the soda-water fountain in the candy 
 store on the corner. She was sick with envy of these young women, j 
 They were in the world, they were elegant, they were debonair, j 
 they had their "young men." 
 
 On this occasion she presented herself at the door of Old Gran- 
 nis s room late in the afternoon. His door stood a little open. That 
 of Miss Baker was ajar a few inches. The two old people were 
 "keeping company" after their fashion. 
 
 "Got any junk, Mister Grannis?" inquired Maria, standing in 
 the door, a very dirty, half-filled pillow-case over one arm. 
 
 "No, nothing nothing that I can think of, Maria," replied Old 
 Grannis, terribly vexed at the interruption, yet not wishing to be un- 
 
24 McTeague 
 
 kind. "Nothing I think of. Yet, however perhaps if you wish 
 to look." 
 
 He sat in the middle of the room before a small pine table. His 
 little binding apparatus was before him. In his ringers was a huge 
 upholsterer s needle threaded with twine, a brad-awl lay at his 
 elbow, on the floor beside him was a great pile of pamphlets, the 
 pages uncut. Old Grannis bought the "Nation" and the "Breeder 
 and Sportsman." In the latter he occasionally found articles on 
 dogs which interested him. The former he seldom read. He could 
 not afford to subscribe regularly to either of the publications, but 
 purchased their back numbers by the score, almost solely for the 
 pleasure he took in binding them. 
 
 "What you alus sewing up them books for, Mister Grannis?" 
 asked Maria, as she began rummaging about in Old Grannis s 
 closet shelves. "There s just hundreds of em in here on yer 
 shelves; they ain t no good to you." 
 
 "Well, well," answered Old Grannis, timidly, rubbing his chin, 
 "I I m sure I can t quite say; a little habit, you know; a diver 
 sion, a a it occupies one, you know. I don t smoke; it takes the 
 place of a pipe, perhaps." 
 
 "Here s this old yellow pitcher," said Maria, coming out of the 
 closet with it in her hand. "The handle s cracked ; you don t want it ; 
 better give me it." 
 
 Old Grannis did want the pitcher; true, he never used it now, 
 but he had kept it a long time, and somehow he held to it as old 
 people hold to trivial, worthless things that they have had for many 
 years. 
 
 "Oh, that pitcher well, Maria, I I don t know. I m afraid 
 you see, that pitcher " 
 
 "Ah, go long," interrupted Maria Macapa, "what s the good 
 of it?" 
 
 "If you insist, Maria, but I would much rather " he rubbed his 
 chin, perplexed and annoyed, hating to refuse, and wishing that 
 Maria were gone. 
 
 "Why, what s the good of it?" persisted Maria. He could give 
 no sufficient answer. "That s all right," she asserted, carrying the 
 pitcher out. 
 
 "Ah Maria I say, you you might leave the door ah, don t 
 quite shut it it s a bit close in here at times." Maria grinned, and 
 swung the door wide. Old Grannis was horribly embarrassed ; posi 
 tively, Maria was becoming unbearable. 
 
McTeague 25 
 
 "Got any junk?" cried Maria at Miss Baker s door. The little 
 old lady was sitting close to the wall in her rocking-chair ; her hands 
 resting idly in her lap. 
 
 "Now, Maria," she said plaintively, "you are always after junk; 
 you know I never have anything laying round like that." 
 
 It was true. The retired dressmaker s tiny room was a marvel 
 of neatness, from the little red table, with its three Gorham spoons 
 laid in exact parallels, to the decorous geraniums and mignonettes 
 growing in the starch box at the window, underneath the fish globe 
 with its one venerable goldfish. That day Miss Baker had been 
 doing a bit of washing; two pocket handkerchiefs, still moist, ad 
 hered to the window panes, drying in the sun. 
 
 "Oh, I guess you got something you don t want," Maria went on, 
 peering into the corners of the room. "Look-a-here what Mister 
 Grannis gi me," and she held out the yellow pitcher. Instantly 
 Miss Baker was in a quiver of confusion. Every word spoken aloud 
 could be perfectly heard in the next room. What a stupid drab 
 was this Maria ! Could anything be more trying than this position ? 
 
 "Ain t that right, Mister Grannis ?" called Maria ; "didn t you gi 
 me this pitcher?" Old Grannis affected not to hear; perspiration 
 stood on his forehead; his timidity overcame him as if he were a 
 ten-year-old schoolboy. He half rose from his chair, his fingers 
 dancing nervously upon his chin. 
 
 Maria opened Miss Baker s closet unconcernedly. "What s the 
 matter with these old shoes?" she exclaimed, turning about with a 
 pair of half-worn silk gaiters in her hand. They were by no means 
 old enough to throw away, but Miss Baker was almost beside her 
 self. There was no telling what might happen next. Her only 
 thought was to be rid of Maria. 
 
 "Yes, yes, anything. You can have them; but go, go. There s 
 nothing else, not a thing." 
 
 Maria went out into the hall, leaving Miss Baker s door wide 
 open, as if maliciously. She had left the dirty pillow-case on the 
 floor in the hall, and she stood outside, between the two open doors, 
 stowing away the old pitcher and the half-worn silk shoes. She 
 made remarks at the top of her voice, calling now to Miss Baker, 
 now to Old Grannis. In a way she brought the two old people face 
 to face. Each time they were forced to answer her questions it 
 was as if they were talking directly to each other. 
 
 "These here are first-rate shoes, Miss Baker. Look here, Mister 
 Grannis, get on to the shoes Miss Baker gi me. You ain t got a 
 
 B III NORRIS 
 
a 6 McTeague 
 
 pair you don t want, have you? You two people have less junk than 
 any one else in the flat. How do you manage, Mister Grannis? 
 You old bachelors are just like old maids, just as neat as pins. 
 You two are just alike you and Mister Grannis ain t you, Miss 
 Baker?" 
 
 Nothing could have been more horribly constrained, more awk 
 ward. The two old people suffered veritable torture. When Maria 
 had gone, each heaved a sigh of unspeakable relief. Softly they 
 pushed to their doors, leaving open a space of half a dozen inches. 
 Old Grannis went back to his binding. Miss Baker brewed a cup 
 of tea to quiet her nerves. Each tried to regain their composure, 
 but in vain. Old Grannis s fingers trembled so that he pricked them 
 with his needle. Miss Baker dropped her spoon twice. Their 
 nervousness would not wear off. They were perturbed, upset. In 
 a word, the afternoon was spoiled. 
 
 Maria went on about the flat from room to room. She had al 
 ready paid Marcus Schouler a visit early that morning before he 
 had gone out Marcus had sworn at her, excitedly vociferating: 
 "No, by damn! No, he hadn t a thing for her; he hadn t, for a 
 fact. It was a positive persecution. Every day his privacy was 
 invaded. He would complain to the landlady, he would. He d move 
 out of the place." In the end he had given Maria seven empty 
 whiskey flasks, an iron grate, and ten cents the latter because he 
 said she wore her hair like a girl he used to know. 
 
 After coming from Miss Baker s room Maria knocked at Mc- 
 Teague s door. The dentist was lying on the bed-lounge in his 
 stocking feet, doing nothing apparently, gazing up at the ceiling, 
 lost in thought. 
 
 Since he had spoken to Trina Sieppe, asking her so abruptly to 
 marry him, McTeague had passed a week of torment. For him 
 there was no going back. It was Trina now, and none other. It 
 was all one with him that his best friend, Marcus, might be in love 
 with the same girl. He must have Trina in spite of everything; he 
 would have her even in spite of herself. He did not stop to reflect 
 about the matter; he followed his desire blindly, recklessly, furious 
 and raging at every obstacle. And she had cried "No, no!" back 
 at him ; he could not forget tha.t. She, so small and pale and deli 
 cate, had held him at bay, who was so huge, so immensely strong. 
 
 Besides that, all the charm of their intimacy was gone. After 
 that unhappy sitting, Trina was no longer frank and straightfor 
 ward. Now she was circumspect, reserved, distant. He could no 
 
McTeague 27 
 
 longer open his mouth ; words failed him. At one sitting in particu 
 lar they had said but good-day and good-by to each other. He 
 felt that he was clumsy and ungainly. He told himself that she 
 despised him. 
 
 But the memory of her was with him constantly. Night after 
 night he lay broad awake thinking of Trina, wondering about her, 
 racked with the infinite desire of her. His head burned and 
 throbbed. The palms of his hands were dry. He dozed and woke, 
 and walked aimlessly about the dark room, bruising himself against 
 the three chairs drawn up "at attention" under the steel engraving, 
 and stumbling over the stone pug dog that sat in front of the little 
 stove. 
 
 Besides this, the jealousy of Marcus Schouler harassed him. 
 Maria Macapa, coming into his "Parlor" to ask for junk, found 
 him flung at length upon the bed-lounge, gnawing at his fingers in 
 an excess of silent fury. At lunch that day Marcus had told him 
 of an excursion that was planned for the next Sunday afternoon. 
 Mr. Sieppe, Trina s father, belonged to a rifle club that was to hold 
 a meet at Schuetzen Park across the bay. All the Sieppes were 
 going; there was to be a basket picnic. Marcus, as usual, was in 
 vited to be one of the party. McTeague was in agony. It was his 
 first experience, and he suffered all the worse for it because he was 
 totally unprepared. What miserable complication was this in which 
 he found himself involved? It seemed so simple to him since he 
 loved Trina to take her straight to himself, stopping at nothing, 
 asking no questions, to have her, and by main strength to carry her 
 far away somewhere, he did not know exactly where, to some vague 
 country, some undiscovered place where every day was Sunday. 
 
 "Got any junk?" 
 
 "Huh? What? What is it?" exclaimed McTeague, suddenly 
 rousing up from the lounge. Often Maria did very well in the 
 "Dental Parlors." McTeague was continually breaking things 
 which he was too stupid to have mended; for him anything that 
 was broken was lost. Now it was a cuspidor, now a fire-shovel for 
 the little stove, now a china shaving mug. 
 
 "Got any junk?" 
 
 "I don t know I don t remember," muttered McTeague. Maria 
 roamed about the room, McTeague following her in his huge stock 
 inged feet. All at once she pounced upon a sheaf of old hand in 
 struments in a coverless cigar-box, pluggers, hard bits, and excava 
 tors. Maria had long coveted such a find in McTeague s "Parlor," 
 
28 McTeague 
 
 knowing it should be somewhere about. The instruments were of 
 the finest tempered steel and really valuable. 
 
 "Say, Doctor, I can have these, can t I?" exclaimed Maria. 
 "You got no more use for them." McTeague was not at all sure 
 of this. There were many in the sheaf that might be repaired, 
 reshaped. 
 
 "No, no," he said, wagging his head. But Maria Macapa, know 
 ing with whom she had to deal, at once let loose a torrent of words. 
 She made the dentist believe that he had no right to withhold them, 
 that he had promised to save them for her. She affected a great 
 indignation, pursing her lips and putting her chin in the air as 
 though wounded in some finer sense, changing so rapidly from one 
 mood to another, filling the room with such shrill clamor, that Mc 
 Teague was dazed and benumbed. 
 
 "Yes, all right, all right," he said, trying to make himself heard. 
 "It would be mean. I don t want em." As he turned from her to 
 pick up the box, Maria took advantage of the moment to steal three 
 "mats" of sponge-gold out of the glass saucer. Often she stole Mc- 
 Teague s gold, almost under his very eyes; indeed, it was so easy 
 to do so that there was but little pleasure in the theft. Then Maria 
 took herself off. McTeague returned to the sofa and flung himself 
 upon it face downward. 
 
 A little before supper time Maria completed her search. The 
 flat was cleaned of its junk from top to bottom. The dirty pillow 
 case was full to bursting. She took advantage of the supper hour 
 to carry her bundle around the corner and up into the alley where 
 Zerkow lived. 
 
 When Maria entered his shop, Zerkow had just come in from his 
 daily rounds. His decrepit wagon stood in front of his door like a 
 stranded wreck; the miserable horse, with its lamentably swollen 
 joints, fed greedily upon an armful of spoiled hay in a shed at the 
 back. 
 
 The interior of the junk shop was dark and damp, and foul with 
 all manner of choking odors. On the walls, on the floor, and hang 
 ing from the rafters was a world of debris, dust-blackened, rust- 
 corroded. Everything was there, every trade was represented, every 
 class of society ; things of iron and cloth and wood ; all the detritus 
 that a great city sloughs off in its daily life. Zerkow s junk shop 
 was^the last abiding-place, the almshouse, of such articles as had 
 outlived their usefulness. 
 
 Maria found Zerkow himself in the back room, cooking some 
 
McTeague 29 
 
 sort of a meal over an alcohol stove.^. Zerkow_was a Polish JewV- 
 curiously enough his hair was fiery. jedS He was a dry, shriveled 
 old man of sixty odd. He had the thin, eager, cat-like lips of 
 the covetous ; eyes that had grown keen as those of a lynx from long 
 searching amid muck and debris ; and claw-like, prehensile fingers 
 the fingers of a man who accumulates, but never disburses. It was 
 impossible to look at Zerkow and not know instantly that greed 
 inordinate, insatiable greed was the dominant passion of the man. 
 He was the Man with the Rake, groping hourly in the muck-heap 
 of the city for gold, for gold, for gold. It was his dream, his pas 
 sion; at every instant he seemed to feel the generous solid weight 
 of the crude fat metal in his palms. The glint of it was constantly 
 in his eyes ; the jangle of it sang forever in his ears as the jangling 
 of cymbals. 
 
 "Who is it? Who is it?" exclaimed Zerkow, as he heard Maria s 
 footsteps in the outer room. His voice was faint, husky, reduced 
 almost to a whisper by his prolonged habit of street crying. 
 
 "Oh, it s you again, is it ?" he added, peering through the gloom 
 ef the shop. "Let s see ; you ve been here before, ain t you ? You re , , 
 the Mexican woman from Polk Street. Macapa s your name, hey.?" 
 
 Maria nodded. "Had a flying squirrel anklet him go," she mut 
 tered, absently. Zerkow was puzzled; he looked .at her sharply for 
 a moment, then dismissed the matter with a movement of his head. 
 
 "Well, what you got for me?" he said. He left his supper to 
 grow cold, absorbed at once in the affair. 
 
 Then a long wrangle began. Every bit of junk in Maria s pillow 
 case was discussed and weighed and disputed. They clamored into 
 each other s faces over Old Grannis s cracked pitcher, over Miss 
 Baker s silk gaiters, over Marcus Schouler s whiskey flasks, reaching 
 the climax of disagreement when it came to McTeague s instru 
 ments. 
 
 "AH, no, no!" shouted Maria. "Fifteen cents for the lot! I 
 might as well make you a Christmas present! Besides, I got some 
 gold fillings off him; look at um." 
 
 Zerkow drew a quick breath as the three pellets suddenly flashed 
 in Maria s palm. There it was, the virgin metal, the pure, unalloyed 
 ore, his dream, his consuming desire. His fingers twitched and 
 hooked themselves into his palms, his thin lips drew tight across his 
 teeth. 
 
 "Ah, you got some gold," he muttered, reaching for it. 
 
 Maria shut her fist over the pellets. "The gold goes with the 
 
jo McTeague 
 
 others," she declared. You ll gi me a fair price for the lot, or I ll 
 take urn back." 
 
 In the end a bargain was struck that satisfied Maria. Zerkow 
 was not one who would let gold go out of his house. He counted 
 out to her the price of all her junk, grudging each piece of money 
 as if it had been the blood of his veins. The affair was concluded. 
 
 But Zerkow still had something to say. As Maria folded up 
 the pillow-case and rose to go, the old Jew said : 
 
 "Well, see here a minute, we ll you ll have a drink before you 
 go, won t you ? Just to show that it s all right between us." Maria 
 sat down again. 
 
 "Yes, I guess I ll have a drink," she answered. 
 
 Zerkow took down a whiskey bottle and a red glass tumbler with 
 a broken base from a cupboard on the wall. The two drank to 
 gether, Zerkow from the bottle, Maria from the broken tumbler. 
 They wiped their lips slowly, drawing breath again. There was a 
 moment s silence. 
 
 "Say," said Zerkow at last, "how about those gold dishes you 
 told me about the last time you were here?" 
 
 "What gold dishes ?" inquired Maria, puzzled. 
 
 "Ah, you know," returned the other. "The plate your father 
 owned in Central America a long time ago. Don t you know, it 
 rang like so many bells? Red gold, you know, like oranges?" 
 
 "Ah," said Maria, putting her chin in the air as if she knew a 
 long story about that if she had a mind to tell it. "Ah, yes, that 
 gold service." 
 
 "Tell us about it again," said Zerkow, his bloodless lower lip 
 moving against the upper, his claw-like fingers feeling about his 
 mouth and chin. "Tell us about it ; go on." 
 
 He was breathing short, his limbs trembled a little. It was as if 
 some hungry beast of prey had scented a quarry. Maria still re 
 fused, putting up her head, insisting that she had to be going. 
 
 "Let s have it," insisted the Jew. "Take another drink." Maria 
 took another swallow of the whiskey. "Now, go on," repeated Zer 
 kow ; "let s have the story." Maria squared her elbows on the deal 
 table, looking straight in front of her with eyes that saw nothing. 
 
 "Well, it was this way," she -began. "It was when I was little. 
 My folks must have been rich, oh, rich into the millions coffee, I 
 guess and there was a large house, but I can only ^member the 
 plate. Oh, that service of plate ! It was wonderful. There were 
 more than a hundred pieces, and every one of them gold. You 
 
McTeague 3 1 
 
 should have seen the sight when the leather trunk was opened. It 
 fair dazzled your eyes. It was a yellow blaze like a fire, like a sun 
 set ; such a glory, all piled up together, one piece over the other. 
 Why, if the room was dark you d think you could see just the same 
 with all that glitter there. There wa n t a piece that was so much 
 as scratched; every one was like a mirror, smooth and bright, just 
 like a little pool when the sun shines into it. There was dinner 
 dishes and soup tureens and pitchers ; and great, big platters as long 
 as that, and wide too ; and cream- jugs and bowls with carved han 
 dles, all vines and things ; and drinking mugs, every one a different 
 shape ; and dishes for gravy and sauces ; and then a great, big punch 
 bowl with a ladle, and the bowl was all carved out with figures and 
 bunches of grapes. Why, just only that punch-bowl was worth a 
 fortune, I guess. When all that plate was set out on a table, it 
 was a sight for a king to look at. Such a service as that was ! Each 
 piece was heavy, oh, so heavy ! and thick, you know ; thick, fat 
 gold, nothing but gold red, shining, pure gold, orange red and 
 when you struck it with your knuckle, ah, you should have heard! 
 No church bell ever rang sweeter or clearer. It was soft gold, too ; 
 you could bite into it, and leave the dent of your teeth. Oh, that 
 gold plate ! I can see it just as plain solid, solid, heavy, rich, pure 
 gold; nothing but gold, gold, heaps and heaps of it. What a ser 
 vice that was !" 
 
 Maria paused, shaking her head, thinking over the vanished 
 splendor. Illiterate enough, unimaginative enough on all other sub 
 jects, her distorted wits called up this picture with marvelous dis 
 tinctness. It was plain she saw the plate clearly. Her description 
 was accurate, was almost eloquent. 
 
 Did that wonderful service of gold plate ever exist outside of 
 her diseased imagination? Was Maria actually remembering some 
 reality of a childhood of barbaric luxury? Were her parents at 
 one time possessed of an incalculable fortune derived from some 
 Central American coffee plantation, a fortune long since confis 
 cated by armies of insurrectionists, or squandered in the support of 
 revolutionary governments ? 
 
 It was not impossible. Of Maria Macapa s past prior to the 
 time of her appearance at the "flat" absolutely nothing could be 
 learned. She suddenly appeared from the unknown, a strange woman 
 of a mixed race, sane on all subjects but that of the famous service 
 of gold plate; but unusual, complex, mysterious, even at her best. 
 
 But what misery Zerkow endured as he listened to her tale ! For 
 
3 2 McTeague 
 
 he chose to believe it, forced himself to believe it, lashed and 
 harassed by a pitiless greed that checked at no tale of treasure, 
 however preposterous. The story ravished him with delight. He 
 was near some one who had possessed this wealth. He saw some 
 one who had seen this pile of gold. He seemed near it; it was 
 there, somewhere close by, under his eyes, under his ringers ; it was 
 red, gleaming, ponderous. He gazed about him wildly; nothing, 
 nothing but the sordid junk shop and the rust-corroded tins. What 
 exasperation, what positive misery, to be so near to it and yet to know 
 that it was irrevocably, irretrievably lost! A spasm of anguish 
 passed through him. He gnawed at his bloodless lips, at the hope 
 lessness of it, the rage, the fury of it. 
 
 "Go on, go on," he whispered ; "let s have it all over again. Pol 
 ished like a mirror, hey, and heavy? Yes, I know, I know. A 
 punch-bowl worth a fortune. Ah ! and you saw it, you had it all !" 
 
 Maria rose to go. Zerkow accompanied her to the door, urging 
 another drink upon her. 
 
 "Come again, come again," he croaked. "Don t wait till you ve 
 got junk; come any time you feel like it, and tell me more about 
 the plate." 
 
 He followed her a step down the alley. 
 
 "How much do you think it was worth ?" he inquired, anxiously. 
 
 "Oh, a million dollars," answered Maria, vaguely. 
 
 When Maria had gone, Zerkow returned to the back room of the 
 shop, and stood in front of the alcohol stove, looking down into his 
 cold dinner, preoccupied, thoughtful. 
 
 "A million dollars," he muttered in his rasping guttural whisper, 
 his finger-tips wandering over his thin, cat-like lips. "A golden ser 
 vice worth a million dollars; a punch-bowl worth a fortune; red 
 gold plates, heaps and piles. God!" 
 
 IV 
 
 THE days passed. McTeague had finished the operation on 
 Trina s teeth. She did not come .any more to the "Parlors." Mat 
 ters had readjusted themselves a little between the two during the 
 last sittings. Trina yet stood upon her reserve, and McTeague still 
 felt himself shambling and ungainly in her presence ; but that con 
 straint and embarrassment that had followed upon McTeague s 
 
McTeague 33 
 
 blundering declaration broke up little by little. In spite, of them 
 selves they were gradually resuming the same relative positions 
 they had occupied when they had first met. 
 
 But McTeague suffered miserably for all that. He never would 
 have Trina, he saw that clearly. She was too good for him ; too 
 delicate, too refined, too prettily made for him, who was so coarse, so 
 enormous, so stupid. She was for some one else Marcus, no doubt 
 or at least for some finer-grained man. She should have gone to 
 some other dentist ; the young fellow on the corner, for instance, the 
 poser, the rider of bicycles, the courser of greyhounds. McTeague 
 began to loathe and to envy this fellow. He spied upon him going 
 in and out of his office, and noted his salmon-pink neckties and 
 his astonishing waistcoats. 
 
 One Sunday, a few days after Trina s last sitting, McTeague 
 met Marcus Schouler at his table in the car conductors coffee- joint, 
 next to the harness shop. 
 
 "What you got to do this afternoon, Mac?" inquired the other, 
 as they ate their suet pudding. 
 
 "Nothing, nothing," replied McTeague, shaking his head. His 
 mouth was full of pudding. It made him warm to eat, and little 
 beads of perspiration stood across the bridge of his nose. He 
 looked forward to an afternoon passed in his operating chair as 
 usual. On leaving his "Parlors" he had put ten cents into his 
 pitcher and had left it at Frenna s to be filled. 
 
 "What do you say we take a walk, huh?" said Marcus. "Ah, 
 that s the thing a walk, a long walk, by damn ! It ll be outa sight. 
 I got to take three or four of the dogs out for exercise, anyhow. 
 Old Grannis thinks they need ut. We ll walk out to the Presidio." 
 
 Of late it had become the custom of the two friends to take long 
 walks from time to time. On holidays and on those Sunday after- 
 noons when Marcus was not absent with the Sieppes they went out 
 together, sometimes to the park, sometimes to the Presidio, some 
 times even across the bay. They took a great pleasure in each \ 
 other s company, but silently and with reservation, having the mas 
 culine horror of any demonstration of friendship. 
 
 out the 
 
 length of California Street, and across the Presidio Reservation to 
 the Golden Gate. Then they .turned, and, following the line of the 
 shore, brought up at the Cliff House. Here they halted for beer, 
 Marcus swearing that his mouth was as dry as a hay-bin. Before 
 starting on their walk they had gone around to the little dog hos- 
 
34 McTeague 
 
 pital, and Marcus had let out four of the convalescents, crazed with 
 joy at the release. 
 
 "Look at that dog," he cried to McTeague, showing him a finely- 
 bred Irish setter. "That s the dog that belonged to the duck on the 
 avenue, the dog we called for that day. I ve bought um. The duck 
 thought he had the distemper, and just threw um away. Nothun 
 wrong with um but a little catarrh. Ain t he a bird? Say, ain t 
 be a bird? Look at his flag; it s perfect; and see how he carries his 
 tail on a line with his back. See how stiff and white his whiskers 
 are. Oh, by damn! you can t fool me on a dog. That dog s a 
 winner." 
 
 At the Cliff House the two sat down to their beer in a quiet 
 corner of the billiard-room. There were but two players. Some 
 where in another part of the building a mammoth music-box was 
 jangling out a quickstep. From outside came the long, rhythmical 
 rush of the surf and the sonorous barking of the seals upon the seal 
 rocks. The four dogs curled themselves down upon the sanded 
 floor. 
 
 "Here s how," said Marcus, half emptying his glass. "Ah-h !" 
 he added, with a long breath, "that s good ; it is, for a fact." 
 
 For the last hour of their walk Marcus had done nearly all the 
 talking, McTeague merely answering him by uncertain movements 
 of the head. For that matter, the dentist had been silent and pre 
 occupied throughout the whole afternoon. At length Marcus no 
 ticed it. As he set down his glass with a bang he suddenly ex 
 claimed : 
 
 "What s the matter with you these .days, Mac ? You got a bean 
 about somethun, hey? Spit ut out." 
 
 "No, no," replied McTeague, looking about on the floor, rolling 
 his eyes ; "nothing, no, no." 
 
 "Ah, rats !" returned the other. McTeague kept silence. The 
 two billiard players departed. The music-box struck into a fresh 
 tune. 
 
 "Huh!" exclaimed Marcus, with a short laugh, - "guess you re 
 in love." 
 
 McTeague gasped, and shuffled his enormous feet under the 
 table. 
 
 "Well, somethun s bitun you, anyhow," pursued Marcus. "May 
 be I can help you. We re pals, you know. Better tell me what s 
 up ; guess we can straighten ut out. Ah, go on ; spit ut out." 
 
 The situation was abominable. McTeague could not rise to it. 
 
McTeague 3j 
 
 Marcus was his best friend, his only friend. They were "pals" and 
 McTeague was very fond of him. Yet they were both in love, pre 
 sumably, with the same girl, and now Marcus would try and force 
 the secret out of him ; would rush blindly at the rock upon which the 
 two must split, stirred by the very best of motives, wishing only 
 to be of service. Besides this, there was nobody to whom McTeague 
 would have better preferred to tell his troubles than to Marcus, and 
 yet about this trouble, the greatest trouble of his life, he must keep 
 silent ; must refrain from speaking of it to Marcus above everybody. 
 
 McTeague began dimly to feel that life was too much for him. 
 How had it all come about? A month ago he was perfectly content; 
 he was calm and peaceful, taking his little pleasures as he found 
 them. His life had shaped itself; was, no doubt, to continue al 
 ways along these same lines. A woman had entered his small 
 world and instantly there was discord. The disturbing element had 
 appeared. Wherever the woman had put her foot a score of dis 
 tressing complications had sprung up, like the sudden growth of 
 strange and puzzling flowers. 
 
 "Say, Mac, go on; let s have ut straight," urged Marcus, lean 
 ing toward him. "Has any duck been doing you dirt?" he cried, 
 his face crimson on the instant. 
 
 "No," said McTeague, helplessly. 
 
 "Come along, old man," persisted Marcus ; "let s have ut. What 
 is the row? I ll do all I can to help you." 
 
 It was more than McTeague could bear. The situation had got 
 beyond him. Stupidly he spoke, his hands deep in his pockets, his 
 head rolled forward. 
 
 "It s it s Miss Sieppe," he said. 
 
 "Trina, my cousin? How do you mean?" inquired Marcus 
 sharply. 
 
 "I I I don know," stammered McTeague, hopelessly con 
 founded. 
 
 "You mean," cried Marcus, suddenly enlightened, "that you are 
 that you, too." 
 
 McTeague stirred in his chair, looking at the walls of the room, 
 avoiding the other s glance. He nodded his head, then suddenly 
 broke out: 
 
 "I can t help it. It ain t my fault, is it?" 
 
 Marcus was struck dumb ; he dropped back in his chair breath 
 less. Suddenly McTeague found his tongue. 
 
 "I tell you, Mark, I can t help it. I don t know how it hap- 
 
2 6 McTeague 
 
 pened. It came on so slow that I was, that that that it was done 
 before I knew it, before I could help myself. I know we re pals, us 
 two, and I knew how how you and Miss Sieppe were. I know 
 now, I knew then; but that wouldn t have made any difference. 
 Before I knew it it it there I was. I can t help it. I wouldn t 
 a had ut happen for anything, if I could a stopped it, but I don 
 know, it s something that s just stronger than you are, that s all. 
 She came there Miss Sieppe came to the parlors there three or 
 four times a week, and she was the first girl I had ever known 
 and you don know ! Why, I was so close to her I touched her face 
 every minute, and her mouth, and smelt her hair and her breath 
 oh, you don t know anything about it. I can t give you any idea. 
 I don know exactly myself; I only know how I m fixed. I I 
 it s been done; it s too late, there s no going back. Why, I can t 
 think of anything else night and day. It s everything. It s it s 
 oh, it s everything! I I why, Mark, it s everything I can t 
 explain." He made a helpless movement with both hands. 
 
 Never had McTeague been so excited; never had he made so 
 long a speech. His arms moved in fierce, uncertain gestures, his 
 face flushed, his enormous jaws shut together with a sharp click 
 at every pause. It was like some colossal brute trapped in a deli 
 cate, invisible mesh, raging, exasperated, powerless to extricate 
 himself. 
 
 Marcus Schouler said nothing. There was a long silence. Mar 
 cus got up and walked to the window and stood looking out, but 
 seeing nothing. "Well, who would have thought of this ?" he mut 
 tered under his breath. Here was a fix. Marcus cared for Trina. 
 There was no doubt in his mind about that. He looked forward 
 eagerly to the Sunday afternoon excursions. He liked to be with 
 Trina. He, too, felt the charm of the little girl the charm of 
 the small, pale forehead; the little chin thrust out as if in confi 
 dence and innocence; the heavy, odorous crown of black hair. He 
 liked her immensely. Some day he would speak ; he would ask her 
 to marry him. Marcus put off this matter of marriage to some fu 
 ture period ; it would be some time a year, perhaps, or two. The 
 thing did not take definite shape in his mind. Marcus "kept com 
 pany" with his cousin Trina, but he knew plenty of other girls. 
 For the matter of that, he liked all girls pretty well. Just now the 
 singleness and strength of McTeague s passion startled him. Mc- 
 | Teague would marry Trina that very afternoon if she would have 
 ; him; but would he Marcus? No, he would not; if it came to 
 
McTeague 37 
 
 that, no, he would not. Yet he knew he liked Trina. He could 
 say yes, he could say he loved her. She was his "girl." The 
 Sieppes acknowledged him as Trina s "young man." Marcus came 
 back to the table and sat down sidewise upon it. 
 
 "Well, what are we going to do about it, Mac?" he said. 
 
 "I don* know," answered McTeague, in great distress. "I don* 
 want anything to to come between us, Mark." 
 
 "Well, nothun will, you bet!" vociferated the other. "No, sir; 
 you bet not, Mac." 
 
 Marcus was thinking hard. He could see very clearly that Mc 
 Teague loved Trina more than he did; that in some strange way 
 this huge, brutal fellow was capable of a greater passion than him 
 self, who was twice as clever. Suddenly Marcus jumped impetu 
 ously "to a resolution. 
 
 "Well, say, Mac," he cried, striking .the table with his fist, "go 
 ahead. I guess you you want her pretty bad. I ll pull out; yes, j 
 I will. I ll give her up to you, old man." 
 
 The sense of his own magnanimity all at once overcame Marcus. 
 He saw himself as another man, very noble, self-sacrificing; he 
 stood apart and watched this second self with boundless admiration 
 and with infinite pity. He was so good, so magnificent, so heroic, 
 that he almost sobbed. Marcus made a sweeping gesture of resig 
 nation, throwing out both his arms, crying : 
 
 "Mac, I ll give her up to you. I won t stand between you." 
 There were actually tears in Marcus s eyes as he spoke. There 
 was no doubt he thought himself sincere. At that moment he al 
 most believed he loved Trina conscientiously, that he was sacrificing 
 himself for the sake of his friend. The two stood up and faced each 
 other, gripping hands. It was a great moment; even McTeague 
 felt the drama of it. What a fine thing was this friendship between / 
 men ! The dentist treats his friend for an ulcerated tooth and re 
 fuses payment ; the friend reciprocates by giving up his girl. This 
 was nobility. Their mutual affection and esteem suddenly increased ^p 
 enormously. It was Damon and Pythias; it was David and Jona 
 than; nothing could ever estrange them. Now it was for life or 
 death. 
 
 "I m much obliged," murmured McTeague. He could think of 
 nothing better to say. "I m much obliged," he repeated; "much 
 obliged, Mark." 
 
 "That s all right, that s all right," returned Marcus Schouler, 
 bravely, and it occurred to him to add, "You ll be happy together. 
 
3 8 McTeague 
 
 Tell her for me tell her tell her Marcus could not go on* 
 He wrung the dentist s hand silently. 
 
 It had not appeared to either of them that Trina might refuse 
 McTeague. McTeague s spirits rose at once. In Marcus s with 
 drawal he fancied he saw an end to all his difficulties. Everything 
 would come right, after all. The strained, exalted state of Mar 
 cus s nerves ended by putting him into fine humor as well. His 
 grief suddenly changed to an excess of gayety. The afternoon was 
 a success. They slapped each other on the back with great blows 
 of the open palms, and they drank each other s health in a third 
 round of beer. 
 
 Ten minutes after his renunciation of Trina Sieppe, Marcus as 
 tounded McTeague with a tremendous feat. 
 
 "Looka here, Mac. I know somethun you can t do. I ll bet 
 you two bits I ll stump you." They each put a quarter on the 
 table. "Now watch me," cried Marcus. He caught up a billiard 
 ball from the rack, poised it a moment in front of his face, then 
 with a sudden, horrifying distension of his jaws crammed it into 
 his mouth, and shut his lips over it. 
 
 For an instant McTeague was stupefied, his eyes bulging. Then 
 an enormous laugh shook him. He roared and shouted, swaying in 
 his chair, slapping his knee. What a josher was this Marcus ! Sure, 
 you never could tell what he would do next. Marcus slipped the 
 ball out, wiped it on the tablecloth, and passed it to McTeague. 
 
 "Now let s see you do it." 
 
 McTeague fell suddenly grave. The matter was serious. He 
 parted his thick mustaches and opened his enormous jaws like an 
 anaconda. The ball disappeared inside his mouth. Marcus ap 
 plauded vociferously, shouting, "Good work!" McTeague reached 
 for the money and put it in his vest pocket, nodding his head with 
 a knowing air. 
 
 Then suddenly his face grew purple, his jaws moved convul 
 sively, he pawed at his cheeks with both hands. The billiard ball 
 had slipped into his mouth easily enough; now, however, he could 
 not get it out again. 
 
 It was terrible. The dentist rose to his feet, stumbling about 
 among the dogs, his face working, his eyes starting. Try as he 
 would, he could not stretch his jaws wide enough to slip the ball 
 out. Marcus lost his wits, swearing at the top of his voice. Mc 
 Teague sweated with terror; inarticulate sounds came from his 
 crammed mouth ; he waved his arms wildly ; all the four dogs caught 
 
McTeague 39 
 
 the excitement and began to bark. A waiter rushed in, the two bil 
 liard players returned, a little crowd formed. There was a veritable 
 scene. 
 
 All at once the ball slipped out of McTeague s jaws as easily 
 as it had gone in. What a relief ! He dropped into a chair, wiping 
 his forehead, gasping for breath. 
 
 On the strength of the occasion Marcus Schouler invited the en 
 tire group to drink with him. 
 
 By the time the affair was over and the group dispersed it was 
 after five. Marcus and McTeague decided they would ride home on 
 the cars. But they soon found this impossible. The dogs would 
 not follow. Only Alexander, Marcus s new setter, kept his place at 
 the rear of the car. The other three lost their senses immediately, 
 running wildly about the streets with their heads in the air, or sud 
 denly starting off at a furious gallop directly away from the car* 
 Marcus whistled and shouted and lathered with rage in vain. The 
 two friends were obliged to walk. When they finally reached Polk 
 Street, Marcus shut up the three dogs in the hospital. Alexander 
 he brought back to the flat with him. 
 
 There was a minute back yard in the rear, where Marcus had 
 made a kennel for Alexander out of an old water barrel. Before 
 he thought of his own supper Marcus put Alexander to bed and fed 
 him a couple of dog biscuits. McTeague had followed him to the 
 yard to keep him company. Alexander settled to his supper at once, 
 chewing vigorously at the biscuit, his head on one side. 
 
 "What you going to do about this about that about about 
 my cousin now, Mac?" inquired Marcus. 
 
 McTeague shook his head helplessly. It was dark by now and 
 cold. The little back yard was grimy and full of odors. Mc 
 Teague was tired with their long walk. All his uneasiness about 
 his affair with Trina had returned. No, surely she was not for him. 
 Marcus or some other man would win her in the end. What could 
 she ever see to desire in him in him, a clumsy giant, with hands 
 like wooden mallets? She had told him once that she would not 
 marry him. Was that not final? 
 
 "I don know what to do, Mark," he said. 
 
 "Well, you must make up to her now," answered Marcus. "Go 
 and call on her." 
 
 McTeague started. He had not thought of calling on her. The 
 idea frightened him a little. 
 
 "Of course," persisted Marcus, "that s the proper caper. What 
 
4<D McTeague 
 
 did you expect? Did you think you was never going to see her 
 again ?" 
 
 "I don know, I don know/ responded the dentist, looking 
 stupidly at the dog. 
 
 "You know where they live," continued Marcus Schouler. 
 "Over at B Street station, across the bay. I ll take you over there 
 whenever you want to go. I tell you what, we ll go over there 
 Washington s Birthday. That s this next Wednesday; sure, they ll 
 be glad to see you." It was good of Marcus. All at once Mc 
 Teague rose to an appreciation of what his friend was doing for him. 
 He stammered: 
 
 "Say, Mark you re you re all right, anyhow." 
 
 "Why, pshaw !" said Marcus. "That s all right, old man. I d 
 like to see you two fixed, that s all. We ll go over Wednesday, sure." 
 
 They turned back to the house. Alexander left off eating and 
 watched them go away, first with one eye, then with the other. 
 But he was too self-respecting to whimper. However, by the time 
 the two friends had reached the second landing on the back stairs 
 a terrible commotion was under way in the little yard. They rushed 
 to an open window at the end of the hall and looked down. 
 
 A thin board fence separated the flat s back yard from that used 
 by the branch post-office. In the latter place lived a collie dog. 
 He and Alexander had smelled each other out, blowing through 
 the cracks of the fence at each other. Suddenly the quarrel had 
 exploded on either side of the fence. The dogs raged at each other, 
 snarling and barking, frantic with hate. Their teeth gleamed. They 
 tore at the fence with their front paws. They filled the whole night 
 with their clamor. 
 
 "By damn!" cried Marcus, "they don t love each other. Just 
 listen; wouldn t that make a fight if the two got together? Have 
 to try it some day." 
 
McTeague 41 
 
 V 
 
 WEDNESDAY morning, Washington s Birthday, McTeague rose 
 very early and shaved himself. Besides the six mournful con 
 certina airs, the dentist knew one song. Whenever he shaved, he 
 sang this song ; never at any other time. His voice was a bellowing 
 roar, enough to make the window sashes rattle. Just now he woke 
 up all the lodgers in his hall with it. It was a lamentable wail : 
 
 "No one to love, none to caress, 
 Left all alone in this world s wilderness." 
 
 As he paused to strop his razor, Marcus came into his room, 
 half-dressed, a startling phantom in red flannels. 
 
 Marcus often ran back and forth between his room and the 
 dentist s "Parlors" in all sorts of undress. Old Miss Baker had 
 seen him thus several times through her half-open door, as she sat 
 in her room listening and waiting. The old dressmaker was shocked 
 out of all expression. She was outraged, offended, pursing her lips, 
 putting up her head. She talked of complaining to the landlady. 
 "And Mr. Grannis right next door, too. You can understand how 
 trying it is for both of us." She would come out in the hall after 
 one of these apparitions, her little false curls shaking, talking loud 
 and shrill to any one in reach of her voice. 
 
 "Well," Marcus would shout, "shut your door, then, if you don t 
 want to see. Look out, now, here I come again. Not even a porous 
 plaster on me this time." 
 
 On this Wednesday morning Marcus called McTeague out into 
 the hall, to the head of the stairs that led down to the street door. 
 
 "Come and listen to Maria, Mac," said he. 
 
 Maria sat on the next to the lowest step, her chin propped b y 
 her two fists. The red-headed Polish Jew, the ragman Zerkow, 
 stood in the doorway. He was talking eagerly. 
 
 "Now, just once more, Maria," he was saying. ^"Tell it to us 
 just once more." Maria s voice came up the stairway in a monotone. 
 Marcus and McTeague caught a phrase from time to time. 
 
 "There were more than a hundred pieces, and every one of them 
 
42 McTeague 
 
 gold j u st that punch-bowl was worth a fortune thick, fat, red 
 gold." 
 
 "Get on to that, will you?" observed Marcus. "The old skin 
 has got her started on the plate. Ain t they a pair for you ?" 
 "And it rang like bells, didn t it?" prompted Zerkow. 
 "Sweeter n church bells, and clearer." 
 
 "Ah, sweeter n bells. Wasn t that punch-bowl awful heavy?" 
 "All you could do to lift it." 
 
 "I know. Oh, I know," answered Zerkow, clawing at his lips. 
 "Where did i+ all go to? Where did it go?" 
 Maria shook her head. 
 "It s gone, anyhow." 
 
 "Ah, gone, gone ! Think of it ! The punch-bowl gone, and the 
 engraved ladle, and the plates and goblets. What a sight it must 
 have been all heaped together !" 
 "It was a wonderful sight." 
 "Yes, wonderful ; it must have been." 
 
 On the lower steps of that cheap flat, the Mexican woman and 
 the red-haired Polish Jew mused long over that vanished, half- 
 mythical gold plate. 
 
 Marcus and the dentist spent Washington s Birthday across the 
 bay. The journey over was one long agony to McTeague. He 
 shook with a formless, uncertain dread; a dozen times he would 
 have turned back had not Marcus been with him. The stolid giant 
 was as nervous as a schoolboy. He fancied that his call upon Miss 
 Sieppe was an outrageous affront. She would freeze him with a 
 r stare; he would be shown the door, would be ejected, disgraced. 
 
 As they got off the local train at B Street station they sud 
 denly collided with the whole tribe of Sieppes the mother, father, 
 three children, and Trina equipped for one of their eternal picnics. 
 They were to go to Schuetzen Park, within walking distance of the 
 station. They were grouped about four lunch baskets. One of the 
 children, a little boy, held a black greyhound by a rope around its 
 neck. Trina wore a blue cloth skirt, a striped shirt waist, and a 
 white sailor ; about her round waist was a belt of imitation alligator 
 skin. 
 
 At once Mrs. Sieppe began to talk to Marcus. He had written 
 of their coming, but the picnic had been decided upon after the 
 arrival of his letter. Mrs. Sieppe explained this to him. She was 
 an immense old lady with a pink face and wonderful hair, abso 
 lutely white. The Sieppes were a German-Swiss family. 
 
McTeague 43 
 
 "We go to der park, Schuetzen Park, mit alle dem childern, a 
 little eggs-kursion, eh not soh? We breathe der freshes air, a 
 celubration, a pignic bei der seashore on. Ach, dot wull be soh 
 gay, ah?" 
 
 "You bet it will. It ll be outa sight," cried Marcus, enthusiastic 
 in an instant. "This is m friend, Doctor McTeague, I wrote you 
 about, Mrs. Sieppe." 
 
 "Ach, der doktor," cried Mrs. Sieppe. 
 
 McTeague was presented, shaking hands gravely as Marcus 
 shouldered him from one to the other. 
 
 Mr. Sieppe was a little man of a military aspect, full of im 
 portance, taking himself very seriously. He was a member of a 
 rifle team. Over his shoulder was slung a Springfield rifle, while 
 his breast was decorated by five bronze medals. 
 
 Trina was delighted. McTeague was dumfounded. She ap 
 peared positively glad to see him. 
 
 "How do you do, Doctor McTeague," she said, smiling at him 
 and shaking his hand. "It s nice to see you again. Look, see how 
 fine my filling is." She lifted a corner of her lip and showed him 
 the clumsy gold bridge. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Sieppe toiled and perspired. Upon him de 
 volved the responsibility of the excursion. He seemed to consider 
 it a matter of vast importance, a veritable expedition. 
 
 "Owgooste!" he shouted to the little boy with a black grey 
 hound, "you will der hound und basket number three carry. Der 
 tervins," he added, calling to the two smallest boys, who were 
 dressed exactly alike, "will releef one unudder mit der camp-stuhl 
 und basket number four. Dat is comprehend, hay? When we 
 make der start, you childern will in der advance march. Dat is your 
 orders. But we do not start," he exclaimed, excitedly ; "we re-main. 
 Ach Gott, Selina, who does not arrive." 
 
 Selina, it appeared, was a niece of Mrs. Sieppe s. They were 
 on the point of starting without her, when she suddenly arrived, 
 very much out of breath. She was a slender, unhealthy-looking girl, 
 who overworked herself giving lessons in hand-painting at twenty- 
 five cents an hour. McTeague was presented. They all began to 
 talk at once, filling the little station house with a confusion of 
 tongues. 
 
 "Attention!" cried Mr. Sieppe, his gold-headed cane in one 
 hand, his Springfield rifle in the other. "Attention! We depart." 
 The four little boys moved off ahead; the greyhound suddenly be- 
 
44 McTeague 
 
 gan to bark and tug at his leash. The others picked up their 
 bundles. 
 
 "Vorwarts !" shouted Mr. Sieppe, waving his rifle and assum 
 ing the attitude of a lieutenant of infantry leading a charge. The 
 party set off down the railroad track. 
 
 Mrs. Sieppe walked with her husband, who constantly left her 
 side to shout an order up and down the line. Marcus followed with 
 Selina. McTeague found himself with Trina at the end of the 
 procession. 
 
 "We go off on these picnics almost every week," said Trina, by 
 way of a beginning, "and almost every holiday, too. It is a cus 
 tom." 
 
 "Yes, yes, a custom," answered McTeague, nodding; "a custom 
 that s the word." 
 
 "Don t you think picnics are fine fun, Doctor McTeague?" she 
 continued. "You take your lunch ; you leave the dirty city all day ; 
 you race about in the open air, and when lunch time comes, oh, 
 aren t you hungry? And the woods and the grass smell so fine!" 
 
 "I don know, Miss Sieppe," he answered, keeping his eyes 
 fixed on the ground between the rails. "I never went on a picnic." 
 
 "Never went on a picnic," she cried, astonished. "Oh, you ll 
 see what fun we ll have. In the morning father and the children 
 dig clams in the mud by the shore, an we bake them, and oh, 
 there s thousands of things to do." 
 
 "Once I went sailing on the bay," said McTeague. "It was in 
 a tugboat; we fished off the heads. I caught three codfishes." 
 
 "I m afraid to go out on the bay," answered Trina, shaking her 
 head, "sailboats tip over so easy. A cousin of mine, Selina s brother, 
 was drowned one Decoration Day. They never found his body. 
 Can you swim, Doctor McTeague?" 
 
 "I used to at the mine." 
 
 "At the mine? Oh, yes, I remember, Marcus told me you were 
 a miner once." 
 
 "I was a car-boy ; all the car-boys used to swim in the reservoir 
 by the ditch every Thursday evening. One of them was bit by a 
 rattlesnake once while he was dressing. He was a Frenchman 
 named Andrew. He swelled up and began to twitch." 
 
 "Oh, how I hate snakes ! They re so crawly and graceful but, 
 just the same, I like to watch them. You know that drug store 
 over in town that has a showcase full of live ones?" 
 
 "We killed the rattler with a cart whip." 
 
McTeague 45 
 
 "How far do you think you could swim? Did you ever try? 
 D you think you could swim a mile?" 
 
 "A mile? I don t know. I never tried. I guess I could." 
 
 "I can swim a little. Sometimes we all go out to the Crystal 
 Baths." 
 
 The Crystal Baths, huh? Can you swim across the tank?" 
 
 "Oh, I can swim all right as long as papa holds my chin up. 
 Soon as he takes his hand away, down I go. Don t you hate to get 
 \vater in your ears?" 
 
 "Bathing s good for you." 
 
 "If the water s too warm, it isn t. It weakens you." 
 
 Mr. Sieppe came running down the tracks, waving his cane. 
 
 "To one side," he shouted, motioning them off the track; "der 
 drain gomes." A local passenger train was just passing B Street 
 station, some quarter of a mile behind them. The party stood to 
 one side to let it pass. Marcus put a nickel and two crossed pins 
 upon the rail, and waved his hat to the passengers as the trarn 
 roared past. The children shouted shrilly. Wheri the train was 
 gone, they all rushed to see the nickel and the crossed pins. The 
 nickel had been jolted off, but the pins had been flattened out so 
 that they bore a faint resemblance to opened scissors. A great 
 contention arose among the children for the possession of these 
 "scissors." Mr. Sieppe was obliged to intervene. He reflected 
 gravely. It was a matter of tremendous moment. The whole 
 party halted, awaiting his decision. 
 
 "Attend now," he suddenly exclaimed. "It will not be soh soon. 
 At der end of der day, ven we shall have home becommen, den wull 
 it pe adjudge, eh? A reward of merit to him who der bes pehaves. 
 It is an order. Vorwarts!" 
 
 "That was a Sacramento train," said Marcus to Selina as they 
 started off; "it was, for a fact." 
 
 "I know a girl in Sacramento," Trina told McTeague. "She s 
 forewoman in a drug store, and she s got consumption." 
 
 "I was in Sacramento once," observed McTeague, "nearly eight 
 years ago." 
 
 "Is it a nice place as nice as San Francisco?" 
 
 "It s hot. I practiced there for a while." 
 
 "I like San Francisco," said Trina, looking across the bay to 
 where the city piled itself upon its hills. 
 
 "So do I," answered McTeague. "Do you like it better than 
 living over here?" 
 
46 McTeague 
 
 "Oh, sure, I wish we lived in the city. If you want to go across 
 for anything it takes up the whole day." 
 
 "Yes, yes, the whole day almost." 
 
 "Do you know many people in the city? Do you know anybody 
 named Oelbermann? That s my uncle. He has a wholesale toy 
 store in the Mission. They say he s awful rich." 
 
 "No, I don know him." 
 
 "His stepdaughter wants to be a nun. Just fancy! And Mr. 
 Oelbermann won t have it. He says it would be just like burying 
 his child. Yes, she wants to enter the convent of the Sacred Heart. 
 Are you a Catholic, Doctor McTeague?" 
 
 "No. No, I" 
 
 "Papa is a Catholic. He goes to Mass on the feast days once 
 in a while. But mamma s Lutheran." 
 
 "The Catholics are trying to get control of the schools," ob 
 served McTeague, suddenly remembering one of Marcus s political 
 tirades. 
 
 "That s what cousin Mark says. We are going to send the 
 twins to the kindergarten next month." 
 
 "What s the kindergarten?" 
 
 "Oh, they teach them to make things out of straw and tooth 
 picks kind of a place to keep them off the street." 
 
 "There s one up on Sacramento Street, not far from Polk Street. 
 I saw the sign." 
 
 "I know where. Why, Selina used to play the piano there." 
 
 "Does she play the piano?" 
 
 "Oh, you ought to hear her. She plays fine. Selina s very ac 
 complished. She paints, too." 
 
 "I can play on the concertina." 
 
 "Oh, can you? I wish you d brought it along. Next time you 
 will. I hope you ll come often on our picnics. You ll see what fun 
 we ll have." 
 
 "Fine day for a picnic, ain t it? There ain t a cloud." 
 
 "That s so,"^ exclaimed Trina, looking up, "not a single cloud. 
 Oh, yes ; there is one, just over Telegraph Hill." 
 
 "That s smoke." 
 
 <f No, it s a cloud. Smoke isn t white that way " 
 r Tis a cloud." 
 
 "I knew I was right. I never say a thing unless I m pretty 
 
 sure. 
 
 [ It looks like a dog s head." 
 
McTeague 47 
 
 "Don t it? Isn t Marcus fond of dogs?" 
 
 "He got a new dog last week a setter." 
 
 "Did he?" 
 
 "Yes. He and I took a lot of dogs from his hospital out for a 
 walk to the Cliff House last Sunday, but we had to walk all the way 
 home, because they wouldn t follow. You ve been out to the Cliff 
 House?" 
 
 "Not for a long time. We had a picnic there one Fourth of 
 July, but it rained. Don t you love the ocean?" 
 
 "Yes yes, I like it pretty well." 
 
 "Oh, I d like to go off in one of those big sailing ships. Just 
 away, and away, and away, anywhere. They re different from a 
 little yacht. I d love to travel." 
 
 "Sure; so would I." 
 
 "Papa and mamma came over in a sailing ship. They were 
 twenty-one days. Mamma s uncle used to be a sailor. He was 
 captain of a steamer on Lake Geneva, in Switzerland." 
 
 "Halt!" shouted Mr. Sieppe, brandishing his rifle. They had 
 arrived at the gates of the park. All at once McTeague turned 
 cold. He had only a quarter in his pocket. What was he expected 
 to do pay for the whole party, or for Trina and himself, or merely 
 buy his own ticket? And even in this latter case would a quarter 
 be enough? He lost his wits, rolling his eyes helplessly. Then it 
 occurred to him to feign a great abstraction, pretending not to 
 know that the time was come to pay. He looked intently up and 
 down the tracks; perhaps a train was coming. "Here we are," 
 cried Trina, as they came up to the rest of the party, crowded about 
 the entrance. "Yes, yes," observed McTeague, his head in the air. 
 
 "Gi me four bits, Mac," said Marcus, coming up. "Here s where 
 we shell out." 
 
 "I I I only got a quarter," mumbled the dentist, miserably. 
 He felt that he had ruined himself forever with Trina. What was 
 the use of trying to win her? Destiny was against him. "I only 
 got a quarter," he stammered. He was on the point of adding that 
 he would not go in the park. That seemed to be the only alter 
 native. 
 
 "Oh, all right !" said Marcus, easily. "I ll pay for you, and you 
 can square with me when we go home." 
 
 They filed into the park, Mr. Sieppe counting them off as they 
 entered. 
 
 "Ah," said Trina, with a long breath, as she and McTeague 
 
48 McTeague 
 
 pushed through the wicket, "here we are once more, Doctor." She \ 
 had not appeared to notice McTeague s embarrassment. The diffi 
 culty had been tided over somehow. Once more McTeague felt 
 himself saved. 
 
 "To der beach !" shouted Mr. Sieppe. They had checked their 
 baskets at the peanut stand. The whole party trooped down to the 
 seashore. The greyhound was turned loose. The children raced 
 on ahead. 
 
 From one of the larger parcels Mr. Sieppe had drawn forth a 
 small tin steamboat August s birthday present a gaudy little toy 
 which could be steamed up and navigated by means of an alcohol 
 lamp. Her trial trip was to be made this morning. 
 
 "Gi me it, gi me it," shouted August, dancing around his 
 father. 
 
 "Not soh, not soh," cried Mr. Sieppe, bearing it aloft. "I must 
 first der eggsperimunt make." 
 
 "No, no !" wailed August. "I want to play with ut." 
 
 "Obey !" thundered Mr. Sieppe. August subsided. A little jetty 
 ran part of the way into the water. Here, after a careful study 
 of the directions printed on the cover of the box, Mr. Sieppe began 
 to fire the little boat. 
 
 "I want to put ut in the waater," cried August. 
 
 "Stand back!" shouted his parent. "You do not know so well 
 as me; dere is dandger. Mitout attention he will eggsplode." 
 
 "I want to play with ut," protested August, beginning to cry. 
 
 "Ach, soh; you cry, bube!" vociferated Mr. Sieppe. "Mom- 
 mer," addressing Mrs. Sieppe, "he will soh soon be ge-whipt, eh?" 
 
 "I want my boa-wut," screamed August, dancing. 
 
 "Silence !" roared Mr. Sieppe. The little boat began to hiss and 
 smoke. 
 
 "Soh," observed the father, "he gommence. Attention! I put 
 him in der water." He was very excited. The perspiration dripped 
 from the back of his neck. The little boat was launched. It hissed 
 more furiously than ever. Clouds of steam rolled from it, but it 
 refused to move. 
 
 "You don t know how she wo-rks," sobbed August. 
 
 "I know more soh mudge as der grossest liddle fool as you," 
 cried Mr. Sieppe, fiercely, his face purple. 
 
 "You must give it sh shove!" exclaimed the boy. 
 
 "Den he eggsplode, idiot !" shouted his father. All at once the 
 boiler of the steamer blew up with a sharp crack. The little tin 
 
McTeague 49 
 
 toy turned over and sank out of sight before any one could inter 
 fere. 
 
 "Ah h! Yah! Yah!" yelled August. "It s go-one!" 
 
 Instantly Mr. Sieppe boxed his ears. There was a lamentable 
 scene. August rent the air with his outcries ; his father shook him 
 till his boots danced on the jetty, shouting into his face: 
 
 "Ach, idiot! Ach, imbecile! Ach, miserable! I tol you he 
 eggsplode. Stop your cry. Stop ! It is an order. Do you wish I 
 drow you in der water, eh ? Speak. Silence, bube ! Mommer, 
 where ist mein stick? He will der grossest whippun ever of his life" 
 receive." 
 
 Little by little the boy subsided, swallowing his sobs, knuckling 
 his eyes, gazing ruefully at the spot where the boat had sunk. "Dat 
 is better soh," commented Mr. Sieppe, finally releasing him. "Next 
 dime berhaps you will your fat er better pelief. Now, no more. 
 We will der glams ge-dig. Mommer, a fire. Ach, himmel ! we 
 have der pfeffer forgotten." 
 
 The work of clamdigging began at once, the little boys tak 
 ing off their shoes and stockings. At first August refused to 
 be comforted, and it was not until his father drove him into 
 the water with his gold-headed cane that he consented to join 
 the others. 
 
 What a day that was for McTeague! What a never-to-be-for 
 gotten day ! He was with Trina constantly. They laughed to 
 gethershe demurely, her lips closed tight, her little chin thrust 
 out, her small pale nose, with its adorable little freckles, wrinkling; 
 he roared with all the force of his lungs, his enormous mouth dis 
 tended, striking sledge-hammer blows upon his knees with his 
 clinched fist. 
 
 The lunch was delicious. Trina and her mother made a clam 
 chowder that melted in one s mouth. The lunch baskets were 
 emptied. The party were fully two hours eating. There were huge 
 rolls of rye bread full of grains of chickweed. There were wiener- 
 wurst and frankfurter sausages. There was unsalted butter. There 
 were pretzels. There was cold underdone chicken, which one ate 
 in slices, plastered with a wonderful kind of mustard that did not 
 sting. There were dried apples, that gave Mr. Sieppe the hiccoughs. 
 There were a dozen bottles of beer, and, last of all, a crowning 
 achievement, a marvelous Gotha truffle. After lunch came tobacco. 
 Stuffed to the eyes, McTeague drowsed over his pipe, prone on his 
 back in the sun, while Trina, Mrs. Sieppe, and Selina washed the 
 
 C III-NORRIS 
 
jo McTeague 
 
 dishes. In the afternoon Mr. Sieppe disappeared. They heard 
 the reports of his rifle on the range. The others swarmed over the 
 park, now around the swings, now in the Casino, now in the mu 
 seum, now invading the merry-go-round. 
 
 At half -past five o clock Mr. Sieppe marshaled the party to 
 gether. It was time to return home. 
 
 The family insisted that Marcus and McTeague should take 
 supper with them at their home and should stay overnight. Mrs. 
 Sieppe argued they could get no decent supper if they went back 
 to the city at that hour; that they could catch an early morning, 
 boat and reach their business in good time. The two friends ac 
 cepted. 
 
 The Sieppes lived in a little box of a house at the foot of B 
 Street, the first house to the right as one went up from the station. 
 It was two stories high, with a funny red mansard roof of oval 
 slates. The interior was cut up into innumerable tiny rooms, some 
 of them so small as to be hardly better than sleeping closets. In the 
 back yard was a contrivance for pumping water from the cistern 
 that interested McTeague at once. It was a dog-wheel, a huge re 
 volving box in which the unhappy black greyhound spent most of 
 his waking hours. It was his kennel ; he slept in it. From time to 
 time during the day Mrs. Sieppe appeared on the back doorstep, 
 crying shrilly, "Hoop, hoop!" She threw lumps of coal at him, 
 waking him to his work. 
 
 They were all very tired and went to bed early. Affer great 
 discussion it was decided that Marcus would sleep upon the lounge 
 in the front parlor. Trina would sleep with August, giving up her 
 room to McTeague. Selina went to her home, a block or so above 
 the Sieppes . At nine o clock Mr. Sieppe showed McTeague to his 
 room and left him to himself with a newly lighted candle. 
 
 For a long time after Mr. Sieppe had gone McTeague stood 
 motionless in the middle of the room, his elbows pressed close to 
 his sides, looking obliquely from the corners of his eyes. He hardly 
 dared to move. . He was in Trina s room. 
 
 It was an ordinary little room. A clean white matting was on 
 the floor; gray paper, spotted with pink and green flowers, covered 
 the walls. In one corner, under a white netting, was a little bed, 
 the woodwork gayly painted w;th knots of bright flowers. Near 
 it, against the wall, was a black walnut bureau. A work-table with 
 spiral legs stood by the window, which was hung with a green and 
 gold window curtain. Opposite the window the closet door stood 
 
McTeague 51 
 
 ajar, while in the corner across from the bed was a tiny washstand 
 with two clean towels. 
 
 And that was all. But it was Trina s room. McTeague was in 
 his lady s bower; it seemed to him a little nest, intimate, discreet. 
 He felt hideously out of place. He was an intruder; he, with his 
 enormous feet, his colossal bones, his crude, brutal gestures. The 
 mere weight of his limbs, he was sure, would crush the little bed 
 stead like an eggshell. 
 
 Then, as this first sensation wore off, he began to feel the charm 
 of the little chamber. It was as though Trina were close by, but 
 invisible. McTeague felt all the delight of her presence without 
 the embarrassment that usually accompanied it. He was near to 
 her nearer than he had ever been before. He saw into her daily 
 life, her little ways and manners, her habits, her very thoughts. 
 And was there not in the air of that room a certain faint perfume 
 that he knew, that recalled her to his mind with marvelous vivid 
 ness? 
 
 As he put the candle down upon the bureau he saw her hairbrush 
 lying there. Instantly he picked it up, and, without knowing why, 
 held it to his face. With what a delicious odor was it redolent! 
 That heavy, enervating odor of her hair her wonderful, royal hair ! 
 The smell of that little hairbrush was talismanic. He had but to 
 close his eyes to see her as distinctly as in a mirror. He saw her 
 tiny, round figure, dressed all in black for, curiously enough, it 
 was his very first impression of Trina that came back to him now 
 not the Trina of the later occasions, not the Trina of the blue cloth 
 skirt and white sailor. He saw her as he had seen her the day 
 that Marcus had introduced them: saw her pale, round face; her 
 narrow, half-open eyes, blue like the eyes of a baby ; her tiny, pale 
 ears, suggestive of anaemia; the freckles across the bridge of her 
 nose ; her pale lips ; the tiara of royal black hair ; and, above all, the 
 delicious poise of the head, tipped back as though by the weight of 
 all that hair the poise that thrust out her chin a little, with the 
 movement that was so confiding, so innocent, so nearly infantile. 
 
 McTeague went softly about the room from one object to an 
 other, beholding Trina in everything he touched or looked at. He 
 came at last to the closet door. It was ajar. He opened it wide, 
 and paused upon the threshold. 
 
 Trina s clothes were hanging there skirts and waists, jackets, 
 and stiff white petticoats. What a vision? For an instant Mc 
 Teague caught his breath, spellbound. If he had suddenly discov- 
 
p McTeague 
 
 ered Trina herself there, smiling at him, holding out her hands, he 
 could hardly have been more overcome. Instantly he recognized the 
 black dress she had worn on that famous first day. There it was, 
 the little jacket she had carried over her arm the day he had terri 
 fied her with his blundering declaration, and still others, and others 
 
 a whole group of Trinas faced him there. He went further into 
 
 the closet, touching the clothes gingerly, stroking them softly with 
 his huge leathern palms. As he stirred them a delicate perfume 
 disengaged itself from the folds. Ah, that exquisite feminine odor ! 
 It was not only her hair now, it was Trina herself her mouth, her 
 hands, her neck; the indescribably sweet, fleshly aroma that was a 
 part of her, pure and clean, and redolent of youth and freshness. 
 All at once, seized with an unreasoned impulse, McTeague opened 
 his huge arms and gathered the little garments close to him, plung 
 ing his face deep among them, savoring their delicious odor with 
 long breaths of luxury and supreme content. 
 
 The picnic at Schuetzen Park decided matters. McTeague be 
 gan to call on Trina regularly Sunday and Wednesday afternoons. 
 He took Marcus Schouler s place. Sometimes Marcus accom 
 panied him, but it was geerally to meet Selina by appointment at 
 the Sieppes house. 
 
 But Marcus made the most of his renunciation of his cousin. 
 He remembered his pose from time to time. He made McTeague 
 unhappy and bewildered by wringing his hands, by venting sighs that 
 seemed to tear his heart out, or by giving evidences of an infinite 
 melancholy. "What is my life !" he would exclaim. "What is left 
 for me? Nothing, by damn!" And when McTeague would at 
 tempt remonstrance, he would cry: "Never mind, old man. Never 
 mind me. Go, be happy. I forgive you." 
 
 Forgive what? McTeague was all at sea, was harassed with 
 the thought of some shadowy, irreparable injury he had done his 
 friend. 
 
 "Oh, don t think of me !" Marcus would exclaim at other times, 
 even when Trina was by. "Don t think of me ; I don t count any 
 more. I ain t in it." Marcus seemed to take great pleasure in 
 contemplating the wreck of his life. There is no doubt he enjoyed 
 himself hugely during these days. 
 
 The Sieppes were at first puzzled as well over this change of 
 front. 
 
McTeague 53 
 
 "Trina has den a new younge man," cried Mr. Sieppe. "First 
 Schouler, now der doktor, eh ? What die tevil, I say !" 
 
 Weeks passed, February went, March came in very rainy, put 
 ting a stop to all their picnics and Sunday excursions. 
 
 One Wednesday afternoon in the second week in March Mc 
 Teague came over to call on Trina, bringing his concertina with him, 
 as was his custom nowadays. As he got off the train at the station 
 he was surprised to find Trina waiting for him. 
 
 "This is the first day it hasn t rained in weeks," she explained, 
 "an I thought it would be nice to walk." 
 
 "Sure, sure," assented McTeague. 
 
 B Street station was nothing more than a little shed. There was 
 no ticket office, nothing but a couple of whittled and carven benches. 
 It was built close to the railroad tracks, just across which was the 
 dirty, muddy shore of San Francisco Bay. About a quarter of a 
 mile back from the station was the edge of the town of Oakland. 
 Between the station and the first houses of the town lay immense 
 salt flats, here and there broken by winding streams of black water. 
 They were covered with a growth of wiry grass, strangely dis 
 colored in places by enormous stains of orange yellow. 
 
 Near the station a bit of fence painted with a cigar advertise 
 ment reelejj over into the mud, while under its lee lay an aban- 
 dond gravel wagon with dished wheels. The station was connected 
 with the town by the extension of B Street, which struck across the 
 flats geometrically straight, a file of tall poles with intervening wires 
 marching along with it. At the station these were headed by an iron 
 electric-light pole that, with its supports and outriggers, looked for 
 all the world like an immense grasshopper on its hind legs. 
 
 Across the flats, at the fringe of the town, were the dump heaps, 
 the figures of a few Chinese rag-pickers moving over them. Far to 
 the left the view was shut off by the immense red-brown drum of 
 the gas-works; to the right it was bounded by the chimneys and 
 workshops of an iron foundry. 
 
 Across the railroad tracks, to seaward, one saw the long stretch 
 of black mud bank left bare by the tide, which was far out, nearly half 
 a mile. Clouds of sea-gulls were forever rising and settling upon 
 this mud bank; a wrecked and abandoned wharf crawled over it 
 on tottering legs; close in an old sailboat lay canted on her bilge. 
 
 But further on, across the yellow waters of the bay, beyond Goat 
 Island, lay San Francisco, a blue line of hills, rugged with roofs 
 and spires. Far to the westward opened the Golden Gate, a bleak 
 
54 McTeague 
 
 cutting in the sand-hills, through which one caught a glimpse of the 
 open Pacific. 
 
 The station at B Street was solitary; no trains passed at this 
 hour ; except the distant rag-pickers, not a soul was in sight. The 
 wind blew strong, carrying with it the mingled smell of salt, of tar, 
 of dead seaweed, and of bilge. The sky hung low and brown; at 
 long intervals a few drops of rain fell. 
 
 Near the station Trina and McTeague sat on the roadbed of the 
 tracks, at the edge of the mud bank, making the most out of 
 landscape, enjoying the open air, the salt marshes, and the sight of 
 the distant water. From time to time McTeague played his six 
 mournful airs upon his concertina. 
 
 After a while they began walking up and down the tracks, Mc 
 Teague talking about his profession, Trina listening, very interested 
 and absorbed, trying to understand. 
 
 "For pulling the roots of the upper molars we use the cow- 
 horn forceps," continued the dentist, monotonously. "We get tht 
 inside beak over the palatal roots and the cow-horn beak over the 
 buccal roots that s the roots on the outside, you see. Then we 
 close the forceps, and that breaks right through the alveolus that s 
 the part of the socket in the jaw, you understand." 
 
 At another moment he told her of his one unsatisfied desire. 
 / "Some day I m going to have a big gilded tooth outside my win 
 dow for a sign. Those big gold teetlT are beautiful, beautiful 
 only they cost so much, I can t afford one just now." 
 
 "Oh, it s raining," suddenly exclaimed Trina, holding out her 
 palm. They turned back and reached the station in a drizzle. The 
 afternoon was closing in dark and rainy. The tide was coming 
 back, talking and lapping for miles along the mud bank. Far off 
 across the flats, at the edge of the town, an electric car went by, 
 stringing out a long row of diamond sparks on the overhead wires. 
 
 "Say, Miss Trina," said McTeague, after a while, "what s the 
 good of waiting any longer? Why can t us two get married?" 
 
 Trina still shook her head, saying "No" instinctively, in spite of 
 herself. 
 
 "Why not?" persisted McTeague. "Don t you like me well 
 enough?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then why not?" 
 
 "Because." 
 
 "Ah, come on," he said, but Trina still shook her head. 
 
McTeague 55 
 
 "Ah, come on," urged McTeague. He could think of nothing 
 else to say, repeating the same phrase over and over again to all 
 her refusals. 
 
 "Ah, come on ! Ah, come on !" 
 
 Suddenly he took her in his enormous arms, crushing down her 
 struggle with his immense strength. Then Trina gave up, all in | 
 an instant, turning her head to his. They kissed each other, grossly, / 
 full in the mouth. 
 
 A roar and a jarring of the earth suddenly grew near and 
 passed them in a reek of steam and hot air. It was the Overland, 
 with its flaming headlight, on its way across the continent. 
 
 The passage of the train startled them both. Trina struggled 
 to free herself from McTeague. "Oh, please! please!" she pleaded, 
 on the point of tears. McTeague released her, but in that moment . 
 a slight, a barely perceptible, revulsion of feeling had taken place j 
 in him. The instant that Trina gave up, the instant she allowed 
 him to kiss her, he thought less of her. She was not so desirable, 
 after all. But this reaction was so faint, so subtle, so intangible, 
 that in another moment he had doubted its occurrence. Yet after 
 ward it returned. Was there not something gone from Trina now? 
 Was he not disappointed in her for doing that very thing for which 
 he had longed? Was Trina the submissive, the compliant, the at 
 tainable, just the same, just as delicate and adorable as Trina the 
 inaccessible? Perhaps he dimly saw that this must be so, that-iti 
 belonged to the changeless order of things the man desiring thej 
 woman only for what she withholds ; the woman worshiping the man 
 for that which she yields up to him. With each concession gainedjW 
 the man s desire cools; with every surrender made the woman s/ r 
 adoration increases. But why should it be so? 
 
 Trina wrenched herself free and drew back from McTeague, her 
 little chin quivering; her face, even to the lobes of her pale ears, 
 flushed scarlet ; her narrow blue eyes brimming. Suddenly she put 
 her head between her hands and began to sob. 
 
 "Say, say, Miss Trina, listen listen here, Miss Trina," cried 
 McTeague, coming forward a step. 
 
 "Oh, don t!" she gasped, shrinking. "I must go home," she 
 cried, springing to her feet. "It s late. I must. I must. Don t 
 come with me, please. Oh, I m so so" she could not find any 
 words. "Let me go alone," she went on. "You may you come 
 Sunday. Good-by." 
 
 "Good-by," said McTeague, his head in a whirl at this sudden, 
 
5 6 McTeague 
 
 unaccountable change. "Can t I kiss you again?" But Trina was 
 firm now. When it came to his pleading a mere matter of words 
 she was strong enough. 
 
 "No, no, you must not!" she exclaimed, with energy. She 
 was gone in another instant. The dentist, stunned, bewildered, 
 gazed stupidly after her as she ran up the extension of B Street 
 through the rain. 
 
 But suddenly a great joy took possession of him. He had won 
 her. Trina was to be for him, after all. An enormous smile dis 
 tended his thick lips ; his eyes grew wide, and flashed ; and he drew 
 his breath quickly, striking his mallet-like fist upon his knee, and 
 exclaiming under his breath: 
 
 "I got her, by God ! I got her, by God !" At the same time he 
 thought better of himself; his self-respect increased enormously. 
 The man that could win Trina Sieppe was^a man of extraordinary 
 ability. 
 
 Trina burst in upon her mother while the latter was setting a 
 mousetrap in the kitchen. 
 
 "Oh, mamma!" 
 
 "Eh, Trina? Ach, what has happun?" 
 
 Trina told her in a breath. 
 
 "Son soon?" was Mrs. Sieppe s first comment. "Eh, well, 
 what you cry for, then?" 
 
 "I don t know," wailed Trina, plucking at the end of her hand 
 kerchief. 
 
 "You loaf der younge doktor?" 
 
 "I don t know." 
 
 "Well, what for you kiss him ?" 
 
 "I don t know." 
 
 "You don know, you don know ? Where haf your sensus gone, 
 Trina? You kiss der doktor. You cry, and you don know. Is ut 
 Marcus den?" 
 
 "No, it s not Cousin Mark." 
 
 "Den ut must be der doktor." 
 v Trina made no answer. 
 
 , t V H 1-I 1 
 
 ^"1 I guess so." 
 "You loaf him?" 
 "I don t know." 
 
 -i- viuu L ruiuw. 
 
 Mrs. Sieppe set down the ihousetrap with such violence that it 
 "sprung with a sharp snap. 
 
 17 
 
McTeague 57 
 
 VI 
 
 No, Trina, did not know. "Do I love him? Do I love him?" 
 A thousand times she put the question to herself during the next 
 two or three days. At night she hardly slept, but lay broad awake 
 for hours in her little, gayly painted bed, with its white netting, 
 torturing herself with doubts and questions. At times she remem 
 bered the scene in the station with a veritable agony of shame, and 
 at other times she was ashamed to recall it with a thrill of joy. 
 Nothing could have been more sudden, more unexpected, than that 
 surrender of herself. For over a year she had thought that Marcus 
 would some day be her husband. They would be married, she sup 
 posed, some time in the future, she did not know exactly when; 
 the matter did not take definite shape in her mind. She liked 
 Cousin Mark very well. And then suddenly this cross-current had 
 set in ; this blond giant had appeared, this huge, stolid fellow, with 
 his immense, crude strength. She had not loved him at first, that 
 was certain. The day he had spoken to her in his "Parlors" she 
 had only been terrified. If he had confined himself to merely ^j, 
 speaking, as did Ma r cus, to pleading with her, to wooing her at a 
 distance, forestalling her wishes, showing her little attentions, 
 sending her boxes of candy, she could .have easily withstood him. 
 But he had only to take her in his arms, to crush down her struggle 
 with his enormous strength, to subdue her, conquer her by sheer 
 brute force, and she gave up in an instant. 
 
 But why why had she done so? Why did she feel the desire, 
 the necessity of being conquered by a superior strength? Why did 
 it please her? Why had it suddenly thrilled her from head to foot 
 with a quick, tejrifyjng^gust of passion, the like of which she had 
 never known? Never at his bestliad Marcus made her feel like 
 that, and yet she had always thought she cared for Cousin Mark 
 more than for any one else. 
 
 When McTeague had all at once caught her in his huge arms, 
 something had leaped to life in her something that had hitherto 
 lain dormant, something strong and overpowering. It frightened 
 her now as she thought of it, fthis second seEL that had wakened 
 within her, and that shouted and clamored for recognition ? "" Ami 
 
 
 A 
 
 "V 
 
j8 McTeague 
 
 yet, was it to be feared ? Was it something to be ashamed of ? Was 
 it not, after all, natural, clean, spontaneous? Trina knew that she 
 was a pure girl; knew that this sudden commotion within hei 
 carried with it no suggestion of vice. 
 
 Dimly, as figures seen in a waking dream, these ideas floated 
 through Trina s mind. It was quite beyond her to realize them 
 clearly; she could not know what they meant. Until that rainy 
 day by the shore of the bay Trina had lived her life with as little 
 self-consciousness as a tree. She was frank, straightforward, a 
 healthy, natural human being, without sex as yet. She was almost 
 like a boy. At once there hacl -h^eri a~niysterioils disturbance. The 
 woman within her suddenly awoke.v 
 
 Did she love McTeague? Difficult question. Did she choose 
 him for better or for worse, deliberately, of her own free will, or 
 was Trina herself allowed even a choice in the taking of that step 
 that was to make or mar her life? The Woman is awakened, and, 
 starting from her sleep, catches blindly at what first her newly 
 opened eyes light upon. It is a spell, a witchery, ruled by chance 
 alone, inexplicable a fairy queen enamored of a clown with ass s 
 ears. 
 
 McTeague had awakened the Woman, and, whether she would 
 or no, she was his now irrevocably ; struggle against it as she would, 
 she belonged to him, body and soul, for lifejor for death. She had 
 not sought it, she had not desired it. The spell was laid upon her. 
 Was it a blessing? Was it a curse? It was all one; she was his, 
 indissolubly, for evil or for good. 
 
 And he? The very act of submission that bound the woman to 
 him forever had made her seem less desirable in his eyes. Their 
 undoing") had already begun. Yet neither of them was to blame. 
 From the first they had not sought each, other. Chance had brought 
 b them face to face, and mysterious instincts as ungovernable as the 
 , winds of heaven were at work knitting their lives together. Neither 
 of them had asked that this thing should be that their destinies, 
 their very souls, should be the sport of chance. If they could have 
 known, they would have shunned the fearful risk. But they were 
 allowed no voice in the matter. Why should it all be? 
 
 It had been on a Wednesday that the scene in the B Street sta 
 tion had taken place. Throughout the rest of the week, at every 
 hour of the day, Trina asked herself the same question : "Do I love 
 him? Do I really love him? Is this what love is like?" As she 
 recalled McTeague recalled his huge, square-cut head, his salient 
 
 , 
 ; 
 
McTeague 59 
 
 jaw, his shock of yellow hair, his heavy, lumbering body, his slow 
 wits she found little to admire in him beyond his physical strength, 
 and at such moments she shook her head decisively. "No, surely 
 she did not love him." Sunday afternoon, however, McTeague^ 
 called. Trina had prepared a little speech for him. She was to tell 
 him that she did not know what had been the matter with her that 
 Wednesday afternoon; that she had acted like a bad girl; that she 
 did not love him well enough to marry him; that she had told 
 him as much once before. 
 
 McTeague saw her alone in the little front parlor. The instant 
 she appeared he came straight toward her. She saw what he was 
 bent upon doing. "Wait a minute," she cried, putting out her 
 hands. "Wait. You don t understand. I have got something to 
 say to you." She might as well have talked to the wind. McTeague 
 put aside her hands with a single gesture, and gripped her to him 
 in a bearlike embrace that all but smothered her. Trina 
 was but a reed before that giant strength. McTeague turned 
 her face to his and kissed her again upon the mouth. Where was 
 all Trina s resolve then? Where was her carefully prepared little 
 speech? Where was all her hesitation and torturing doubts of the 
 last few days? She clasped McTeague s huge red neck with both 
 her slender arms ; she raised her adorable little chin and kissed him 
 in return, exclaiming: "Oh, I do love you! I do love you!" 
 Never afterward were the two so happ^ as at that moment. 
 
 A little later in that same week, when Marcus and McTeague 
 were taking lunch at the car conductors coffee-joint, the former 
 suddenly exclaimed : 
 
 "Say, Mac, now that you ve got Trina, you ought to do more for 
 her. By damn ! you ought to, for a fact. Why don t you take her 
 out somewhere to the theatre, or somewhere? You ain t on to 
 your job." 
 
 Naturally, McTeague had told Marcus of his success with Trina. 
 Marcus had taken on a grand air. 
 
 "You ve got her, have you? Well, I m glad of it, old man. I 
 am, for a fact. I know you ll be happy with her. I know how I 
 would have been. I forgive you;_.yes r I - forgive .you, freely." 
 
 McTeague had not thought of taking Trina to the theatre. 
 
 "You think I ought to, Mark ?" he inquired, hesitating. Marcus 
 answered, with his mouth full of suet pudding: 
 
 "Why, of course. That s the proper caper." 
 
 "Well well, that s so. The theatre that s the word." 
 
60 McTeague 
 
 "Take her to the variety show at the Orpheum. There s a good 
 show there this week; you ll have to take Mrs. Sieppe, too, of 
 course," he added. Marcus was not sure of himself as regarded 
 certain proprieties, nor, for that matter, were any of the people of 
 the little world of Polk Street. The shop girls, the plumbers ap 
 prentices, the small tradespeople, and their like, whose social posi- 
 "tion was not clearly denned, could never be sure how far they could 
 go and yet preserve their "respectability." When they wished to be 
 "proper," they invariably overdid the thing. It was not as if they 
 belonged to the "tough" element, who had no appearances to keep 
 up. Polk Street rubbed elbows with the "avenue" one block above. 
 There were certain limits which its dwellers could not overstep ; but 
 unfortunately for them, these limits were poorly defined. They 
 could never be sure of themselves. At an unguarded moment they 
 might be taken for "toughs," so they generally erred in the other 
 direction, and were absurdly formal. No people have a keener eye 
 for the amenities than those whose social position is not assured. 
 
 "Oh, sure,* you ll have to take her mother," insisted Marcus. 
 "It wouldn t be the proper racket if you didn t." 
 
 McTeague undertook the affair. It was an ordeal. Never in 
 his life had he been so perturbed, so horribly anxious. He called 
 upon Trina the following Wednesday and made arrangements. Mrs. 
 Sieppe asked if little August might be included. It would console 
 him for the loss of his steamboat. S* V- 
 
 "Sure, sure/ said McTeague. "August too everybody," he 
 added, vaguely. 
 
 "We always have to leave so early," complained Trina, "in order 
 to catch the last boat. Just when it s becoming interesting." 
 
 At this McTeague, acting upon a suggestion of Marcus Schoul- 
 er s, insisted they should stay at the flat overnight. Marcus and the 
 dentist would give up their rooms to them and sleep at the dog 
 hospital. There was a bed there in the sick ward that old Grannis 
 sometimes occupied when a bad case needed watching. All at once 
 McTeague had an idea, a veritable inspiration. 
 
 "And we ll we ll we ll have what s the matter with having 
 something to eat afterward in my "Parlors ?" 
 
 "Vairy goot," commented Mrs. Sieppe. "Bier, eh? And some 
 damales." 
 
 "Oh, I love tamales!" exclaimed Trina, clasping her hands. 
 
 McTeague returned to the city, rehearsing his instructions over 
 and over. The theatre party began to assume tremendous proper- 
 
McTeague 61 
 
 tions. First of all, he was to get the seats, the third or fourth row 
 from the front, on the left-hand side, so as to be out of the hearing 
 of the drums in the orchestra; he must make arrangements about 
 the rooms with Marcus, must get in the beer, but not the tamales ; 
 must buy for himself a white lawn tie so Marcus directed; must 
 look to it that Maria Macapa put his room in perfect order; and, 
 finally, must meet the Sieppes at the ferry slip at half-past seven the 
 following Monday night. 
 
 The real labor of the affair began with the buying of the tickets. 
 At the theatre McTeague got into wrong entrances ; was sent from 
 one wicket to another ; was bewildered, confused ; misunderstood 
 directions; was at one moment suddenly convinced that he had not 
 enough money with him, and started to return home. Finally he 
 found himself at the box-office wicket. 
 
 "Is it here you buy your seats?" 
 
 "How many?" 
 
 "Is it here" 
 
 "What night do you want em? Yes, sir, here s the place." 
 
 McTeague gravely delivered himself of the formula he had been 
 reciting for the last dozen hours. 
 
 "I want four seats for Monday night in the fourth row from 
 the front, and on the right-hand side." 
 
 "Right hand as you face the house or as you face the stage?" 
 McTeague was dumfounded. 
 
 "I want to be on the right-hand side," he insisted, stolidly; 
 adding, "in order to be away from the drums." 
 
 "Well, the drums are on the right of the orchestra as you face 
 the stage," shouted the other impatiently ; "you want to the left, then, 
 as you face the house." 
 
 "I want to be on the right-hand side," persisted the dentist. 
 
 Without a word the seller threw out four tickets with a mag 
 nificent, supercilious gesture. 
 
 "There s four seats on the right-hand side, then, and you re 
 right up against the drums." 
 
 "But I don t want to be near the drums/ protested McTeague, 
 beginning to perspire. 
 
 "Do you know what you want at all?" said the ticket seller with 
 calmness, thrusting his head at McTeague. The dentist knew that 
 he had hurt this young man s feelings. 
 
 "I want I want," he stammered. The seller slammed -down 
 a plan of the house in front of him and began to explain excit- 
 
62 McTeague 
 
 edly. It was the one thing lacking to complete McTeague s 
 confusion. 
 
 "There are your seats," finished the seller, shoving the tickets 
 into McTeague s hands. "They are the fourth row from the front, 
 and away from the drums. Now are you satisfied?" 
 
 "Are they on the right-hand side? I want on the right no, I 
 want on the left. I want I don know, I don know." 
 
 The seller roared. McTeague moved slowly away, gazing 
 stupidly at the blue slips of pasteboard. Two girls took his place 
 at the wicket. In another moment McTeague came back, peering 
 over the girls shoulders and calling to the seller : 
 "Are these for Monday night?" 
 
 The other disdained reply. McTeague retreated again timidly, 
 thrusting the tickets into his immense wallet. For a moment he 
 stood thoughtful on the steps of the entrance. Then all at once he 
 became enraged, he did not know exactly why; somehow he felt 
 himself slighted. Once more he came back to the wicket. 
 
 "You can t make small of me," he shouted over the girls shoul 
 ders ; "you you can t make small of me. I ll thump you in the head, 
 you little you little you little little little pup." The ticket 
 seller shrugged his shoulders wearily. "A dollar and a half," he 
 said to the two girls. 
 
 McTeague glared at him and breathed loudly. Finally he de 
 cided to let the matter drop. He moved away, but on the steps was 
 once more seized with a sense of injury and outraged dignity. 
 
 "You can t make small of me," he called back a last time, wag 
 ging his head and shaking his fist. "I will I will I will yes, I 
 will." He went off muttering. 
 
 At last Monday night came. McTeague met the Sieppes at the 
 ferry, dressed in a black Prince Albert coat and his best slate-blue 
 trousers, and wearing the made-up lawn necktie that Marcus had 
 selected for him. Trina was very pretty in the black dress that 
 McTeague knew so well. She wore a pair of new gloves. Mrs. 
 Sieppe had on lisle-thread mits, and carried two bananas and an 
 orange in a net reticule. "For Owgooste," she confided to him. 
 Owgooste was in a Fauntleroy "costume" very much too small for 
 him. Already he had been crying. 
 
 "Woult you pelief, Doktor, dot bube has torn his stockun al- 
 reatty ? Walk in der front, you ; stop cryun. Where is dot berlice- 
 man?" 
 
 At the door of the theatre McTeague was suddenly seized with a 
 
McTeague 63 
 
 panic terror. He had lost the tickets. He tore through his 
 pockets, ransacked his wallet. They were nowhere to be found. All 
 at once he remembered, and with a gasp of relief removed his hat 
 and took them out from beneath the sweatband. 
 
 The party entered and took their places. It was absurdly early. 
 The lights were all darkened, the ushers stood under the galleries 
 in groups, the empty auditorium echoing with their noisy talk. Oc 
 casionally a waiter with his tray and clean white apron sauntered 
 up and down the aisle. Directly in front of them was the great 
 iron curtain of the stage, painted with all manner of advertise 
 ments. From behind this came a noise of hammering and of occa 
 sional loud vo/ices. 
 
 While waiting they studied their programmes. First was an 
 overture b.y the orchestra, after which came "The Gleasons, in their 
 mirth-moving musical farce, entitled McMonnigal s Courtship/ " 
 This w&s to be followed by "The Lamont Sisters, Winnie and 
 Violet, serio-comiques and skirt dancers." And after this came a 
 great ^array of other "artists" and "specialty performers," musical 
 wonders, acrobats, lightning artists, ventriloquists, and last of all, 
 "The* feature of the evening, the crowning scientific achievement 
 of the nineteenth century, the kinetoscope." McTeague was ex- 
 cit^d, dazzled. In five years he had not been twice to the theatre. 
 NOW he beheld himself inviting his "girl" and her mother to ac- 
 cd>mpany him. He began to feel that he was a man of the world, 
 f^e ordered a cigar. 
 
 dl Meanwhile the house was filling up. A few side brackets were 
 ie arned on. The ushers ran up and down the aisles, stubs of tickets 
 Between their thumb and finger, and from every part of the audi 
 torium could be heard the sharp clap-clapping of the seats as the 
 "iishers flipped them down. A buzz of talk arose. In the gallery a 
 j&treet gamin whistled shrilly, and called to some friends on the other 
 yfide of the house. 
 
 "Are they go-wun to begin pretty soon, ma?" whined Owgooste 
 *for the fifth or sixth time; adding, "Say, ma, can t I have some 
 tandy ?" A cadaverous little boy had appeared in their aisle, chant 
 ing, "Candies, French mixed candies, pop-corn, peanuts and candy." 
 The orchestra entered, each man crawling out from an opening under 
 Sfche stage, hardly larger than the gate of a rabbit hutch. At every 
 Instant now the crowd increased ; there were but few seats that were 
 
 not taken. 
 111 The waiters hurried up and down the aisles, their trays 
 
64 McTeague 
 
 laden with beer glasses. A smell of cigar-smoke filled the air, and 
 soon a faint blue haze rose from all corners of the house. 
 
 "Ma, when are they go-wun to begin?" cried Owgooste. As he 
 spoke the iron advertisement curtain rose, disclosing the curtain 
 proper underneath. This latter curtain was quice an affair. Upon 
 it was painted a wonderful picture. A flight of marble steps led 
 down to a stream of water; two white swans, their necks arched 
 like the capital letter S, floated about. At the head of the marble 
 steps were two vases filled with red and yellow flowers, while at the 
 foot was moored a gondola. This gondola was fall of red velvet 
 rugs that hung over the side and trailed in the water. In the prow 
 of the gondola a young man in vermilion tights held a mandolin in 
 his left hand, and gave his right to a girl in white satin. A King 
 Charles spaniel, dragging a leading-string in the shape of a huge 
 pink sash, followed the girl. Seven scarlet roses were scattered 
 upon the two lowest steps, and eight floated in the water. . 
 
 "Ain t that pretty, Mac ?" exclaimed Trina, turning to the dentist. 
 
 "Ma, ain t they go-wun to begin now-wow ?" whined Owgooste. 
 Suddenly the lights all over the house blazed up. "Ah !" said every 
 body all at once. 
 
 "Ain t ud crowdut?" murmured Mrs. Sieppe. Every seat was 
 taken ; many were even standing up. 
 
 "I always like it better when there is a crowd," said Trina. She 
 was in great spirits that evening. Her round, pale face was posi 
 tively pink. 
 
 The orchestra banged away at the overture, suddenly finis? teg 
 with a great flourish of violins. A short pause followed. Ttf-n 
 the orchestra played a quick-step strain, and the curtain rose ^ : 
 an interior furnished with two red chairs and a green sofa. A { 
 in a short blue dress and black stockings entered in a hurry ; 
 began to dust the two chairs. She was in a great temper, taJ 4 
 very fast, disclaiming against the "new lodger." It appeared 
 this latter never paid his rent; that he was given to late h 
 Then she came down to the footlights and began to sing in ? 
 mendous voice, hoarse and flat, almost like a man s. The e i- 
 
 of a feeble originality, ran: !" 
 
 j 
 
 "Oh, how happy I will be, 
 When my darling s face I ll see; 
 Oh, tell him for to meet me in the moonlight, 
 Down where the golden lilies bloom." * 
 
McTeague 65 
 
 The orchestra played the tune of this chorus a second time, 
 with certain variations, while the girl danced to it. She sidled to 
 one side of the stage and kicked, then sidled to the other and kicked 
 again. As she finished with the song, a man, evidently the lodger in 
 question, came in. Instantly McTeague exploded in a roar of 
 laughter. The man was intoxicated, his hat was knocked in, one 
 end of his collar was unfastened and stuck up into his face, his 
 watch-chain dangled from his pocket, and a yellow satin slipper 
 was tied to a buttonhole of his vest; his nose was vermilion, one 
 eye was black and blue. After a short dialogue with the girl, a 
 third actor appeared. He was dressed like a little boy, the girl s 
 younger brother. He wore an immense turned-down collar, and 
 was continually doing handsprings and wonderful back somersaults. 
 The "act" devolved upon these three people ; the lodger making love 
 to the girl in the short blue dress, the boy playing all manner of 
 tricks upon him, giving him tremendous digs in the ribs or slaps 
 upon the back that made him cough, pulling chairs from under him, 
 running on all fours between his legs and upsetting him, knocking 
 him over at inopportune moments. Every one of his falls was 
 accentuated by a bang upon the bass drum. The whole humor of 
 the "act" seemed to consist in the tripping up of the intoxicated 
 lodger. 
 
 This horse-play delighted McTeague beyond measure. He 
 roared and shouted every time the lodger went down, slapping his 
 knee, wagging his head. Owgooste crowed shrilly, clapping his 
 hands and continually asking, "What did he say, ma? What did 
 he say?" Mrs. Sieppe laughed immoderately, her huge fat body 
 shaking like a mountain of jelly. She exclaimed from time to time, 
 "Ach, Gott, dot fool !" Even Trina was moved, laughing demurely, 
 her lips closed, putting one hand with its new glove to her mouth. 
 
 The performance went on. Now it was the "musical marvels," 
 two men extravagantly made. up. .as njgro_ minstrels, with immense 
 shoes and plaid vests. They seemed to be able to wrestle a tune 
 out of almost anything glass bottles, cigar-box fiddles, strings 
 of sleigh-bells, even graduated brass tubes, which they rubbed with 
 resined fingers. McTeague was stupefied with admiration. 
 
 "That s what you call musicians," he announced gravely. "Home, 
 Sweet Home," played upon a trombone. Think of that ! Art could 
 go no further. 
 
 The acrobats left him breathless. They were dazzling young 
 men with beautifully parted hair, continually making graceful ges- 
 
66 McTeague 
 
 tures to the audience. In one of them the dentist fancied he saw a 
 strong resemblance to the boy who had tormented the intoxicated 
 lodger and who had turned such marvelous somersaults. Trina 
 fcould not bear to watch their antics. She turned away her head 
 with a little shudder. "It always makes me sick," she explained. 
 
 The beautiful young lady, "The Society Contralto," in evening 
 t dress, who sang the sentimental songs, and carried the sheets of 
 music at which she never looked, pleased McTeague less. Trina, 
 however, was captivated. She grew pensive over 
 
 "You do not love me no; 
 Bid me good-by and go;" 
 
 and split her new gloves in her enthusiasm when it was finished. 
 
 "Don t you love sad music, Mac?" she murmured. 
 
 Then came the two comedians. They talked with fearful ra 
 pidity; their wit and repartee seemed inexhaustible. 
 
 "As 7 was going down the street yesterday " 
 
 "Ah ! as you were going down the street all right." 
 
 "7 saw a girl at a window " 
 
 "You saw a girl at a window " 
 
 "And this girl she was a corker " 
 
 "Ah! as you were going down the street yesterday you saw a 
 girl at a window, and this girl she was a corker. All right, go on. * 
 
 The other comedian went on. The joke was suddenly evolved. 
 A certain phrase led to a song, which was sung with lightning ra 
 pidity, each performer making precisely the same gestures at pre 
 cisely the same instant. They were irresistible. McTeague, though 
 he caught but a third of the jokes, could have listened all night. 
 
 After the comedians had gone out, the iron advertisement cur 
 tain was let down. 
 
 "What comes now ?" said McTeague, bewildered. 
 
 "It s the intermission of fifteen minutes now." 
 
 The musicians disappeared through the rabbit hutch, and the 
 audience stirred and stretched itself. Most of the young men left 
 their seats. 
 
 During this intermission McTeague and his party had refresh 
 ments." Mrs. Sieppe and Tripa had Queen Charlottes, McTeague 
 drank a glass of beer, Owgooste ate the orange and one of the ba 
 nanas. He begged for a glass of lemonade, which was finally given 
 him. 
 
McTeague 67 
 
 "Joost to geep um quiet," observed Mrs. Sieppe. 
 
 The quarter of an hour intermission seemed interminable to 
 McTeague. He continually consulted his watch, wondering when 
 the musicians would come back, listening anxiously to the vague 
 clamor of footsteps and voices that issued confusedly from behind 
 the curtain and from the direction of the wings. Mrs. Sieppe pre 
 tended to recognize a friend two rows back of where she was 
 sitting. 
 
 "Ach ! sure dot s her," she murmured continually. 
 
 The performance was resumed. A lightning artist appeared, 
 drawing caricatures and portraits with incredible swiftness. He 
 even went so far as to ask for subjects from the audience, and the 
 names of prominent men were shouted to him from the gallery. He 
 drew portraits of the President, of Grant, of Washington, of Napo 
 leon Bonaparte, of Bismarck, of Garibaldi, of P. ,T. Barnum. 
 
 And so the evening passed. The hall grew very hot, and the 
 smoke of innumerable cigars made the eyes smart. A thick 
 blue mist hung low over the heads of the audience. The air 
 was full of varied smells the smell of stale cigars, of flat 
 beer, of orange peel, of gas, of sachet powders, and of cheap 
 perfumery. 
 
 One "artist" after another came upon the stage. McTeague s 
 attention never wandered for a minute. Trina and her mother en 
 joyed themselves hugely. At every moment they made comments 
 to one another, their eyes never leaving the stage. 
 
 "Ain t dot fool joost too funny?" 
 
 "That s a pretty song. Don t you like that kind of a song?" 
 
 "Wonderful! It s wonderful! Yes, yes, wonderful! That s 
 the word." 
 
 Owgooste, however, lost interest. He stood up in his place, his 
 back to the stage, chewing a piece of orange peel and watching a 
 little girl in her father s lap across the aisle, his eyes fixed in a 
 glassy, ox-like stare. But he was uneasy. He danced from one foot 
 to the other, and at intervals appealed in hoarse whispers to his 
 mother, who disdained an answer. 
 
 "Ma, say, ma-ah," he whined, abstractedly chewing his orange 
 peel, staring at the little girl. 
 
 "Ma-ah, say, ma." At times his monotonous plaint reached his 
 mother s consciousness. She suddenly realized what this was that 
 was annoying her. 
 
 "Owgooste, will you sit down ?" She caught him up all at once, 
 
68 McTeague 
 
 and jammed him down into his place. "Be quiet, den; loog; listun 
 at der yunge girls." 
 
 Three young women and a young man who played a zither occu 
 pied the stage. They were dressed in Tyrolese costume ; they were 
 yodlers, and sang in German about "mountain-tops" and "bold 
 hunters" and the like. The yodling chorus was a marvel of flnte- 
 like modulations. The girls were really pretty, and were not made 
 up in the least. Their "turn" had a great success. Mrs. Sieppe 
 was entranced. Instantly she remembered her girlhood and her na 
 tive Swiss village. 
 
 "Ach, dot is heavunly; joost like der old country. Mein gran - 
 mutter used to be one of der mos famous yodlers. When I was 
 leedle, I haf seen dem joost like dat." 
 
 "Ma-ah," began Owgooste fretfully, as soon as the yodlers had 
 departed. He protested that he was sleepy, as though it was a 
 matter for which the party were indiscriminately responsible. 
 
 "Ma-ah, I want to go ho-ome." 
 
 "Pehave !" exclaimed his mother, shaking him by the arm ; "loog, 
 der leedle girl is watchun you. Dis is der last dime I take you to 
 der blay, you see." 
 
 "I don t ca-are ; I m sleepy." At length, to their great relief, he 
 went to sleep, his head against his mother s arm. 
 
 The kinetoscope fairly took their breaths away. 
 
 "What will they do next?" observed Trina, in amazement. 
 "Ain t that wonderful, Mac?" 
 
 McTeague was awe-struck. 
 
 "Look at that horse move his head," he cried excitedly, quite 
 carried away. "Look at that cable-car coming and the man going 
 across the street. See, here comes a truck. Well, I never in all 
 my life ! What would Marcus say to this ?" 
 
 "It s all a drick!" exclaimed Mrs. Sieppe, with sudden convic 
 tion. "I ain t no fool ; dot s nothun but a drick." 
 
 "Well, of course, mamma," exclaimed Trina, "it s " 
 
 But Mrs. Sieppe put her head in the air. 
 
 "I m too old to be fooled," she persisted. "It s a drick." Noth 
 ing more could be got out of her than this. 
 
 The party stayed to the very end of the show, though the kineto 
 scope was the last number but one on the programme, and fully half 
 the audience left immediately afterward. However, while the un 
 fortunate Irish comedian went through his "act" to the backs of 
 the departing people, Mrs. Sieppe woke Owgooste, very cross and 
 
McTeague 69 
 
 sleepy, and began getting her "things together." McTeague groped 
 under his seat, reaching about for his hat. 
 
 "Save der brogramme, Trina," whispered Mrs. Sieppe. "Take, 
 tit home to popper. Where is der net redicule, eh? Haf you got 
 mein handkerchief, Trina?" 
 
 But McTeague was in distress. He had lost his hat. What 
 could have become of it? Again and again he thrust his hand 
 blindly underneath the seat, feeling about upon the dusty floor. 
 His face became scarlet with embarrassment and with the effort of 
 bending his great body in so contracted a space; he bumped his 
 head upon the backs of the seats in front of him. 
 
 At length he recovered it from a remote corner, in company with 
 Mrs. Sieppe s reticule, sadly battered by a score of feet. He clapped 
 it upon his head with a breath of relief. But when he turned about 
 to hand her reticule to Mrs. Sieppe he was struck with bewilder 
 ment. Neither Mrs. Sieppe, Trina, nor Owgooste was anywhere in 
 sight. McTeague found himself staring into the faces of some 
 dozen people whose progress he was blocking. 
 
 "What where are they gone ?" muttered McTeague. 
 
 He gazed about him in great embarrassment, rolling his eyes. 
 But the moving audience had carried the Sieppes further down the 
 aisle. At last McTeague discovered them and crushed his way to 
 them with bull-like force and directness. They, meanwhile, sidled 
 into an empty row of seats to wait for him. 
 
 The party filed out at the tail end of the audience. Already the 
 lights were being extinguished and the ushers spreading drugget- 
 ing over the upholstered seats. 
 
 McTeague and the Sieppes took an uptown car that would 
 bring them near Polk Street. The car was crowded; McTeague 
 and Owgooste were obliged to stand. The little boy fretted to be 
 taken in his mother s lap, but Mrs. Sieppe emphatically refused. 
 
 On their way home they discussed the performance. 
 
 "I I like best der yodlers." 
 
 "Ah, the soloist was the best the lady who sang those sad 
 songs " 
 
 "Wasn t wasn t that magic lantern wonderful, where the fig 
 ure moved? Wonderful ah, wonderful! And wasn t that first 
 act funny, where the fellow fell down all the time? And that mu 
 sical act, and the fellow with Jhe Jburnt^cprk lace^who played 
 Nearer, My God, to Thee on tne ^eeTbotties? 1 " 
 
 They got off at Polk Street and walked up a. block to the flat 
 
7 o McTeague 
 
 The street was dark and empty ; opposite the flat, in the back of the 
 deserted market, the ducks and geese were calling persistently. 
 
 As they were buying their tamales from the half-breed Mexican 
 at the street corner, McTeague observed : 
 
 "Marcus ain t gone to bed yet. See, there s a light in his win 
 dow. There !" he exclaimed at once, "I forgot the door-key. Well, 
 Marcus can let us in." 
 
 Hardly had he rung the bell at the street door of the flat when 
 the bolt was shot back. In the hall at the top of the long, narrow 
 staircase there was the sound of a great scurrying. Maria Macapa 
 stood there, her hand upon the rope that drew the bolt ; Marcus was 
 at her side ; Old Grannis was in the background, looking over their 
 shoulders; while little Miss Baker leaned over the banisters, a 
 strange man in a drab overcoat at her side. As McTeague s party 
 stepped into the doorway a half-dozen voices cried: 
 
 "Yes, it s them." 
 
 "Is that you, Mac?" 
 
 "Is that you, Miss Sieppe?" 
 
 "Is your name Trina Sieppe?" 
 
 Then, shriller than all the rest, Maria Macapa screamed : 
 
 "Oh, Miss Sieppe, come up here quick. Your lottery ticket has 
 won five thousand dollars !" 
 
 VII 
 
 "WHAT nonsense," answered Trina. 
 
 " Ach Gott ! What is ut ?" cried Mrs. Sieppe, misunderstanding, 
 supposing a calamity. 
 
 "What what what," stammered the dentist, confused by 
 the lights, the crowded stairway, the medley of voices. The party 
 reached the landing. The others surrounded them. Marcus alone 
 seemed to rise to the occasion. 
 
 "Le me be the first to congratulate you," he cried, catching 
 Trina s hand. Every one was talking at once. 
 
 "Miss Sieppe, Miss Sieppe, your ticket had won five thousand 
 dollars," cried Maria. "Don t you remember the lottery ticket I 
 sold you in Doctor McTeague s office?" 
 
 "Trina!" almost screamed her mother. "Five tausand thalers ! 
 five tausand thalers ! If popper were only here !" 
 
McTeague 71 
 
 "What is it what is it?" exclaimed McTeagtie, rolling his 
 eyes. 
 
 "What are you going to do with it, Trina?" inquired Marcus. 
 
 "You re a rich woman, my dear," said Miss Baker, her little 
 false curls quivering with excitement, "and I m glad for your sake. 
 Let me kiss you. To think I was in the room when you bought 
 the ticket!" 
 
 "Oh, oh !" interrupted Trina, shaking her head, "there is a mis 
 take. There must be. Why why should I win five thousand dol 
 lars? It s nonsense!" 
 
 "No mistake, no mistake," screamed Maria. "Your number was 
 400,012. Here it is in the paper this evening. I remember it well, 
 because I keep an account." 
 
 "But I know you re wrong," answered Trina, beginning to trem 
 ble in spite of herself. "Why should I win?" 
 
 "Eh ? Why shouldn t you ?" cried her mother. 
 
 In fact, why shouldn t she? The idea suddenly occurred to 
 Trina. After all, it was not a question of effort or merit on her 
 part. Why should she suppose a mistake? What if it were true, 
 this wonderful fillip of fortune striking in there like some chance- 
 driven bolt? 
 
 "Oh, do you think so?" she gasped. 
 
 The stranger in the drab overcoat came forward. 
 
 "It s the agent," cried two or three voices, simultaneously. 
 
 "I guess you re one of the lucky ones, Miss Sieppe," he said. 
 "I suppose you have kept your ticket." 
 
 "Yes, yes ; four three oughts twelve I remember." 
 
 "That s right," admitted the other. "Present your ticket at the 
 local branch office as soon as possible the address is printed on the 
 back of the ticket and you ll receive a check on our bank for five 
 thousand dollars. Your number will have to be verified on our 
 official list, but there s hardly a chance of a mistake. I congratulate 
 you." 
 
 All at once a great thrill of gladness surged up in Trina. She 
 was to possess five thousand dollars. She was carried away with 
 the joy of her good fortune, a natural, spontaneous joy the gayety 
 of a child with a new and wonderful toy. 
 
 "Oh, I ve won, I ve won, I ve won!" she cried, clapping her 
 hands. "Mamma, think of it. I ve won five thousand dollars, just 
 by buying a ticket. Mac, what do you say to that? I ve got five 
 thousand dollars. August, do you hear what s happened to sister ?" 
 
72 McTeague 
 
 "Kiss your mommer, Trina," suddenly commanded Mrs. Sieppe. 
 "What efer will you do mit all dose money, eh, Trina ?" 
 
 "Huh !" exclaimed Marcus. "Get married on it for one thing." 
 Thereat they all shouted with laughter. McTeague grinned, and 
 looked about sheepishly. "Talk about luck," muttered Marcus, 
 shaking his head at the dentist ; then suddenly he added : 
 
 "Well, are we going to stay talking out here in the hall all night ? 
 Can t we all come into your Parlors/ Mac?" 
 
 "Sure, sure," exclaimed McTeague, hastily unlocking the door. 
 
 "Efery botty gome," cried Mrs. Sieppe, genially "Ain t ut so, 
 Doktor?" 
 
 "Everybody," repeated the dentist. "There s there s some 
 beer." 
 
 "We ll celebrate, by damn!" exclaimed Marcus. "It ain t every 
 day you win five thousand dollars. It s only Sundays and legal 
 holidays." Again he set the company off into a gale of laughter. 
 Anything was funny at a time like this. In some way every one of 
 them felt elated. The wheel of fortune had come spinning close to 
 them. They were near to this great sum of money. It was as 
 though they, too, had won. 
 
 "Here s right where I sat when I bought that ticket," cried 
 Trina, after they had come into the "Parlors" and Marcus had 
 lighted the gas. "Right here in this chair." She sat down in one 
 of the rigid chairs under the steel engraving. "And, Marcus, you 
 sat here" 
 
 "And I was just getting out of the operating chair," interposed 
 Miss Baker. 
 
 "Yes, yes. That s so; and you," continued Trina, pointing to 
 Maria, "came up and said, Buy a ticket in the lottery ; just a dollar/ 
 Oh, I remember it just as plain as though it was yesterday, and I 
 wasn t going to at first " 
 
 "And don t you know I told Maria it was against the law ?" 
 
 "Yes, I remember, and then I gave her a dollar and put the 
 ticket in my pocketbook. It s in my pocketbook now at home in the 
 top drawer of my bureau oh, suppose it should be stolen now," 
 she suddenly exclaimed. 
 
 "It s worth big money now," asserted Marcus. 
 
 "Five thousand dollars. Who would have thought it ? It s won 
 derful." Everybody started and turned. It was McTeague. He 
 stood in the middle of the floor, wagging his huge head. He seemed 
 to have just realized what had happened. 
 
McTeague 73 
 
 "Yes, sir, five thousand dollars !" exclaimed Marcus, with a 
 sudden unaccountable mirthlessness. "Five thousand dollars! Do 
 you get on to that ? Cousin Trina and you will be rich people." 
 
 "At six per cent, that s twenty-five dollars a month," hazarded 
 the agent. 
 
 "Think of it. Think of it," muttered McTeague. He went aim 
 lessly about the room, his eyes wide, his enormous hands dangling. 
 
 "A cousin of mine won forty dollars once," observed Miss Baker. 
 "But he spent every cent of it buying more tickets, and never won 
 anything." 
 
 Then the reminiscences began. Maria told about the butcher on 
 the next block who had won twenty dollars the last drawing. Mrs. 
 Sieppe knew a gasfitter in Oakland who had won several times; 
 once a hundred dollars. Little Miss Baker announced that she had 
 always believed that lotteries were wrong; but, just the same, five 
 thousand was five thousand. 
 
 "It s all right when you win, ain t it, Miss Baker?" observed 
 Marcus, with a certain sarcasm. What was the matter with Mar 
 cus? At moments he seemed singularly out of temper. 
 
 But tne agent was full of stories. He told his experiences, the 
 legends and myths that had grown up around the history of the 
 lottery ; he told of the poor newsboy with a dying mother to support 
 who had drawn a prize of fifteen thousand ; of the man who was 
 driven to suicide through want, but who held (had he but known 
 it) the number that two days after his death drew the capital prize 
 of thirty thousand dollars ; of the little milliner who for ten years 
 had played the lottery without success, and who had one day de 
 clared that she would buy but one more ticket and then give up try 
 ing, and of how this last ticket had brought her a fortune upon 
 which she could retire; of tickets that had been lost or destroyed, 
 and whose numbers had won fabulous sums at the drawing; of 
 criminals, driven to vice by poverty, and who had reformed after 
 winning competencies ; of gamblers who played the lottery as they 
 would play a faro bank, turning in their winnings again as soon as 
 made, buying thousands of tickets all over the country; of super 
 stitions as to terminal and initial numbers, and as to lucky days of 
 purchase ; of marvelous coincidences three capital prizes drawn 
 consecutively by the same town ; a ticket bought by a millionaire and 
 given to his bootblack, who won a thousand dollars upon it; the 
 same number winning the same amount an indefinite number of 
 times ; and so on to infinity. Invariably it was the needy who won, 
 
 D III NORRIS 
 
74 McTeague 
 
 the destitute and starving woke to wealth and plenty, the virtuous 
 toiler suddenly found his reward in a ticket bought at a hazard 
 the lottery was a great charity, the friend of the people, a vast 
 beneficent machine that recognized neither rank nor wealth nor 
 station. 
 
 The company began to be very gay. Chairs and tables were 
 brought in from the adjoining rooms, and Maria was sent out for 
 more beer and tamales, and also commissioned to buy a bottle of 
 wine and some cake for Miss Baker, who abhorred beer. 
 
 The "Dental Parlors" were in great confusion. Empty beer 
 bottles stood on the movable rack where the instruments were kept ; 
 plates and napkins were upon the seat of the operating chair and 
 upon the stand of shelves in the corner, side by side with the con 
 certina and the volumes of "Allen s Practical Dentist." The canary 
 woke and chittered crossly, his feathers puffed out; the husks of 
 tamales littered the floor; the stone pug dog sitting before the little 
 stove stared at the unusual scene, his glass eyes starting from their 
 sockets. 
 
 They drank and feasted in impromptu fashion. Marcus Schouler 
 assumed the office of master of ceremonies; he was in a lather of 
 excitement, rushing about here and there, opening beer bottles, 
 serving the tamales, slapping McTeague upon the back, laughing 
 and joking continually. He made McTeague sit at the head of the 
 table, with Trina at his right and the agent at his left ; he when he 
 sat down at all occupied the foot, Maria Macapa at his left, while 
 next to her was Mrs. Sieppe, opposite Miss Baker. Owgooste had 
 been put to bed upon the bed-lounge. 
 
 "Where s Old Grannis?" suddenly exclaimed Marcus. Sure 
 enough, where had the old Englishman gone? He had been there 
 at first. 
 
 "I called him down with everybody else," cried Maria Macapa, 
 "as soon as I saw in the paper that Miss Sieppe had won. We all 
 came down to Mr. Schouler s room and waited for you to come 
 home. I think he must have gone back to his room. I ll bet you ll 
 find him sewing up his books." 
 
 "No, no," observed Miss Baker, "not at this hour." 
 
 Evidently the timid old gentleman had taken advantage of the 
 confusion to slip unobtrusively away. 
 
 "I ll go bring him down," shouted Marcus; "he s got to join 
 us." 
 
 Miss Baker was in great agitation. 
 
McTeague 75 
 
 "I I hardly think you d better," she murmured; "he he I 
 don t think he drinks beer." 
 
 "He takes his amusement in sewin up books," cried Maria. 
 
 Marcus brought him down, nevertheless, having found him just 
 preparing for bed. 
 
 "I I must apologize," stammered Old Grannis, as he stood in 
 the doorway. "I had not quite expected I find find myself a 
 little unprepared." He was without collar and cravat, owing to 
 Marcus Schouler s precipitate haste. He was annoyed beyond 
 words that Miss Baker saw him thus. Could anything be more em 
 barrassing? 
 
 Old Grannis was introduced to Mrs. Sieppe and to Trina as 
 Marcus s employer. They shook hands solemnly. 
 
 "I don t believe that he an* Miss Baker have ever been intro 
 duced," cried Maria Macapa, shrilly, "an they ve been livin side 
 by side for years." 
 
 The two old people were speechless, avoiding each other s gaze. 
 It had come at last ; they were to know each other, to talk together, 
 to touch each other s hands. 
 
 Marcus brought Old Grannis around the table to little Miss 
 Baker, dragging him by the coat sleeve, exclaiming: "Well, I 
 thought you two people knew each other long ago. Miss Baker, 
 this is Mr. Grannis ; Mr. Grannis, this is Miss Baker." Neither 
 spoke. Like two little children they faced each other, awkward, 
 constrained, tongue-tied with embarrassment. Then Miss Baker 
 put out her hand shyly. Old Grannis touched it for an instant and 
 let it fall. 
 
 "Now you know each other," cried Marcus, "and it s about 
 time." For the first time their eyes met ; Old Grannis trembled a lit 
 tle, putting his hand uncertainly to his chin. Miss Baker flushed 
 ever so slightly, but Maria Macapa passed suddenly between them, 
 carrying a half empty beer bottle. The two old people fell back 
 from one another, Miss Baker resuming her seat. 
 
 "Here s a place for you over here, Mr. Grannis," cried Marcus, 
 making room for him at his side. Old Grannis slipped into the 
 chair, withdrawing at once from the company s notice. He stared 
 fixedly at his plate and did not speak again. Old Miss Baker began 
 to talk yolubly across the table to Mrs. Sieppe about hot-house 
 flowers and medicated flannels. 
 
 It was in the midst of this little impromptu supper that the 
 engagement of Trina and the dentist was announced. In a pause 
 
7 6 McTeague 
 
 in the chatter of conversation Mrs. Sieppe leaned forward and, 
 speaking to the agent, said: 
 
 "Veil, you know also my daughter Trina get married bretty 
 soon. She and der dentist, Doktor McTeague, eh, yes?" 
 
 There was a general exclamation. 
 
 "I thought so all along," cried Miss Baker, excitedly. The 
 first time I saw them together I said, What a pair ! 
 
 "Delightful!" exclaimed the agent, "to be married and win a 
 snug little fortune at the same time." 
 
 "So so," murmured Old Grannis, nodding at his plate. 
 
 "Good luck to you," cried Maria~____^ 
 
 "He s lucky enough already," growle}i Marcus under his breath, 
 relapsing for a moment into one of those strange moods of sullen- 
 ness which had marked him throughout the evening. 
 
 Trina flushed crimson, drawing shyly nearer her mother. Mc 
 Teague grinned from ear to ear, looking around from one to an 
 other, exclaiming "Huh ! huh !" 
 
 But the agent rose to his feet, a newly filled beer glass in his 
 hand. He was a man of the world, this agent. He knew life. He 
 was suave and easy. A diamond was on his little finger. 
 
 "Ladies and gentlemen," he began. There was an instant 
 silence. "This is indeed a happy occasion. I I am glad to be 
 here to-night; to be a witness to such good fortune; to partake in 
 these in this celebration. Why, I feel almost as glad as if I had 
 held four three oughts twelve myself; as if the five thousand were 
 mine instead of belonging to our charming hostess. The good 
 wishes of my humble self go out to Miss Sieppe in this moment of 
 her good fortune, and I think in fact, I am sure I can speak for 
 the great institution, the great company I represent. The 
 company congratulates Miss Sieppe. We they all They 
 wish her every happiness her new fortune can procure her. 
 It has been my duty, my ah cheerful duty to call upon the 
 winners of large prizes and to offer the felicitation of the company. 
 I have, in my experience, called upon many such; but never have 
 I seen fortune so happily bestowed as in this case. ^The company 
 have dowered the prospective bridej> I am sure I but echo the senti 
 ments of this assembly when I wish all joy and happiness to this 
 happy pair, happy in the possession of a snug little fortune, and 
 happy happy in" he finished with a sudden inspiration "in the 
 possession of each other; I drink to the health, wealth, and hap 
 piness of the future bride and groom. Let us drink standing up." 
 
McTeague 77 
 
 They drank with enthusiasm. Marcus was carried away with the 
 excitement of the moment. 
 
 "Outa sight, outa sight," he vociferated, clapping his hands. 
 "Very well said. To the health of the bride. McTeague, Mc 
 Teague, speech, speech!" 
 
 In an instant the whole table was clamoring for the dentist to 
 speak. McTeague was terrified; he gripped the table with both 
 hands, looking wildly about him. 
 
 "Speech, speech !" shouted Marcus, running around the table 
 ai d endeavoring to drag McTeague up. 
 
 "No no no," muttered the other. "No speech." The com 
 pany rattled upon the table with their beer glasses, insisting upon 
 a speech. McTeague settled obstinately into his chair, very red in 
 the face, shaking his head energetically. 
 
 "A.h, go on!" he exclaimed; "no speech." 
 
 "Ah, get up and say somethun, anyhow," persisted Marcus; 
 "you ought to do it. It s the proper caper." 
 
 McTeague heaved himself up ; there was a burst of applause ; he 
 looked slowly about him, then suddenly sat down again, shaking 
 his head hopelessly. 
 
 "Oh, go on, Mac," cried Trina. 
 
 "Get up, say somethun, anyhow," cried Marcus, tugging at his 
 arm ; "you gat to." 
 
 Once more McTeague rose to his feet. 
 
 "Huh !" he exclaimed, looking steadily at the table. Then he 
 began : 
 
 "I don know what to say I I I ain t never made a speech 
 before ; I I ain t never made a speech before. But I m glad Trina s 
 won the prize " 
 
 "Yes, I ll bet you are," muttered Marcus. 
 
 "I I I m glad Trina s won, and I I want to I want to I 
 want to want to say that you re all welcome, an drink hearty, 
 an I m much obliged to the agent. Trina and I are goin to be 
 married, an I m glad everybody s here to-night, an you re all 
 welcome, an drink hearty, an I hope you ll come again, an you re 
 always welcome an I an an That s about all I gotta 
 say." He sat down, wiping his forehead, amid tremendous ap 
 plause. 
 
 Soon after that the company pushed back from the table and 
 relaxed into couples and groups. The men, with the exception of 
 Old Grannis, began to smoke, the smell of their tobacco mingling 
 
78 McTeague 
 
 with the odors of ether, creosote, and stale bedding, which pervaded 
 the "Parlors." Soon the windows had to be lowered from the top. 
 Mrs. Sieppe and old Miss Baker sat together in the bay wirdow 
 exchanging confidences. Miss Baker had turned back the overskirt 
 of her dress; a plate of cake was in her lap; from time to time she 
 sipped her wine with the delicacy of a white cat. The two worr en 
 were much interested in each other. Miss Baker told Mrs. Sieppe 
 all about Old Grannis, not forgetting the fiction of the title and the 
 unjust stepfather. 
 
 "He s quite a personage really," said Miss Baker. 
 
 Mrs. Sieppe led the conversation around to her children. "Ach, 
 Trina is sudge a goote girl," she said; "always gay, yes, und sing 
 from morgen to night. Und Owgooste, he is soh smart also, yes, 
 eh ? He has der genius for machines, always making somethun mit 
 wheels und sbrings." 
 
 "Ah, if if I had children," murmured the little old rr.aid a 
 trifle wistfully, "one would have been a sailor ; he would have begun 
 as a midshipman on my brother s ship ; in time he would have been 
 an officer. The other would have been a landscape gardener." 
 
 "Oh, Mac !" exclaimed Trina, looking up into the dentist s face, 
 "think of all this money coming to us just at this very moment. 
 Isn t it wonderful ? Don t it kind of scare you ?" 
 
 "Wonderful, wonderful !" muttered McTeague, shaking his head. 
 "Let s buy a lot of tickets," he added, struck with an idea. 
 
 "Now, that s how you can always tell a good cigar," observed 
 the agent to Marcus as the two sat smoking at the end of the table. 
 "The light end should be rolled to a point." 
 
 "Ah, the Chinese cigar-makers," cried Marcus, in a passion, 
 brandishing his fist, "It s them as is ruining the cause of white 
 labor. They are, they are for a fact. Ah, the rat-eaters ! Ah, the 
 white-livered curs!" 
 
 Over in the corner, by the stand of shelves, Old Grannis was 
 listening to Maria Macapa. The Mexican woman had been vio 
 lently stirred over Trina s sudden wealth; Maria s mind had gone 
 back to her younger days. She leaned forward, her elbows on her 
 knees, her chin in her hands, her eyes wide and fixed. Old Grannis 
 listened to her attentively. 
 
 "There wa n t a piece that was so much as scratched," Maria 
 was saying. "Every piece was just like a mirror, smooth and 
 bright ; oh, bright as a little sun. Such a service as that was plat 
 ters and soup tureens and an immense big punch-bowl. Five thou- 
 
McTeague 79 
 
 sand dollars, what does that amount to? Why, that punch-bowl 
 alone was worth a fortune." 
 
 "What a wonderful story!" exclaimed Old Grannis, never for 
 an instant doubting its truth. "And it s all lost now, you say ?" 
 
 "Lost, lost," repeated Maria. 
 
 "Tut, tut ! What a pity ! What a pity !" 
 
 Suddenly the agent rose and broke out with : 
 
 "Well, / must be going, if I m to get any car." 
 
 He shook hands with everybody, offered a parting cigar to Mar 
 cus, congratulated McTeague and Trina a last time, and bowed 
 himself out. 
 
 "What an elegant gentleman," commented Miss Baker. 
 
 "Ah," said Marcus, nodding his head, "there s a man of the 
 world for you. Right on to himself, by damnl" 
 
 The company broke up. 
 
 "Come along, Mac," cried Marcus ; "we re to sleep with the dogs 
 to-night, you know." 
 
 The two friends said "Good-night" all around and departed for 
 the little dog hospital. 
 
 Old Grannis hurried to his room furtively terrified lest he should 
 again be brought face to face with Miss Baker. He bolted himself 
 in and listened until he heard her foot in the hall and the soft clos 
 ing of her door. She was there close beside him ; as one might say, 
 in the same room; for he, too, had made the discovery as to the 
 similarity of the wall-paper. At long intervals he could hear a faint 
 rustling as she moved about. What an evening that had been for 
 him ! He had met her, had spoken to her, had touched her hand ; 
 he was in a tremor of excitement. In a like manner the little old 
 dressmaker listened and quivered. He was there in that same 
 room which they shared in common, separated only by the thinnest 
 board partition. He was thinking of her, she was almost sure of it. 
 They were strangers no longer; they were acquaintances, friends. 
 What an event that evening had been in their lives ! 
 
 Late as it was, Miss Baker brewed a cup of tea and sat down 
 in her rocking-chair close to the partition ; she rocked gently, sipping 
 her tea, calming herself after the emotions of that wonderful 
 evening. 
 
 Old Grannis heard the clinking of the tea things and smelled 
 the faint odor of the tea. It seemed to him a signal, an invitation. 
 He drew his chair close to his side of the partition, before his work- 
 table. A pile of half-bound "Nations" was in the little binding ap- 
 
80 McTeague 
 
 paratus ; he threaded his huge upholsterer s needle with stout twine 
 and set to work. 
 
 It was their tete-a-tete. Instinctively they felt each other s 
 presence, felt each other s thought coming to them through the 
 thin partition. It was charming ; they were perfectly happy. There 
 in the stillness that settled over the flat in the half hour after mid 
 night the two old people "kept company/ enjoying after their fash 
 ion their little romance that had come so late into the life of each. 
 
 On the way to her room in the garret Maria Macapa passed 
 under the single gas-jet that burned at the top of the well of the 
 staircase; she assured herself that she was alone, and then drew 
 from her pocket one of McTeague s "tapes" of non-cohesive gold. 
 It was the most valuable steal she had ever yet made in the dentist s 
 "Parlors." She told herself that it was worth at least a couple of 
 dollars. Suddenly an idea occurred to her, and she went hastily to 
 a window at the end of the hall and, shading her face with both 
 hands, looked down into the little alley just back of the flat. On 
 some nights Zerkow, the red-headed Polish Jew, sat up late, taking 
 account of the week s rag-picking. There was a dim light in his 
 window now. 
 
 Maria went to her room, threw a shawl around her head, and 
 descended into the little back yard of the flat by the back stairs. As 
 she let herself out of the back gate into the alley, Alexander, Mar 
 cus s Irish setter, woke suddenly with a gruff bark. The collie who 
 lived on the other side of the fence, in the back yard of the branch 
 post-office, answered with a snarl. Then in an instant the endless 
 feud between the two dogs was resumed. They dragged their re- 
 pective kennels to the fence, and through the cracks raged at each 
 other in a frenzy of hate; their teeth snapped and gleamed; the 
 hackles on their backs rose and stiffened. Their hideous clamor 
 could have been heard for blocks around. What a massacre should 
 the two ever meet! 
 
 Meanwhile, Maria was knocking at Zerkow s miserable hovel. 
 
 "Who is it? Who is it?" cried the rag-picker from within, in 
 his hoarse voice, that was half whisper, starting nervously, and 
 sweeping a handful of silver into his drawer. 
 
 "It s me, Maria Macapa ;" then in a lower voice, and as if speak 
 ing to herself, "had a flying squirrel an let him go." 
 
 "Ah, "Maria," cried Zerkow, obsequiously opening the door. 
 "Come in, come in, my girl; you re always welcome, even as late 
 as this. No junk, hey? But you re welcome for all that You ll 
 
McTeague 81 
 
 have a drink, won t you?" He led her into his back room and got 
 down the whiskey bottle and the broken red tumbler. 
 
 After the two had drank together Maria produced the gold 
 "tape." Zerkow s eyes glittered on the instant. The sight of gold 
 invariably sent a qualm all through him ; try as he would, he could 
 not repress it. His fingers trembled and clawed at his mouth; his 
 breath grew short. 
 
 "Ah, ah, ah !" he exclaimed, "give it here, give it here ; give it 
 to me, Maria. That s a good girl, come, give it to me." 
 
 They haggled as usual over the price, but to-night Maria was 
 too excited over other matters to spend much time in bickering over 
 a few cents. 
 
 "Look here, Zerkow," she said as soon as the transfer was made, 
 "I got something to tell you. A little while ago I sold a lottery 
 ticket to a girl at the flat ; the drawing was in this evening s papers. 
 How much do you suppose that girl has won ?" 
 
 "I don t know. How much? How much?" 
 
 "Five thousand dollars." 
 
 It was as though a knife had been run through the Jew; a 
 spasm of an almost physical pain twisted his face his entire body. 
 He raised his clinched fists into the air, his eyes shut, his teeth 
 gnawing his lip. 
 
 "Five thousand dollars," he whispered; "five thousand dollars. 
 For what? For nothing, for simply buying a ticket; and I have 
 worked so hard for it, so hard, so hard. Five thousand dollars, 
 five thousand dollars. Oh, why couldn t it have come to me?" he 
 cried, his voice choking-, the tears coming to his eyes ; "why couldn t 
 it have come to me ? To come so close, so close, and yet to miss me 
 me who have worked for it, fought for it, starved for it, am 
 dying for it every day. Think of it, Maria, five thousand dollars, 
 all bright, heavy pieces " 
 
 "Bright as a sunset," interrupted Maria, her chin propped on her 
 hands. "Such a glory, and heavy. Yes, every piece was heavy, 
 and it was all you could do to lift the punch-bowl. Why, that 
 punch-bowl was worth a fortune alone " 
 
 "And it rang when you hit it with your knuckles, didn t it?" 
 prompted Zerkow, eagerly, his lips trembling, his fingers hooking 
 themselves into claws. 
 
 "Sweeter n any church bell," continued Maria. 
 
 "Go on, go on, go on," cried Zerkow, drawing his chair closer, 
 and shutting his eyes in ecstasy. 
 
82 McTeague 
 
 "There were more than a hundred pieces, and every one of them 
 gold-" 
 
 "Ah, every one of them gold." 
 
 "You should have seen the sight when the leather trunk was 
 opened. There wa n t a piece that was so much as scratched ; every 
 one was like a mirror, smooth and bright, polished so that it looked 
 black you know how I mean." 
 
 "Oh x I know, I know," cried Zerkow, moistening his lips. 
 
 Then he plied her with questions questions that covered every 
 detail of that service of plate. It was soft, wasn t it? You could 
 bite into a plate and leave a dent? The handles of the knives, now, 
 were they gold, too? All the knife was made from one piece of 
 gold, was it? And the forks the same? The interior of the trunk 
 was quilted, of course? Did Maria ever polish the plates herself? 
 When the company ate off this service, it must have made a fine 
 noise these gold knives and forks clinking together upon these 
 gold plates. 
 
 "Now, let s have it all over again, Maria," pleaded Zerkow. 
 "Begin now with There were more than a hundred pieces, and 
 every one of them gold/ Go on, begin, begin, begin!" 
 
 The red-headed Pole was in a fever of excitement. Maria s 
 recital had become a veritable mania with him. As he listened, 
 with closed eyes and trembling lips, he fancied he could see that 
 wonderful plate before him, there on the table, under his eyes, under 
 his hand, ponderous, massive, gleaming. He tormented Maria into 
 a second repetition of the story into a third. The more his mind 
 dwelt upon it, the sharper grew his desire. Then, with Maria s 
 refusal to continue the tale, came the reaction. Zerkow awoke as 
 from some ravishing dream. The plate was gone, was irretrievably 
 lost. There was nothing in that miserable room but grimy rags and 
 rust-corroded iron. What torment! what agony! to be so near 
 so near, to see it in one s distorted fancy as plain as in a mirror. 
 To know every individual piece as an old friend ; to feel its weight, 
 to be dazzled by its glitter ; to call it one s own, own ; to have it to 
 one s self, hugged to the breast ; and then to start, to wake, to come 
 down to the horrible reality. 
 
 "And you, you had it once," gasped Zerkow, clawing at her 
 arm ; "you had it once, all your own. Think of it, and now it s gone." 
 
 "Gone for good and all." 
 
 Perhaps it s buried near your old place somewhere." 
 
 "It s gone gone gone," chanted Maria in a monotone. 
 
McTeague 83 
 
 Zerkow dug- his nails into his scalp, tearing at his red hair. 
 "Yes, yes, it s gone, it s gone lost forever! Lost forever!" 
 
 Maicus and the dentist walked up the silent street and reached 
 the little dog hospital. They had hardly spoken on the way. Mc- 
 Teague s brain was in a whirl; speech failed him. He was busy 
 thinking of the great thing that had happened that night, and was 
 trying to realize what its effect would be upon his life his life 
 and Trina s. As soon as they had found themselves in the street, 
 Marcus had relapsed at once into a sullen silence, which McTeague 
 was too abstracted to notice. 
 
 They entered the tiny office of the hospital with its red carpet, 
 its gas stove, and its colored prints of famous dogs hanging against 
 the walls. In one corner stood the iron bed which they were to 
 occupy. 
 
 "You go on an get to bed, Mac," observed Marcus. "I ll take 
 a look at the dogs before I turn in." 
 
 He went outside and passed along into the yard, that was bounded 
 on three sides by pens where the dogs were kept. A bull terrier 
 dying of gastritis recognized him and began to whimper feebly. 
 
 Marcus paid no attention to the dogs. For the first time that 
 evening he was alone and could give vent to his thoughts. He 
 took a couple of turns up and down the yard, then suddenly in a 
 low voice exclaimed : 
 
 "You fool, you fool, Marcus Schouler! If you d kept Trina 
 you d have had that money. You might have had it yourself. 
 You ve thrown away your chance in life to give up the girl, yes 
 but this" he stamped his foot with rage "to throw five thousand 
 dollars out of the window to stuff it into the pockets of some one 
 else, when it might have been yours, when you might have had 
 Trina and the money and all for what? Because we were pals. 
 Oh, pals is all right but five thousand dollars to have played it// 
 right into his hands God damn the luck !" 
 
8 4 McTeague 
 
 VIII 
 
 THE next two months were delightful. Trina and McTeague 
 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 nine and twelve o clock down town, 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 
 McTeague 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 lamp shade 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 
 portieres for two and a half. Now, what have you been doing since 
 I last saw you? Did Mr. Heise finally get up enough courage to 
 have his tooth pulled yet?" Trina took off her hat and veil and re 
 arranged her hair before the looking-glass. 
 
 "No, no not yet. I went down to the sign painter s 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 
 gilt and the other French gilt; but the German gilt is no good." 
 
 McTeague sighed, and wagged his head. Even Trina and the 
 
McTeague 85 
 
 five thousand dollars 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 McTeague 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 "Parlors," and he believed the photographer 
 would sublet them furnished. 
 
 McTeague 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 five thousand dollars. To McTeague s mind this interest 
 seemed wo fully small. He had had uncertain ideas about that five 
 thousand dollars; 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 
 per cents, he was troubled and not a little disappointed. The lump 
 sum of five thousand dollars was one thing, a miserable little twenty 
 or twenty-five a month was quite another; and then some one 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 Sieppe family. The savings 
 bank would allow only three per cent, but Trina s parents believed 
 that something better could be got. 
 
 "There s Uncle Oelbermann," Trina had suggested, remembering 
 the rich relative who had the wholesale toy store in the Mission. 
 
 Mr. Sieppe struck his hand to his forehead. "Ah, an idea," 
 he cried. In the end an agreement was made. The money 
 
86 McTeague 
 
 was invested in Mr. Oelbermann s business. He gave Trina six 
 per cent. 
 
 Invested in this fashion, Trina s winning would bring in twenty- 
 five dollars a month. But, besides this, Trina had her own little 
 trade. She made Noah s ark animals for Uncle Oelbermann s store. 
 Trina s ancestors on both sides were German- Swiss, and some 
 long-forgotten forefather of the sixteenth century, some worsted- 
 leggined wood-carver 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 jack-knife, 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-grained 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 Vandyke brown for the horses, foxes, and cows; slate 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 manikins." 
 
 "The manikins?" 
 
 "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 the turning lathe, that could throw 
 off whole tribes and peoples of manikins while she was fashioning 
 one family. Everything else, however, she made the ark itself, all 
 windows and no door; the box in which the whole 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, McTeague s profession, the 
 interest of the five thousand dollars, and Trina s whittling, made 
 a respectable little sum taken altogether. 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 
 
McTeague 87 
 
 saves without any thought, without idea of consequence saving 
 for the sake of saving, hoarding without knowing why. Even Mc 
 Teague did not know how closely Trina held to her new-found 
 wealth. 
 
 But they did not always pass their luncheon hour in this dis 
 cussion 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 rents of rooms and the cost of light and fuel with a brusque 
 outburst of affection that set him all a-tremble with delight. All at 
 once she would set down her chocolate, and, leaning across the nar 
 row table, would exclaim : 
 
 "Never mind all that ! Oh, Mac, do you truly, really love me 
 love me big?" 
 
 McTeague would stammer something, gasping, and wagging 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 toward her "right on 
 the 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 McTeague s 
 great square-cut head, rumpling his hair till it stood on end, putting 
 her fingers in his eyes, or stretching his ears out straight, and watch 
 ing 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 wearied of. The two 
 would lean across the table toward each other, McTeague folding 
 his arms under his breast. Then Trina, resting on her elbows, 
 would part his mustache the great blond 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 Mc 
 Teague would make a fearful snorting noise through his nose. In 
 variably though she was expecting this, though it was part of the 
 game Trina would jump with a stifled shriek. McTeague would 
 bellow with laughter till his eyes watered. Then they would recom- 
 
88 McTeague 
 
 mence upon the instant, Trina protesting with a nervous 
 tremulousness : 
 
 "Now n ow now, Mac, don t; you scare me so." 
 
 But these delicious tete-d-tetes with Trina were offset by a cer 
 tain coolness that Marcus Schouler began to affect toward the 
 dentist. At first McTeague 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 conductors coffee- 
 joint. But Marcus was sulky; there could be no doubt about that. 
 He avoided talking to McTeague, read the paper continually, an 
 swering the dentist s timid efforts at conversation in gruff mono 
 syllables. Sometimes, even, he turned sidewise to the table and 
 talked at great length to Heise 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 McTeague took his place at the table in the 
 coffee- joint, he found Marcus already there. 
 
 "Hello, Mark," said the dentist, "you here already?" 
 
 "Hello," returned the other, indifferently, helping himself to 
 tomato catsup. There was a silence. After a long while Marcus 
 suddenly looked up. 
 
 "Say, Mac," he exclaimed, "when you going to pay me that 
 money you owe me ?" 
 
 McTeague 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 McTeague, 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 now-a-days." 
 
 "Are you are you broke ?" inquired McTeague. 
 
 "And I ain t saying anything about your sleeping at the hos 
 pital that night, either," muttered Marcus, as he pocketed the 
 
 "Well well do you mean should I have paid for that?" 
 "Well, you d a had to sleep somewheres, wouldn t you ?" fl< 
 
McTeague 89 
 
 out Marcus. "You d a 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." 
 
 McTeague was miserable. How had he offended his pal? 
 
 "Well, I want you should take it, Mark," he said, pushing it 
 toward him. 
 
 "I tell you I won t touch your money," exclaimed the other 
 through his clinched teeth, white with passion. "I ve been played 
 for a sucker long enough." 
 
 "What s the matter with you lately, Mark?" remonstrated Mc 
 Teague. "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 con 
 ductors coffee-joint, was Frenna s. It was a corner grocery; ad 
 vertisements 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 col 
 ored lithographs of trotting horses. On the wall behind the bar was 
 a model of a full-rigged ship inclosed in a bottle. 
 
 It was at this place that the dentist used to leave his pitcher 
 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 piquet players around the tables. 
 In fact, he hardly spoke to any one but the bartender and Marcus. 
 
 For Frenna s was one of Marcus Schouler s haunts ; a great deal 
 of his time was spent there. He involved himself in fearful politi 
 cal and social discussions with Heise the harness-maker, and with 
 
o,o McTeague 
 
 one or two old Germans, habitues of the place. These discussions 
 Marcus carried on, as was his custom, at the top of his voice, ges 
 ticulating fiercely, banging the table with his fists, brandishing the 
 plates and glasses, exciting himself with his own clamor. 
 
 On a certain Saturday evening, a few days after the scene at 
 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 McTeague 
 entered Frenna s back room by the street door, he found Marcus 
 and Heise already installed at one of the tables. Two or three of 
 the old Germans sat opposite them, gulping their beer from time to 
 time. Heise was smoking a cigar, but Marcus had before him his 
 fourth whiskey cocktail. At the moment of McTeague 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 damn ! 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 do I say 
 I do. What?" He glared about him, seeking opposition. 
 
 "That s nonsense," observed Heise, quietly. "Try it once ; you ll 
 get jugged." But this observation of the harness-maker s 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, Mister Schouler," said 
 Frenna, from behind the bar. 
 
 "Well, it makes me mad," answered Marcus, subsiding into a 
 growl and resuming his chair. "Hullo, Mac." 
 
 "Hullo, Mark." 
 
 But McTeague s presence made Marcus uneasy, rousing in him 
 at once a sense of wrong. He twisted to and fro in his chair, 
 shrugging first one shoulder and then another. Quarrelsome at all 
 times, the heat of the previous discussion had awakened within him 
 
McTeague 9 1 
 
 all his natural combativeness. Besides this, he was drinking his 
 fourth cocktail. 
 
 McTeague began filling his big porcelain pipe. He lighted it, 
 blew a great cloud of smoke into the room, and settled himself com 
 fortably 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 muck 
 ers ; don t come here among gentlemen." 
 
 "Shut up, Schouler !" observed Heise in a low voice. 
 
 McTeague was stunned by the suddenness of the attack. He 
 took his pipe from his mouth, and stared blankly at Marcus; his 
 lips moved, but he said no word. Marcus turned his back on him, 
 and the dentist resumed his pipe. 
 
 But Marcus was far from being appeased. McTeague could not 
 hear the talk that followed between him and the harness-maker, 
 but it seemed to him that Marcus was telling Heise of some injury, 
 some grievance, and that the latter was trying to pacify him. All 
 at once their talk grew louder. Heise laid a retaining hand upon his 
 companion s coat sleeve, but Marcus swung himself around in his 
 chair, and, fixing his eyes on McTeague, cried as if in answer to 
 some protestation on the part of Heise : 
 
 "All I know is that I ve been soldiered out of five thousand 
 dollars." 
 
 McTeague gaped at him, bewildered. He removed his pipe from 
 his mouth a second time, and stared at Marcus with eyes full of 
 trouble and perplexity. 
 
 "If I had my rights," cried Marcus, bitterly, "I d have part of 
 that money. It s due me it s only justice." The dentist still kept 
 silence. 
 
 "If it hadn t been for me," Marcus continued, addressing him 
 self directly to McTeague, "you wouldn t have had a cent of it 
 no, not a cent. Where s my share, I d like to know ? Where do I 
 come in? No, I ain t in it any more. I ve been played for a 
 sucker, an now that you ve got all you can out of me, now that 
 you ve done me out of my girl and out of my money, you give me 
 the go-by. Why, where would you have been to-day if it hadn t 
 been for me?" Marcus shouted in a sudden exasperation, "You d a 
 been plugging teeth at two bits an hour. Ain t you got any grati 
 tude? Ain t you got any sense of decency?" 
 
^2 McTeague 
 
 "Ah, hold up, Schouler," grumbled Heise. "You don t want to 
 get into a row." 
 
 "No, I don t, Heise/ returned Marcus, with a plaintive, ag 
 grieved air. "But it s too much sometimes when you think of it. 
 He stole away my girl s affections, and now that he s rich and 
 prosperous, and has got five thousand dollars that I might have had, 
 he gives me the go-by; he s played me for a sucker. Look here," 
 he cried, turning again to McTeague, "do I get any of that money ?" 
 
 "It ain t mine to give," answered McTeague. "You re drunk, 
 that s what you are." 
 
 "Do I get any of that money?" cried Marcus, persistently. 
 
 The dentist shook his head. "No, you don t get any of it." 
 
 "Now now," clamored the other, turning to the 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 McTeague s face, moving off 
 again as he spoke the last words, in order to give them better 
 effect. 
 
 "This settles it right here. I ve done with you. Don t you ever 
 dare speak to me again" his voice was shaking with fury "and 
 don t you sit at my table in the restaurant again. I m sorry I ever 
 lowered myself to keep company with such dirt. Ah, one-horse 
 dentist! Ah, ten-cent zinc-plugger hoodlum mucker! Get your 
 damn smoke outa my face." 
 
 Then matters reached a sudden climax. In his agitation the den 
 tist had been pulling hard on his pipe, and as Marcus for the last 
 time thrust his face close to his own, McTeague, in opening his 
 lips to reply, blew a stifling, acrid cloud directly in Marcus Schou- 
 ler s eyes. Marcus knocked the pipe from his fingers with a sudden 
 flash of his hand; it spun across the room and broke into a dozen 
 fragments in a far corner. 
 
 McTeague rose to his feet, his eyes wide. But as yet he was 
 not angry, only surprised, taken all aback by the suddenness of 
 Marcus Schouler s outbreak as well as by its unreasonableness. 
 Why had Marcus broken his pipe? What did it all mean, any 
 way? As he rose the dentist made a vague motion with his right 
 hand. Did Marcus misinterpret it as a gesture of menace? He 
 sprang back as though avoiding a blow. All at once there was a 
 cry. Marcus had made a quick, peculiar motion, swinging his arm 
 upward with a wide and sweeping gesture; his jack-knife lay open 
 
McTeague 93 
 
 in his palm ; it shot forward as he flung it, glinted sharply by Mc- 
 Teague s head, and struck quivering into the wall behind. 
 
 A sudden chill ran through the room; the others stood trans 
 fixed, 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 babel of exclamation arose. The tension of that 
 all but fatal instant snapped, and speech became once more possible. 
 
 "He would have knifed you." 
 
 "Narrow escape." 
 
 "What kind of a man do you call thatf" 
 
 " Tain t his fault he ain t a murderer." 
 
 "I d have him up for it." 
 
 "And they two have been the greatest kind of friends." 
 
 "He didn t touch you, did he ?" 
 
 "No no no." 
 
 "What a what a devil ! What treachery ! A regular greaser 
 trick!" 
 
 "Look out he don t stab you in the back. If that s the kind of 
 man he is, you never can tell." 
 
 Frenna drew the knife from the wall. 
 
 "Guess I ll keep this toad-stabber," he observed. "That fellow 
 won t come round for it in a hurry; good-sized blade, too." The 
 group examined it with intense interest. 
 
 "Big enough to let the life out of any man," observed Heise. 
 
 "What what what did he do it for?" stammered McTeague. 
 "I got no quarrel with him." 
 
 He was puzzled and harassed by the strangeness of it all. Mar 
 cus would have killed him ; had thrown his knife at him in the true, 
 uncanny "greaser" style. It was inexplicable. McTeague sat down 
 again, looking stupidly about on the floor. In a corner of the room 
 his eye encountered his broken pipe, a dozen little fragments of 
 painted porcelain and the stem of cherry wood and amber. 
 
 At that sight his tardy_jiLcath, ever lagging behind the original 
 affront, suddenly blazed up. Instantly his huge jaws clicked together. 
 
 "He can t make small of me," he exclaimed, suddenly. I ll 
 show Marcus Schouler I ll show him I ll " 
 
 He got up and clapped on his hat. 
 
 Now, Doctor," remonstrated Heise, standing between him and 
 the door, "don t go make a fool of yourself." 
 
94 McTeague 
 
 "Let urn alone," joined in Frenna, catching the dentist by the 
 arm ; "he s full, anyhow." 
 
 "He broke my pipe," answered McTeague. 
 
 It was this that had roused him. The thrown knife, the attempt 
 on his life, was beyond his solution; but the breaking of his pipe 
 he understood clearly enough. 
 
 Til show him," he exclaimed. 
 
 As though they had been little children, McTeague set Frenna 
 and the harness-maker aside, and strode out of the door like a 
 raging elephant. Heise stood rubbing his shoulder. 
 
 "Might as well try to stop a locomotive," he muttered. "The 
 man s made of iron." 
 
 Meanwhile, McTeague went storming up the street toward the 
 flat, wagging his head and grumbling to himself. Ah, Marcus 
 would break his pipe, would he? Ah, he was a zinc-plugger, was 
 he? He d show Marcus Schouler. No one should make small of 
 him. He tramped up the stairs to Marcus s room. The door was 
 locked. The dentist put one enormous hand on the knob and pushed 
 the door in, snapping the wood-work, tearing off the lock. No 
 body the room was dark and empty. Never mind, Marcus would 
 have to come home some time that night. McTeague would go 
 down and wait for him in his "Parlors." He was bound to hear 
 him as he came up the stairs. 
 
 As McTeague reached his room he stumbled over, in the dark 
 ness, 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 ex 
 pecting nothing. Never since he had first furnished his room had 
 packing-cases been left for him in this fashion. No mistake was 
 possible. There were his name and address unmistakably. "Dr. 
 McTeague, dentist Polk Street, San Francisco, Cal.," and the red 
 Wells-Fargo tag. 
 
 Seized with the joyful curiosity of an overgrown boy, he pried 
 
 off the boards with the corner of his 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 
 
 Mac s birthday, from Trina ;" and below, in a kind of postscript, 
 
 "The man will be round to-morrow to put it in place." McTeague 
 
 tore away the excelsior. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation. 
 
 It was the Tooth the famous golden molar with its huge prongs 
 
McTeague 95 
 
 his sign, his ambition, the one unrealized dream of his life; and 
 it was French gilt, too, not the cheap German gilt that was no 
 good. Ah, what a dear little woman was this Trina, to keep so 
 quiet, to remember his birthday! 
 
 "Ain t she ain t she just a just a jeivel," exclaimed McTeague 
 under his breath, "a jewel yes, just a jewel; that s the word." 
 
 Very carefully he removed the rest of the excelsior, and lifting 
 the ponderous Tooth from its box, set it upon the marble-top centre - 
 table. How immense it looked in that little room ! The thing was 
 tremendous, overpowering the tooth of a gigantic fossil, golden 
 and dazzling. Beside it everything seemed dwarfed. Even Mc 
 Teague himself, big-boned and enormous as he was, shrank and 
 dwindled in the presence of the monster. As for an instant he bore 
 it in his hands, it was like a puny Gulliver struggling with the 
 molar of some vast Brobdingnag. 
 
 The dentist circled about the golden wonder, gasping with de 
 light and stupefaction, touching it gingerly with his hands as if it 
 were something sacred. At every moment his thought returned to 
 Trina. No, never was there such a little woman as his the very 
 thing he wanted how had she remembered? And the money, 
 where had that come from? No one knew better than he how ex 
 pensive were these signs; not another dentist on Polk Street could 
 afford one. Where, then, had Trina found the money? It came 
 out of her five thousand dollars, no doubt. 
 
 But what a wonderful, beautiful tooth it was, to be sure, bright 
 as a mirror, shining there in its coat of French gilt, as if with a light 
 of its own ! No danger of that tooth turning black with the weather, 
 as did the cheap German gilt impostures. What would that other 
 dentist, that poser, that rider of bicycles, that courser of greyhounds, 
 say when he should see this marvelous molar run out from Mc- 
 Teague s bay window like a flag of defiance? No doubt he would 
 suffer veritable convulsions of envy; would be positively sick with 
 jealousy. If McTeague could only see his face at the moment! 
 
 For a whole hour the dentist sat there in his little "Parlor," 
 gazing ecstatically at his treasure, dazzled, supremely content. The 
 whole room took on a different aspect because of it. The stone pug 
 dog before the little stove reflected it in his protruding eyes; the 
 canary woke and chittered feebly at this new gilt, so much brighter 
 than the bars of its little prison. Lorenzo de Medici, in the steel 
 engraving, sitting in the heart of his court, seemed to ogle the thing 
 out of the corner of one eye, while the brilliant colors of the unused 
 
9 6 McTeague 
 
 rifle manufacturer s calendar seemed to fade and pale in the bril 
 liance of this greater glory. 
 
 At length, long after midnight, the dentist started to go to bed, 
 undressing himself with his eyes still fixed on the great tooth. All 
 at once he heard Marcus Schouler s foot on the stairs; he started 
 up with his fists clinched, 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 rein 
 state himself in that mood of wrath wherein he had left the corner 
 grocery. The tooth had changed all that. What was Marcus 
 Schouler s hatred to him, who had Trina s affection? What did he 
 care about a broken pipe now that he had the tooth? Let him go. 
 As Frenna said, he was not worth it. He heard iMarcus come out 
 into the hall, shouting aggrievedly to any one within sound of his 
 voice : 
 
 "An now he breaks into my room into my room, by damn! 
 How do I know how many things he s stolen ? It s come to stealing 
 from me, now, has it?" He went into his room, banging his splin 
 tered 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 morn 
 ing. 
 
 But he was restless during the night. Every now and then he 
 was awakened by noises to which he had long since become accus 
 tomed. Now it was the cackling of the geese in the deserted mar 
 ket across the street; now it was the stoppage of the cable, the 
 sudden silence coming almost like a shock; and now it was the 
 infuriated barking of the dogs in the back yard Alec, the Irish 
 setter, and the collie that belonged to the branch post-offic raging 
 at each other through the fence, snarling tljeir 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 present from his little woman a huge, 
 vague bulk, looming there through the half darkness in the centre 
 of the room, shining dimly out as if with some mysterious light of 
 its own. 
 
McTeague 97 
 
 IX 
 
 TRINA and McTeague were married on the first day of June, in 
 the photographer s rooms that the dentist had rented. All through 
 May the Sieppe household had been turned upside down. The 
 little box of a house vibrated with excitement and confusion, for 
 not only were the preparations for Trina s marriage to be made, 
 but also the preliminaries were to be arranged for the hegira of 
 the entire Sieppe family. 
 
 They were to move to the squthern part of the State the day 
 after Trina s marriage, Mr. Sieppe having bought a third interest 
 in an upholstering business in the suburbs of Los Angeles. It was 
 possible ihajLMarcus Schouler would go with them. 
 
 Not Stanle^ penetrating for the first time into the Dark Con 
 tinent, not Napoleon leading his army across the Alps, was more 
 weighted with responsibility, more burdened with care, more over 
 come with the sense of the importance of his undertaking, than was 
 Mr. Sieppe during this period of preparation. From dawn to dark, 
 from dark to early dawn, he toiled and planned and fretted, organ 
 izing and reorganizing, projecting and devising. The trunks were 
 lettered A, B, and C, the packages and smaller bundles numbered. 
 Each member of the family had his especial duty to perform, his 
 particular bundles to oversee. Not a detail was forgotten fares, 
 prices, and tips were calculated to two places of decimals. Even 
 the amount of food that it would be necessary to carry for the black 
 greyhound was determined. Mrs. Sieppe was to look after the 
 lunch, "der gomisariat." Mr. Sieppe would assume charge of the 
 checks, the money, the tickets, and, of course, general supervision. 
 The twins would be under the command of Owgooste, who, in turn, 
 would report for orders to his father. 
 
 Day in and day out these minutiae were rehearsed. The children 
 were drilled in their parts with a military exactitude; obedience 
 and punctuality became cardinal virtues. The vast importance of 
 the undertaking was insisted upon with scrupulous iteration. It 
 was a manoeuvre, an army changing its base of operations, a verita 
 ble tribal migration. 
 
 E III NORRIS 
 
9 8 McTeague 
 
 On the other hand, Trina s little room was the centic .around 
 which revolved another and different order of things. The dress 
 maker came and went, congratulatory visitors invaded the little 
 front parlor, the chatter of unfamiliar voices resounded from the 
 front steps ; bonnet boxes and yards of dress goods littered the beds 
 and chairs ; wrapping paper, tissue paper, and bits of string strewed 
 the floor; a pair of white satin slippers stood on a corner of the 
 toilet table; lengths of white veiling, like a snow-flurry, buried the 
 little work-table; and a mislaid box of artificial orange blossoms 
 was finally discovered behind the bureau. 
 
 The two systems of operation often clashed and tangled. Mrs. 
 Sieppe was found by her harassed husband helping Trina with the 
 waist of her gown when she should have been slicing cold chicken 
 in the kitchen. Mr. Sieppe packed his frock coat, which he would 
 have to wear at the wedding, at the very bottom of "Trunk C." 
 The minister, who called to offer his congratulations and to make 
 arrangements, was mistaken for the expressman. 
 
 McTeague came and went furtively, dizzied and made uneasy 
 by all this bustle. He got in the way; he trod upon and tore 
 breadths of silk; he tried to help carry the packing-boxes, and 
 broke the hall gas fixture; he came in upon Trina and the dress 
 maker at an ill-timed moment, and, retiring precipitately, over 
 turned the piles of pictures stacked in the hall. 
 
 There was an incessant going and coming at every moment of 
 the day, a great calling up and down stairs, a shouting from room 
 to room, an opening and shutting of doors, and an intermittent 
 sound of hammering from the laundry, where Mr. Sieppe in his 
 shirt sleeves labored among the packing-boxes. The twins clattered 
 about on the carpetless floors of the denuded rooms. Owgooste 
 was smacked from hour to hour, and wept upon the front stairs; 
 the dressmaker called over the banisters for a hot flatiron ; express 
 men tramped up and down the stairway. Mrs. Sieppe stopped in 
 the preparation of the lunches to call "Hoop, Hoop" to the grey 
 hound, throwing lumps of coal. The dog-wheel creaked, the front 
 door bell rang, delivery wagons rumbled away, windows rattled 
 the little house was in a positive uproar. 
 
 Almost every day of the week now Trina was obliged to run 
 over to town and meet McTeague. No more philandering over their 
 lunch now-a-days. It was business now. They haunted the house- 
 furnishing floors of the great department houses, inspecting and 
 pricing ranges, hardware, china, and the like. They rented the 
 
McTeague 99 
 
 photographer s rooms furnished, and fortunately only the kitchen 
 and dining-room utensils had to be bought. 
 
 The money for this as well as for her trousseau came out of 
 Trina s five thousand dollars. For it had been finally decided that 
 two hundred dollars of this amount should be devoted to the estab 
 lishment of the new household. Now that Trina had made her great 
 winning, Mr. Sieppe no longer saw the necessity of dowering her 
 further, especially when he considered the enormous expense to 
 which he would be put by the voyage of his own family. 
 
 It had been a dreadful wrench for Trina to break in upon her 
 precious five thousand. She clung to this sum with a tenacity that 
 was surprising; it had become for her a thing miraculous, a god- 
 from-the-machine, suddenly descending upon the stage of her hum 
 ble little life; she regarded it as something almost sacred and in 
 violable. Never, never should a penny of it be spent. Before she 
 could be induced to part with two hundred dollars of it, more than 
 one scene had been enacted between her and her parents. 
 
 Did Trina pay for the golden tooth out of this two hundred? 
 Later on, the dentist often asked her about it, but Trina invariably 
 laughed in his face, declaring that it was her secret. McTeague 
 never found out. 
 
 One day during this period McTeague told Trina about his af 
 fair 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, Mac, suppose he had hit 
 you ?" 
 
 "Came within an inch of my head," put in McTeague, proudly. 
 
 "Think of it!" she gasped; "and he wanted part of my money. 
 Well, I do like his cheek ; part of my five thousand ! Why, it s mine, 
 every single penny of it. Marcus hasn t the least bit of right to it. 
 It s mine, mine I mean, it s ours, Mac, dear." 
 
 The elder Sieppes, however, made excuses for Marcus. He 
 had probably been drinking a good deal and didn t know what he 
 was about. He had a dreadful temper, anyhow. Maybe he only 
 wanted to scare McTeague. 
 
 The week before the marriage the two men were reconciled. 
 Mrs. Sieppe brought them together in the front parlor of the B 
 Street house. 
 
 "Now, you two fellers, don t be dot foolish. Schake hands and 
 maig ut oop, soh." 
 
 Marcus muttered an apology. McTeague, miserably embar- 
 
IOO McTeague 
 
 rassed, rolled his eyes about the room, muttering, "That s all right 
 that s all right that s all right." 
 
 However, when it was proposed that Marcus should be Mc- 
 Teague s best man, he flashed out again with renewed violence. 
 Ah, no! ah, no! He d make up with the dentist now that he was 
 going away, but he d be damned yes. he would before he d be 
 his best man. That was rubbing it in. Let him get Old Grannis. 
 
 "I m friends with um all right," vociferated Marcus, "but I ll 
 not stand up with um. I ll not be anybody s best man, I won t." 
 
 The wedding was to be very quiet ; Trina preferred it that way. 
 McTeague would invite only Miss Baker and Heise the harness- 
 maker. The Sieppes sent cards to Selina, who was counted on to 
 furnish the music ; to Marcus, of course ; and to Uncle Oelbermann. 
 
 At last the great day, the first of June, arrived. The Sieppes 
 had packed their last box and had strapped the last trunk. Trina s 
 two trunks had already been sent to her new home the 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 Sieppes would leave for the South. 
 
 McTeague spent the day in a fever of agitation, frightened out 
 of his wits each time that Old Grannis left his elbow. 
 
 Old Grannis was delighted beyond measure at the prospect of 
 acting the part of best man in the ceremony. This wedding in 
 which he was to figure filled his mind with vague ideas and half- 
 formed thoughts. He found himself continually wondering what 
 Miss Baker would think of it. During all that day he was in a 
 reflective mood. 
 
 "Marriage is a a noble institution, is it not, Doctor?" he ob 
 served to McTeague. "The the foundation of society. It is not 
 good that man should be alone. No, no/ he added, pensively, "it 
 is not good." 
 
 "Huh? Yes, yes," McTeague answered, his eyes in the air, 
 hardly hearing him. "Do you think the rooms are all right ? Let s 
 go in and look at them again." 
 
 They went down the hall to where the new rooms were situated, 
 and the dentist inspected them for the twentieth time. 
 
 The rooms were three in number first, the sitting-room, which 
 was also the dining-room; then the bedroom, and back of this the 
 tiny kitchen. 
 
McTeague 101 
 
 The sitting-room was particularly charming. Clean matting 
 covered the floor, and two or three bright-colored rugs were scat 
 tered here and there. The backs of the chairs were hung with 
 knitted worsted tidies, very gay. The bay window should have been 
 occupied by Trina s sewing machine, but this had been moved to 
 the other side of the room to give place to a little black walnut 
 table with spiral legs, before which the pair were to be married. In 
 one corner stood the parlor melodeon, a family possession of the 
 Sieppes, but given now to Trina as one of her parents wedding 
 presents. Three pictures hung upon the walls. Two were compan 
 ion pieces. One of these represented a little boy wearing huge 
 spectacles and trying to smoke an enormous pipe. This was called 
 "I m Grandpa," the title being printed in large black letters; the 
 companion picture was entitled "I m Grandma," a little girl in cap 
 and "specs," wearing mitts, and knitting. These pictures were 
 hung on either side of the mantelpiece. The other picture was quite 
 an affair, very large and striking. It was a colored lithograph of 
 two little golden-haired girls in their nightgowns. They were 
 kneeling down and saying their prayers ; their eyes very large and 
 very blue rolled upward. This picture had for name "Faith," 
 and was bordered with a red plush mat and a frame of imitation 
 beaten brass. 
 
 A door hung with chenille portieres a bargain at two dollars 
 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 in yellow baskets on a white ground. The wall 
 paper was admirable hundreds and hundreds of tiny Japanese, 
 mandarins, all identically alike, helping hundreds of ~aTm6ncT-eyed 
 ladies into hundreds of impossible junks, while hundreds of bamboo 
 palms overshadowed thTpaTr7~and hundreds of long-legged storks 
 trailed contemptuously away from the scene. This room was pro 
 lific 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 cop 
 per boiler, and its overpowering array of flashing tinware. Every 
 thing was new ; everything was complete. 
 
 Maria Macapa and a waiter from one of the restaurants in the 
 street were to prepare the wedding supper here. Maria had already 
 
IO2 McTeague 
 
 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 Mc 
 Teague and Old Grannis 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 bed 
 room furniture went with the .suite ; a few pieces they had bought ; 
 the remainder Trina had brought over from the B Street house. 
 
 The presents had been set out on the extension table in the 
 sitting room. Besides the parlor melodeon, Trina s parents had 
 given her an ice-water set, and a carving knife and fork with elk- 
 horn handles. Selina had painted a view of the Golden Gate upon 
 a polished slice of redwood that answered the purposes of a paper 
 weight. Marcus Schouler after impressing upon Trina that his 
 gift was to her, and not to McTeague had sent a chatelaine watch 
 of German silver; Uncle Oelbermann s present, however, had been 
 awaited with a good deal of curiosity. What would he send ? He 
 was very rich ; 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 McTeague, assisted by Old Gran 
 nis, had opened them. The first was a box of all sorts of toys. 
 
 "But what what I don t make it out," McTeague had ex 
 claimed. "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 :oys," muttered McTeague, looking at her in 
 perplexity. Old Grannis smiled discreetly, raising a tremulous 
 hand to his chin. 
 
 The other box was heavy, bound with withes at the edges, the 
 letters and stamps burned 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 Oelbermann ! 
 That s what it was to be rich. Not one of the other presents pro 
 duced 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 re 
 turned to McTeague s "Parlors." .At the door Old Grannis excused 
 himself. 
 
 At four o clock McTeague began to dress, shaving himself first 
 before the hand-glass that was hung against the woodwork of the 
 
McTeague 103 
 
 Say window. While he shaved he sang with strange inappropri- 
 ateness : 
 
 "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 sugges 
 tive of anaemia, as if all the vitality that should have lent them 
 color had been sucked up into the strands and coils of that won 
 derful hair. 
 
 As their eyes met they waved their hands gayly to each other; 
 then McTeague 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 Grannis. 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 dentist 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 won 
 derful necktie that Trina had given him; it was of salmon-pink 
 satin ; in its centre Selina had painted a knot of blue forget-me-nots. 
 
 At length, after an interminable period of waiting, Mr. Sieppe 
 appeared at the door. 
 
104 McTeague 
 
 "Are you realty?" he asked in a sepulchral whisper. "Gome, 
 den." It was like King Charles summoned __to execution. Mr. 
 Sieppe preceded 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 melodeon. Mr. Sieppe flung his arm into 
 the air. 
 
 "Vorwarts !" 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 lest 
 something should go wrong. He had employed the period of wait 
 ing in going through his part for the fiftieth 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 min 
 ister 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 semicircle, stood the invited guests. A little 
 pock-marked gentleman in glasses, no doubt the famous Uncle 
 Oelbermann; Miss Baker, in her black grenadine, false curls, and 
 coral brooch; Marcus Schouler, his arms folded, his brows bent, 
 grand and gloomy; Heise, the harness-maker, in yellow gloves, in 
 tently studying the pattern of the matting; and Owgooste, in his 
 Fauntleroy "costume," stupefied and a little frightened, rolling his 
 eyes from face to face. Selina sat at the parlor melodeon, fingering 
 the keys, her glance wandering to the chenille portieres. She 
 stopped playing as McTeague and Old Grannis entered and took 
 their places. A profound silence ensued. Uncle Oelbermann s shirt 
 front could be heard creaking as he breathed. The most solemn 
 expression pervaded every face. 
 
 All at once the portieres were shaken violently. It w r as a signal. 
 Selina 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 other 
 wise she was calm. She looked quietly around the room as she 
 crossed it, until her glance rested on McTeague, 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. Sieppe followed in the rear. She 
 
McTeague 105 
 
 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. Sieppe 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. Sieppe never moved a muscle ; Mrs. Sieppe cried into her 
 handkerchief all the time. At the melodeon Selina played "Call Me 
 Thine Own," very softly, the tremulo 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. Sieppe s weeping. 
 Outside the noises of the street rose to the windows in muffled un 
 dertones, a cable car rumbled past, a newsboy went by chanting 
 the evening papers; from somewhere in the building itself came 
 a persistent noise of sawing. 
 
 Trina and McTeague knelt. The dentist s knees thudded 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 glit 
 tering. Trina sank at his side very gracefully, settling her dress and 
 train with a little gesture of her free hand. The company bowed 
 their heads, Mr. Sieppe shutting his eyes tight. But Mrs. Sieppe 
 took advantage of the moment to stop crying and make furtive 
 gestures toward Owgooste, signing him to pull down his coat. But 
 Owgooste 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 any one expected it. 
 The guests kept their positions for a moment, eying 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 inadenuateness 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 urx)tnhTsT~lfrafcus Schouler, 
 in the manner of a man of the world, who knew how to act in every 
 
io6 McTeague 
 
 situation, stepped forward and, even before Mr. or Mrs. Sieppe, 
 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, shak 
 ing hands a babel of talk arose. 
 
 "Owgooste, 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 ! We re to be neighbors 
 now; you must come up and see me very often and we ll have tea 
 together." 
 
 "Did you hear that sawing 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. Sieppe s eyes. 
 
 Marcus came forward a second time, and, with an air of great 
 gravity, kissed his cousin upon the forehead. Heise was introduced 
 to Trina and Uncle Oelbermann to the dentist. 
 
 For upward of half an hour the guests stood about in groups, 
 filling the little sitting-room with a great clatter 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 by 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 um. Where do you geep der zoup blates?" 
 
 "The soup plates are here already." 
 
 "Say, Cousin Trina, is there a corkscrew? What is home with 
 out 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. Mamma knows where." 
 
 They were all very gay, laughing over their mistakes, getting 
 
McTeague 107 
 
 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. Sieppe 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 Oelbermann superintended Heise opening the case of cham 
 pagne with the gravity of a magistrate. Owgooste 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 
 Schouler resumed his coat, wiping his forehead, and remarking: 
 
 "I tell you, I ve been doing chores for my board." 
 
 "To der table !" commanded Mr. Sieppe. 
 
 The company sat down with a great clatter, Trina at the foot, 
 the dentist at the head ; the others arranged themselves in haphazard 
 fashion. But it happened that Marcus Schouler crowded into the 
 seat beside Selina, toward 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. How 
 ever, there was no escape. In great trepidation he sat down beside 
 the retired dressmaker. Neither 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. Sieppe uttered a muffled shriek. The waiter 
 from the cheap restaurant, hired as Maria s assistant, rose from a 
 bending posture, a champagne bottle frothing in his hand; he was 
 grinning from ear to ear. 
 
 "Don t get scairt," 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 mo 
 ment s silence after the toast was broken by McTeague exclaiming 
 with a long breath of satisfaction: "That s the best beer / ever 
 drank." 
 
 There was a roar of laughter. Especially was Marcus tickled 
 over the dentist s 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 
 McTeague 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; 
 
io8 McTeague 
 
 there were sea bass and barracuda ; there was a gigantic roast goose 
 stuffed with chestnuts; there were egg-plant and sweet potatoes- 
 Miss Baker called them "yams." There was calf s head in oil, over 
 which Mr. Sieppe went into ecstasies ; there was lobster salad ; there 
 were rice pudding, and strawberry ice cream, and wine jelly, and 
 stewed prunes, and cocoanuts, 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 beading their foreheads. All around the table one 
 saw the same incessant movement of jaws and heard the same un 
 interrupted sound of chewing. Three times Heise passed his plate 
 for more roast goose. Mr. Seippe devoured the calf s head with 
 long breaths of contentment ; McTeague 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 egg 
 plant, 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. Sieppe 
 urged some one 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," Heise 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 outcries, 
 supposedly addressed to the waiter. 
 
 "Uncle Oelbermann," said Trina, "let me give you another 
 helping of prunes." 
 
 The Sieppes paid great deference to Uncle Oelbermann, as in 
 deed did the whole company. Even Marcus Schouler 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, nod 
 ding his head toward the wholesale toy dealer, "Got thirty thousand 
 dollars in the bank; has, for a fact." 
 
 "Don t have much to say," observed Heise. 
 
 "No, no. That s his way; never opens his face." 
 
McTeague 109 
 
 As the evening wore on, the gas and two lamps were lighted. 
 The company were still eating. The men, gorged with food, had 
 unbuttoned their vests. McTeague s cheeks were distended, his 
 eyes wide, his huge, salient jaw moved with a machine-like regular 
 ity; at intervals he drew a series of short breaths through his nose. 
 Mrs. Sieppe wiped her forehead with her napkin. 
 
 "Hey, dere, poy, gif me some more oaf dat what you call 
 bubble-water/ 
 
 That was how the waiter had spoken of the champagne "bubble- 
 water." The guests had shouted applause, "Outa 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 alarm. 
 
 "That champagne came to my nose," he cried, his eyes water 
 ing. "It stings like everything." 
 
 "Great beer, ain t ut?" shouted Marcus. 
 
 "Now, Mark," remonstrated Trina in a low voice. "Now, Mark, 
 you just shut up; that isn t funny any more. I don t want you 
 should make fun of Mac. He called it beer on purpose. I guess 
 he knows." 
 
 Throughout the meal old Miss Baker had occupied herself 
 largely with Owgooste 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 any 
 thing; inquiries they rarely answered other than by stare, fixed, 
 ox-like, expressionless. 
 
 Suddenly the little dressmaker turned to Old Grannis and ex 
 claimed : 
 
 "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. 
 
no McTeague 
 
 Old Grannis s 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 mastica 
 tion. How different he had imagined it would be! They were 
 to be alone he and Miss Baker in the evening somewhere, with 
 drawn 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 gar 
 den 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. 
 Sieppe had reduced the calf s head to a mere skull ; a row of empty 
 champagne bottles "dead soldiers, 7 as the facetious waiter had 
 called them lined the mantelpiece. Nothing of the stewed prunes 
 remained but the juice, which was given to Owgooste and the twins. 
 The platters were as clean as if they had been washed; crumbs of 
 bread, potato parings, nut-shells, 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. 
 
 "Ouf," cried Mrs. Sieppe, pushing back, "I haf eatun und 
 eatun, ach, Gott, how I haf eatun!" 
 
 "Ah, dot kaf s het," murmured her husband, passing his tongue 
 over his lips. 
 
 The facetious waiter had disappeared. He and Maria Macapa 
 foregathered in the kitchen. They drew up to the washboard of the 
 
McTeague 1 1 1 
 
 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 raised his teacup, 
 bowing to Maria across the sink. "Hark," he added, "they re sing 
 ing inside." 
 
 The company had left the table and had assembled about the 
 melodeon, where Selina 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. Selina 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 : 
 
 "Nee-rah, my Gahd, to Thee, 
 Nee-rah to Thee-ah." 
 
 At the end of the song, Uncle Oelbermann put on his hat with 
 out a word of warning. Instantly there was a hush. The guests 
 rose. 
 
 "Not going so soon, Uncle Oelbermann?" protested Trina po 
 litely. He only nodded. Marcus sprang forward to help him with 
 his overcoat. Mr. Sieppe came up and the two men shook hands. 
 
 Then Uncle Oelbermann delivered himself of an oracular phrase. 
 No doubt he had been meditating it during the supper. Address 
 ing Mr. Sieppe, 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 twenty minutes later, when Marcus Schouler was enter 
 taining the guests by eating almonds, shells and all, Mr. Sieppe 
 started to his feet, watch in hand. 
 
 "Haf-bast elevun," he shouted. "Attention! Der dime haf 
 arrive, shtop eferyting. We depart." 
 
 This was a signal for tremendous confusion. Mr. Sieppe im 
 mediately 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. "Mommer, der tervins, Owgooste." 
 He marshaled " his tribe together, with tremendous commanding 
 
H2 McTeague 
 
 gestures. The sleeping twins were suddenly shaken into a dazed 
 consciousness; Owgooste, whom the almond-eating of Marcus 
 Schouler had petrified with admiration, was smacked to a realization 
 of his surroundings. 
 
 Old Grannis, with a certain delicacy that was one of his char 
 acteristics, 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. Sieppe," exclaimed Marcus, "we won t see each other 
 for some time." Marcus had given up his first intention of joining 
 in the Sieppe 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 some one "to go in with." 
 He dreamed of a cowboy s life and saw himself in an entrancing 
 vision involving silver spurs and untamed bronchos. He told him 
 self 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. Sieppe, "that wants to go in for ranching, why just let me 
 know." 
 
 "Soh, soh," answered Mr. Sieppe abstractedly, peering about for 
 Owgooste s cap. 
 
 Marcus bade the Sieppes farewell. He and Heise 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. 
 Selina 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. Sieppe, "goot-py; perhaps you 
 gome visit us somedime." 
 
 Mrs. Sieppe began crying again. 
 
 "Ach, Trina,, ven shall I efer 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 Owgooste 
 clung to Trina s skirts, fretting and whimpering. 
 
 McTeague was miserable. He stood apart from the group, in a 
 
 
McTeague 113 
 
 corner. None of them seemed to think of him; he was not one of 
 them. 
 
 "Write to me very often, mamma, and tell me about everything 
 about August and the twins." 
 
 "It is dime," cried Mr. Sieppe nervously. "Goot-py, Trina. 
 Mommer, Owgooste, say goot-py, den we must go. Goot-py, Trina." 
 He kissed her. Owgooste and the twins were lifted up. "Gome, 
 gome," insisted Mr. Sieppe, moving toward the door. 
 
 "Goot-py, Trina," exclaimed Mrs. Sieppe, crying harder than 
 ever. "Doktor where is der doktor Doktor, pe goot to her, eh? 
 pe vairy goot, eh, won t you ? Zum day, Dokter, you vill haf a 
 daughter, den you know berhaps how I feel, yes." 
 
 They were standing at the door by this time. Mr. Sieppe, half 
 way down the stairs, kept calling "Gome, gome, we miss der drain." 
 
 Mrs. Sieppe released Trina and started down the hall, the twins 
 and Owgooste 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, mamma, I I m fraid." 
 
 "Ach, Trina, you preak my heart. Don t gry, poor leetle girl." 
 She rocked Trina in her arms as though she were a child again. 
 "Poor leetle scairt girl, don gry soh soh soh, dere s nuttun to pe 
 fraid oaf. Dere, go to your hoasban . Listen, popper s galling 
 again ; go den ; goot-py." 
 
 She loosened Trina s arms and started down the stairs. Trina 
 leaned over the banisters, straining her eyes after her mother. 
 
 "What is ut, Trina?" 
 
 "Oh, good-by, good-by." 
 
 "Gome, gome, we miss der drain." 
 
 "Mamma., oh, mamma!" 
 
 "What is ut, Trina?" 
 
 "Good-by." 
 
 "Goot-py, leetle daughter." 
 
 "Good-by, good-by, good-by." 
 
 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 
 
H4 McTeague 
 
 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 golden 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 McTeague start and rise. 
 
 "Is that you, Trina?" 
 
 She did not answer, but paused in the middle of the room, hold 
 ing her breath, trembling. 
 
 The dentist crossed the outside room, parted the chenille por 
 tieres, and came in. He came toward her quickly, making as if to 
 take her in his arms. His eyes were alight. 
 
 "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 . " 
 
 ".\ T o. no Fm 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 McTeague, after all? Who was this man 
 
McTeague 115 
 
 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. 
 
 McTeague 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 intenseness, 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 tFe"hblT6w~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 McTeague suddenly flashed up in 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 the world now." 
 
Ii6 McTeague 
 
 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 s shop, and further on, above the roofs, the glass 
 skylights and water tanks of the big public baths. In the nearer 
 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 butchers aprons. Upon the side 
 walks 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 airs, 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 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 sidewalks shone -like the surface 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 Oelbermann. In the 
 
McTeague 117 
 
 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 can 
 vas underneath her chair, to catch the chips and shavings, which 
 she used afterward for lighting fires. One after another she caught 
 up the little blocks of straight-grained pine, the knife flashed be 
 tween 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 
 e y es her narrow, pale blue eyes growing wide and thoughtful as 
 she gazed, unseeing, out into the rain-washed street. 
 
 She loved McTeague 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^ ~. ha<ljC9 me an affectionate like 
 of which ~she TiacTnever dreamed in theToTd~T3 StreeF 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 Jo himjreely, 
 unreservedly; had merged her individuality into his; she was his, 
 she belonged to him forever and forever. Nothing that he could do 
 (so she told herself), nothing that she herself could do, could change 
 her in this respect. McTeague 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 thoseTong, 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 for 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 win 
 dow on Sutter Street. They had been caught in a shower, and on re 
 turning to the flat the little dressmaker had insisted on fetching 
 
1 1 8 McTeague 
 
 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 teacups 
 the better part of the afternoon, then Trina had returned to her 
 rooms. For nearly three hours McTeague 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 hus 
 band 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 foot-rest; his pipe, fallen from 
 his half-opened mouth, had spilled the ashes into his lap ; while on the 
 floor, at his side, stood 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 "Par 
 lors," 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 irrev 
 ocable; 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. 
 
McTeague 119 
 
 Aroused at length by the chittering of the canary, McTeague 
 had awakened slowly. After a while he had taken down his con 
 certina and played upon it the six very mournful airs that he knew. 
 
 Face downward upon the bed, Trina still wept. Throughout 
 that little suite 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 concer 
 tina 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, starting up be 
 wildered, 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 jor 
 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 McTeague 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 McTeague s level, as she had 
 feared, Trina found that she could make McTeague rise to hers, 
 and in this saw a solution of many a difficult and gloomy compli 
 cation. 
 
 For one thing, the dentist began to dress a little better, Trina 
 even succeeded in inducing him to wear a 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 misgivings 
 ceased, or when they did assail her, she could at last meet them 
 with a shrug of her shoulders, saying to herself meanwhile, "Well, 
 it s done now and it can t be helped ; one must make the best of it." 
 
I2O McTeague 
 
 During the first months of their married life these nervous re 
 lapses 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 instant s 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 hap 
 py 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 suite in 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 bed 
 room, she hid 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 /de 
 light; 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 instinct 
 ively, without knowing why, responding to the dentist s remon 
 strances 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 re 
 coiled 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, roc-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 two 
 hundred dollars that she had been forced to expend on the prepara 
 tions for her marriage. 
 
 McTeague, on his part, never asked himself now-a-days 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 
 
McTeague 121 
 
 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. Those sudden outbursts of affection on the part of his , 
 little woman, outbursts that only increased in vehemence the longer I 
 they lived together, puzzled rather than pleased him. He had come 
 to submit to them gooci-naturedly, answering her passionate in 
 quiries with a "Sure, sure, Trina, sure I love you. What 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 de 
 light to call her into the "Dental Parlors" when a patient was in the 
 chair and, while he held the plugger, to have her rap in the gold 
 fillings with the little box-wood 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. 
 
 McTeague had relapsed to his wonted stolidity. He never ques 
 tioned 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 honey 
 moon had passed he slipped easily into the new order of things with 
 out 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 inter 
 fered with as in the case of his Sunday afternoon s nap and beer 
 some agreeable substitute was found. In her attempts to improve 
 McTeague to raise him from the stupid animal life to which he had 
 been accustomed in his bachelor^dayL Trina was tactful enough to 
 move so cautiously and with such slowness that the dentist was un 
 conscious 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 
 
 F III NORRIS 
 
122 McTeague 
 
 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 substi 
 tute bottled beer in the place of steam beer, and she induced him 
 to take off his hat to Miss Baker, to Heise s wife, and to the other 
 women of his acquaintance. McTeague no longer spent an evening 
 at Frenna s. 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 inter 
 ests 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 Year s 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, McTeague began to have ambitions 
 very vague, very confused ideas of something better ideas for the 
 most part borrowed from Trina. Some day, 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 calla-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 this son Daniel would marry a wife, and they would 
 all live together in that six-room-and-bath house. Daniel would 
 have little children. McTeague 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 
 McTeagues ; the new life jostled itself into its grooves. A routine 
 began. 
 
 On week-days they rose at half-past six, being awakened by the 
 
McTeague 1 23 
 
 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 oilcloth table-spread tacked on. After break 
 fast 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 oilcloth table-spread, making the 
 bed, pottering about with a broom or duster or cleaning rag. To 
 ward ten 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 butcher s and grocer s books from the knife basket in the drawer 
 of the kitchen table, and descended to the street, where she spent a 
 delicious hour now in the huge market across the way, now in the 
 grocer s store with its fragrant aroma of coffee and spices, and now 
 before the counters of the haberdasher s, intent on a bit of shop 
 ping, turning over ends of veiling, strips of elastic, or slivers of 
 whalebone. 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 wife, or Mrs. 
 Ryer. At times she passed the flat and looked up at the windows of 
 her home, marked by the huge golden molar that projected, flash 
 ing, from the bay window of the "Parlors." She saw the open 
 windows of the sitting-room, the Nottingham lace curtains stirring 
 and billowing in the draught, and she caught sight of Maria Ma- 
 capa 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 McTeague s rounded 
 back as he bent to his work. Sometimes, even, they saw each other 
 and waved their hands gayly in recognition. 
 
 By eleven o clock Trina returned to the flat, her brown net reti 
 cule once her mother s full of parcels. At once she set about get 
 ting lunch sausages, perhaps, with mashed potatoes; or last even 
 ing 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 twelve the dentist came 
 in from the "Parlors," bringing with him the smell of creo 
 sote and of ether. They sat down to lunch in the sitting-room. 
 
124 McTeague 
 
 They told each other of their doings throughout the forenoon; 
 Trina showed her purchases, McTeague 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 lor 
 the rest of the afternoon was variously occupied sometimes it was 
 the mending, sometimes the wash, sometimes new curtains to be 
 put up, or a bit of carpet to be tacked down, or a letter to be writ 
 ten, or a visit generally to Miss Baker to be returned. Toward 
 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 Augus 
 tine, 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 unde 
 sirable, 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 Augus 
 tine 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 uncontrollable 
 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 
 offence 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 had retained 
 her as she reflected upon her admirably cooked cabbage soups and 
 tapioca puddings, and which in Trina s eyes was her chiefest rec 
 ommendationthe pittance for which she was contented to work. 
 
 Augustine had a husband. He was a spirit-medium a "profes 
 sor." At times he held seances in the larger rooms of the flat, play 
 ing 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 McTeague. 
 
 , They had supper at six, after which McTeague 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 
 
McTeague 125 
 
 not, they went out together. One of their amusements was to go 
 "down town" 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 McTeague 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 mil 
 liners windows, rinding a great delight in picking out things for 
 each other, saying how they would choose this and that if they 
 were rich. Trina did most of the talking, McTeague merely ap 
 proving 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 Heise, 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 theatre. Trina had a tamale and a glass 
 of beer, Mrs. Heise (who was a decayed writing teacher) ate 
 salads, with glasses of grenadine and currant syrups. Heise drank 
 cocktails and whiskey straight, and urged the dentist to join him. 
 But McTeague 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, McTeague 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). Wearying of this they would go * 
 up into the gallery, and, leaning over, look down into the huge am 
 phitheatre 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 splash 
 ing 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 
 
126 McTeague 
 
 catch ends of conversation and notes of laughter, the noise of mov 
 ing dresses, and the rustle of stiffly starched skirts. Here and there 
 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 
 Selina, who gave lessons in hand painting at two bits an hour, gen 
 erally 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 gilt. They stood before it some little time, 
 hazarding their opinions, and then moved on slowly from one pic 
 ture to another. Trina had McTeague buy a catalogue and made a 
 duty of finding the title of very picture. This, too, she told Mc 
 Teague, was 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 Idyl," or "Dreams 
 of Love." 
 
 "I think those are lovely, don t you, Mac ?" she said. 
 
 "Yes, yes," answered McTeague, nodding his head, bewildered, 
 trying to understand. "Yes, yes, lovely, that s the word. Are you 
 dead sure now, Trina, that all that s hand-painted just like the 
 poppies ?" 
 
 Thus the winter passed, a year went .by,- then_ two. The little 
 life of Polk Street, the life of small traders, drug clerks, grocers, 
 stationers, plumbers, dentists, doctors, spirit-mediums, and the like, 
 ran on monotonously in its accustomed grooves. The first three 
 years of their married life wrought little change in the fortunes of 
 the McTeagues. In the third summer the branch post-office was 
 moved from the ground floor of the flat to a corner further up the 
 street in order to be near the cable line that ran mail cars. Its 
 place was taken by a German saloon, called a "Wein Stube," in the 
 face of the protests of every female lodger. A few months later 
 quite a little flurry of excitement ran through the street on the occa 
 sion of "The Polk Street Open Air Festival," organized to cele 
 brate the introduction there of electric lights. The festival lasted 
 
McTeague 127 
 
 three days and was quite an affair. The street was garlanded with 
 yellow and white bunting; there were processions and "floats" and 
 brass bands. .Marcus Schouler was in his element during the 
 whole time of ttuf 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 yel 
 low and white calico, with which he made furious passes and ges 
 tures. His voice was soon reduced to a whisper by continued 
 shouting, and he raged and fretted over trifles till he wore him 
 self thin. McTeague was disgusted with him. As often as Mar 
 cus passed the window of the flat the dentist would mutter: 
 
 "Ah, you think you re smart, don t you ?" 
 
 The result of the festival was the organizing of a body known 
 as the "Polk Street Improvement Club," of which Marcus was; 
 elected secretary. McTeague and Trina often heard of him in this 
 capacity through Heise, the harness-maker. Marcus had evidently 
 come to have political aspirations. It appeared that he was gaining 
 a reputation as a maker of speeches, delivered with fiery emphasis, 
 and occasionally reprinted in the "Progress," the organ of the club 
 "outraged constituencies," "opinions warped by personal bias," 
 "eyes blinded by party prejudice," etc. 
 
 Of her family, Trina heard every fortnight in letters from her , 
 mother. The upholstery business which Mr. Sieppe had bought was 
 doing poorly, and Mrs. Sieppe bewailed the day she had ever left 
 B Street. Mr. Sieppe was losing money every month. Owgooste, 
 who was to have gone to school, had been forced to go to work in 
 "the store," picking waste. Mrs. Sieppe was obliged to take a 
 lodger or two. Affairs were in a very bad way. Occasionally she 
 spoke of Marcus. Mr. Sieppe had not forgotten him despite his 
 own troubles, but still had an eye out for some one whom Marcus 
 could "go in with" on a ranch. 
 
 It was toward the end of this period of three years that Trina 
 and McTeague had their first serious quarrel. Trina had talked so 
 much about having a little house of their own at some future day ] 
 that McTeague had at length come to regard the affair as the end 
 and object of all their labors. For a long time they had had their eyes 
 upon one house in particular. It was situated on a cross street close 
 by, between Polk Street and the great avenue one block above, and 
 hardly a Sunday afternoon passed that Trina and McTeague did 
 not go and look at it. They stood for fully half an hour upon the 
 
 is, f 
 jb / 
 
 * 
 
128 McTeague 
 
 other side of the street, examining every detail of its exterior, haz 
 arding guesses as to the arrangement of the rooms, commenting 
 upon its immediate neighborhood which was rather sordid. The 
 house was a wooden two-story arrangement, built by a misguided 
 contractor in a sort of hideous Queen Anne style, all scrolls and 
 meaningless mill-work, with a cheagjmitation of stained glass in the 
 light over the door. There was a microscopic front yard full of 
 dusty calla-lilies. The front door boasted lirTelectric bell. But for 
 the McTeagues it was an ideal home. Their idea was to live m 
 this little house, the dentist retaining merely his office in the flat. 
 The two places were but around the corner from each other, so 
 that McTeague could lunch with his wife, as usual, and could even 
 keep his early morning appointments and return to breakfast if 
 he so desired. 
 
 However, the house was occupied. A Hungarian family lived 
 in it. The father kept a stationery and notion "bazaar" next to 
 Heise s harness-shop on Polk Street, while the oldest son played a 
 third violin in the orchestra of a theatre. The family rented the 
 house unfurnished for thirty-five dc lars, paying extra for the water. 
 
 But one Sunday asTrina and McTeague on their way home from 
 their usual walk turned into the cross street on which the little 
 house was situated, they became promptly aware of an unwonted 
 bustle going on upon the sidewalk in front of it. A dray was backed 
 against the curb, an express wagon drove away loaded with furni 
 ture; bedsteads, looking-glasses, and washbowls littered the side 
 walks. The Hungarian family were moving out. 
 
 "Oh, Mac, look !" gasped Trina. 
 
 "Sure, sure," muttered the dentist. 
 
 After that they spoke but little. For upward of an hour the 
 two stood upon the sidewalk opposite, watching intently all that 
 iwent 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 im 
 agining 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 enor 
 mous, red-faced fellow, so fat that his walking seemed merely a 
 certain movement of his feet by which he pushed his stomach along 
 in front of him. Trina talked with him a few moments, but arrived 
 at no understanding, and the two went away after giving him their 
 address. At supper that night McTeague said: 
 
McTeague 129 
 
 "Huh what do you think, Trina?" 
 
 Trina put her chin in the air, tilting back her heavy tiara of 
 , swarthy hair. 
 
 "I m not so sure yet. Thirty-five dollars and the water extra. 
 I don t think we can afford it, Mac." 
 
 "Ah, pshaw!" growled the dentist, "sure we can." 
 
 "It isn t only that," said Trina, "but it ll cost so much to make 
 the change." 
 
 "Ah, you talk s though we were paupers. Ain t we got five 
 thousand dollars?" 
 
 Trina flushed on the instant, even to the lobes of her tiny pale 
 ears, and put her lips together. 
 
 "Now, Mac, you know I don t want you should talk like that. 
 That money s never, never to be touched." 
 
 "And you ve been savun up a good deal, besides," went on Mc 
 Teague, exasperated at Trina s persistent economies. "How much 
 money have you got in that little brass match-safe in the bottom 
 of your trunk? Pretty near a hundred dollars, I guess ah, sure." 
 He shut his eyes and nodded his great head in a knowing way. 
 
 Trina had more than that in the brass match-safe in question, 
 but her instinct of hoarding had led her to keep it a secret from her 
 husband. Nqw_she lied to hirnjwith prompt fluency. 
 
 "A hundred dollars ! WhaT are you talking "of; Mac? I ve not 
 got fifty. I ve not got thirty" 
 
 "Oh, let s take that little house," broke in McTeague. "We got 
 the chance now, and it may never come again. Come on, Trina, 
 shall we ? Say, come on, shall we, huh ?" 
 
 "We d have to be awful saving if we did, Mac." 
 
 "Well, sure, / say let s take it." 
 
 "I don t know," said Trina, hesitating. "Wouldn t it be lovely 
 to have a house all to ourselves? But let s not decide until to 
 morrow." 
 
 The next day the owner of the house called. Trina was out at 
 her morning s marketing and the dentist, who had no one in the x 
 chair at the time, received him in the "Parlors." Before he was 
 well aware of it, McTeague 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 McTeague, "I ll take it/ 
 
 The other immediately produced a paper. 
 
130 McTeague 
 
 "Well, then, suppose you sign for the first month s rent, and 
 we ll call it a bargain. That s business, you know," and Mc 
 Teague, hesitating, signed. 
 
 "I d like to have talked more with my wife about it first," he 
 said, dubiously. 
 
 "Oh, that s all right," answered the owner, easily. "I guess 
 if the head of the family wants a thing, that s enough." 
 
 McTeague could not wait until lunch time to tell the news to 
 Trina. As soon as he heard her come in, he laid down the plaster- 
 of-paris mold he was making and went out into the kitchen and 
 found her chopping up onions. 
 
 "Well, Trina," he said, "we got that house. I ve taken it." 
 
 "What do you mean?" she answered, quickly. The dentist told 
 her. 
 
 "And you signed a paper for the first month s rent?" 
 
 "Sure, sure. That s business, you know." 
 
 "Well, why did you do it?" cried Trina. "You might have 
 asked me something about it. Now, what have you done? I was 
 talking with Mrs. Ryer about that house while I was out this morn 
 ing, and she said the Hungarians moved out because it was abso 
 lutely unhealthy ; there s water been standing in the basement for 
 months. And she told me, too," Trina went on indignantly, "that 
 she knew the owner, and she was sure we could get the house for 
 thirty if we d bargain for it. Now what have you gone and done? 
 I hadn t made up my mind about taking the house at all. And 
 now I won t take it, with the water in the basement and all." 
 
 "Well well," stammered McTeague, helplessly, "we needn t go 
 in if it s unhealthy." 
 
 "But you ve signed a paper," cried Trina, exasperated. "You ve 
 got to pay that first month s rent, anyhow to forfeit it. Oh, you 
 are so stupid! There s thirty-five dollars just thrown away. I 
 shan t go into that house ; we won t move a foot out of here. I ve 
 changed my mind about it, and there s water in the basement 
 besides." 
 
 "Well, I guess we can stand thirty-five dollars," mumbled the 
 dentist, "if we ve got to." 
 
 "Thirty-five dollars just thrown out of the window," cried 
 Trina, her teeth clicking, every instinct of her parsimony_arpused. 
 "Oh, you are the thick-wittedest man that I ever knew. Do you 
 think we re millionaires? Oh, to think of losing thirty-five dol 
 lars like that." Tears were in her eyes, tears of grief as well as 
 
McTeague 131 
 
 of anger. Never had McTeague seen his little woman so aroused. 
 Suddenly she rose to her feet and slammed the chopping-bowl 
 down upon the table. "Well, / won t pay a nickel of it," she 
 exclaimed. 
 
 "Huh? What, what?" stammered the dentist, taken all aback 
 by her outburst. 
 
 "I say that you will find that money, that thirty-five dollars, 
 yourself." 
 
 -Why why 
 
 "It s your stupidity got us into this fix, and you ll be the one 
 that ll suffer by it." 
 
 "I can t do it, I won t do it. We ll we ll share and share alike. 
 Why, you said you told me you d take the house if the water was 
 free." 
 
 "I never did. I never did. How can you stand there and say 
 such a thing?" 
 
 "You did tell me that," vociferated McTeague, beginning to get 
 angry in his turn. 
 
 "Mac, I didn t, and you know it. And what s more, I won t pay 
 a nickel. Mr. Heise pays his bill next week, it s forty-three dollars, 
 and you can just pay the thirty-five out of that." 
 
 "Why, you got a whole hundred dollars saved up in your 
 match-safe," shouted the dentist, throwing out an arm with 
 an awkward gesture. "You pay half and I ll pay half, that s 
 only fair." 
 
 "No, no, no" exclaimed Trina. "It s not a hundred dollars. 
 You won t touch it; you won t touch my money, I tell you." 
 
 "Ah, how does it happen to be yours, I d like to know ?" 
 
 "It s mine ! It s mine ! It s mine !" cried Trina, her face scarlet, 
 her teeth clicking like the snap of a closing purse. 
 
 "It ain t any more yours than it is mine." 
 
 "Every penny of it is mine." 
 
 "Ah, what a fine fix you d get me into," growled the dentist. 
 "I ve signed the paper with the owner; that s business, you know, 
 that s business, you know; and now you go back on me. Suppose 
 we d taken the house, we d a shared the rent, wouldn t we, just 
 as we do here?" 
 
 Trina shrugged her shoulders with a great affectation of in 
 difference 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 calm- 
 
1^2 McTeague 
 
 ness as though the matter were something that no longer affected 
 her. Her manner exasperated McTeague all the more. 
 
 "No, I won t ; no, I won t ; I won t either," he shouted. "I ll pay 
 my half and he can come to you for the other half." Trina put a 
 hand over her ear to shut out his clamor. 
 
 "Ah, don t try and be smart," cried McTeague. "Come, now, 
 yes or no, will you pay your half ?" 
 
 "You heard what I said." 
 
 "Will you pay it?" 
 / "No." 
 
 "Miser !" shouted McTeague. "Miser ! you re worse than old 
 Zerkow. All right, all right, keep your money. I ll pay the whole 
 thirty-five. I d rather lose it than be such a miser as you." 
 
 "Haven t you got anything to do," returned Trina, "instead of 
 staying here and abusing me?" 
 
 "Well, then, for the last time, will you help me out?" Trina cut 
 the heads of a fresh bunch of onions and gave no answer. 
 
 "Huh? will you?" 
 
 "I d like to have my kitchen to myself, please," she said in a 
 mincing way, irritating to a last degree. The dentist stamped out 
 of the room, banging the door behind him. 
 
 For nearly a week the breach between them remained unhealed. 
 Trina only spoke to the dentist in monosyllables, while he, exas 
 perated at her calmness and frigid reserve, sulked in his "Dental 
 Parlors," muttering terrible things beneath his mustache, or finding 
 solace in his concertina, playing his six lugubrious airs over and 
 I over again, or swearing frightful oaths at his canary. When Heise 
 paid his bill, McTeague, in a fury, sent the amount to the owner 
 of the little house. 
 
 There was no formal reconciliation between the dentist and his 
 little woman. Their relations readjusted themselves inevitably. By 
 the end of the week they were as amicable as ever, but it was long 
 before they spoke of the little house again. Nor did they ever revisit 
 it of a Sunday afternoon. A month or so later the Ryers told them 
 that the owner himself had moved in. The McTeagues never occu 
 pied 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 per- 
 
McTeague 133 
 
 haps, after all, she had been in the wrong. Then it occurred to her 
 how pretty it would be to come up behind him unexpectedly, and 
 slip the money, thirty-five dollars, into his hand, and pull his huge 
 head down to her and kiss his bald spot as she used to do in the days 
 before they were married. 
 
 Then she hesitated, pausing in her work, her knife dropping 
 into her lap, a half-whittled figure between her fingers. If not 
 thirty-five dollars, then at least fifteen or sixteen, her share of it. 
 But a feeling of reluctance, a sudden revolt against this intended 
 generosity, arose in her. 
 
 "No, no," she said to herself. "I ll give him ten dollars. I ll tell 
 him it s all I can afford. It is all I can afford." 
 
 She hastened to finish the figure of the animal she was then at 
 work upon, putting in the ears and tail with a drop of glue, and 
 tossing it into the basket at her side. Then she rose and went into 
 the bedroom and opened 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 match-box had overflowed. Trina kept the surplus in a 
 chamois-skin sack she had made from an old chest protector. Just 
 now, yielding to an impulse which often seized her, she drew out 
 the match-box and the chamois sack, and, emptying the contents on 
 the bed, counted them carefully. It came to one hundred and sixty- \ 
 five dollars, all told. She counted it and recounted it and made little \ 
 piles of it, and rubbed the gold pieces between the folds of her apron ) 
 until they shone. 
 
 "Ah, yes, ten dollars is all I can afford to give Mac," said Trina> \ 
 "and even then, think of it, ten dollars it will be four or five months 
 before I can save that again. But, dear old Mac, I know it would 
 make him feel glad, and perhaps," she added, suddenly taken with 
 an idea, "perhaps Mac will refuse to take it." 
 
 She took a ten-dollar piece from the heap and put the rest away. 
 Then she paused. 
 
 "No, not the gold piece," she said to herself. It s too pretty. 
 He can have the silver." She made the change and counted out ten 
 silver dollars into her palm. But what a difference it made in the ; 
 appearance and weight of the little chamois bag! The bag was 
 shrunken and withered, long wrinkles appeared running downward 
 from the draw-string. It was a lamentable sight. Trina looked 
 
McTeague 
 
 longingly at the ten broad pieces in her hand. Then suddenly all 
 her intuitive desire of saving, her instinct of hoarding, her love of 
 money for the money s sake, rose strong within her. 
 
 "No, no, no/ she said. "I can t do it. It may be mean, but I 
 can t help it. It s stronger than I." She returned the money to the 
 bag and locked it and the brass match-box in her trunk, turning the 
 key with a long breath of satisfaction. 
 
 She was a little troubled, however, as she went back into the 
 sitting-room and took up her work. 
 
 "I didn t use to be so stingy," she told herself. "Since I won 
 in the lottery I ve become a regular little miser. It s growing on 
 me, but never mind, it s a good fault, and, anyhow, I can t help it." 
 
 XI 
 
 ON that particular morning the McTeagues had risen a half- 
 hour earlier than usual and taken a hurried breakfast in the kitchen 
 on the deal table with its oilcloth cover. Trina was house-cleaning 
 that week and had a presentiment of a hard day s work ahead of 
 her, while McTeague remembered a seven o clock appointment 
 with a little German shoemaker. 
 
 At about eight o clock, when the dentist had been in his office 
 for over an hour, Trina descended upon the bedroom, a towel about 
 her head and the roller-sweeper in her hand. She covered the bu 
 reau and sewing machine with sheets, and unhooked the chenille 
 portieres between the bedroom and the sitting-room. As she was 
 tying the Nottingham lace curtains at the window into great knots, 
 she saw old Miss Baker on the opposite sidewalk in the street be 
 low, and raising the sash called down to her. 
 
 "Oh, it s you, Mrs. McTeague," cried the retired dressmaker, 
 facing about, her head in the air. Then a long conversation was 
 begun, Trina, her arms folded under her breast, her elbows resting 
 on the window ledge, willing to be idle for a moment; old Miss 
 Baker, her market-basket on her arm, her hands wrapped in the 
 ends of her worsted shawl against the cold of the early morning. 
 They exchanged phrases, calling to each other from window to 
 curb, their breath coming from their lips in faint puffs of vapor, 
 their voices shrill, and raised to dominate the clamor of the waking 
 street. The newsboys had made their appearance on the street, 
 
McTeague 135 
 
 together with the day laborers. The cable cars had begun to fill 
 up; all along the street could be seen the shopkeepers taking down 
 their shutters; some were still breakfasting. Now and then a 
 waiter from one of the cheap restaurants crossed from one sidewalk 
 to another, balancing on one palm a tray covered with a napkin. 
 
 "Aren t you out pretty early this morning, Miss Baker?" called 
 Trina. 
 
 "No, no," answered the other. "I m always up at half-past six, 
 but I don t always get out so soon. I wanted to get a nice head of 
 cabbage and some lentils for a soup, and if you don t go to market 
 early the restaurants get all the best." 
 
 "And you ve been to market already, Miss Baker?" 
 
 "Oh, my, yes ; and I got a fish a sole see." She drew the sole 
 in question from her basket. 
 
 "Oh, the lovely sole!" exclaimed Trina. 
 
 "I got this one at Spadella s ; he always has good fish on Friday. 
 How is the doctor, Mrs. McTeague?" 
 
 "Ah, Mac is always well, thank you, Miss Baker." 
 
 "You know, Mrs. Ryer told me," cried the little dressmaker, 
 moving forward a step out of the way of a "glass-put-in" man, 
 "that Doctor iMcTeague pulled a tooth of that Catholic priest, 
 Father oh, I forget his name anyhow, he pulled his tooth with 
 his fingers. Was that true, Mrs. McTeague?" 
 
 "Oh, of course. Mac does that almost all the time now, specially 
 with front teeth. He s got a regular reputation for it. He says it s 
 brought him more patients than even the sign I gave him," she 
 added, pointing to the big golden molar projecting from the office 
 window. 
 
 "With his fingers ! Now, think of that," exclaimed Miss Baker, 
 wagging her head. "Isn t he that strong! It s just wonderful. 
 Cleaning house to-day?" she inquired, glancing at Trina s toweled 
 head. 
 
 Um hum," answered Trina. "Maria Macapa s coming in to help 
 pretty soon." 
 
 At the mention of Maria s name the little old dressmaker sud 
 denly uttered an exclamation. 
 
 "Well, if I m not here talking to you and forgetting something 
 I was just dying to tell you. Mrs. McTeague, whatever in the 
 world do you suppose? Maria and old Zerkow, that red-headed 
 Polish Jew, the rag-bottles-sacks man, you know, they re going to 
 be married." 
 
136 McTeague 
 
 "No!" cried Trina, in blank amazement. "You don t mean it." 
 "Of course I do. Isn t it the funniest thing you ever heard of?" 
 "Oh, tell me all about it," said Trina, leaning eagerly from the 
 window. Miss Baker crossed the street and stood just beneath her. 
 "Well, Maria came to me last night and wanted me to make 
 her a new gown, said she wanted something gay, like what the 
 girls at the candy store wear when they go out with their young 
 men. I couldn t tell what had got into the girl, until finally she told 
 me she wanted something to get married in, and that Zerkow had 
 asked her to marry him, and that she was going to do it. Poor 
 Maria! I guess it s the first and only offer she ever received, and 
 it s just turned her head." 
 
 "But what do those two see in each other?" cried Trina. "Zer 
 kow is a horror, he s an old man, and his hair is red and his voice 
 is gone, and then he s a Jew, isn t he ?" 
 
 "I know, I know ; but it s Maria s only chance for a husband, and 
 she don t mean to let it pass. You know she isn t quite right in her 
 head, anyhow. I m awfully sorry for poor Maria. But / can t see 
 what Zerkow wants to marry her for. It s not possible that he s in 
 love with Maria, it s out of the question. Maria hasn t a sou, either, 
 and I m just positive that Zerkow has lots of money." 
 
 "I ll bet I know why," exclaimed Trina, with sudden convic 
 tion; "yes, I know just why. See here, Miss Baker, you know how 
 crazy old Zerkow is after money and gold and those sort of things." 
 "Yes, I know ; but you know Maria hasn t " 
 "Now, just listen. You ve heard Maria tell about that wonder- 
 I / ful service of gold dishes she says her folks used to own in Central 
 I / America; she s crazy on that subject, don t you know. She s all 
 y right on everything else, but just start her on that service of gold 
 plate and she ll talk you deaf. She can describe it just as though 
 . she saw it, and she can make you see it, too, almost. Now, you see, 
 Maria and Zerkow have known each other pretty well. Maria goes 
 to him every two weeks or so to sell him junk; they got acquainted 
 that way, and I know Maria s been dropping in to see him pretty 
 often this last year, and sometimes he comes here to see her. He s 
 made Maria tell him the story of that plate over and over and over 
 again, and Maria does it and is glad to, because he s the only one 
 that believes it. Now he s going to marry her just so s he can i^ar 
 that story every day, every hour. He s pretty near as crazy on the 
 subject as Maria is. They re a pair for you, aren t they? Both 
 crazy over a lot of gold dishes that never existed. Perhaps Mafia ll 
 
McTeague 137 
 
 marry him because it s her only chance to get a husband, but I m sure 
 it s more for the reason that she s got some one to talk to now who 
 believes her story. Don t you think I m right?" 
 
 "Yes, yes, I guess you re right," admitted Miss Baker. 
 
 "But it s a queer match any way you put it," said Trina, musingly. 
 
 "Ah, you may well say that," returned the other, nodding her 
 head. There was a silence. For a long moment the dentist s wife 
 and the retired dressmaker, the one at the window, the other on the 
 sidewalk, remained lost in thought, wondering over the strangeness 
 of the affair. 
 
 But suddenly there was a diversion. Alexander, Marcus 
 SchoulerY Irish/ setter, whom his master had long since allowed the 
 liberty of running untrammeled about the neighborhood, turned the 
 corner briskly and came trotting along the- sidewalk where Miss 
 Baker stood. At the same moment the Scotc$ collie who had at 
 one time belonged to the branch post-office issued from the side 
 door of a house not fifty feet away. In an instant the two enemies 
 had recognized each other. They halted abruptly, their fore feet 
 planted rigidly. Trina uttered a little cry. 
 
 "Oh, look out, Miss Baker. Those two dogs hate each other \J| 
 just like humans. You best look out They ll right sureT** Miss ^ 
 Bakers~oughF safety in a nearby vestibule, whence she peered forth 
 at the scene, very interested and curious. Maria Macapa s head 
 thrust itself from one of the top-story windows of the flat, with a 
 shrill cry. Even McTeague s huge form appeared above the half 
 curtains of the "Parlor" windows, while over his shoulder could be 
 seen the face of the "patient," a napkin tucked in his collar, the 
 rubber dam depending from his mouth. All the flat knew of the 
 feud between the dogs, but never before had the pair been brought 
 face to face. 
 
 Meanwhile, the collie and the setter had drawn near to each 
 other; five feet apart they paused as if by mutual consent. The 
 collie turned sidewise to the setter; the setter instantly wheeled 
 himself flank on to the collie. Their tails rose and stiffened, they 
 raised their lips over their long white fangs, the napes of their 
 necks bristled, and they showed each other the vicious whites of 
 their eyes, while they drew in their breaths with prolonged and 
 rasping snarls. Each dog seemed to be the personification of fury 
 and unsatisfied hate. They began to circle about each other with in 
 finite slowness, walking stiff-legged and upon the very points of 
 their feet. Then they wheeled about and began to circle in the op- 
 
McTeague 
 
 / posite direction. Twice they repeated this motion, their snarls 
 
 \ growing louder. But still they did not come together, and the dis- 
 
 \ tance of five feet between them was maintained with an almost 
 
 / mathematical precision. It was magnificent, but it was not war. 
 
 / Then the setter, pausing in his walk, turned his head slowly from 
 
 his enemy. The collie sniffed the air and pretended an interest in 
 
 cA an old shoe lying in the gutter. Gradually and with all the dignity 
 
 ) of monarchs they moved away from each other. Alexander stalked 
 
 back to the corner of the street. The collie paced toward the side 
 
 ; gate whence he had issued, affecting to remember something of 
 
 great importance. They disappeared. Once out of sight of one 
 
 \ another they began to bark furiously. 
 
 "Well, I never!" exclaimed Trina in great disgust. "The way 
 those two dogs have been carrying on you d a thought they would 
 a just torn each other to pieces when they had the chance, and 
 here I m wasting the whole morning " she closed her window with 
 a bang. 
 
 "Sick im, sick im," called Maria Macapa, in a vain attempt to 
 promote a fight. 
 
 Old Miss Baker came out of the vestibule, pursing her lips, quite 
 put out at the fiasco. "And after all that fuss," she said to herself 
 aggrievedly. 
 
 The little dressmaker bought an envelope of nasturtium seeds at 
 the florist s, and returned to her tiny room in the flat. But as she 
 slowly mounted the first flight of steps she suddenly came face to 
 face with Old Grannis, who was coming down. It was between 
 eight and nine, and he was on his way to his little dog hospital, no 
 doubt. Instantly Miss Baker was seized with trepidation, her 
 curious little false curls shook, a faint a very faint flush came 
 into her withered cheeks, and her heart beat so violently under the 
 worsted shawl that she felt obliged to shift the market-basket to her 
 other arm and put out her free hand to steady herself against the rail. 
 On his part, Old Grannis was instantly overwhelmed with con 
 fusion. His awkwardness seemed to paralyze his limbs, his lips 
 twitched and turned dry, his hand went tremblingly to his chin. But 
 what added to Miss Baker s miserable embarrassment on this occa 
 sion was the fact that the old. Englishman should meet her thus, 
 carrying a sordid market-basket full of sordid fish and cabbage. It 
 seemed as if a malicious fate persisted in bringing the two old people 
 face to face at the most inopportune moments. 
 
 Just now, however, a veritable catastrophe occurred. The little 
 
McTeague 139 
 
 old dressmaker changed her basket to her other arm at precisely the 
 wrong moment, and Old Grannis, hastening to pass, removing his 
 hat in a hurried salutation, struck it with his forearm, knocking it 
 from her grasp, and sending it rolling and bumping down the stairs. 
 The sole fell flat upon the first landing; the lentils scattered them 
 selves over the entire flight; while the cabbage, leaping from step 
 to step, thundered down the incline and brought up against the street 
 door with a shock that reverberated through the entire building. 
 
 The little retired dressmaker, horribly vexed, nervous and em 
 barrassed, was hard put to it to keep back the tears. Old Grannis 
 stood for a moment with averted eyes, murmuring: "Oh, I m so 
 sorry, I m so sorry. I I really I beg your pardon, really really." 
 
 Marcus Schouler, coming downstairs from his room, saved the 
 situation. 
 
 "Hello, people," he cried. "By damn ! you ve upset your basket 
 you have, for a fact. Here, let s pick um up." He and Old 
 Grannis went up and down the flight, gathering up the fish, the 
 lentils, and the sadly battered cabbage. Marcus was raging over 
 the pusillanimity of Alexander, of which Maria had just told him. 
 
 "I ll cut him in two with the whip," he shouted. "I will, I will, I 
 say I will, for a fact. He wouldn t fight, hey? I ll give um all 
 the fight he wants, nasty, mangy cur. If he won t fight he won t 
 eat. I m going to get the butcher s bull pup and I ll put um both 
 in a bag and shake um up. I will, for a fact, and I guess Alec will 
 fight. Come along, Mister Grannie," and he took the old English 
 man away. 
 
 Little Miss Baker hastened to her room and locked herself in. 
 She was excited and upset during all the rest of the day, and listened 
 eagerly for Old Grannis s return that evening. He went instantly to 
 work binding up "The Breeder and Sportsman," and back numbers 
 of the "Nation." She heard him softly draw his chair and the table 
 on which he had placed his little binding apparatus close to the wall. 
 At once she did the same, brewing herself a cup of tea. All through 
 that evening the two old people "kept company" with each other, 
 after their own peculiar fashion. "Setting out with each other" Miss 
 Baker had begun to call it. That they had been presented, that they 
 had even been forced to talk together, had made no change in their 
 relative positions. Almost immediately they had fallen back into 
 their old ways again, quite unable to master their timidity, to over 
 come the stifling embarrassment that seized upon them when in each 
 other s presence. It was a sort of hypnotism, a thing stronger than 
 
140 McTeague 
 
 themselves. But they were not altogether dissatisfied with the way 
 things had come to be. It was their little romance, their last, 
 and they were living through it with supreme enjoyment and calm 
 contentment. 
 
 Marcus Schouler still occupied his old room on the floor above the 
 McTeagues. They saw but little of him, however. At long in 
 tervals the dentist or his wife met him on the stairs of the flat. 
 Sometimes he would stop and talk with Trina, inquiring after the 
 Sieppes, asking her if Mr. Sieppe had yet heard of any one with 
 whom he, Marcus, could "go in with on a ranch." McTeague 
 Marcus merely nodded to. Never had the quarrel_between_the two 
 men been completely patched up. It did not "seem possible to the 
 dentist now that Marcus had ever been his "pal," that they had ever 
 taken long walks together. He was sorry that he had treated Mar 
 cus gratis for an ulcerated tooth, while Marcus daily recalled the 
 fact that he had given up his "girl" to his friend the girl who 
 had won a fortune as the great mistake of his life. Only once 
 since the wedding had he called upon Trina, at a time when he 
 knew McTeague would be out. Trina had shown him through the 
 rooms and had told him, innocently enough, how gay was their life 
 there. Marcus had come away fairly sick with envy; his rancor 
 against the dentist and against himself, for that matter knew no 
 bounds. "And you might a had it all yourself, Marcus Schouler," 
 he muttered to himself on the stairs. "You mush-head, you damn 
 fool!" 
 
 Meanwhile, Marcus was becoming involved in the politics of his 
 ward. As secretary of the Polk Street Improvement Club which 
 soon developed into quite an affair and began to assume the pro 
 portions of a Republican political machine he found he could make 
 a little, a very little, more than "~enonglf to live on. At once he had 
 given up his position as Old Grannis s assistant. Marcus felt that 
 he needed a wider sphere. He had his eye upon a place connected 
 with the city pound. When the great railroad strike occurred, he 
 promptly got himself engaged as deputy sheriff, and spent a 
 memorable week in Sacramento,, where he involved himself in more 
 / than one terrible melee with the strikers. Marcus had that quick- 
 j ness of temper and passionate readiness to take offence which passes 
 among his class for bravery. But whatever were his motives, his 
 promptness to face danger could not for a moment be doubted. After 
 the strike he returned to Polk Street, and throwing himself into the 
 Improvement Club, heart, soul, and body, soon became one of its 
 
McTeague 141 
 
 ruling spirits. In a certain local election, where a huge paving con 
 tract was at stake, the club made itself felt in the ward, and Marcus 
 so managed his cards and pulled his wires that, at the end of the 
 matter, he found himself some four hundred dollars to the good. 
 
 When McTeague came out of his "Parlors" at noon of the 
 day upon which Trina had heard the news of Maria Macapa s in 
 tended marriage, he found Trina burning coffee on a shovel in the 
 sitting-room. Try as she would, Trina could never quite eradicate 
 from their rooms a certain faint and indefinable odor, particularly 
 offensive to her. The smell of the photographer s chemicals per 
 sisted in spite of all Trina could do to combat it. She burned 
 pastilles and Chinese punk, and even, as now, coffee on a shovel, all 
 to no purpose. Indeed, the only drawback to their delightful home 
 was the general unpleasant smell that pervaded it a smell that arose 
 partly from the photographer s chemicals, partly from the cooking 
 in the little kitchen, and partly from the ether and creosote of the 
 dentist s "Parlors." 
 
 As McTeague came in to lunch on this occasion, he found the 
 table already laid, a red cloth figured with white flowers was spread, 
 and as he took his seat his wife put down the shovel on a chair and 
 brought in the stewed codfish and the pot of chocolate. As he tucked 
 his napkin into his enormous collar, McTeague looked vaguely about 
 the room, rolling his eyes. 
 
 During the three years of their married life the McTeagues had 
 made but few additions to their furniture, Trina declaring that they 
 could not afford it. The sitting-room could boast of but three new 
 ornaments. Over the melodeon hung their marriage certificate in 
 a black frame. It was balanced upon one side by Trina s wedding 
 bouquet under a glass case, preserved by some fearful unknown 
 process, and upon the other by the photograph of Trina and the 
 dentist in their wedding finery. This latter picture was quite an 
 affair, and had been taken immediately after the wedding, while 
 McTeague s broadcloth was still new, and before Trina s silks and 
 veil had lost their stiffness. It represented Trina, her veil thrown 
 back, sitting very straight in a rep armchair, her elbows well in at 
 her sides, holding her bouquet of cut flowers directly before her. 
 The dentist stood at her side, one hand on her shoulder, the other 
 thrust into the breast of his "Prince Albert," his chin in the air, his 
 eyes to one side, his left foot forward in the attitude of a Secretary 
 of State. 
 
 "Say, Trina," said McTeague, his mouth full of codfish, "Heise 
 
McTeague 
 
 looked in on me this morning. He says, What s the matter with a 
 basket picnic over at Schuetzen Park next Tuesday? You know 
 the paper-hangers are going to be in the Parlors all that day, so 
 I ll have a holiday. That : s what made Heise think of it. Heise 
 says he ll get the Ryers to go too. It s the anniversary of their wed 
 ding day. We ll ask Selina to go; she can meet us on the other 
 side. Come on, let s go, huh, will you?" 
 
 Trina still had her mania for family picnics, which had been one 
 of the Sieppes most cherished customs ; but now there were other 
 considerations. 
 
 "I don t know as we can afford it this month, Mac," she said, 
 pouring th-e chocolate. "I got to pay the gas bill next week, and 
 there s the papering of your office to be paid for some time." 
 
 "I know, I know," answered her husband. "But I got a new 
 patient this week, had two molars and an upper incisor filled at the 
 very first sitting, and he s going to bring his children round. He s a 
 barber on the next block." 
 
 "Well, you pay half, then," said Trina. "It ll cost three or four 
 dollars at the very least; and mind, the Heises pay their own fare 
 both ways, Mac, and everybody gets their own lunch. Yes," she 
 added, after a pause, "I ll write and have Selina join us. I haven t 
 seen Selina in months. I guess I ll have to put up a lunch for her, 
 though," admitted Trina, "the way we did last time, because she 
 lives in a boarding-house now, and they make a fuss about putting 
 up a lunch." 
 
 They could count on pleasant weather at this time of the year- 
 it was May and that particular Tuesday was all that could be de 
 sired. The party assembled at the ferry slip at nine o clock, laden 
 with baskets. The McTeagues came last of all ; Ryer and his wife 
 had already boarded the boat. They met the Heises in the waiting- 
 room. 
 
 "Hello, Doctor," cried the harness-maker as the McTeagues 
 came up. "This is what you d call an old folks picnic, all married 
 people this time." 
 
 The party foregathered on the upper deck as the boat started, 
 and sat down to listen to the band of Italian musicians who were 
 playing outside this morning because of the fineness of the weather. 
 
 "Oh, we re going to have lots of fun," cried Trina. "If it s 
 anything I do love it s a picnic. Do you remember our first picnic, 
 Mac?" 
 
 "Sure, sure," replied the dentist ; "we had a Gotha truffle." 
 
McTeague 143 
 
 "And August lost his steamboat," put in Trina, "and papa 
 smacked him. I remember it just as well." 
 
 "Why, look here," said Mrs. Heise, nodding at a figure coming 
 up the companion-way. "Ain t that Mr. Schouler?" 
 
 It was Marcus, sure enough. As he caught sight of the party 
 he gaped at them a moment in blank astonishment, and then ran up, 
 his eyes wide. 
 
 "Well, by damn !" he exclaimed, excitedly. "What s up? Where 
 you all going, anyhow? Say, ain t ut queer we should all run up 
 against each other like this?" He made great sweeping bows to 
 the three women, and shook hands with "Cousin Trina," adding, as 
 he turned to the men of the party, "Glad to see you, Mister Heise. 
 How do, Mister Ryer ?" The dentist, who had formulated some sort 
 of reserved greeting, he ignored completely. McTeague settled 
 himself in his seat, growling inarticulately behind his mustache. 
 
 "Say, say, what s all up, anyhow?" cried Marcus again. 
 
 "It s a picnic," exclaimed the three women, all speaking at once ; 
 and Trina added, "We re going over to the same old Schuetzen 
 Park again. But you re all fixed up yourself, Cousin Mark; you 
 look as though you were going somewhere yourself." 
 
 In fact, Marcus was dressed with great care. He wore a new 
 pair of slate-blue trousers, a black "cutaway," and a white lawn 
 "tie" (for him the symbol of the height of elegance). He carried 
 also his cane, a thin wand of ebony with a gold head, presented to 
 him by the Improvement Club in "recognition of services." 
 
 "That s right, that s right," said Marcus, with a grin. "I m 
 takun a holiday myself to-day. I had a bit of business to do over at 
 Oakland, an I thought I d go up to B Street afterward and see 
 Selina. I haven t called on " 
 
 But the party uttered an exclamation. 
 
 "Why, Selina is going with us." 
 
 "She s going to meet us at the Schuetzen Park station," explained 
 Trina. 
 
 Marcus s business in Oakland was a fiction. He was crossing 
 the bay that" morning solely to see Selirra. Marcus had "taken up 
 with" Selina a little after Trina had married, and had been "rush 
 ing" her ever since, dazzled and attracted by her accomplishments, 
 for which he pretended a great respect. At the prospect of missing 
 Selina on this occasion, he was genuinely disappointed. His vexa 
 tion at once assumed the form of exasperation against McTeague, 
 It was all the dentist s fault. Ah, McTeague was coming between 
 
McTeague 
 
 him and Selina now as he had come between him and Trina. Best 
 look out, by damn ! how he monkeyed with him now. Instantly his 
 face flamed and he glanced over furiously at the dentist, who, catch 
 ing his eye, began again to mutter behind his mustache. . 
 
 "Well, say," began Mrs. Ryer, with some hesitation, looking to 
 Ryer for approval, "why can t Marcus come along with us?" 
 
 "Why, of course," exclaimed Mrs. Heise, disregarding her hus 
 band s vigorous nudges. "I guess we got lunch enough to go 
 round, all right ; don t you say so, Mrs. McTeague ?" 
 
 Thus appealed to, Trina could only concur. 
 
 "Why, of course, Cousin Mark," she said; "of course, come 
 along with us if you want to." 
 
 "Why, you bet I will," cried Marcus, enthusiastic in an instant. 
 "Say, this is outa sight; it is, for a fact; a picnic ah, sure and 
 we ll meet Selina at the station." 
 
 Just as the boat was passing Goat Island, the harness-maker 
 proposed that the men of the party should go down to the bar on the 
 lower deck and shake for the drinks. The idea had an immediate 
 success. 
 
 "Have to see you on that," said Ryer. 
 
 "By damn, we ll have a drink ! Yes, sir, we will, for a fact." 
 
 "Sure, sure, drinks, that s the word." 
 
 At the bar Heise and Ryer ordered cocktails, Marcus called for 
 a "creme Yvette" in order to astonish the others. The dentist 
 spoke for a glass of beer. 
 
 "Say, look here," suddenly exclaimed Heise as they took their 
 glasses. "Look here, you fellahs," he had turned to Marcus and the 
 dentist. "You two fellahs have had a grouch at each other for the 
 last year or so ; now what s the matter with your shaking hands and 
 calling quits?" 
 
 McTeague was at once overcome with a great feeling of mag 
 nanimity. He put out his great hand. 
 
 "I got nothing against Marcus," he growled. 
 
 "Well, I don t care if I shake," admitted Marcus, a little shame 
 facedly, as their palms touched. "I guess that s all right." 
 
 "That s the idea," exclaimed Heise, delighted at his success. 
 "Come on, boys, now let s drink.". Their elbows crooked and they 
 drank silently. 
 
 Their picnic that day was very jolly. Nothing had changed 
 at Schuetzen Park since the day of that other memorable Sieppe 
 picnic four years previous. After lunch the men took themselves 
 
McTeague 145 
 
 off to the rifle range, while Selina, Trina, and the other two women 
 put away the dishes. An hour later the men joined them in great 
 spirits. Ryer had won the impromptu match which they had ar 
 ranged, making quite a wonderful score, which included three clean 
 bull s-eyes, while McTeague had not been able even to hit the target 
 itself. 
 
 Their shooting match had awakened a spirit of rivalry in the 
 men, and the rest of the afternoon was passed in athletic exercises be 
 tween them. The women sat on the slope of the grass, their hats and 
 gloves laid aside, watching the men as they strove together. Aroused 
 by the little feminine cries of wonder and the clapping of their un 
 gloved palms, these latter began to show off at once. They took 
 off their coats and vests, even their neckties and collars, and worked 
 themselves into a lather of perspiration for the sake of making an 
 impression on their wives. They ran hundred-yard sprints on the 
 cinder path and executed clumsy feats on the rings and on the 
 parallel bars. They even found a huge round stone on the beach 
 and "put the shot" for a while. As long as it was a question of 
 agility, Marcus was easily the best of the four ; but the dentist s 
 enormous strength, his crude, untutored brute force, was a matter 
 of wonder for the entire party. McTeague cracked English wal 
 nuts taken from the lunch baskets in the hollow of his arm, and 
 tossed the round stone a full five feet beyond their best mark. Heise 
 believed himself to be particularly strong in the wrists, but the den 
 tist, using but one hand, twisted a cane out of Heise s two with a 
 wrench that all but sprained the harness-maker s arm. Then the 
 dentist raised weights and chinned himself on the rings till they 
 thought he would never tire. 
 
 His great success quite turned his head; he strutted back and 
 forth in front of the women, his chest thrown out, and his great 
 mouth perpetually expanded in a triumphant grin. As he felt his 
 strength more and more, he began to abuse it ; he domineered over 
 the others, gripping suddenly at their arms till they squirmed with 
 pain, and slapping Marcus on the back so that he gasped and gagged 
 for breath. The childish vanity of the great fellow was as undis 
 guised as that of a schoolboy. He began to tell of wonderful feats 
 of strength he had accomplished when he was a young man. Why, 
 at one time he had knocked down a half-grown heifer with a blow 
 of his fist between the eyes, sure, and the heifer had just stiffened 
 out and trembled all over and died without getting up. 
 
 McTeague told this story again, and yet again. All through the 
 
 GIII NORRIS 
 
146 McTeague 
 
 afternoon he could be overheard relating the wonder to any one 
 who would listen, exaggerating the effect of his blow, inventing ter 
 rific details. Why, the heifer had just frothed at the mouth, and his 
 eyes had rolled up ah, sure, his eyes rolled up just like that and 
 the butcher had said his skull was all mashed in just all mashed 
 in, sure, that s the word just as if from a sledge-hammer. 
 
 Notwithstanding his reconciliation with the dentist on the boat, 
 Marcus s gorge rose within him at McTeague s boasting swagger. 
 When McTeague had slapped him on the back, Marcus had retired 
 to some little distance while he recovered his breath, and glared 
 at the dentist fiercely as he strode up and down, glorying in the 
 admiring glances of the women. 
 
 "Ah, one-horse dentist," he muttered between his teeth. "Ah, 
 zinc-plugger, cow-killer. I d like to show you once, you overgrown 
 mucker, you you cow-killer!" 
 
 When he rejoined the group, he found them preparing for a 
 wrestling bout. 
 
 "I tell you what," said Heise, "we ll have a tournament. Mar 
 cus and I will rastle, and Doc and Ryer, and then the winners will 
 rastle each other." 
 
 The women clapped their hands excitedly. This would be ex 
 citing. Trina cried: 
 
 "Better let me hold your money, Mac, and your keys, so as you 
 won t lose them out of your pockets." The men gave their valu 
 ables into the keeping of their wives and promptly set to work. 
 
 The dentist thrust Ryer down without even changing his grip; 
 Marcus and the harness-maker struggled together for a few mo 
 ments till Heise all at once slipped on a bit of turf and fell back 
 ward. As they toppled over together, Marcus writhed himself from 
 under his opponent, and, as they reached the ground, forced down 
 first one shoulder and then the other. 
 
 "All right, all right," panted the harness-maker, good-naturedly, 
 "I m down. It s up to you and Doc now," he added, as he got to 
 his feet. 
 
 The match between McTeague and Marcus promised to be in 
 teresting. The dentist, of course, had an enormous advantage in 
 point of strength, but Marcus prided himself on his wrestling, and 
 knew something about strangle-holds and half-Nelsons. The men 
 drew back to allow them a free space as they faced each other, while 
 Trina and the other women rose to their feet in their excitement. 
 "I bet Mac will throw him, all the same," said Trina. 
 
McTeague 147 
 
 "All ready !" cried Ryer. 
 
 The dentist and Marcus stepped forward, eying each other cau 
 tiously. They circled around the impromptu ring, Marcus watching 
 eagerly for an opening. He ground his teeth, telling himself he 
 would throw McTeague if it killed him. Ah, he d show him now. 
 Suddenly the two men caught at each other; Marcus went to his 
 knees. The dentist threw his vast bulk on his adversary s shoulders 
 and, thrusting a huge palm against his face, pushed him backward 
 and downward. It was out of the question to resist that enormous 
 strength. Marcus wrenched himself over and fell face downward 
 on the ground. 
 
 McTeague rose on the instant with a great laugh of exultation. 
 
 "You re down !" he exclaimed. 
 
 Marcus leaped to his feet. 
 
 "Down nothing," he vociferated, with clinched fists. "Down 
 nothing, by damn ! You got to throw me so s my shoulders touch." 
 
 McTeague was stalking about, swelling with pride. 
 
 "Hoh, you re down. I threw you. Didn t I throw him, Trina? 
 Hoh, you can t rastle me." 
 
 Marcus capered with rage. 
 
 "You didn t! you didn t! you didn t! and you can t! You got 
 to give me another try." 
 
 The other men came crowding up. Everybody was talking at 
 once. 
 
 "He s right." 
 
 "You didn t throw him." 
 
 "Both his shoulders at the same time." 
 
 Trina clapped and waved her hand at McTeague from where 
 she stood on the little slope of lawn above the wrestlers. Marcus 
 broke through the group, shaking all over with excitement and rage. 
 
 "I tell you that ain t the way to rastle. You ve got to throw a 
 man so s his shoulders touch. You got to give me another bout." 
 
 "That s straight," put in Heise, "both his shoulders down at the 
 same time. Try it again. You and Schouler have another try." 
 
 McTeague was bewildered by so much simultaneous talk. He 
 could not make out what it was all about. Could he have offended 
 Marcus again?" 
 
 "What? What? Huh? What is it?" he exclaimed in per 
 plexity, looking from one to the other. 
 
 "Come on, you must rastle me again," shouted Marcus. 
 
 "Sure, sure," cried the dentist. "I ll rastle you again. I ll 
 
148 McTeague 
 
 rastle everybody," he cried, suddenly struck with an idea. Trina 
 looked on in some apprehension. 
 
 "Mark gets so mad," she said, half aloud. 
 
 "Yes," admitted Selina. "Mister Schouler s got an awful quick 
 temper, but he ain t afraid of anything." 
 
 "All ready !" shouted Ryer. 
 
 This time Marcus was more careful. Twice, as McTeague 
 rushed at him, he slipped cleverly away. But as the dentist came 
 in a third time, with his head bowed, Marcus, raising himself to his 
 full height, caught him with both arms around the neck. The den 
 tist gripped at him and rent away the sleeve of his shirt. There 
 was a great laugh. 
 
 "Keep your shirt on," cried Mrs. Ryer. 
 
 The two men were grappling at each other wildly. The party 
 could hear them panting and grunting as they labored and strug 
 gled. Their boots tore up great clods of turf. Suddenly they came 
 to the ground with a tremendous shock. But even as they were in 
 the act of falling, Marcus, like a very eel, writhed in the dentist s 
 clasp and fell upon his side. McTeague crashed down upon him 
 like the collapse of a felled ox. 
 
 "Now, you gotta turn him on his back," shouted Heise to the 
 dentist. "He ain t down if you don t." 
 
 With his huge salient chin digging into Marcus s shoulder, the 
 dentist heaved and tugged. His face was flaming, his huge shock 
 of yellow hair fell over his forehead, matted with sweat. Marcus 
 began to yield despite his frantic efforts. One shoulder was down, 
 now the other began to go ; gradually, gradually it was forced over. 
 The little audience held its breath in the suspense of the moment. 
 Selina broke the silence, calling out shrilly: 
 
 "Ain t Doctor McTeague just that strong!" 
 
 Marcus heard it, and his fury came instantly to a head. Rage 
 at his defeat at the hands of the dentist and before Selina s eyes, 
 the hate he still bore his old-time "pal" and the impotent wrath of 
 his own powerlessness were suddenly unleashed. 
 
 "God damn you ! get off of me," he cried under his breath, spit 
 ting the words as a snake spits its venom. The little audience ut 
 tered a cry. With the oath Marcus had twisted his head and had 
 bitten through the lobe of the defttisifs_ear. There was a sudden 
 flash of bright-red blootl." 
 
 Then followed a terrible scene. The brute that in McTeague 
 lay so close to the surface leaped instantly . Jojife, monstrous, not 
 
McTeague 149 
 
 to be resisted. He sprang to his feet with a shrill and meaningless 
 clamor, totally unlike the ordinary bass of his speaking tones. It 
 was the hideous yelling of a hurt beast, the squealing of a woundeH" 
 
 elephant: ffe f raffled "no woids rin~th^msh-of"hTgh^pitched-sound 
 
 tRaT"is*sued from his wide-open mouth there was nothing articulate. 
 It was something no longer human; it was rather an echo from the 
 jungle:" 
 
 Sluggish enough and slow to anger on ordinary occasions, Mc 
 Teague when finally aroused became another man. His rage was a / 
 kind of obsession, an evil mania, the drunkenness of passion, the J 
 exalted and perv6fteU fury Of the Berserker, blind and deaf, a thing 
 insensate:" 
 
 As~he~ J rose he caught Marcus s wrist in both his hands. He did 
 not strike, he did not know what he was doing. His only idea 
 was to batter the life out of the man before him, to crush and anni 
 hilate him upon the instant. Gripping his enemy in his enormous 
 hands, hard and knotted, and covered with a stiff fell of yellow hair 
 the hands of the old-time car-boy he swung him wide, as a 
 hammer-thrower swings his hammer. Marcus s feet flipped from 
 the ground, he spun through the air about McTeague as helpless 
 as a bundle of clothes. All at once there was a sharp snap, almost 
 like the report of a small pistol. Then Marcus rolled over and over 
 upon the ground as McTeague released his grip; his arm, the one 
 the dentist had seized, bending suddenly, as though a third joint 
 had formed between wrist and elbow. _The~-arm was broken. 
 
 But by this time every one was crying out at once. Heise and 
 Ryer ran in between the two men. Selina turned her head away. 
 Trina was wringing her hands and crying in an agony of dread: 
 
 "Oh, stop them, stop them ! Don t let them fight. Oh, it s too 
 awful." 
 
 "Here, here, Doc, quit. Don t make a fool of yourself," cried 
 Heise, clinging to the dentist. "That s enough now. Listen to me, 
 will you?" 
 
 "Oh, Mac, Mac," cried Trina, running to her husband. "Mac, 
 dear, listen ; it s me, it s Trina, look at me, you " 
 
 "Get hold of his other arm, will you, Ryer?" panted Heise. 
 "Quick!" 
 
 "Mac, Mac," cried Trina, her arms about his neck. 
 
 "For God s sake, hold up, Doc, will you?" shouted the harness- 
 maker. "You don t want to kill him, do you ?" 
 
 Mrs. Ryer and Heise s lame wife were filling the air with their 
 
1 50 McTeague 
 
 outcries. Selina was giggling with hysteria. Marcus, terrified, but 
 too brave to run, had picked up a jagged stone with his left hand 
 and stood on the defensive. His swollen right arm, from which the 
 shirt sleeve had been torn, dangled at his side, the back of the hand 
 twisted where the palm should have been. The shirt itself was a 
 mass of grass stains and was spotted with the dentist s blood. 
 
 But McTeague, in the centre of the group that struggled to hold 
 him, was nigh to madness. The side of his face, his neck, and all 
 the shoulder and breast of his shirt were covered with blood. He 
 had ceased to cry out, but kept muttering between his gripped jaws, 
 as he labored to tear himself free of the retaining hands : 
 
 "Ah, I ll kill him! Ah, I ll kill him! I ll kill him! Damn you, 
 Heise," he exclaimed suddenly, trying to strike the harness-maker, 
 "let go of me, will you !" 
 
 Little by little they pacified him, or rather (for he paid but lit 
 tle attention to what was said to him) his bestial fury lapsed by de 
 grees. He turned away and let fall his arms, drawing long breaths, 
 and looking stupidly about him, now searching helplessly upon the 
 ground, now gazing vaguely into the circle of faces about him. 
 His ear bled as though it would never stop. 
 
 "Say, Doctor/ asked Heise, "what s the best thing to do?" 
 
 "Huh?" answered McTeague. "What what do you mean? 
 What is it?" 
 
 "What ll we do to stop this bleeding here?" 
 
 McTeague did not answer, but looked intently at the blood 
 stained bosom of his shirt. 
 
 "Mac," cried Trina, her face close to his, "tell us something 
 the best thing we can do to stop your ear bleeding." 
 
 "Collodium," said the dentist. 
 
 "But we can t get to that right away ; we " 
 
 "There s some ice in our lunch basket/ broke in Heise. "We 
 brought it for the beer ; and take the napkins and make a bandage." 
 
 "Ice," muttered the dentist, "sure, ice, that s the word." 
 
 Mrs. Heise and the Ryers were looking after Marcus s broken 
 arm. Selina sat on the slope of the grass, gasping and sobbing. 
 Trina tore the napkins into strips, and, crushing some of the ice, 
 made a bandage for her husband s head. 
 
 The party resolved itself into two groups; the Ryers and Mrs. 
 Heise bending over Marcus, while the harness-maker and Trina 
 came and went about McTeague, sitting on the ground, his shirt, a 
 mere blur of red and white, detaching itself violently from the back- 
 
McTeague 151 
 
 ground of pale-green grass. Between the two groups was the torn 
 and trampled bit of turf, the wrestling ring; the picnic baskets, to 
 gether with empty beer bottles, broken egg-shells, and discarded 
 sardine tins, were scattered here and there. In the middle of the 
 improvised wrestling ring the sleeve of Marcus s shirt fluttered 
 occasionally in the sea breeze. 
 
 Nobody was paying any attention to Selina. All at once she 
 began to giggle hysterically again, then cried out with a peal of 
 laughter : 
 
 "Oh, what a way for our picnic to end!" 
 
 XII 
 
 "Now, then, Maria," said Zerkow, his cracked, strained voice 
 just rising above a whisper, hitching his chair closer to the table, 
 "now, then, my girl, let s have it all over again. Tell us about the 
 gold plate the service. Begin with, There were over a hundred 
 pieces and every one of them gold. 
 
 "I don know what you re talking about, Zerkow," answered 
 Maria. "There never was no gold plate, no gold service. I guess / 
 you must have dreamed it." 
 
 Maria and the red-headed Polish Jew had been married about 
 a month after the McTeagues picnic which had ended in such 
 lamentable fashion. Zerkow had taken Maria home to his wretched 
 hovel in the alley back of the flat* and the flat had been obliged to 
 get another maid of all work. Time passed, a month, six months, a 
 whole year went by. At length Maria gave birth to a child, a 
 wretched, sickly child, "with not even strength enough nor wits 
 enough to cry. At the time of its birth Maria was out of her mind, 
 and continued in a state of dementia for nearly ten days. She re 
 covered just in time to make the arrangements for the baby s burial. 
 Neither Zerkow nor Maria was much affected by either the birth 
 or the death of this little child. Zerkow had welcomed it with pro 
 nounced disfavor, since it had a mouth to be fed and wants to be 
 provided for. Maria was out of her head so much of the time 
 that she could scarcely remember how it looked when alive. The 
 child was a mere incident in their lives, a thing that had come un- 
 desired and had gone unregretted. It had not even a name; a 
 strange, hybrid little being, come and gone within a fortnight s time, 
 
McTeague 
 
 yet combining in its puny little body the blood ofjhejjebrew, the 
 Pole, and the Spaniard. 
 
 But the birtE of this child had peculiar consequences. Maria 
 came out of her dementia, and in a few days the household settled 
 itself again to its sordid regime and Maria went about her duties as 
 usual. Then one evening, about a week after the child s burial, 
 Zerkow had asked Maria to tell him the story of the famous service 
 of gold plate for the hundredth time. 
 
 Zerkow had come to believe in this story infallibly. He was 
 immovably persuaded that at one time Maria or Maria s people had 
 possessed these hundred golden dishes. In his perverted mind the 
 hallucination had developed still further. Not only had that service 
 of gold plate once existed, but it existed now, entire, intact; not a 
 single burnished golden piece of it was missing. It was somewhere, 
 somebody had it, locked away in that leather trunk with its quilted 
 lining and round brass locks. It was to be searched for and secured, 
 to be fought for, to be gained at all hazards. Maria must know 
 where it was; by dint of questioning, Zerkow would surely get the 
 information from her. Some day, if only he was persistent, he would 
 hit upon the right combination of questions, the right suggestion that 
 would disentangle Maria s confused recollections. Maria would 
 tell him where the thing was kept, was concealed, was buried, and he 
 would go to that place and secure it, and all that wonderful gold 
 would be his forever and forever. This service of plate had come to 
 be Zerkow s mania. 
 
 On this particular evening, about a week after the child s burial, 
 in the wretched back room of the junk shop, Zerkow had made 
 Maria sit down to the table opposite him the whiskey bottle and 
 the red glass tumbler with its broken base between them and 
 had said: 
 
 "Now, then, Maria, tell us that story of the gold dishes again." 
 
 Maria stared at him, an expression of perplexity coming into her 
 face. 
 
 "What gold dishes?" said she. 
 
 "The ones your people used to own in Central America. Come 
 on, Maria, begin, begin." The Jew craned himself forward, his 
 lean fingers clawing eagerly at his lips. 
 
 "What gold plate?" said Marja, frowning at him as she drank 
 her whiskey. "What gold plate ? / don know what you re talking 
 about, Zerkow." 
 
 Zerkow sat back in his chair, staring at her. 
 
McTeague 1 53 
 
 "Why, your people s gold dishes, what they used to eat off of. 
 You ve told me about it a hundred times." 
 
 "You re crazy, Zerkow," said Maria. "Push the bottle here, 
 will you?" 
 
 "Come, now," insisted Zerkow, sweating with desire, "come, 
 now, my girl, don t be a fool ; let s have it, let s have it. Begin now, 
 There were more n a hundred pieces, and every one of em gold. 
 Oh, you know ; come on, come on." 
 
 "I don t remember nothing of the kind," protested Maria, reach 
 ing for the bottle. Zerkow snatched it from her. 
 
 "You fool !" he wheezed, trying to raise his broken voice to a 
 shout. "You fool ! Don t you dare try an cheat me, or I ll do for 
 you. You know about the gold plate, and you know where it is." 
 Suddenly he pitched his voice at the prolonged rasping shout with 
 which he made his street cry. He rose to his feet, his long, pre 
 hensile fingers curled into fists. He was menacing, terrible in his 
 rage. He leaned over Maria, his fists in her face. 
 
 "I believe you ve got it!" he yelled. "I believe you ve got it, 
 an are hiding it from me. Where is it, where is it? Is it here?" 
 he rolled his eyes wildly about the room. "Hey? hey?" he went 
 on, shaking Maria by the shoulders. "Where is it? Is it here? 
 Tell me where it is. Tell me, or I ll do for you !" 
 
 "It ain t here," cried Maria, wrenching from him. "It ain t 
 anywhere. What gold plate? What are you talking about? I 
 don t remember nothing about no gold plate at all." 
 
 No, Maria did not remember. The trouble and turmoil of her 
 mind consequent upon the birth of her child seemed to have re- / 
 adjusted her disordered ideas upon this point. Her mania had come 
 to a crisis, which in subsiding had cleared her brain of its one illu 
 sion. She did not remember. Or it was possible that the gold plate 
 she had once remembered had had some foundation in fact, that 
 her recital of its splendors had been truth, sound and sane. It was 
 possible that now her forgetfulness of it was some form of brain 
 trouble, a relic of the dementia of childbirth. At all events, Maria 
 did not remember; the idea of the gold plate had passed entirely 
 out of her mind, and it was now Zerkow who labored under its 
 hallucination. It was now Zerkow, the raker of the city s muck 
 heap, the searcher after gold, thaFsaw that wonderful service in the 
 eye of his perverted mind. It was he who could now describe it in 
 a language" almrerr^oTjlfent. Maria had been content merely to re 
 member it ; but Zerkow s avarice goaded him to a belief that it was 
 
McTeague 
 
 still in existence, hid somewhere, perhaps in that very house, stowed 
 away there by Maria. For it stood to reason, didn t it, that Maria 
 could not have described it with such wonderful accuracy and such 
 careful detail unless she had seen it recently the day before, per 
 haps, or that very day, or that very hour, that very hour? 
 
 "Look out for yourself," he whispered hoarsely to his wife. 
 "Look out for yourself, my girl. I ll hunt for it, and hunt for it, 
 and hunt for it, and some day I ll find it / will, you ll see I ll 
 find it, I ll find it ; and if I don t, I ll find a way that ll make you tell 
 me where it is. I ll make you speak believe me, I will, I will, my 
 girl trust me for that." 
 
 And at night Maria would sometimes wake to find Zerkow gone 
 from the bed, and would see him burrowing into some corner by the 
 light of his dark-lantern and would hear him mumbling to himself : 
 "There were more n a hundred pieces, and every one of em gold 
 when the leather trunk was opened it fair dazzled your eyes why, 
 just that punch-bowl was worth a fortune, I guess; solid, solid, 
 heavy, rich, pure gold, nothun but gold, gold, heaps and heaps of it 
 what a glory! I ll find it yet, I ll find it. It s here somewheres, 
 hid somewheres in this house." 
 
 At length his continued ill success began to exasperate him. One 
 day he took his whip from his junk wagon and thrashed Maria with 
 it, gasping the while, "Where is it, you beast? Where is it? Tell 
 me where it is; I ll make you speak." 
 
 "I don know, I don know," cried Maria, dodging his blows. 
 "I d tell you, Zerkow, if I knew ; but I don t know nothing about it. 
 How can I tell you if I don know ?" 
 
 Then one evening matters reached a crisis. Marcus Schouler 
 was in his room, the room in the flat just over McTeague s "Par 
 lors" which he had always occupied. It was between eleven and 
 twelve o clock. The vast house was quiet; Polk Street outside was 
 very still, except for the occasional whir and trundle of a passing 
 cable car and the persistent calling of ducks and geese in the de 
 serted market directly opposite. Marcus was in his shirt sleeves, 
 perspiring and swearing with exertion as he tried to get all his 
 belongings into an absurdly inadequate trunk. The room was in 
 great confusion. It looked as though Marcus was about to move. 
 He stood in front of his trunk, his precious silk hat in its hat-box in 
 his hand. He was raging at the perverseness of a pair of boots that 
 refused to fit in his trunk, no matter how he arranged them. 
 
 "I ve tried you so, and I ve tried you so" he exclaimed fiercely 
 
McTeague 155 
 
 between his teeth, "and you won t go." He began to swear hor 
 ribly, grabbing at the boots with his free hand. "Pretty soon I 
 won t take you at all ; I won t, for a fact." 
 
 He was interrupted by a rush of feet upon the back stairs and 
 a clamorous pounding upon his door. He opened it to let 
 in Maria Macapa, her hair disheveled and her eyes starting with 
 terror. 
 
 "Oh, Mister Schouler," she gasped, "lock the door quick. Don t 
 let him get me. He s got a knife, and he says sure he s going to do 
 for me, if I don t tell him where it is." 
 
 "Who has? What has? Where is what?" shouted Marcus, 
 flaming with excitement upon the instant. He opened the door 
 and peered down the dark hall, both fists clinched, ready to fight 
 he did not know whom, and he did not know why. 
 
 "It s Zerkow," wailed Maria, pulling him back into the room 
 and bolting the door, "and he s got a knife as long as that. Oh, 
 my Lord, here he comes now ! Ain t that him ? Listen." 
 
 Zerkow was coming up the stairs, calling for Maria. 
 
 "Don t you let him get me, will you, Mister Schouler?" gasped 
 Maria. 
 
 "I ll break him in two," shouted Marcus, livid with rage. 
 "Think I m afraid of his knife?" 
 
 "I know where you are," cried Zerkow, on the landing outside. 
 "You re in Schouler s room. What are you doing in Schouler s 
 room at this time of night? Come outa there; you oughta be 
 ashamed. I ll do for you yet, my girl. Come outa there once, an 
 see if I don t." 
 
 "I ll do for you myself, you jlirty_ Jew," shouted Marcus, un 
 bolting the door and running out into theTiall. 
 
 "I want my wife," exclaimed the Jew, backing down the stairs. 
 "What s she mean by running away from me and going into your 
 room ?" 
 
 "Look out, he s got a knife!" cried Maria through the crack of 
 the door. 
 
 "Ah, there you are. Come outa that, and come back home," ex 
 claimed Zerkow. 
 
 "Get outa here yourself," cried Marcus, advancing on him 
 angrily, "Get outa here." 
 
 "Maria s gota come too." 
 
 "Get outa here," vociferated Marcus, "an put up that knife. / 
 see it; you needn t try an hide it behind your leg. Give it to me, 
 
McTeague 
 
 anyhow," he shouted suddenly, and before Zerkow was aware, 
 Marcus had wrenched it away. "Now, get outa here." 
 
 Zerkow backed away, peering and peeping over Marcus s 
 shoulder. 
 
 "I want Maria." 
 
 "Get outa here. Get along out, or I ll put you out." The street 
 door closed. The Jew was gone. 
 
 "Huh!" snorted Marcus, swelling with arrogance. "Huh! 
 Think I m afraid of his knife? I ain t afraid of anybody/ he 
 shouted pointedly, for McTeague and his wife, roused by the clamor, 
 were peering over the banisters from the landing above. "Not of 
 anybody," repeated Marcus. 
 
 Maria came out into the hall. 
 
 "Is he gone? Is he sure gone?" 
 
 "What was the trouble?" inquired Marcus suddenly. 
 
 "I woke up about an hour ago," Maria explained, "and Zerkow 
 wasn t in bed; maybe he hadn t come to bed at all. He was down 
 on his knees by the sink, and he d pried up some boards off the floor 
 and was digging there. He had his dark-lantern. He was digging 
 with that knife, I guess, and all the time he kept mumbling to him 
 self, .More n a hundred pieces, an every one of em gold, more n a 
 hundred pieces, an every one of em gold. Then, all of a sudden, he 
 caught sight of me. I was sitting up in bed, and he jumped up and 
 came at me with his knife, an he says, Where is it? Where is it? 
 I know you got it hid somewheres. Where is it? Tell me or I ll 
 knife you. I kind of fooled him and kept him off till I got my 
 wrapper on, an then I run out. I didn t dare stay." 
 
 "Well, what did you tell him about your gold dishes for in the 
 first place?" cried Marcus. 
 
 "I never told him," protested Maria, with the greatest energy. 
 "I never told him ; I never heard of any gold dishes. I don know 
 where he got the idea ; he must be crazy." 
 
 By this time Trina and McTeague, Old Grannis, and little Miss 
 Baker all the lodgers on the upper floors of the flat had gathered 
 about Maria. Trina and the dentist, who had gone to bed, were 
 partially dressed, and Trina s enormous mane of black hair was 
 hanging in two thick braids far down her back. But, late as it was, 
 Old Grannis and the retired dressmaker had still been up and about 
 when Maria had aroused them. 
 
 "Why, Maria," said Trina, "you always used to tell us about 
 your gold dishes. You said your folks used to have them." 
 
McTeague 157 
 
 "Never, never, never!" exclaimed Maria vehemently. "You 
 folks must all be crazy. I never heard of any gold dishes." 
 
 "Well," spoke up Miss Baker, "you re a queer girl, Maria; 
 that s all I can say." She left the group and returned to her room. 
 Old Grannis watched her go from the corner of his eye, and in a 
 few moments followed her, leaving the group as unnoticed as he 
 had joined it. By degrees the flat quieted down again. Trina and 
 McTeague returned to their rooms. 
 
 "I guess I ll go back now," said Maria. "He s all right now. 
 I ain t afraid of him so long as he ain t got his knife." 
 
 "Well, say," Marcus called to her as she went down stairs, "if 
 he gets funny again, you just yell out; / // hear you. / won t let 
 him hurt you." 
 
 Marcus went into his room again and resumed his wrangle with 
 the refractory boots. His eye fell on Zerkow s knife, a long, keen- 
 bladed hunting-knife, with a buckhorn handle. "I ll take you along 
 with me," he exclaimed suddenly. "I ll just need you where I m 
 going." 
 
 Meanwhile, old Miss Baker was making tea to calm her nerves 
 after the excitement of Maria s incursion. This evening she went so 
 far as to make tea for two, laying an extra place on the other side 
 of her little tea-table, setting out a cup and saucer and one of the 
 Gorham silver spoons. Close upon the other side of the partition 
 Old Grannis bound uncut numbers of the "Nation." 
 
 "Do you know what I think, Mac?" said Trina, when the 
 couple had returned to their rooms. "I think Marcus is going 
 away." 
 
 "What? What?" muttered the dentist, very sleepy and stupid, 
 "what you saying? What s that about Marcus?" 
 
 "I believe Marcus has been packing up, the last two or three 
 days. I wonder if he s going away." 
 
 "Who s going away?" said McTeague, blinking at her. 
 
 "Oh, go to bed," said Trina, pushing him good-naturedly. "Mac, 
 you re the stupidest man I ever knew." 
 
 But it was true. Marcus was going away. Trina received a 
 letter the next morning from her mother. The carpet-cleaning 
 and upholstery business in which Mr. Sieppe had involved himself 
 was going from bad to worse. Mr. Sieppe had even been obliged to 
 put a mortgage upon their house. Mrs. Sieppe didn t know what 
 was to become of them all. Her husband had even begun to talk of 
 emigrating to New Zealand. Meanwhile, she informed Trina that 
 
158 McTeague 
 
 Mr. Sieppe had finally come across a man with whom Marcus could 
 "go in with on a ranch," a cattle ranch in the southeastern portion 
 of the State. Her ideas were vague upon the subject, but she knew 
 that Marcus was wildly enthusiastic at the prospect, and was ex 
 pected down before the end of the month. In the meantime, could 
 Trina send them fifty dollars? 
 
 "Marcus is going away, after all, Mac," said Trina to her hus 
 band that day as he came out of his "Parlors" and sat dow r n to the 
 lunch of sausages, mashed potatoes, and chocolate in the sitting- 
 room. 
 
 "Huh?" said the dentist, a little confused. "Who s going away? 
 Schouler going away? Why s Schouler going away?" 
 
 Trina explained. "Oh!" growled McTeague, behind his thick 
 mustache, "he can go far before I ll stop him." 
 
 "And, say, Mac," continued Trina, pouring the chocolate, "what 
 do you think ? Mamma wants me wants us to send her fifty dollars. 
 She says they re hard up. ; 
 
 "Well," said the dentist, after a moment, "well, I guess we can 
 send it, can t we?" 
 
 "Oh, that s easy to say," complained Trina, her little chin in the 
 air, her small pale lips pursed. "I wonder if mamma thinks we re 
 millionaires?" 
 
 "Trina, you re getting to be regular stingy," muttered Mc 
 Teague. "You re getting worse and worse every day." 
 
 "But fifty dollars is fifty dollars, Mac. Just think how long it 
 takes you to earn fifty dollars. Fifty dollars! That s two months 
 of our interest." 
 
 "Well," said McTeague, easily, his mouth full of mashed potato, 
 "you got a lot saved up." 
 
 Upon every reference to that little hoard in the brass match-safe 
 and chamois-skin bag at the bottom of her trunk, Trina bridled on 
 the instant. 
 
 "Don t talk that way, Mac. A lot of money/ What do you 
 call a lot of money ? I don t believe I ve got fifty dollars saved." 
 
 "Hoh!" exclaimed McTeague. "Hoh! I guess you got nearer 
 a hundred an" fifty. That s what I guess you got." 
 
 "I ve not, I ve not" declared Trina, "and you know I ve not. 
 I wish mamma hadn t asked me "for any money. Why can t she 
 be a little more economical? 7 manage all right. No, no, I can t 
 possibly afford to send her fifty." 
 
 "Oh, pshaw ! What will you do, then ?" grumbled her husband. 
 
McTeague 159 
 
 "I ll send her twenty-five this month, and tell her I ll send the 
 rest as soon as I can afford it." 
 
 "Trina, you re a regular little miser," said McTeague. 
 
 "I don t care," answered Trina, beginning to laugh. "I guess I 
 am, but I can t help it, and it s a good fault." 
 
 Trina put off sending this money for a couple of weeks, and her 
 mother made no mention of it in her next letter. "Oh, I guess if 
 she wants it so bad," said Trina, "she ll speak about it again." So 
 she again postponed the sending of it. Day by day she put it off. 
 When her mother asked her for it a second time, it seemed harder 
 than ever for Trina to part with even half the sum requested. She 
 answered her mother, telling her that they were very hard up 
 themselves for that month, but that she would send down the 
 amount in a few weeks. 
 
 "I ll tell you what we ll do, Mac," she said to her husband, "you 
 send half and I ll send half; we ll send twenty-five dollars alto 
 gether. Twelve and a half apiece. That s an idea. How will 
 that do?" 
 
 "Sure, sure," McTeague had answered, giving her the money. 
 Trina sent McTeague s twelve dollars, but never sent the twelve 
 that was to be her share. One day the dentist happened to ask her 
 about it. 
 
 "You sent that twenty-five to your mother, didn t you ?" said he. 
 
 "Oh, long ago," answered Trina, without thinking. 
 
 In fact, Trina never allowed herself to think very much of this 
 affair. And, in fact, another matter soon came to engross her 
 attention. \/J [ j$ \7| 
 
 One Sunday evening Trina and her husband were in their sit 
 ting-room together. It was dark, but the lamp had not been lighted. 
 McTeague had brought up some bottles of beer from the "Wein 
 Stube" on the ground floor, where the branch post-office used to be. 
 But they had not opened the beer. It was a warm evening in summer. ; 
 Trina was sitting on McTeague s lap in the bay window, and had 
 looped back the Nottingham curtains so the two could look out into 
 the darkened street and watch the moon coming up over the glass 
 roof of the huge public baths. On occasions they sat like this for 
 an hour or so, "philandering," Trina cuddling herself down upon 
 McTeague s enormous body, rubbing her cheek against the grain 
 of his unshaven chin, kissing the bald spot on the top of his head, 
 or putting her fingers into his ears and eyes. At times, a brusque 
 access of passion would seize upon her, and, with a nervous little 
 
!6o McTeague 
 
 sigh, she would clasp his thick red neck in both her small arms and 
 whisper in his ear: 
 
 "Do you love me, Mac, dear? love me big, big? Sure, do you 
 love me as much as you did when we were married ?" 
 
 Puzzled, McTeague would answer: "Well, you know it, don t 
 you, Trina?" 
 
 "But I want you to say so ; say so always and always." 
 
 "Well, I do, of course I do." 
 
 "Say it, then." 
 
 "Well, then, I love you." 
 
 "But you don t say it of your own accord." 
 
 "Well, what what what I don t understand," stammered the 
 dentist, bewildered. 
 
 There was a knock on the door. Confused and embarrassed, 
 as if thev were not married, Trina scrambled off McTeague s lap, 
 hastening to light the lamp, whispering, "Put on your coat, Mac, 
 and smooth your hair," and making gestures for him to put the beer 
 bottles out of sight. She opened the door and uttered an ex 
 clamation. 
 
 "Why, Cousin Mark!" she said. McTeague glared at him, 
 struck speechless, confused beyond expression. Marcus Schouler, 
 perfectly at his ease, stood in the doorway, smiling with great affa 
 bility. 
 
 "Say," he remarked, "can I come in?" 
 
 Taken all aback, Trina could only answer: 
 
 "Why I suppose so. Yes, of course come in." 
 
 "Yes, yes, come in," exclaimed the dentist, suddenly, speaking 
 without thought. "Have some beer?" he added, struck with an 
 idea. 
 
 "No, thanks, Doctor," said Marcus, pleasantly. 
 
 McTeague and Trina were puzzled. What could it all mean? 
 Did Marcus want fo become reconciled to his enemy? "/ know," 
 Trina said to herself. "He s going away, and he wants to borrow 
 some money. He won t get a penny, not a penny." She set her 
 teeth together hard. 
 
 "Well," said Marcus, "how s business, Doctor?" 
 
 "Oh," said McTeague, uneasily, "oh, I don know. I guess 
 I guess," he broke off in helpleSs embarrassment. They had all 
 sat down by now. Marcus continued, holding his hat and his cane 
 the black wand of ebony with the gold top presented to him by the 
 "Improvement Club." 
 
McTeague 161 
 
 "Ah!" said he, wagging his head and looking about the sitting- 
 room, "you people have got the best fixed rooms in the whole flat. 
 Yes, sir; you have, for a fact." He glanced from the lithograph 
 framed in gilt and red plush the two little girls at their prayers 
 to the "I m Grandpa" and "I m Grandma" pictures, noted the clean 
 white matting and the gay worsted tidies over the chair backs, and 
 appeared to contemplate in ecstasy the framed photograph of Mc 
 Teague and Trina in their wedding finery. 
 
 "Well, you two are pretty happy together, ain t you?" said he, 
 smiling good-humoredly. 
 
 "Oh, we don t complain," answered Trina. 
 
 "Plenty of money, lots to do, everything fine, hey?" 
 
 "We ve got lots to do," returned Trina, thinking to head him 
 off, "but we ve not got lots of money." 
 
 But evidently Marcus wanted no money. 
 
 "Well, Cousin Trina," he said, rubbing his knee, "I m going 
 away." 
 
 "Yes, mamma wrote me; you re going on a ranch." 
 
 "I m going in ranching with an English duck," corrected Mar 
 cus. "Mr. Sieppe has fixed things. We ll see if we can t raise 
 some cattle. I know a lot about horses, and he s ranched some be 
 fore this English duck. And then I m going to keep my eye open 
 for a political chance down there. I got some introductions from 
 the President of the Improvement Club. I ll work things somehow, 
 oh, sure." 
 
 "How long you going to be gone ?" asked Trina. 
 
 Marcus stared. 
 
 "Why, I ain t ever coming back," he vociferated. "I m going 
 to-morrow, and I m going for good. I come to say good-by." 
 
 Marcus stayed for upward of an hour that evening. He talked 
 on easily and agreeably, addressing himself as much to McTeague 
 as to Trina. At last he rose. 
 
 "Well, good-by, Doc." 
 
 "Good-by, Marcus," returned McTeague. The two shook 
 hands. 
 
 "Guess we won t ever see each other again," continued Marcus. 
 "But good luck to you, Doc. Hope some day you ll have the pa 
 tients standing in line on the stairs." 
 
 "Huh ! I guess so, I guess so," said the dentist. 
 
 "Good-by, Cousin Trina." 
 
 "Good-by, Marcus," answered Trina. "You be sure to remem- 
 
1 62 McTeague 
 
 ber me to mamma, and papa, and everybody. I m going to make 
 two great big sets of Noah s ark animals for the twins on their next 
 birthday; August is too old for toys. But you tell the twins that 
 I ll make them some great big animals. Good-by, success to you, 
 Marcus." 
 
 "Good-by, good-by. Good luck to you both." 
 
 "Good-by, Cousin Mark." 
 
 "Good-by, Marcus." 
 
 He was gone. 
 
 XIII 
 
 ONE morning about a week after Marcus had left for the south 
 ern part of the State, McTeague found an oblong letter thrust 
 through the letter-drop of the door of his "Parlors." The address 
 was typewritten. He opened it. The letter had been sent from the 
 City Hall and was stamped in one corner with the seal of the State 
 of California, very official; the form and file numbers super 
 scribed. 
 
 McTeague had been making fillings when this letter arrived. He 
 was in his "Parlors," pottering over his movable rack underneath 
 the bird cage in the bay window. He was making "blocks" to be 
 used in large proximal cavities and "cylinders" for commencing 
 fillings. He heard the postman s step in the hall and saw the en 
 velopes begin to shuttle themselves through the slit of his letter-drop. 
 Then came the fat oblong envelope, with its official seal, that 
 dropped flatwise to the floor with a sodden, dull impact. 
 
 The dentist put down the broach and scissors and gathered up 
 his mail. There were four letters altogether. One was for Trina, 
 in Selina s "elegant" handwriting; another was an advertisement 
 of a new kind of operating chair for dentists ; the third was a card 
 from a milliner on the next block, announcing an opening; and the 
 fourth, contained in the fat oblong envelope, was a printed form 
 with blanks left for names and dates, and addressed to McTeague, 
 from an office in the City Hall. McTeague read it through labori 
 ously. "I don know, I don know," he muttered, looking stupidly 
 at the rifle manufacturer s calendar. Then he heard Trina, from 
 the kitchen, singing as she made a clattering noise with the break 
 fast dishes. "I guess I ll ask Trina about it," he muttered. 
 
 He went through the suite, by the sitting-room, where the sun 
 
McTeague 163 
 
 was pouring in through the looped backed Nottingham curtains 
 upon the clean white matting and the varnished surface of the 
 melodeon, passed on through the bedroom, with its framed litho 
 graphs of round-cheeked English babies and alert fox terriers, and 
 carne out into the brick-paved kitchen. The kitchen was clean as a 
 new whistle; the freshly blackened cook stove glowed like a negro s 
 hide ; the tins and porcelain-lined stew-pans might have^been oTsil- 
 ver and of ivory. Trina was in the centre of the room, wiping off, 
 with a damp sponge, the oilcloth table-cover, on which they had 
 breakfasted. Never had she looked so pretty. Early though it 
 was, her enormous tiara of swarthy hair was neatly combed and 
 coiled, not a pin was so much as loose. She wore a blue calico 
 skirt with a white figure, and a belt of imitation alligator skin 
 clasped around her small, firmly-corseted waist ; her shirt-waist was 
 of pink linen, so new and crisp that it crackled with every movement, 
 while around the collar, tied in a neat knot, was one of McTeague s 
 lawn ties which she had appropriated. Her sleeves were carefully 
 rolled up almost to her shoulders, and nothing could have been 
 more delicious than the sight of her small round arms, white as 
 milk, moving back and forth as she sponged the table-cover, a faint 
 touch of pink coming and going at the elbows as they bent and 
 straightened. She looked up quickly as her husband entered, her 
 narrow eyes alight, her adorable little chin in the air; her lips 
 rounded and opened with the last words of her song, so that one 
 could catch a glint of gold in the fillings of her upper teeth. 
 
 The whole scene the clean kitchen and its clean brick floor; 
 the smell of coffee that lingered in the air; Trina herself, fresh as 
 if from a bath, and singing at her work; the morning sun, striking 
 obliquely through the white muslin half-curtain of the window and 
 spanning the little kitchen with a bridge of golden mist gave 
 off, as it were, a note of gayety that was not to be resisted. 
 Through the opened top of the window came the noises of Polk 
 Street, already long awake. One heard the chanting of street cries, 
 the shrill calling of children on their way to school, the merry 
 rattle of a butcher s cart, the brisk noise of hammering, or the occa 
 sional prolonged roll of a cable car trundling heavily past, with a 
 vibrant whirring of its jostled glass and the joyous clanging of its 
 bells. 
 
 "What is it, Mac, dear?" said Trina. 
 
 McTeague shut the door behind him with his heel and handed 
 her the letter. Trina read it through. Then suddenly her small 
 
164 McTeague 
 
 hand gripped tightly upon the sponge, so that the water started from 
 it and dripped in a little pattering deluge upon the bricks. 
 
 The letter or rather printed notice informed McTeague that 
 he had never received a diploma from a dental college, and that in 
 consequence he was forbidden to practice his profession any longer. 
 A legal extract bearing upon the case was attached in small type. 
 
 "Why, what s all this?" said Trina, calmly, without thought as 
 yet. 
 
 "I don know, / don know/ answered her husband. 
 
 "You can t practice any longer," continued Trina " is here 
 with prohibited and enjoined from further continuing She re 
 read the extract, her forehead lifting and puckering. She put the 
 sponge carefully away in its wire rack over the sink, and drew 
 up a chair to the table, spreading out the notice before her. "Sit 
 down," she said to McTeague. "Draw up to the table here, Mac, 
 and let s see what this is." 
 
 "I got it this morning," murmured the dentist. "It just now 
 came. I was making some fillings there, in the Parlors, in the 
 window and the postman shoved it through the door. I thought 
 it was a number of the American System of Dentistry at first, and 
 when I d opened it and looked at it I thought I d better " 
 
 "Say, Mac," interrupted Trina, looking up from the notice, 
 "didn t you ever go to a dental college?" 
 
 "Huh? What? What?" exclaimed McTeague. 
 
 "How did you learn to be a dentist ? Did you go to a college ?" 
 
 "I went along with a fellow who came to the mine once. My 
 mother sent me. We used to go from one camp to another. I 
 sharpened his excavators for him, and put up his notices in the 
 towns stuck them up in the post-offices and on the doors of the 
 Odd Fellows halls. He had a wagon." 
 
 "But didn t you never go to a college?" 
 
 "Huh? What? College? No, I never went. Learned from 
 the fellow." 
 
 Trina rolled down her sleeves. She was a little paler than usual. 
 She fastened the buttons into the cuffs and said : 
 
 "But do you know you can t practice unless you re graduated 
 from a college? You haven t the right to call yourself doctor. " 
 
 McTeague stared a moment then : 
 
 "Why, I ve been practicing ten years. More nearly twelve." 
 
 "But it s the law." 
 
 "What s the law ?" 
 
McTeague 165 
 
 "That you can t practice, or call yourself doctor, unless you ve 
 got a diploma. 
 
 "What s that a diploma?" 
 
 "I don t know exactly. It s a kind of paper that that oh, Mac, 
 we re ruined." Trina s voice rose to a cry. 
 
 "What do you mean, Trina ? Ain t I a dentist ? Ain t I a doc 
 tor? Look at my sign, and the gold tooth you gave me. Why, I ve 
 been practicing nearly twelve years." 
 
 Trina shut her lips tightly, cleared her throat, and pretended to 
 resettle a hairpin at the back of her head. 
 
 "I guess it isn t as bad as that," she said, very quietly. "Let s 
 read this again. Herewith prohibited and enjoined from further 
 Continuing " She read to the end. . 
 
 "Why, it isn t possible," she cried. "They can t mean ohX. 
 Mac, I do believe pshaw !" she exclaimed, her pale face flushing. 
 "They don t know how good a dentist you are. What difference 
 does a diploma make, if you re a first-class dentist? I guess that s/ 
 all right. Mac, didn t you ever go to a dental college ?" / 
 
 "No," answered McTeague, doggedly. "What was the goocf? 
 I learned how to operate ; wa n t that enough ?" 
 
 "Hark," said Trina, suddenly. "Wasn t that the bell of your 
 office?" They had both heard the jangling of the bell that Mc 
 Teague had hung over the door of his "Parlors." The dentist 
 looked at the kitchen clock. 
 
 "That s Vanovitch," said he. "He s a plumber round on Sut- 
 ter Street. He s got an appointment with me to have a bicuspid 
 pulled. I got to go back to work." He rose. 
 
 "But you can t," cried Trina, the back of her hand upon her lips, 
 her eyes brimming. "Mac, don t you see? Can t you understand? 
 You ve got to stop. Oh, it s dreadful! Listen." She hurried 
 around the table to him and caught his arm in both her hands. 
 
 "Huh?" growled McTeague, looking at her with a puzzled 
 frown. 
 
 "They ll arrest you. You ll go to prison. You can t work 
 can t work any more. We re ruined." 
 
 Vanovitch was pounding on the door of the sitting-room. 
 
 "He ll be gone in a minute," exclaimed McTeague. 
 
 "Well, let him go. Tell him to go; tell him to come again." 
 
 "Why, he s got an appointment with me," exclaimed McTeague, 
 his hand upon the door. 
 
 Trina caught him back. "But, Mac, you ain t a dentist any 
 
1 66 McTeague 
 
 longer; you ain t a doctor. You haven t the right to work. You 
 never went to a dental college." 
 
 "Well, suppose I never went to a college, ain t I a dentist just 
 the same? Listen, he s pounding there again. No, I m going, 
 sure." 
 
 "Well, of course, go," said Trina, with sudden reaction. "It 
 ain t possible they ll make you stop. If you re a good dentist, that s 
 all that s wanted. Go on, Mac; hurry, before he goes." 
 
 McTeague went out, closing the door. Trina stood for a mo 
 ment looking intently at the bricks at her feet. Then she returned 
 to the table, and sat down again before the notice, and, resting her 
 head on both her fists, read it yet another time. Suddenly the con 
 viction seized upon her that it was all true. McTeague would be 
 obliged to stop work, no matter how good a dentist he was. But 
 why had the authorities at the City Hall waited this long before 
 serving the notice? All at once Trina snapped her fingers, with a 
 quick flash of intelligence. 
 
 "It s Marcus that s done it," she cried. 
 
 It was like a clap of thunder. McTeague was stunned, stupefied. 
 He said nothing. Never in his life had he been so taciturn. At 
 times he did not seem to hear Trina when she spoke to him, and 
 often she had to shake him by the shoulder to arouse his attention. 
 He would sit apart in his "Parlors," turning the notice about in his 
 enormous clumsy fingers, reading it stupidly over and over again. 
 He couldn t understand. What had a clerk at the City Hall to do 
 with him ? Why couldn t they let him alone ? 
 
 "Oh, what s to become of us now?" wailed Trina. "What s to 
 become of us now? We re paupers, beggars and all so sudden." 
 And once, in a quick, inexplicable fury, totally unlike any thing that 
 McTeague had noticed in her before, she had started up, with fists 
 and teeth shut tight, and had cried, "Oh, if you d only killed Marcus 
 Schouler that time he fought you !" 
 
 McTeague had continued his work, acting from sheer force of 
 habit; his sluggish, deliberate nature, methodical, obstinate, refus 
 ing to adapt itself to the new conditions. 
 
 "Maybe Marcus was only trying to scare us," Trina had said. 
 "How are they going to know whether you re practicing or not?" 
 
 "I got a mold to make to-morrow," McTeague said, "and Vano- 
 vitch, that plumber round on Sutter Street, he s coming again at 
 three." 
 
McTeague 167 
 
 "Well, you go right ahead," Trina told him, decisively; "you 
 go right ahead and make the mold, and pull every tooth in Vano- 
 vitch s head if you want to. Who s going to know? Maybe they 
 just sent that notice as a matter of form. Maybe Marcus got that 
 paper and filled it in himself." 
 
 The two would lie awake all night long, staring up into the dark, 
 talking, talking, talking. 
 
 "Haven t you got any right to practice if you ve not been to a 
 dental college, Mac? Didn t you ever go?" Trina would ask again 
 and again. 
 
 "No, no," answered the dentist, "I never went. I learned from 
 the fellow I was apprenticed to. I don know anything about a 
 dental college. Ain t I got a right to do as I like ?" he suddenly ex 
 claimed. 
 
 "If you know your profession, isn t that enough?" cried Trina. 
 
 "Sure, sure," growled McTeague. "I ain t going to stop for 
 them." 
 
 "You go right on," Trina said, "and I bet you won t hear an 
 other word about it." 
 
 "Suppose I go round to the City Hall and see them," haz 
 arded McTeague. 
 
 "No, no, don t you do it, Mac," exclaimed Trina. "Because if 
 Marcus has done this just to scare you, they won t know anything 
 about it there at the City Hall; but they ll begin to ask you ques 
 tions, and find out that you never had graduated from a dental 
 college, and you d be just as bad off as ever." 
 
 "Well, I ain t going to quit for just a piece of paper," declared 
 the dentist. The phrase stuck to him. All day long he went about 
 their rooms or continued at his work in the "Parlors," growling be 
 hind his thick mustache: "I ain t going to quit for just a piece of i 
 paper. No, I ain t going to quit for just a piece of paper. Sure 
 not." 
 
 The days passed, a week went by, McTeague continued his work 
 as usual. They heard no more from the City Hall, but the suspense 
 of the situation was harrowing. Trina was actually sick with it. 
 The terror of the thing was ever at their elbows, going to bed with 
 them, sitting down with them at breakfast in the kitchen, keeping 
 them company all through the day. Trina dared not think of what 
 would be their fate if the income derived from McTeague s prac 
 tice was suddenly taken from them. Then they would have to fall 
 back on the interest of her lottery money and the pittance she de- 
 
McTeague 
 
 rived from the manufacture of the Noah s ark animals, a little over 
 thirty dollars a month. No, no, it was not to be thought of. It 
 could not be that their means of livelihood was to be thus stricken 
 from them. 
 
 A fortnight went by. "I guess we re all right, Mac," Trina al 
 lowed herself to say. "It looks as though we were all right. How 
 are they going to tell whether you re practicing or not?" 
 
 That day a second and much more peremptory notice was served 
 upon McTeague by an official in person. Then suddenly Trina was 
 seized with a panic terror, unreasoned, instinctive. If McTeague 
 persisted they would both be sent to a prison, she was sure of it ; a 
 place where people were chained to the wall, in the dark, and fed on 
 bread and water. 
 
 "Oh, Mac, you ve got to quit," she wailed. "You can t go on. 
 They can make you stop. Oh, why didn t you go to a dental col 
 lege? Why didn t you find out that you had to have a college de 
 gree ? And now we re paupers, beggars. We ve got to leave here 
 leave this flat where I ve been where we ve been so happy, and 
 sell all the pretty things; sell the pictures and the melodeon, and 
 Oh, it s too dreadful!" 
 
 "Huh? Huh? What? What?" exclaimed the dentist be 
 wildered. "I ain t going to quit for just a piece of paper. Let them 
 put me out. I ll show them. They they can t make small of me." 
 
 "Oh, that s all very fine to talk that way, but you ll have 
 to quit." 
 
 "Well, we ain t paupers," McTeague suddenly exclaimed, an 
 idea entering his mind. "WeVe got our money yet. You ve got 
 your five thousand dollars and the money you ve been saving up. 
 People ain t paupers when they ve got over five thousand dollars." 
 
 "What do you mean, Mac?" cried Trina apprehensively. 
 
 "Well, we can live on that money until until until " he broke 
 off with an uncertain movement of his shoulders, looking about him 
 stupidly. 
 
 "Until when?" cried Trina. "There ain t ever going to be any 
 until We ve got the interest of that five thousand and we ve got 
 what Uncle Oelbermann gives me, a little over thirty dollars a 
 month, and that s all we ve got. You ll have to find something 
 else to do." 
 
 "What will I find to do?" 
 
 What, indeed? McTeague was over thirty now, sluggish and 
 slow-witted at best. What new trade could he learn at this age ? 
 
McTeague 1 69 
 
 Little by little Trina made the dentist understand the calamity 
 that had befallen them, and McTeague at last began canceling his 
 appointments. Trina gave it out that he was sick. 
 
 "Not a soul need know what s happened to us," she said to her 
 husband. 
 
 But it was only by slow degrees that McTeague abandoned his 
 profession. Every morning after breakfast he would go into his 
 "Parlors" as usual and potter about his instruments, his dental 
 engine, and his washstand in the corner behind his screen where 
 he made his molds. Now he would sharpen a "hoe" excavator, now 
 he would busy himself for a whole hour making "mats" and "cylin 
 ders." Then he would look over his slate where he kept a record of 
 his appointments. 
 
 One day Trina softly opened the door of the "Parlors" and 
 came in from the sitting-room. She had not heard McTeague mov 
 ing about for some time and had begun to wonder what he was 
 doing. She came in, quietly shutting the door behind her. 
 
 McTeague had tidied the room with the greatest care. The 
 volumes of the "Practical Dentist" and the "American System of 
 Dentistry" were piled upon the marble-top centre-table in rectangu 
 lar blocks. The few chairs were drawn up against the wall under 
 the steel engraving of "Lorenzo de Medici" with more than usual 
 precision. The dental engine and the nickeled trimmings of the 
 operating chair had been furbished till they shone, while on the 
 movable rack in the bay window McTeague had arranged his in 
 struments with the greatest neatness and regularity. "Hoe" ex 
 cavators, pluggers, forceps, pliers, corundum disks and burrs, even 
 the boxwood mallet that Trina was never to use again, all were laid 
 out and ready for immediate use. 
 
 McTeague himself sat in his operating chair, looking stupidly out 
 of the windows, across the roofs opposite, with an unseeing gaze, 
 his red hands lying idly in his lap. Trina came up to him. There 
 was something in his eyes that made her put both arms around his 
 neck and lay his huge head with its coarse blond hair upon her 
 shoulder. 
 
 "I I got everything fixed," he said. "I got everything fixed 
 an ready. See, everything ready an waitin an an an nobody 
 comes, an j nobody s ever going- to come any more. Oh, Trina!" 
 He put his arms about her and drew her down closer to him. 
 
 "Never mind, dear ; never mind," cried Trina, through her tears. 
 "It ll all come right in the end, and we ll be poor together if we 
 
 H III NORRIS 
 
McTeague 
 
 have to. You can sure find something else to do. We ll start in 
 again/ 
 
 "Look at the slate there," said McTeague, pulling away from her 
 and reaching down the slate on which he kept a record of his ap 
 pointments. "Look at them. There s Vanovitch at two on Wednes 
 day, and Loughhead s wife Thursday morning, and Heise s little 
 girl Thursday afternoon at one-thirty ; Mrs. Watson on Friday, and 
 Vanovitch again Saturday morning early at seven. That s what I 
 was to have had, and they ain t going to come. They ain t ever 
 going to come any more." 
 
 Trina took the little slate from him arid looked at it ruefully. 
 
 "Rub them out," she said, her voice trembling ; "rub it all out ;" 
 and as she spoke her eyes brimmed again, and a great tear dropped 
 on the slate. "That s it," she said ; "that s the way to rub it out, by 
 me crying on it." Then she passed her fingers over the tear-blurred 
 writing and washed the slate clean. "All gone, all gone," she said. 
 
 "All gone," echoed the dentist. There was a silence. Then 
 McTeague heaved himself up to his full six feet two, his face 
 purpling, his enormous mallet-like fists faised over his head. His 
 massive jay protruded more than ever, while his teeth clicked and 
 grated together; then he growled: 
 
 "If ever I meet Marcus Schouler " he broke off abruptly, the 
 white oi his eyes growing suddenly pink. 
 
 "Oh, if ever you do" exclaimed Trina, catching her breath. 
 
 XIV 
 
 "WELL, what do you think?" said Trina. 
 
 She and McTeague stood in a tiny room at the back of the flat 
 and on its very top floor. The room was whitewashed. It con 
 tained a bed, three cane-seated chairs, and a wooden washstand 
 with its washbowl and pitcher. From its single uncurtained window 
 one looked down into the flat s dirty back yard and upon the roofs of 
 the hovels that bordered the alley in the rear. There was a rag 
 carpet on the floor. In place of a closet some dozen wooden pegs 
 were affixed to the wall over the washstand. There was a smell of 
 cheap soap and of ancient hair-oil in the air. 
 
 "That s a single bed," said Trina, "but the landlady says she ll 
 put in a double one for us. You see " 
 
McTeague 171 
 
 "I ain t going to live here," growled McTeague. 
 
 "Well, you ve got to live somewhere," said Trina impatiently. 
 "We ve looked Polk Street over, and this is the only thing we can 
 afford." 
 
 "Afford, afford," muttered the dentist. "You with your five 
 thousand dollars, and the two or three hundred you got saved up, 
 talking about afford/ _You make me sick." 
 
 "Now, Mac," exclaimed Trina, deliberately, sitting down in one 
 of the cane-seated chairs; "now, Mac, let s have this thing " 
 
 "Well, I don t figure on living in one room," growled the dentist 
 sullenly. "Let s live decently until we can get a fresh start. We ve 
 got the money." 
 
 "Who s got the money?" 
 
 "We ve got it." 
 
 "We!" 
 
 "Well, it s all in the family. What s yours is mine, and what s 
 mine is yours, ain t it?" 
 
 "No, it s not; no, it s not; no, it s not," cried Trina vehemently. 
 "It s all mine, mine. There s not a penny of it belongs to anybody 
 else. I don t like to have to talk this way to you, but you just make 
 me. We re not going to touch a penny of my five thousand nor a 
 penny of that little money I managed to save that seventy-five." 
 
 "That two hundred, you mean." 
 
 "That seventy-five. We re just going to live on the interest of 
 that and on what I earn from Uncle Oelbermann on just that thirty- 
 one or two dollars." 
 
 "Huh! Think I m going to do that, an live in such a room as 
 this?" 
 
 Trina folded her arms and looked him squarely in the face. 
 
 "Well, what are you going to do, then?" 
 
 "Huh?" 
 
 "I say, what are you going to do? You can go on and find 
 something to do and earn some more money, and then we ll talk." 
 
 "Well, I ain t going to live here." 
 
 "Oh, very well, suit yourself. I m going to live here." 
 
 "You ll live where I tell you," the dentist suddenly cried, ex 
 asperated at the mincing tone she affected. 
 
 "Then you ll pay the rent," exclaimed Trina, quite as angry 
 as he. 
 
 "Are you my boss, I d like to know ? Who s the boss, you or I ?" 
 
 "Who s got the money, I d like to know?" cried Trina, flushing 
 
McTeague 
 
 to her pale lips. "Answer me that, McTeague, who s got the 
 money ?" 
 
 "You make me sick, you and your money. Why, you re a miser. 
 I never saw anything like it. When I was practicing, I never 
 thought of my fees as my own ; we lumped everything in together." 
 
 "Exactly; and I m doing the working now. I m working for 
 Uncle Oelbermann, and you re not lumping in anything now. I m 
 doing it all. Do you know what I m doing, McTeague? I m sup 
 porting you." 
 
 "Ah, shut up; you make me sick." 
 
 "You got no right to talk to me that way. I won t let you. I 
 I won t have it." She caught her breath. Tears were in her eyes. 
 
 "Oh, live where you like, then," said McTeague sullenly. 
 
 "Well, shall we take this room then?" 
 
 "All right, we ll take it. But why can t you take a little of your 
 money an an sort of fix it up?" 
 
 "Not a penny, not a single penny." 
 
 "Oh, I don t care what you do." And for the rest of the day 
 the dentist and his wife did not speak. 
 
 This was not the only quarrel they had during these days when 
 they were occupied in moving from their suite and in looking for 
 new quarters. Every hour the question of money came up. Trina 
 had become more niggardly than ever since the loss of McTeague s 
 practice. It was not mere economy with her now. It was a panic 
 terror lest a fraction of a cent of her little savings should be touched ; 
 a passionate eagerness to continue to save in spite of all that had 
 happened. Trina could have easily afforded better quarters than the 
 single whitewashed room at the top of the flat, but she made Mc 
 Teague believe that it was impossible. 
 
 "I can still save a little," she said to herself, after the room had 
 been engaged; "perhaps almost as much as ever. I ll have three 
 hundred dollars pretty soon, and Mac thinks it s only two hundred. 
 It s almost two hundred and fifty ; and I ll get a good deal out of the 
 sale." 
 
 But this sale was a long agony. It lasted a week. Everything 
 went everything but the few big pieces that went with the suite, 
 and that belonged to the photographer. The melodeon, the chairs, 
 the black walnut table before which they were married, the exten 
 sion table in the sitting-room, the kitchen table with its oilcloth 
 cover, the framed lithographs from the English illustrated papers, 
 the very carpets on the floors. But Trina s heart nearly broke when 
 
McTeague 1 73 
 
 the kitchen utensils and furnishings began to go. Every pot, every 
 stewpan, every knife and fork, was an old friend. How she had 
 worked over them ! How clean she had kept them ! What a pleas 
 ure it had been to invade that little brick-paved kitchen every 
 morning, and to wash up and put to rights after breakfast, turning 
 on the hot water at the sink, raking down the ashes in the cook- 
 stove, going and coming over the warm bricks, her head in the 
 air, singing at her work, proud in the sense of her proprietorship 
 and her independence ! How happy had she been the day after her 
 marriage when she had first entered that kitchen and knew that it 
 was all her own! And how well she remembered her raids upon 
 the bargain counters in the housefurnishing departments of the 
 great down-town stores! And now it was all to go. Some one 
 else would have it all, while she was relegated to cheap restaurants 
 and meals cooked by hired servants. Night after night she sobbed 
 herself to sleep at the thought of her past happiness and her present 
 wretchedness. However, she was not alone in her unhappiness. 
 
 "Anyhow, I m going to keep the steel engraving an the stone 
 pug dog," declared the dentist, his fist clinching. When it had come 
 to the sale of his office effects McTeague had rebelled with the in 
 stinctive obstinacy of a boy ; shutting his eyes and ears. Only little 
 by little did Trina induce him to part with his office furniture. He 
 fought over every article, over the little iron stove, the bed-lounge, 
 the marble-topped centre table, the whatnot in the corner, the bound 
 volumes of "Allen s Practical Dentist," the rifle manufacturer s 
 calendar, and the prim, military chairs. A veritable scene took place 
 between him and his wife before he could bring himself to part with 
 the steel engraving of "Lorenzo de Medici and His Court" and 
 the stone pug dog with its goggle eyes. 
 
 "Why," he would cry, "I ve had em ever since ever since I 
 began; long before I knew you, Trina. That steel engraving I 
 bought in Sacramento one day when it was raining. I saw it in the 
 window of a second-hand store, and a fellow gave me that stone 
 pug dog. He was a druggist. It was in Sacramento, too. We 
 traded. I gave him a shaving-mug and a razor, and he gave me the 
 pug dog." 
 
 There were, however, two of his belongings that even Trina could \ 
 not induce him to part with. 
 
 "And your concertina, Mac," she prompted, as they were making j 
 out the list for the second-hand dealer. "The concertina, and oh, / 
 yes, the canary and the bird cage. 
 
174 McTeague 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Mac, you must be reasonable. The concertina would bring 
 quite a sum, and the bird cage is as good as new. I ll sell the 
 canary to the bird-store man on Kearney Street." 
 
 "No." 
 
 "If you re going to make objections to every single thing, we 
 might as well quit. Come, now, Mac, the concertina and the bird 
 cage. We ll put them in Lot D." 
 
 "No." 
 
 "You ll have to come to it sooner or later. I m giving up every 
 thing. I m going to put them down, see." 
 
 "No." 
 
 And she could get no further than that. The dentist did not 
 lose his temper, as in the case of the steel engraving or the stone 
 pug dog; he simply opposed her entreaties and persuasions with a 
 passive, inert obstinacy that nothing could move. In the end Trina 
 was obliged to submit. McTeague kept his concertina and his 
 canary, even going so far as to put them both away in the bedroom, 
 attaching to them tags on which he had scrawled in immense round 
 letters, "Not for Sale." 
 
 One evening during that same week the dentist and his wife 
 were in the dismantled sitting-room. The room presented the ap 
 pearance of a wreck. The Nottingham lace curtains were down. 
 The extension table was heaped high with dishes, with tea and coffee 
 pots, and with baskets of spoons and knives and forks. The melo- 
 deon was hauled out into the middle of the floor, and covered with a 
 sheet marked "Lot A," the pictures were in a pile in a corner, the 
 chenille portieres were folded on top of the black walnut table. 
 The room was desolate, lamentable. Trina was going over the in 
 ventory; McTeague, in his shirt sleeves, was smoking his pipe, 
 looking stupidly out of the window. All at once there was a brisk 
 rapping at the door. 
 
 "Come in," called Trina apprehensively. Nowadays at every 
 unexpected visit she anticipated a fresh calamity. The door opened 
 to let in a young man wearing a checked suit, a gay cravat, and a 
 marvelously figured waistcoat. Trina and McTeague recognized him 
 at once. It was the Other Dentist, the debonair fellow whose clients 
 were the barbers and the young women of the candy stores and 
 soda-water fountains, the poser, the wearer of waistcoats, who bet 
 money on greyhound races. 
 
 "How do?" said this one, bowing gracefully to the McTeagues 
 
McTeague 175 
 
 as they stared at him distrustfully. "How do? They tell me, Doc 
 tor that you are going out of the profession." 
 
 McTeague muttered indistinctly behind his mustache and glow 
 ered at him. 
 
 "Well, say," continued the other cheerily, "I d like to talk busi 
 ness with you. That sign of yours, that big golden tooth that you 
 got outside of your window, I don t suppose you ll have any further 
 use for it. Maybe I d buy it if we could agree on terms." 
 
 Trina shot a glance at her husband. McTeague began to glower 
 again. 
 
 "What do you say?" said the Other Dentist. 
 
 "I guess not," growled McTeague. 
 
 "W r hat do you say to ten dollars?" 
 
 "Ten dollars !" cried Trina, her chin in the air. 
 
 "Well, what figure do you put on it?" 
 
 Trina was about to answer when she was interrupted by Mc 
 Teague. 
 
 "You go out of here." 
 
 "Hey? What?" 
 
 "You go out of here." 
 
 The other retreated toward the door. 
 
 "You can t make small of me. Go out of here." 
 
 McTeague came forward a step, his great red fist clinching. The 
 young man fled. But half way down the stairs he paused long 
 enough to call back: 
 
 "You don t want to trade anything for a diploma, do you ?" 
 
 McTeague and his wife exchanged looks. 
 
 "How did he know?" exclaimed Trina sharply. They had 
 invented and spread the fiction that McTeague was merely retiring 
 from business, without assigning any reason. But evidently every 
 one knew the real cause. The jyimiliatior^ w^_crnplete_iiow. Old 
 Miss Baker confirmed their suspicions on this point the next day. 
 The little retired dressmaker came down and wept with Trina over 
 her misfortune, and did what she could to encourage her. But she, 
 too, knew that McTeague had been forbidden by the authorities from 
 practicing. Marcus had evidently left them no loophole of escape. 
 
 "It s just likejcu^ng^fi your ^^ Jijisband!5JiajTds,my dear," said 
 Miss Baker7^"And you two were so happy WhenTlirsFsaw you 
 together I said, What a pair ! " 
 
 Old Grannis also called during this period of the breaking up 
 of the McTeague household. 
 
McTeague 
 
 "Dreadful, dreadful,", murmured the old Englishman, his hand 
 going tremulously to his chin. "It seems unjust ; it does. But Mr. 
 Schouler could not have set them on to do it. I can t quite believe 
 it of him." 
 
 "Of Marcus !" cried Trina. "Hoh ! Why, he threw his knife 
 at Mac one time, and another time he bit him, actually bit him with 
 his teeth, while they were wrestling just for fun. Marcus would 
 do anything to injure Mac." 
 
 "Dear, dear," returned Old Grannis, genuinely pained. "I had 
 always believed Schouler to be such a good fellow." 
 
 "That s because you re so good yourself, Mr. Grannis," re 
 sponded Trina. 
 
 "I tell you what, Doc," declared Heise, the harness-maker, shak 
 ing his finger impressively at the dentist, "you must fight it; you 
 must appeal to the courts; you ve been practicing too long to be 
 debarred now. The statute of limitations, you know." 
 
 "No, no," Trina had exclaimed, when the dentist had repeated 
 this advice to her. "No, no, don t go near the law courts. 7 know 
 them. The lawyers take all your money, and you lose your case. 
 We re bad off as it is, without lawing about it." 
 
 Then at last came the sale. McTeague and Trina, whom Miss 
 Baker had invited to her room for that day, sat there side by side, 
 holding each other s hands, listening nervously to the turmoil that 
 rose to them from the direction of their suite. From nine o clock till 
 dark the crowds came and went. All Polk Street seemed to have 
 invaded the suite, lured on by the red flag that waved from the 
 front windows. It was a fete, a veritable holiday, for the whole 
 neighborhood. People with no thought of buying presented them 
 selves. Young women the candy-store girls and florist s appren 
 tices came to see the fun, walking arm in arm from room to room, 
 making jokes about the pretty lithographs and mimicking the picture 
 of the two little girls saying their prayers. 
 
 "Look here," they would cry, "look here what she used for cur 
 tains Nottingham lace, actually! Whoever thinks of buying Not 
 tingham lace nowadays ? Say, don t that jar you ?" 
 
 "And a melodeon," another one would exclaim, lifting the sheet. 
 "A melodeon, when you can rent a piano for a dollar a week; and 
 say, I really believe they used to eat in the kitchen." 
 
 "Dollarn-half, dollarn-half, dollarn-half, give me two," intoned 
 the auctioneer from the second-hand store. By noon the crowd 
 became a jam. Wagons backed up to the curb outside and de- 
 
McTeague 177 
 
 parted heavily laden. In all directions people could be seen going 
 away from the house, carrying small articles of furniture a clock, 
 a water pitcher, a towel rack. Every now and then old Miss Baker, 
 who had gone below to see how things were progressing, returned 
 with reports of the foray. 
 
 "Mrs. Heise bought the chenille portieres. Mister Ryer made 
 a bid for your bed, but a man in a gray coat bid over him. It was 
 knocked down for three dollars and a half. The German shoe 
 maker on the next block bought the stone pug dog. I saw our post 
 man going away with a lot of the pictures. Zerkow has come, on my 
 word! the rags-bottles-sacks man; he s buying lots; he bought all 
 Doctor McTeague s gold tape and some of the instruments. Maria s 
 there too. That dentist on the corner took the dental engine, and 
 wanted to get the sign, the big gold tooth, and so on and so on. 
 Crudest of all, however, at least to Trina, was when Miss Baker 
 herself began to buy, unable to resist a bargain. The last time she 
 came up she carried a bundle of the gay tidies that used to hang over 
 the chair back. 
 
 "He offered them, three for a nickel," she explained to Trina, 
 "and I thought I d spend just a quarter. You don t mind, now, do 
 you, Mrs. McTeague?" 
 
 "Why, no, of course not, Miss Baker," answered Trina, bravely. 
 
 "They ll look very pretty on some of my chairs," went on the lit 
 tle old dressmaker, innocently. "See." She spread one of them on 
 a chair back for inspection. Trina s chin quivered. 
 
 "Oh, very pretty," she answered. 
 
 At length that dreadful day was over. The crowd dispersed. 
 Even the auctioneer went at last, and as he closed the door with a 
 bang, the reverberation that went through the suite gave evidence 
 of its emptiness. 
 
 "Come," said Trina to the dentist, "let s go down and look 
 take a last look." 
 
 They went out of Miss Baker s room and descended to the floor 
 below. On the stairs, however, they were met by Old Grannis. 
 In his hands he carried a little package. Was it possible that he 
 too had taken advantage of their misfortunes to join in the raid 
 upon the suite? 
 
 "I went in," he began timidly, "for for a few moments. This" 
 he indicated the little package he carried "this was put up. It 
 was of no value but to you. I I ventured to bid it in. I thought 
 perhaps" his hand went to his chin, "that you wouldn t mind ; that 
 
178 McTeague 
 
 in fact, I bought it for you as a present. Will you take it ?" He 
 handed the package to Trina and hurried on. Trina tore off the 
 wrappings. 
 
 It was the framed photograph of McTeague and his wife in their 
 wedding finery, the one that had been taken immediately after the 
 marriage. It represented Trina sitting very erect in a rep arm 
 chair, holding her wedding bouquet straight before her, McTeague 
 standing at her side, his left foot forward ; one hand upon her shoul 
 der, and the other thrust into the breast of his " Prince Albert" 
 coat, in the attitude of a statue of a Secretary of State. 
 
 "Oh, it was good of him, it was good of him," cried Trina, her 
 eyes filling again. "I had forgotten to put it away. Of course it 
 was not for sale." 
 
 They went on down the stairs, and arriving at the door of the 
 sitting-room, opened it and looked in. It was late in the afternoon, 
 and there was just light enough for the dentist and his wife to see 
 the results of that day of sale. Nothing was left, not even the carpet. 
 It was a pillage, a devastation, the barrenness of a field after the 
 passage of a swarm of locusts. The room had been picked and 
 stripped till only the bare walls and floor remained. Here where 
 they had been married, where the wedding supper had taken place, 
 where Trina had bade farewell to her father and mother, here 
 where she had spent those first few hard months of her married 
 life, where afterward she had grown to be happy and contented, 
 where she had passed the long hours of the afternoon at her 
 work of whittling, and where she and her husband had spent so 
 many evenings looking out of the window before the lamp was 
 lighted here in what had been her home, nothing was left but 
 echoes and the emptiness of complete desolation. Only oneTfhing 
 remained. On the wall between the windows, in its oval glass 
 frame, preserved by some unknown and fearful process, a melan 
 choly relic of a vanished happiness, unsold, neglected, and forgot 
 ten, a thing that nobody wanted, hung Trina s wedding bouquet. 
 
McTeague 1 79 
 
 XV 
 
 THEN the grind began. It would have been easier for the Mc- 
 Teagues to have faced their misfortunes had they befallen them im 
 mediately after their marriage, when their love for each other was 
 fresh and fine, and when they could have found a certain happiness 
 in helping each other and sharing each other s privations. Trina, no 
 doubt, loved her husband more than ever, in the sense that she felt 
 she belonged to him. But McTeague s affection for his wife was 
 dwindling a little every day had been dwindling for a long 
 time, in fact. He had become used to her by now. "3fie 
 was part of the order of things with which he found him 
 self surrounded. He saw nothing extraordinary about her; it 
 was no longer a pleasure for him to kiss her and take her in his 
 arms ; she was merely his wife. He did not dislike her ; he did not 
 love her. She was his wife, that was all. But he sadly missed and 
 regretted all those little animal comforts which in the old prosperous ^ 
 life Trina had managed to find for him. He missed the cabbage 
 soups and steaming chocolate that Trina had taught him to like ; he 
 missed his good tobacco that Trina had educated him to prefer ; he 
 missed the Sunday afternoon walks that she had caused him to sub 
 stitute in place of his nap in the operating chair ; and he missed the 
 bottled beer that she had induced him to drink in place of the steam 
 beer from Frenna s. In the end he grew morose and sulky, and 
 sometimes neglected to answer his wife when she spoke to him. 
 Besides this, Trina s avarice was a perpetual annoyance to him. 
 Oftentimes when a considerable alleviation of this unhappiness could 
 have been obtained at the expense of a nickel or a dime, Trina 
 refused the money with a pettishness that was exasperating. 
 
 "No, no," she would exclaim. "To ride to the park Sunday; 
 afternoon, that means ten cents, and I can t afford it." 
 
 "Let s walk there, then." 
 
 "I ve got to work/ 
 
 "But you ve worked morning and afternoon every day thia 
 week/ 
 
 "I don t care, I ve got to work." 
 
i8o McTeague 
 
 There had been a time when Trina had hated the idea of Mc 
 Teague drinking steam beer as common and vulgar. 
 
 "Say, let s have a bottle of beer to-night. We haven t had a 
 drop of beer in three weeks." 
 
 "We can t afford it. It s fifteen cents a bottle." 
 
 "But I haven t had a swallow of beer in three weeks." 
 
 "Drink steam beer, then. You ve got a nickel. I gave you a 
 quarter day before yesterday." 
 / "But I don t like steam beer now." 
 
 It was so with everything. Unfortunately, Trina had culti 
 vated tastes in McTeague which now could not be gratified. He had 
 come to be very proud of his silk hat and "Prince Albert" coat, and 
 liked to wear them on Sundays. Trina had made him sell both. 
 He preferred "Yale mixture" in his pipe ; Trina had made him 
 come down to "Mastiff," a five-cent tobacco with which he was once 
 contented, but now abhorred. He liked to wear clean cuffs. Trina 
 allowed him a fresh pair on Sundays only. At first these depriva 
 tions angered McTeague. Then, all of a sudden, he slipped back 
 into the old habits (that had been his before he knew Trina) with 
 an ease that was surprising. Sundays he dined at the car con 
 ductors coffee- joint once more, and spent the afternoon lying full 
 length upon the bed, cropful, stupid, warm, smoking his huge pipe, 
 drinking his steam beer, and playing his six mournful tunes upon his 
 concertina, dozing off to sleep toward four o clock. 
 
 The sale of their furniture had, after paying the rent and out 
 standing bills, netted about a hundred and thirty dollars. Trina 
 believed that the auctioneer from the second-hand store had swindled 
 and cheated them and had made a great outcry to no effect. But 
 she had arranged the affair with the auctioneer herself, and offset 
 her disappointment in the matter of the sale by deceiving her hus 
 band as to the real amount of the. returns. It was eas^JolieJd IVTc- 
 Teague, who took everything for granted ; and since the occasion of 
 IKT trickery with the money that was to have been sent to her 
 mother, Trina had found falsehood easier than ever. 
 
 "Seventy dollars is all the auctioneer gave me," she told her 
 husband; "and after paying the balance due on the rent, and the 
 grocer s bill, there s only fifty left." 
 
 "Only fifty?" murmured McTeague, wagging his head, "only 
 fifty? Think of that." 
 
 " ( >nly fifty," declared Trina. Afterward she said to herself with 
 a certain admiration for her cleverness : 
 
Mel Vague 181 
 
 "Couldn t save sixty dollars much easier than that,** and she had 
 added the hundred and thirty to the little hoard in the chamois-skin 
 bag and brass match-box in the bottom of her trunk. 
 
 In these first months of their misfortunes the routine of the Mo 
 Teagues was as follows: They rose at seven and breakfasted in their 
 room, Trina cooking the very meagre meal on an oil stove. Imme 
 diately after breakfast Trina sat down to her work of whittling 
 the Noah s ark animals, and McTeague took himself off to walk 
 down town. He had by the greatest good luck secured a position 
 with a manufacturer of surgical instruments, where his manual dex 
 terity in the making of excavators, pluggers, and other dental con 
 trivances stood him in fairly good stead, lie lunched at a sailors 
 boarding-house near the water front and in the afternoon worked till 
 six. He was home at six-thirty, and he and Trina had supper to 
 gether in the "ladies dining-parlor," an adjunct of the car conduc 
 tors coffee-joint. Trina, meanwhile, had worked at her whittling 
 all day long, with but half an hour s interval for lunch, which she 
 herself prepared upon the oil stove. In the evening they were both 
 so tired that they were in no mood for conversation, and went to 
 bed early, worn out, harried, nervous, and cross. 
 
 Trina was not quite so scrupulously tidy now as in the old days. ) 
 At one time while whittling the Noah s ark animals she had worn 
 gloves. She never wore them now. She still took pride in neatly 
 combing and coiling her wonderful black hair, but as the days 
 passed she found it more and more comfortable to work in her blue 
 flannel wrapper, \\hittlings and chips accumulated under the win 
 dow where she did her work, and she was at no great pains to cle.ir 
 the air of the room vitiated by the fumes of the oil stove and !UM\ \ 
 with the smell of cooking. It was not gay, that life. The room 
 itself was not gay. The huge double bed sprawled over nearly a 
 fourth of the available space ; the angles of Trina s trunk and the 
 washstand projected into the room from the walls, and barked 
 shins and scraped ellxnvs. Streaks and spots of the non-poisonous" 
 paint that Trina used were upon the walls and woodwork. How 
 ever, in one corner of the room, next the window, monstrous, dis 
 torted, brilliant, shining with a light of its own, stood the dentist s I 
 sign, the enormous golden tooth, the tooth of a Nrobdingnag. 
 
 One afternoon in September, about four months after the Mc- 
 Teagues had left their suite, Trina was at her work by the window. 
 She had whittled some half-dozen sets of animals, and was now 
 busy painting them and making the arks. Little pots of "non- 
 
1 82 McTeague 
 
 poisonous" paint stood at her elbow on the table, togethe^with_ajbox 
 of labels that_read, "Made in France." Her huge clasp-knife was 
 stuck into the 7 under side of the table. She was now occupied solely 
 with the brushes and the glue-pot. She turned the little figures in 
 her ringers with a wonderful lightness and deftness, painting the 
 chickens Naples yellow, the elephants blue gray, the horses Van 
 dyke brown, adding a dot of Chinese white for the eyes, and sticking 
 in the ears and tail with a drop of glue. The animals once done, 
 she put together and painted the arks, some dozen of them, all 
 windows and no doors, each one opening only by a lid which was 
 half the roof. She had all the work she could handle these days, 
 for, from this time till a week before Christmas, Uncle Oelbermann 
 could take as many "Noah s ark sets" as she could make. 
 
 Suddenly Trina paused in her work, looking expectantly toward 
 the door. McTeague came in. 
 
 "Why, Mac," exclaimed Trina. "It s only three o clock. What 
 are you home so early for? Have they discharged you?" 
 
 "They ve fired me," said McTeague, sitting down on the bed. 
 
 "Fired you! What for?" 
 
 "I don know. Said the times were getting hard an they had 
 to let me go." 
 
 Trina let her paint-stained hands fall into her lap. 
 
 "Oh!" she cried. "If we don t have the hardest luck of any two 
 people I ever heard of. What can you do now? Is there another 
 place like that where they make surgical instruments?" 
 
 "Huh? No, I don know. There s three more." 
 
 "Well, you must try them right away. Go down there right 
 now." 
 
 "Huh? Right now? No, I m tired. I ll go down in the morn 
 ing." 
 
 "Mac," cried Trina, in alarm, "what are you thinking of? You 
 talk as though we were millionaires. You must go down this min 
 ute. You re losing money every second you sit there." She goaded 
 the huge fellow to his feet again, thrust his hat into his hands, and 
 pushed him out of the door, he obeying the while, docile and obedient 
 as a big cart horse. He was on the stairs when she came running 
 after him. 
 
 "Mac, they paid you off, didn t they, when they discharged you ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then you must have some money. Give it to me." 
 
 The dentist heaved a shoulder uneasily. 
 
McTeague 1 83 
 
 /No, I don want to." 
 
 "I ve got to have that money. There s no more oil for the stove, 
 and I must buy some more meal tickets to-night." 
 
 "Always after me about money," muttered the dentist; but he 
 emptied his pockets for her, nevertheless. 
 
 "I you ve taken it all," he grumbled. "Better leave me some 
 thing for car fare. It s going to rain." 
 
 "Pshaw ! You can walk just as well as not. A big fellow like 
 you fraid of a , iitjtle walk ; and it ain t going to rain." 
 
 Trina hadilied N again both as to the want of oil for the stove and 
 the commutation ticket for +he restaurant But she knew by in 
 stinct that McTeague had money about him, and she did not intend 
 to let it -go out of the house. She listened intently until she was 
 sure .McTeague was gone. Then she hurriedly opened her trunk 
 and hid the money in the chamois bag at the bottom. 
 
 The dentist presented himself at every one of the makers of sur 
 gical instruments that afternoon and was promptly turned away in 
 each case. Then it came on to rain, a fine, cold drizzle, that chilled 
 him and wet him to the bone. He had no umbrella, and Trina had > 
 not left him even five cents for car fare. He started to walk home 
 through the rain. It was a long way to Polk Street, as the last 
 manufactory he had visited was beyond even Folsom Street, and 
 not far from the city front. 
 
 By the time McTeague reached Polk Street his teeth were chat 
 tering with the cold. He was wet from head to foot. As he was 
 passing Heise s harness shop a sudden deluge of rain overtook him 
 and he was obliged to dodge into the vestibule for shelter. He, who 
 loved to be warm, to sleep and to be well fed, was icy cold, was ex 
 hausted and footsore from tramping the city. He could look for 
 ward to nothing better than a badly cooked supper at the coffee- 
 joint hot meat on a cold plate, half done suet pudding, muddy 
 coffee, and bad bread, and he was cold, miserably cold, and wet to 
 the bone. All at once a sudden rage against Trina took possession 
 of him. It was her fault. She knew it was going to rain, and she / 
 had not. let him have a nickel for car fare she who had five thou 
 sand dollars. She let him walk the streets in the cold and in the 
 rain. "Miser," he growled behind his mustache. "Miser, nasty 
 little old miser. You re worse than old Zerkow, always nagging 
 about money, monev^ an4 yo^i jfot five thousand dollars. You got 
 more, an you live, as much more i7i k no ^ e ^ a room > an< ^ vou won t 
 drink any decent * Mp stand it much longer. She 
 
1 84 McTeague 
 
 knew it was going to rain. She knew it. Didn t I tett her? And 
 she drives me out of my own home in the rain, for me to get 
 money for her ; more money, and she takes it. She took that money 
 from me that I earned. "1 wasn t hers ; it was mine, I earned it- 
 and not a nickel for car fare. She don t care if I get wet and get a 
 cold and die. No, she don t, as long as she s warm and s got her 
 money." He became more and more indignant at the picture he 
 made of himself. "I ain t going to stand it much longer," he re 
 peated. 
 
 "Why, hello, Doc. Is that you?" exclaimed Heise, opening the 
 door of the harness shop behind him. -"Come in out of the wet. 
 Why, you re soaked through," he added as he and McTeague came 
 back into the shop, that reeked of oiled leather. "Didn t you have 
 any umbrella ? Ought to have taken a car." 
 
 "I guess so I guess so," murmured the dentist, Confused. His? 
 teeth were chattering. 
 
 "You re going to catch your death-a-cold," exclaimed Heise, 
 "Tell you what," he said, reaching for his hat, "come in next door 
 to Frenna s and have something to warm you up. I ll get the old 
 lady to mind the shop." He called Mrs. Heise down from the floor 
 above and took McTeague into Joe Frenna s saloon, which was two 
 doors above his harness shop. 
 
 "Whiskey and gum twice, Joe," said he to the barkeeper as he 
 and the dentist approached the bar. 
 
 "Huh? What?" said McTeague. "Whiskey? No, I can t drink 
 whiskey. It kind of disagrees with me." 
 
 "Oh, the hell!" returned Heise, easily. "Take it as medicine. 
 You ll get your death-a-cold if you stand round soaked like that. 
 Two whiskey and gum, Joe." 
 
 McTeague emptied the small whiskey glass at a single enormous 
 gulp. 
 
 "That s the way," said Heise, approvingly. "Do you good." 
 He drank his off slowly. 
 
 "I d I d ask you to have a drink with me, Heise," said the den 
 tist, who had an indistinct idea of the amenities of the barroom, 
 "only," he added shamefacedly, "only you see, I don t believe I got 
 any change/ His anger against Trina, heated by the whiskey he 
 had drunk, flamed up afresh. What a humiliating position for 
 Trina to place him in, not to leave him thp ntice of a drink with a 
 friend, she who had five thousaj*6ney. Give it 
 
 "Sha! That s all right^roer uneasily. -e, nibbling on a 
 
McTeague 185 
 
 grain of coffee. "Want another? Hey? This is my treat. Two 
 more of the same, Joe." 
 
 McTeague hesitated. It was lamentably true that whiskey did 
 not agree with him ; he knew it well enough. However, by this time 
 he felt very comfortably warm at the pit of his stomach. The blood 
 was beginning to circulate in his chilled finger-tips and in his 
 soggy, wet feet. He had had a hard day of it ; in fact, the last week, 
 the last month, the last three or four months, had been hard. He 
 deserved a little consolation. Nor could Trina object to this. It 
 wasn t costing a cent. He drank again with Heise. 
 
 "Get up here to the stove and warm yourself," urged Heise, 
 drawing up a couple of chairs and cocking his feet upon the guard. 
 The two fell to talking while McTeague s draggled coat and trou 
 sers smoked. 
 
 "What a dirty turn that was that Marcus Schouler did you!" 
 said Heise, wagging his head. "You ought to have fought that, 
 Doc, sure. You d been practicing too long." They discussed this 
 question some ten or fifteen minutes and then Heise rose. 
 
 "Well, this ain t earning any money. I got to get back to the 
 shop." McTeague got up as well, and the pair started for the door. 
 Just as they were going out Ryer met them. 
 
 "Hello, hello," he cried. "Lord, what a wet day! You two 
 are going the wrong way. You re going to have a drink with me. j 
 Three whiskey punches, Joe." 
 
 "No, no," answered McTeague, shaking his head. "Pm going 
 back home. I ve had two glasses of whiskey already." 
 
 "Sha!" cried Heise, catching his arm. "A strapping big chap 
 like you ain t afraid of a little whiskey." 
 
 "Well, I I I got to go right afterward," protested Mc 
 Teague. 
 
 About half an hour after the dentist had left to go down town, 
 Maria Macapa had come in to see Trina. Occasionally Maria 
 dropped in on Trina in this fashion and spent an hour or so chat 
 ting with her while she worked. At first Trina had been inclined to 
 resent these intrusions of the Mexican woman, but of late she had 
 begun to tolerate them. Her day was long and cheerless at the 
 best, and there was no one to talk to. Trina even fancied that old 
 Miss Baker had come to be less cordial since their misfortune. 
 Maria retailed to her all the gossip of the flat and the neighbor 
 hood, and, which was much more interesting, told her of her troubles 
 with Zerkow. 
 
1 86 McTeague 
 
 Trina said to herself that Maria was common and vulgar, but 
 one had to have some diversion, and Trina could talk and listen 
 without interrupting her work. On this particular occasion Maria 
 was much excited over Zerkow s demeanor of late. 
 
 "He s gettun worse an worse," she informed Trina as she sat 
 on the edge of the bed, her chin in her hand. "He says he knows I 
 got the dishes and am hidun them from him. The other day I 
 thought he d gone off with his wagon, and I was doin a bit of ir n- 
 ing, an by an by all of a sudden I saw him peeping at me through 
 the crack of the door. I never let on that I saw him, and, honest, he 
 stayed there over two hours, watchun everything I did. I could 
 just feel his eyes on the back of my neck all the time. Last Sun 
 day he took down part of the wall, cause he said he d seen me 
 making figures on it. Well, I was, but it was just the wash list. 
 All the time he says he ll kill me if I don t tell !" 
 
 "Why, what do you stay with him for ?" exclaimed Trina. "I d 
 be deathly fraid of a man like that; and he did take a knife to 
 you once." 
 
 "Hoh ! he won t kill me, never fear. If he d kill me he d never 
 know where the dishes were; that s -what he thinks." 
 
 "But I can t understand, Maria; you told him about those gold 
 dishes yourself." 
 
 "Never, never! I never saw such a lot of crazv folks as you 
 are." 
 
 "But you say he hits you sometimes." 
 
 "Ah!" said Maria, tossing her head scornfully, "I ain t afraid 
 of him. He takes his horsewhip to me now and then, but I can 
 always manage. I say, If you touch me with that, then III never 
 tell you. Just pretending, you know, and he drops it as though it 
 was red hot. Say, Mrs. McTeague, have you got any tea? Let s 
 make a cup of tea over the stove." 
 
 "No, no," cried Trina, with niggardly apprehension; "no, I 
 haven t got a bit of tea." Trina s stinginess had increased to such 
 an extent that it had gone beyond the mere hoarding of money. She 
 grudged even the food that she and McTeague ate, and even brought 
 away half loaves of bread, lumps of sugar, and frtrit from the car 
 conductors coffee-joint. She hid these ptlferings away on the shelf 
 by the window, and often managed to make a very creditable lunch 
 from them, enjoying the meal with the greater relish because it cost 
 her nothing. 
 
 "No, Maria, I haven t got a bit of tea," she said, shaking her 
 
McTeague 187 
 
 head decisively. "Hark, ain t that Mac ?" she added, her chin in the 
 air. That s his step, sure." 
 
 Well, I m going to skip," said Maria. She left hurriedly, pass 
 ing the dentist in the hall just outside the door. 
 
 "Well ?" said Trina interrogatively as her husband entered. Mc 
 Teague did not answer. He hung his hat on the hook behind the 
 door and dropped heavily into a chair. 
 
 "Well?" asked Trina, anxiously, "how did you make out, 
 Mac?" 
 
 Still the dentist pretended not to hear, scowling fiercely at his 
 muddy boots. 
 
 "Tell me, Mac, I want to know. Did you get a place? Did 
 you get caught in the rain?" 
 
 "Did I? Did I?" cried the dentist, sharply, an alacrity in his 
 manner and voice that Trina had never observed before. 
 
 "Look at me. Look at me/ 5 he went on, speaking with an un 
 wonted rapidity, his wits sharp, his ideas succeeding each other 
 quickly. "Look at me, drenched through, shivering cold. I ve 
 walked the city over. Caught in the rain ! Yes, I guess I did get 
 caught in the rain, and it ain t your fault I didn t catch my death-a- 
 cold ; wouldn t even let me have a nickel for car fare." 
 
 "But, Mac," protested Trina, "I didn t know it was going to 
 rain." 
 
 The dentist put back his head and laughed scornfully. His face 
 was very red, and his small eyes twinkled. "Hoh! no, you didn t 
 know it was going to rain. Didn t I tell you it was ?" he exclaimed, 
 suddenly angry again. "Oh, you re a daisy, you are. Think I m 
 going to put up with your foolishness all the time ? Who s the boss, 
 you or I?" 
 
 "Why, Mac, I never saw you this way before. You talk like a 
 different man." 
 
 "Well, I am a different man," retorted the dentist, savagely. 
 "You can t make small of me always." 
 
 "Well, never mind that. You know I m not trying to make small 
 of vou. But never mind that. Did you get a place?" 
 
 "Give me my money," exclaimed McTeague, jumping up briskly. 
 There was an activity, a positive nimbleness about the huge blond 
 giant that had never been his before; also his stupidity, the slug 
 gishness of his brain, seemed to be unusually stimulated. 
 
 Give me my money, the money I gave you as I was going 
 away." 
 
1 88 McTeague 
 
 "I can t," exclaimed Trina. "I paid the grocer s bill with it 
 while you were gone." 
 
 "Don t believe you." 
 
 "Truly, truly, Mac. Do you think I d lie to you ? Do you think 
 I d lower myself to do that?" 
 
 "Well, the next time I earn any money I ll keep it myself." 
 
 "But tell me, Mac, did you get a place?" 
 
 McTeague turned his back on her. 
 
 "Tell me, Mac, please, did you?" 
 
 The dentist jumped up and thrust his face close to hers, his 
 heavy jaw protruding, his little eyes twinkling meanly. 
 
 "No," he shouted. "No, no, no. Do you hear? No." 
 
 Trina cowered before him. Then suddenly she began to sob 
 aloud, weeping partly at his strange brutality, partly at the disap 
 pointment of his failure to find employment. 
 
 McTeague cast a contemptuous glance about him, a glance that 
 embraced the dingy, cheerless room, the rain streaming down the 
 panes of the one window, and the figure of his weeping wife. 
 
 "Oh, ain t this all fine?" he exclaimed. "Ain t it lovely?" 
 
 "It s not my fault/ sobbed Trina. 
 
 "It is, too," vociferated McTeague. "It is, too. We could live 
 like Christians and decent people if you wanted to. You got more n 
 five thousand dollars, and you re so damned stingy that you d rather 
 live in a rat hole and make me live there, too before you d part 
 with a nickel of it. I tell you I m sick and tired of the whole 
 business." 
 
 An allusion to her lottery money never failed to rouse Trina. 
 
 "And I ll tell you this much, too," she cried, winking back the 
 tears. "Now that you re out of a job, we can t afford even to live 
 in your rat hole, as you call it. We ve got to find a cheaper place 
 than this even." 
 
 "What!" exclaimed the dentist, purple with rage. "What, get 
 into a worse hole in the wall than this ? Well, we ll see if we will. 
 We ll just see about that. You re going to do just as I tell you 
 after this, Trina McTeague," and once more he thrust his face close 
 to hers. 
 
 "/ know what s the matter," cried Trina, with a half sob; 
 "I know, I can smell it on your breath. You ve been drinking 
 whiskey." 
 
 "Yes, I ve been drinking whiskey," retorted her husband. "I ve 
 been drinking whiskey. Have you got anything to say about it? 
 
McTeague 189 
 
 Ah, yes, you re right, I ve been drinking whiskey. What have you 
 got to say about my drinking whiskey? Let s hear it." 
 
 "Oh! Oh! Oh!" sobbed Trina, covering her face with her 
 hands. McTeague caught her wrists in one palm and pulled them 
 down. Trina s pale face was streaming with tears ; her long, nar 
 row blue eyes were swimming; her adorable little chin upraised and 
 quivering. 
 
 "Let s hear what you got to say," exclaimed McTeague. 
 
 "Nothing, nothing," said Trina, between her sobs. 
 
 "Then stop that noise. Stop it, do you hear me? Stop it." He 
 threw up his open hand threateningly. "Stop!" he exclaimed. 
 
 Trina looked at him fearfully, half blinded with weeping. Her 
 husband s thick mane of yellow hair was disordered and rumpled 
 upon his great square-cut head; his big red ears were redder than 
 ever; his face was purple; the thick eyebrows were knotted over 
 the small, twinkling eyes; the heavy yellow mustache, that smelled 
 of alcohol, drooped over the massive, protruding chin, salient, like 
 that of the carnivora; the veins were swollen and throbbing on his 
 thick red neck; while over her head Trina saw his upraised palm, 
 calloused, enormous. 
 
 "Stop!" he exclaimed. And Trina, watching fearfully, saw the 
 palm suddenly contract into a fist, a fist that was hard as a wooden 
 mallet, the fist of the old-time car-boy. And then her ancient terror 
 of him, the intuitive fear of the male, leaped to life again. She 
 was afraid of him. Every nerve of her quailed and shrank from him. 
 She choked back her sobs, catching her breath. 
 
 "There," growled the dentist, releasing her, "that s more like. 
 Now," he went on, fixing her with his little eyes, "now listen to me. 
 I m beat out. I ve walked the city over ten miles, I guess an I m 
 going to bed, an I don t want to be bothered. You understand ? I 
 want to be let alone." Trina was silent. 
 
 "Do you hear?" he snarled. 
 
 "Yes, Mac." 
 
 The dentist took off his coat, his collar and necktie, unbuttoned 
 his vest, and slipped his heavy-soled boots from his big feet. Then 
 he stretched himself upon the bed and rolled over toward the wall. 
 In a few minutes the sound of his snoring filled the room. 
 
 Trina craned her neck and looked at her husband over the foot 
 board of the bed. She saw his red, congested face ; the huge mouth 
 wide open; his unclean shirt, with its frayed wristbands; and his 
 huge feet incased in thick woolen socks. Then her grief and the 
 
190 McTeague 
 
 sense of her unhappiness returned more poignant than ever. She 
 stretched her arms out in front of her on her work-table, and, burying 
 her face in them, cried and sobbed as though her heart would break. 
 
 The rain continued. The panes of the single window ran with 
 sheets of water ; the eaves dripped incessantly. It grew darker. The 
 tiny, grimy room, full of the smells of cooking and of "non-poison 
 ous" paint, took on an aspect of desolation and cheerlessness lament 
 able beyond words. The canary in its little gilt prison chittered 
 feebly from time to time. Sprawled at full length upon the bed, 
 the dentist snored and snored, stupefied, inert, his legs wide apart, 
 his hands lying palm upward at his sides. 
 
 At last Trina raised her head, with a long, trembling breath. 
 She rose, and going over to the washstand, poured some water from 
 the pitcher into the basin, and washed her face and swollen eyelids, 
 and rearranged her hair. Suddenly, as she was about to return to 
 her work, she was struck with an idea. 
 
 "I wonder," she said to herself, "I wonder where he got the 
 money to buy his whiskey." She searched the pockets of his coat, 
 which he had flung into a corner of the room, and even came up to 
 him as he lay upon the bed and went through the pockets of his 
 vest and trousers. She found nothing. 
 
 "I wonder," she murmured, "I wonder if he s got any money 
 he don t tell me about. I ll have to look out for that." 
 
 XVI 
 
 A WEEK passed, then a fortnight, then a month. It was a 
 month of the greatest anxiety and unquietude forTrmsu McTeague 
 was out of a job, could find nothing to do ; and Trina, who saw the 
 impossibility of saving as much money as usual out of her earnings 
 under the present conditions, was on the lookout for cheaper quar 
 ters. In spite of his outcries and sulky resistance Trina had in 
 duced her husband to consent to such a move, bewildering him with 
 a torrent of phrases and marvelous columns of figures by which she 
 proved conclusively that they were in a condition but one remove 
 from downright destitution. 
 
 The dentist continued idle. Since his ill success with the 
 manufacturers of surgical instruments he had made but two at 
 tempts to secure a job. Trina had gone to see Uncle Oelbermann 
 
McTeague 191 
 
 and had obtained for McTeague a position in the shipping depart 
 ment of the wholesale toy store. However, it was a position that 
 involved a certain amount of ciphering, and McTeague had been 
 obliged to throw it up in two days. 
 
 Then for a time they had entertained a wild idea that a place on 
 the police force could be secured for McTeague. He could pass the 
 physical examination with flying colors, and Ryer, who had become 
 the secretary of the Polk Street Improvement Club, promised the 
 requisite political "pull." If McTeague had shown a certain energy 
 in the matter the attempt might have been successful; but he was 
 too stupid, or of late had become too listless to exert himself greatly, 
 and the affair resulted only in a violent quarrel with Ryer. 
 
 McTeague had lost Jiis_ambitiQtTL He di 
 
 situation. All he wanted was a warm place to sleep and three good 
 meals a day. At the first at the very first he had chafed at his 
 idleness and had spent the days with his wife in their one narrow 
 room, walking back and forth with the restlessness of a caged brute, 
 or sitting motionless for hours, watching Trina at her work, feeling 
 a dull glow of shame at the idea that she was supporting him. This 
 feeling had worn off quickly, however. Trina s work was only 
 hard when she chose to make it so, and as a rule she supported 
 their misfortunes with a silent fortitude. 
 
 Then, wearied at his inaction and feeling the need of movement 
 and exercise, McTeague would light his pipe and take a turn upon 
 the great avenue one block above Polk Street. A gang of laborers 
 were digging the foundations for a large brown-stone house, and 
 McTeague found interest and amusement in leaning over the barrier 
 that surrounded the excavations and watching the progress of the 
 work. He came to see it every afternoon ; by and by he even got to 
 know the foreman who superintended the job, and the two had long 
 talks together. Then McTeague would return to Polk Street and 
 find Heise in the back room of the harness shop, and occasionally 
 the day ended with some half dozen drinks of whiskey at Joe 
 Frenna s saloon. 
 
 It was curious to note the effect of the alcohol upon the dentist. \ 
 It did not make him drunk, it made him vicious. So far from/ 
 being stupefied, he became, after the fourth glass, active, alert, quick 
 witted, even talkative ; a certain wickedness stirred in him then ; he 
 was intractable, mean; and when he had drunk a little more heavily 
 than usual, he found a certain pleasure in annoying arid exasperat- .. 
 ing Trina, even in abusing and hurting her. 
 
McTeague 
 
 It had begun on the evening of Thanksgiving Day, when Heise r 
 had taken McTeague out to dinner with him. The dentist on this 
 occasion had drunk very freely. He and Heise had returned to 
 Polk Street toward ten o clock, and Heise at once suggested a couple 
 of drinks at Frenna s. 
 
 "All right, all right," said McTeague. "Drinks, that s the word. 
 I ll go home and get some money and meet you at Joe s." 
 
 Trina was awakened by her husband pinching her arm. 
 
 "Oh, Mac," she cried, jumping up in bed with a little scream, 
 "how you hurt ! Oh, that hurt me dreadfully." 
 
 "Give me a little money," answered the dentist, grinning, and 
 pinching her again. 
 
 "I haven t a cent. There s not a oh, Mac, will you stop? I 
 won t have you pinch me that way." 
 
 "Hurry up," answered her husband, calmly, nipping the flesh 
 of her shoulder between his thumb and ringer. "Heise s waiting 
 for me/ Trina wrenched from him with a sharp intake of breath, 
 frowning with pain, and caressing her shoulder. 
 
 "Mac, you ve no idea how that hurts. Mac, stop!" 
 
 "Give me some money, then." 
 
 In the end Trina had to comply. She gave him half a dollar 
 from her dress pocket, protesting that it was the only piece of money 
 she had. 
 
 "One more, just for luck," said McTeague, pinching her again; 
 "and another." 
 
 "How can you how can you hurt a woman so !" exclaimed 
 Trina, beginning to cry with the pain. 
 
 "Ah, now, cry" retorted the dentist. "That s right, cry. I 
 never saw such a little fool." He went out, slamming the door in 
 disgust. 
 
 But McTeague never became a drunkard in the generally re 
 ceived sense of the ferm. He did riot "o!fink to excess more than 
 two or three times in a month, and never upon any occasion did he 
 become maudlin or staggering. Perhaps his nerves were naturally 
 too dull to admit of any excitation; perhaps he did not really care 
 for the whiskey, and only drank because Heise and the other men 
 at Frenna s did. Trina could often reproach him with drinking too 
 much; she never could say that .he was drunk. The alcohol had Jts 
 effect for all that. ... It roused the man, or rather""the brute in the 
 man, and now not only roused it, but goaded it to evil. McTeague s 
 nature changed. It was not only the alcohol, it was idleness and a 
 
McTeague 193 
 
 general throwing off of the good influence his wife had had over 
 him in the days of their prosperity. ^McTeague disliked Trina. 
 She was a perpetual irritation to him. She annoyed hirrP5e"cauBe 
 she was so small, so prettily made, so invariably correct and pre- 
 cise. Her avarice incessantly harassed him. Her industry was a 
 constant reproach to him. She seemed to flaunt her work defiantly 
 in his face. It was the red flag in the eyes of the bull. One time 
 when he had just come back from Frenna s and had been sitting in 
 the chair near her, silently watching her at her work, he exclaimed 
 all of a sudden : 
 
 "Stop working. Stop it, I tell you. Put em away. Put em all 
 away, or I ll pinch _you." 
 
 "But why why?" Trina protested. 
 
 The dentist cuffed her__ears. "I won t have you work." He 
 took her knife andlief^paint-pots away, and made her sit idly in the 
 window the rest of the afternoon. 
 
 It was, however, only when his wits had been stirred with alcohol 
 that the dentist was brutal to his wife. At other times, say three 
 weeks of every month, she was merely an incumbrance to him. 
 They often quarreled about Tina s money, her savings. The den 
 tist was bent upon having at least a part of them. What he would 
 do with the money once he had it, he did not precisely know. He 
 would spend it in royal fashion, no doubt, feasting continually, buy 
 ing himself wonderful clothes. The miner s idea of money quickly 
 gained and lavishly squandered persisted in his mind. As for TrinaT 
 tHe~ more her husband stormed, the tighter she drew the strings 
 of the little chamois-skin bag that she hid at the bottom of her trunk 
 underneath her bridal dress. Her five thousand dollars invested in 
 Uncle Oelbermann s business was a glittering, splendid dream which 
 came to her almost every hour of the day as a solace and a com 
 pensation for all her unhappiness. 
 
 At times, when she knew that McTeague was far from home, 
 she would lock her door, open her trunk, and pile all her little hoard 
 on her table. By now it was four hundred and seven ^dollars and 
 fifty cents. Trina would play with this money by the hour, piling 
 it, and repiling it, or gathering IT all into one heap, and drawing 
 back to the furthest corner of the room to note the effect, her head 
 on one side. She polished the gold pieces with a mixture of soap 
 and ashes until they shone, wiping them carefully on her apron. Or, 
 again, she would draw the heap lovingly toward her and bury her 
 face in it, delighted at the smell of it and the feel of the smooth, 
 I III NORRIS 
 
194 McTeague 
 
 /cool metal on her cheeks. She even put the smaller gold pieces in 
 her mouth, and jingled them there. She loved her money with an 
 intensity that she could hardly express. She would plunge her 
 small ringers into the pile with little murmurs of affection, her long, 
 narrow eyes half closed and shining, her breath coming in long sighs. 
 
 "Ah, the dear money, the dear money," she would whisper. "I 
 love you so! All mine, every penny of it. No one shall ever, ever 
 get you. How I ve worked for you! How I ve slaved and saved 
 for you ! And I m going to get more ; I m going to get more, more, 
 more; a little every day." 
 
 She was still looking for cheaper quarters. Whenever she 
 could spare a moment from her work, she would put on her hat and 
 range up and down the entire neighborhood from Sutter to Sacra 
 mento Streets, going into all the alleys and by-streets, her head in 
 the air, looking for the "Rooms-to-let" sign. But she was in de 
 spair. All the cheaper tenements were occupied. She could find 
 no room more reasonable than the one she and the dentist now 
 occupied. 
 
 As time went on, McTeague s idleness became habitual. He 
 drank no more whiskey than at first, but his dislike for Triria in- 
 creased-with every day of their poverty, with every day of Trina s 
 persistent stinginess. At times fortunately rare he was more 
 than ever brutal to her. He would box her ears or hit her a great 
 blow with the back of a hair-brush, or even with his closed fist. 
 His old-time affection for his "little woman," unable to stand the 
 test of privation, had lapsed by degrees, and what little of it was left 
 was changed, distorted, and made monstrous by the-alcohol. 
 
 The people about the house and the clerks at the provision stores 
 often remarked that Trina s finger-tips were swollen and the nails 
 purple as though they had been shut in a door. Indeed, this was 
 the explanation she gave. The fact of the matter was that Mc 
 Teague, when he had been drinkmg 2 _use4_to bite thejm J _.cj^n^Hmg- 
 ^n^grmdrn^tEem^jtri his immense teeth, alway^jngejiious enough 
 to remember which were the sorest. Sbmetimes~"he extorted money 
 from her 1By~lriis~means7~TOf " as often as not he did it for his own 
 satisfaction. 
 
 And in some strange, inexplicable way this brutality made Trina 
 all the more affectionate; aroused in her a morbid, unwholesome 
 l ve of sujjmi&sion, a ^strange^__mmatural_ pleasure in yielding, in 
 v surrendering herself to the will of an irresistible, virile power. 
 
 Trina s emotions had narrowed with the narrowing of her daily 
 
McTeague 195 
 
 <\ 
 
 life. They reduced themselves at last to but two, her passion for \ 
 her money and her perverted love for her husband when he wasj 
 brutal. She was a strange woman during these days. 
 
 Trina had come to be on very intimate terms with Maria Macapa, 
 and in the end the dentist s wife and the maid of all work became 
 great friends. Maria was constantly in and out of Trina s room, 
 and, whenever she could, Trina threw a shawl over her head and 
 returned Maria s calls. Trina could reach Zerkow s dirty house with 
 out going into the street. The back yard of the flat had a gate that 
 opened into a little inclosure where Zerkow kept his decrepit horse 
 and ramshackle wagon, and from thence Trina could enter directly 
 into Maria s kitchen. Trina made long visits to Maria during the 
 morning in her dressing-gown and curl papers, and the two talked 
 at great length over a cup of tea served on the edge of the sink or a 
 corner of the laundry table. The talk was all of their husbands 
 and of what to do when they came home in aggressive moods. 
 
 "You never ought to fight um," advised Maria. "It only makes 
 um worse. Just hump your back, and it s soonest over." 
 
 They told each other of their husbands brutalities, taking a 
 strange sort of pride in recounting some particularly savage blow, 
 each trying to make out that her own husband was the most cruel. 
 They critically compared each other s bruises, each one glad when 
 she could exhibit the worst. They exaggerated, they invented de 
 tails, and, as if proud of their beatings, as if glorying in their hus 
 bands mishandling, lied to each other, magnifying their own mal 
 treatment. They had long and excited arguments as to which 
 were the most effective means of punishment, the rope s ends and 
 cart whips such as Zerkow used, or the fists and backs of hair 
 brushes affected by McTeague. Maria contended that the lash of 
 the whip hurt the most; Trina, that the butt did the most injury. 
 
 Maria showed Trina the holes in the walls and the loosened 
 boards in the flooring where Zerkow had been searching for the gold 
 plate. Of late he had been digging in the back yard and had ran 
 sacked the hay in his horse-shed for the concealed leather chest he 
 imagined he would find. But he was becoming impatient, evidently. 
 
 "The way he goes on," Maria told Trina, "is somethun dreadful. 
 He s gettun regularly sick with it got a fever every night don t 
 sleep, and when he does, talks to himself. Says More n a hundred 
 pieces, an every one of em gold. More n a hundred pieces, an 
 every one of em gold. Then he ll whale me with his whip, and 
 shout, You know wherj it is. Tell me, tell me, you swine, or I ll do 
 
McTeague 
 
 for you. An then he ll get down on his knees and whimper, and 
 beg me to tell um where I ve hid it. He s just gone plum crazy. 
 Sometimes he has regular fits, he gets so mad, and rolls on the floor 
 and scratches himself." 
 
 One morning in November, about ten o clock, Trina pasted a 
 "Made in France" label on the bottom of a Noah s ark, and leaned 
 back in her chair with a long sigh of relief. She had just finished a 
 large Christmas order for Uncle Oelbermann, and there was nothing 
 else she could do that morning. The bed had not yet been made, nor 
 had the breakfast things been washed. Trina hesitated for mo 
 ment, then put her chin in the air indifferently. 
 
 "Bah!" she said, "let them go till this afternoon. I don t care 
 when the room is put to rights, and I know Mac don t." She deter 
 mined that instead of making the bed or washing the dishes she 
 would go and call on Miss Baker on the floor below. The little 
 dressmaker might ask her to stay to lunch, and that would be 
 something saved, as the dentist had announced his intention 
 that morning of taking a long walk out to the Presidio to be 
 gone all day. 
 
 But Trina rapped on Miss Baker s door in vain that morning. 
 She was out. Perhaps she was gone to the florist s to buy some 
 geranium seeds. However, Old Grannis s door stood a little ajar, 
 and on hearing Trina at Miss Baker s room, the old Englishman 
 came out into the hall. 
 
 "She s gone out," he said uncertainly, and in a half whisper, 
 "went out about half an hour ago. I I think she went to the drug 
 store to get some wafers for the goldfish." 
 
 "Don t you go to your dog hospital any more, Mister Grannis?" 
 said Trina, leaning against the balustrade in the hall, willing to talk 
 a moment. 
 
 Old Grannis stood in the doorway of his room, in his carpet slip 
 pers and faded corduroy jacket that he wore when at home. 
 
 "Why why," he said, hesitating, tapping his chin thoughtfully. 
 "You see, I m thinking of giving up the little hospital." 
 
 "Giving it up?" 
 
 "You see, the people at the book store where I buy my pamphlets 
 have found out I told them of my contrivance for binding books, 
 and one of the members of the firm came up to look at it. He offered 
 me quite a sum if I would sell him the right of it the the patent 
 of it quite a sum. In fact in fact yes, quite a sum, quite." He 
 rubbed his chin tremulously and looked abont him on the floor. 
 
McTeague 197 
 
 "Why, isn t that fine?" said Trina, good-naturedly. "I m very 
 glad, Mister Grannis. Is it a good price?" 
 
 "Quite a sum quite. In fact, I never dreamed of having so 
 much money." 
 
 "Now, see here, Mister Grannis," said Trina decisively, "I want 
 to give you a good piece of advice. Here are you and Miss Baker 
 The old Englishman started nervously "you and Miss Baker, that 
 have been in love with each other for " 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. McTeague, that subject if you would, please Miss 
 Baker is such an estimable lady." 
 
 "Fiddlesticks!" said Trina. "You re in love with each other, 
 and the whole flat knows it; and you two have been living here 
 side by side year in and year out, and you ve never said a word 
 to each other. It s all nonsense. Now, I want you should go right 
 in and speak to her just as soon as she comes home, and say you ve 
 come into money and you want her to marry you." 
 
 "Impossible impossible!" exclaimed the old Englishman, 
 alarmed and perturbed. "It s quite out of the question. I wouldn t 
 presume." 
 
 "Well, do you love her, or not?" 
 
 "Really, Mrs. McTeague, I I you must excuse me. It s a 
 matter so personal so I oh, yes, I love her. Oh, yes, indeed," 
 he exclaimed suddenly. 
 
 "Well, then, she loves you. She told me so." 
 
 "Oh !" 
 
 "She did. She said those very words." 
 
 Miss Baker had said nothing of the kind would have died 
 sooner than have made such a confession ; but Trina had drawn her 
 own conclusions, like every other lodger of the flat, and thought 
 the time was come for decided action. 
 
 "Now, you do just as I tell you, and when she comes home, go 
 right in and see her, and have it over with. Now, don t say another 
 word. I m going; but you do just as I tell you." 
 
 Trina turned about and went down stairs. She had decided, 
 since Miss Baker was not at home, that she would run over and see 
 Maria; possibly she could have lunch there. At any rate, Maria 
 would offer her a cup of tea. 
 
 Old Grannis stood for a long time just as Trina had left him, his 
 hands trembling, the blood coming and going in his withered cheeks. 
 
 "She said, she she she told her she said that that " he 
 could get no further. 
 

 198 McTeague 
 
 Then he faced about and entered his room, closing the door be 
 hind him. For a long time he sat in his armchair, drawn close to 
 the wall in front of the table on which stood his piles of pamphlets 
 and his little binding apparatus. 
 
 "I wonder," said Trina, as she crossed the yard back of Zer- 
 kow s house, "I wonder what rent Zerkow and Maria pay for this 
 place. I ll bet it s cheaper than where Mac and I are." 
 
 Trina found Maria sitting in front of the kitchen stove, her chin 
 upon her breast. Trina went up to her. She was dead. And as 
 Trina touched her shoulder, her head rolled sulewise and showed a 
 fearful gash in her throat under her ear. All the front of her dress 
 was soaked through and through:. 
 
 Trina backed sharply away from the body, drawing her hands up 
 to her very shoulders, her eyes staring and wide, an expression of 
 unutterable horror twisting her face. 
 
 "Oh-h-h !" she exclaimed in a long breath, her voice hardly ris 
 ing above a whisper. "Oh-h, isn t that horrible!" Suddenly she 
 turned and fled through the front part of the house to the street 
 door, that opened upon the little alley. She looked wildly about 
 her. 
 
 Directly across the way a butcher s boy was getting into his 
 two-wheeled cart drawn up in front of the opposite house, while 
 near by a pedler of wild game was coming down the street, a brace 
 of ducks in his hand. 
 
 "Oh, say say," gasped Trina, trying to get her voice, "say, 
 come over here quick." 
 
 The butcher s boy paused, one foot on the wheel, and stared. 
 Trina beckoned frantically." 
 
 "Come over here, come over here quick." 
 
 The young fellow swung himself into his seat. 
 
 "What s the matter with that woman?" he said, half aloud. 
 
 "There s a murder been done," cried Trina, swaying in the 
 doorway. 
 
 The young fellow drove away, his head over his shoulder, star 
 ing at Trina with eyes that were fixed and absolutely devoid of ex 
 pression. 
 
 "What s the matter with that woman?" he said again to him 
 self as he turned the corner. 
 
 Trina wondered why she didn t scream, how she could keep from 
 it how, at such a moment as this, she could remember that it was 
 improper to make a disturbance and create a scene in the street. 
 
McTeague 199 
 
 The pedler of wild game was looking at her suspiciously. It would 
 not do to tell him. He would go away like the butcher s boy. 
 
 Now, wait a minute," Trina said to herself, speaking aloud. 
 She put her hands to her head. "Now, wait a minute. It won t 
 do for me to lose my wits now. What must I do?" She looked 
 about her. There was the same familiar aspect of Polk Street. 
 She could see it at the end of the alley. The big market opposite 
 the flat, the delivery carts rattling up and down, the great ladies 
 from the avenue at their morning shopping, the cable cars trun 
 dling past, loaded with passengers. She saw a little boy in a flat 
 leather cap whistling and calling for an unseen dog, slapping his 
 small knee from time to time. Two men came out of Frenna s 
 saloon, laughing heartily. Heise, the harness-maker, stood in the 
 vestibule of his shop, a bundle of whittlings in his apron of greasy 
 ticking. And all this was going on, people were laughing and liv 
 ing, buying and selling, walking about out there on the sunny side 
 walks, while behind her in there in there in there 
 
 Heise started back from the sudden apparition of a white-lipped 
 woman in a blue dressing-gown that seemed to rise up before him 
 from his very doorstep. 
 
 "Well, Mrs. McTeague, you did scare me, for " 
 
 "Oh, come over here quick." Trina put her hand to her neck, 
 swallowing something that seemed to be choking her. "Maria s 
 killed Zerkow s wife I found her." 
 
 "Get out!" exclaimed Heise, "you re joking." 
 
 "Come over here over into the house I found her she s 
 dead." 
 
 Heise dashed across the street on the run, with Trina at his 
 heels, a trail of spilled whittlings marking his course. The two 
 ran down the alley. The wild-game pedler, a woman who had been 
 washing down the steps in a neighboring house, and a man in a 
 broad-brimmed hat stood at Zerkow s doorway, looking in from 
 time to time, and talking together. They seemed puzzled. 
 
 "Anything wrong in here?" asked the wild-game pedler as 
 Heise and Trina came up. Two more men stopped on the corner 
 of the alley and Polk Street and looked at the group. A woman 
 with a towel round her head raised a window opposite Zerkow s 
 house and called to the woman who had been washing the steps, 
 "What is it, Mrs. Flint?" 
 
 Heise was already inside the house. He turned to Trina, pant 
 ing from his run. 
 
2oo McTeague 
 
 "Where did you say where was it where?" 
 
 "In there," said Trina, "further in the next room." They 
 burst into the kitchen. 
 
 "Lord!" ejaculated Heise, stopping a yard or so from the body, 
 and bending down to peer into the gray face with its brown lips. 
 
 "By God! he s killed her." 
 
 "Who ?" 
 
 "Zerkow, by God! he s killed her. Cut her throat. He always 
 said he would." 
 
 "Zerkow? 
 
 "He s killed her. Her throat s cut. Good Lord, how she did 
 bleed ! By God ! he s done for her in good shape this time." 
 
 "Oh, I told her I told her," cried Trina. 
 
 "He s done for her sure this time." 
 
 "She said she could always manage Oh-h! It s hor 
 rible." 
 
 "He s done for her sure this trip. Cut her throat. Lord, how 
 she has bled! Did you ever see so much that s murder that s 
 cold-blooded murder. He s killed her. Say, we must get a police 
 man. Come on." 
 
 They turned back through the house. Half a dozen people 
 the wild-game pedler, the man with the broad-brimmed hat, the 
 washwoman, and three other men were in the front room of the 
 junk shop, a bank of excited faces surged at the door. Beyond this, 
 outside, the crowd was packed solid from one end of the alley to 
 the other. Out in Polk Street the cable cars were nearly blocked 
 and were bunting a way slowly through the throng with clanging 
 bells. Every window had its group. And as Trina and the harness- 
 maker tried to force the way from the door of the junk shop the 
 throng suddenly parted right and left before the passage of two 
 blue-coated policemen who clove a passage through the press, 
 working their elbows energetically. They were accompanied by a 
 third man in citizen s clothes. 
 
 Heise and Trina went back into the kitchen with the two police 
 men, the third man in citizen s clothes cleared the intruders from 
 the front room of the junk shop and kept the crowd back, his arm 
 across the open door. 
 
 "Whew !" whistled one of the officers as they came out into the 
 kitchen, "cutting scrape? By George! somebody s been using his 
 knife all right." He turned to the other officer. "Better get the 
 wagon. There s a box on the second corner south. Now, then," he 
 
McTeague 201 
 
 continued, turning to Trina and the harness-maker and taking out 
 his note-book and pencil, "I want your names and addresses." 
 
 It was a day of tremendous excitement for the entire street. 
 Long after the patrol wagon had driven away, the crowd remained. 
 In fact, until seven o clock that evening groups collected about the 
 door of the junk shop, where a policeman stood guard, asking all 
 manner of questions, advancing all manner of opinions. 
 
 "Do you think they ll get him?" asked Ryer of the policeman. 
 A dozen necks craned forward eagerly. 
 
 "Hoh, we ll get him all right, easy enough," answered the other, 
 with a grand air. 
 
 "What? What s that? What did he say?" asked the people 
 on the outskirts of the group. Those in front passed the answer 
 back. 
 
 "He says they ll get him all right, easy enough." 
 
 The group looked at the policeman admiringly. 
 
 "He s skipped to San Jose." 
 
 Where the rumor started, and how, no one knew. But every one 
 seemed persuaded that Zerkow had gone to San Jose. 
 
 "But what did he kill her for? Was he drunk?" 
 
 "No, he was crazy, I tell you crazy in the head. Thought she 
 was hiding some money from him." 
 
 Frenna did a big business all day long. The murder was the 
 one subject of conversation. Little parties were made up in his 
 saloon parties of two and threes to go over and have a look at 
 the outside of the junk shop. Heise was the most important man 
 the length and breadth of Polk Street ; almost invariably he accom 
 panied these parties, telling again and again of the part he had 
 played in the affair. 
 
 "It was about eleven o clock. I was standing in front of the 
 shop, when Mrs. McTeague you know, the dentist s wife came 
 running across the street," and so on and :o on. 
 
 The next day came a fresh sensation. Polk Street read of it in 
 the morning papers. Toward midnight on the day of the murder 
 Zerkow s body had been found floating- in the bay near Black Point. 
 No one knew whether he had drowned himself or fallen from one 
 of the wharves. Clutched in both his hands was a_sack full of old 
 and rusty pans, tin dishes j:= ^ully_ajiundred ofjhenv^tjn cans, and 
 iron knives ar-d forks, collected from some dump heap. 
 
 "And alTtfiisT exclaimed ^Trina, "on account of a set of gold 
 dis les that never existed." 
 
202 McTeague 
 
 XVII 
 
 ONE day, about a fortnight after the coroner s inquest had been 
 held, and when the excitement of the terrible affair was calming 
 down and Polk Street beginning to resume its monotonous routine, 
 Old Grannis sat in his clean, well-kept little room, in his cushioned 
 armchair, his hands lying idly upon his knees. It was evening; 
 not quite time to light the lamps. Old Grannis had drawn his 
 chair close to the wall so close, in fact, that he could hear Miss 
 Baker s grenadine brushing against the other side of the thin parti 
 tion, at his very elbow, while she rocked gently back and forth, a 
 cup of tea in her hands. 
 
 Old Grannis s occupation was gone. That morning the book 
 selling firm where he had bought his pamphlets had taken his little 
 binding apparatus from him to use as a model. The transaction 
 had been concluded. Old Grannis had received his check. It was 
 large enough, to be sure, but when all was over he returned to his 
 room and sat there sad and unoccupied, looking at the pattern in the 
 carpet and counting the heads of the tacks in the zinc guard that was 
 fastened to the wall behind his little stove. By and by he heard 
 Miss Baker moving about. It was five o clock, the time when she 
 was accustomed to make her cup of tea and "keep company" with 
 him on her side of the partition. Old Grannis drew up his chair 
 to the wall near where he knew she was sitting. The minutes 
 passed; side by side, and separated by only a couple of inches of 
 board, the two old people sat there together, while the afternoon 
 grew darker. 
 
 But for Old Grannis all was different that evening. There was 
 
 nothing for him to do. His hands lay idly in his lap. His table, 
 
 - with its pile of pamphlets, was in a far corner of the room, and, 
 
 1 from time to time, stirred with an uncertain trouble, he turned his 
 
 head and looked at it sadly, reflecting that he would never use it 
 
 / again. The absence of his accustomed work seemed to leave some 
 
 thing out of his life. It did not appear to him that he could be the 
 
 same to Miss Baker now ; their little habits were disarranged, their 
 
 customs broken up. He could no longer fancy himself so near to 
 
McTeague 203 
 
 her. They would drift apart now, and she would no lonsper make 
 herself a cup of tea and "keep company" with him when she knew 
 that he would never again sit before his table binding uncut pam 
 phlets. He had sold his happiness forjnoney; he had bartered all 
 his tardy romance for some miserable bank-notes. He had not fore- 
 seerfThat It" would he~lttfe~thtsT "ftTasf regr eF welled up within him. 
 What was that on the back of his hand? He wiped it dry with, \ 
 his ancient silk handkerchief. 
 
 Old Grannis leaned his face in his hands. Not only did an inex 
 plicable regret stir within him, but a certain great tenderness came 
 upon him. The tears that swam in his faded blue eyes were not al 
 together those of unhappiness. No, this long-delayed affection that 
 had come upon him in his later years filled him with a joy for which 
 tears seemed to be the natural expression. For thirty years his eyes 
 had not been wet, but to-night he felt as if he were young again. 
 He had never loved before, and there was still a part of him that 
 was only twenty years of age. He could not tell whether he was 
 profoundly sad or deeply happy; but he was not ashamed of the 
 tears that brought the smart to his eyes and the ache to his throat. 
 He did not hear the timid rapping on his door, and it was not until 
 the door itself opened that he looked up quickly and saw the little 
 retired dressmaker standing on the threshold, carrying a cup of tea 
 on a tiny Japanese tray. She held it toward him. . 
 
 "I was making some tea," she said, "and I thought you would 
 like to have a cup." 
 
 Never after could the little dressmaker understand how she had 
 brought herself to do this thing. One moment she had been sitting 
 quietly on her side of the partition, stirring her cup of tea with one 
 of her Gorham spoons. She was quiet, she was peaceful. The even 
 ing was closing down tranquilly. Her room was the picture of 
 calmness and order. The geraniums blooming in the starch boxes 
 in the window, the aged goldfish occasionally turning- his iridescent 
 flank to catch a sudden glow of the setting sun. The next moment 
 she had been all trepidation. It seemed to her the most natural thing 
 in the world to make a steaming cup of tea and carry it in to Old 
 Grannis next door. It seemed to her that he was wanting her, that 
 she ought to go to him. With the brusque resolve and intrepidity ^ 
 that sometimes seizes upon very timid people the courage of the 
 coward, greater than all others she had presented herself at the old / 
 Englishman s half-open door, and, when he had not heeded her 
 knock, had pushed it open, and at last, after all these years, stood 
 
204 McTeague 
 
 upon the threshold of his room. She had found courage enough to 
 explain her intrusion. 
 
 "I was making some tea, and I thought you would like to have 
 a cup." 
 
 Old Grannis dropped his hands upon either arm of his chair, 
 and, leaning forward a little, looked at her blankly. He did not 
 speak. 
 
 The retired dressmaker s courage had carried her thus far ; now 
 it deserted her as abruptly as it had come. Her cheeks became scar 
 let; her funny little false curls trembled with her agitation. What 
 she had done seemed to her indecorous beyond expression. It was 
 an enormity. Fancy, she had gone into his room, into his room 
 Mister Grannis s room. She had done this she who could not pass 
 him on the stairs without a qualm. What to do she did not know. 
 She stood, a fixture, on the threshold of his room, without even 
 resolution enough to beat a retreat. Helplessly, and with a little 
 quaver in her voice, she repeated obstinately: 
 
 "I was making some tea, and I thought you would like to have 
 a cup of tea." Her agitation betrayed itself in the repetition of the 
 words. She felt that she could not hold the tray out another in 
 stant. Already she was trembling so that half the tea was spilled. 
 
 Old Grannis still kept silence, still bending forward, with wide 
 eyes, his hands gripping the arms of his chair. 
 
 Then with the tea-tray still held straight before her, the little 
 dressmaker exclaimed tearfully: 
 
 "Oh, I -didn t mean I didn t mean I didn t know it would 
 seem like this. I only meant to be kind and bring you some tea; 
 and now it seems so improper. I I I m so ashamed! I don t 
 know what you will think of me. I " she caught her breath 
 "improper " she managed to exclaim, "unladylike you can never 
 think well of me I ll go." She turned about. 
 
 "Stop," cried Old Grannis, finding his voice at last. Miss Baker 
 paused, looking at him over her shoulder, her eyes very wide open, 
 blinking through her tears, for all the world like a frightened child. 
 
 "Stop," exclaimed the old Englishman, rising to his feet. "I 
 didn t know it was you at first. I hadn t dreamed I couldn t be 
 lieve you would be so good, so kind to me. Oh," he cried, with a 
 sudden sharp breath, "oh, you are kind. I I you have have 
 made me very happy." 
 
 "No, no," exclaimed Miss Baker, ready to sob. "It was unlady 
 like. You will you must think ill of me." She stood in the hall. 
 
McTeague 205 
 
 The tears were running down her cheeks, and she had no free 
 hand to dry them. 
 
 "Let me I ll take the tray from you," cried Old Grannis, com 
 ing forward. A tremulous joy came upon him. Never in his life 
 had he been so happy. At last it had come come when he had 
 least expected it. That which he had longed for and hoped for 
 through so many years, behold, it was come to-night. He felt 
 his awkwardness leaving him. He was almost certain that the little 
 dressmaker loved him, and the thought gave him boldness. He 
 came toward her and took the tray from her hands, and, turning 
 back into the room with it, made as if to set it upon his table. But 
 the piles of his pamphlets were in the way. Both of his hands were 
 occupied with the tray ; he could not make a place for it on the table. 
 He stood for a moment uncertain, his embarrassment returning. 
 
 "Oh, won t you won t you please " He turned his head, look 
 ing appealingly at the little old dressmaker. 
 
 "Wait, 111 help you," she said. She came into the room, up to 
 the table, and moved the pamphlets to one side. 
 
 "Thanks, thanks," murmured Old Grannis, setting down the 
 tray. 
 
 "Now now now I will go back," she exclaimed, hurriedly. 
 
 "No no," returned the old Englishman. "Don t go, don t go. 
 I ve been so lonely to-night and last night too all this year all 
 my life," he suddenly cried. 
 
 "I I I ve forgotten the sugar." 
 
 "But I never take sugar in my tea." 
 
 "But it s rather cold, and I ve spilled it almost all of it." 
 
 "I ll drink it from the saucer." Old Grannis had drawn up his 
 armchair for her. 
 
 "Oh, I shouldn t. This is this is so You must think ill of 
 me." Suddenly she sat down, and resting her elbows on the table, 
 hid her face in her hands. 
 
 "Think ill of you?" cried Old Grannis, "think ill of you? Why, 
 you don t know you have no idea all these years living so close 
 to you, I I " he paused suddenly. It seemed to him as if the 
 beating of his heart was choking him. 
 
 "I thought you were binding your books to-night," said Miss 
 Baker, suddenly, "and you looked tired. I thought you looked tired 
 when I last saw you, and a cup of tea, you know, it that that 
 does you so much good when you re tired. But you weren t binding 
 books." 
 
206 McTeague 
 
 "No, no," returned Old Grannis, drawing up a chair and sitting- 
 down. "No, I the fact is, I ve sold my apparatus ; a firm of book 
 sellers has bought the rights of it." 
 
 "And aren t you going to bind books any more?" exclaimed the 
 little dressmaker, a shade of disappointment in her manner. "I 
 thought you always did about four o clock. I used to hear you 
 when I was making tea." 
 
 It hardly seemed possible to Miss Baker that she was actually 
 talking to Old Grannis, that the two were really chatting together, 
 face to face, and without the dreadful embarrassment that used 
 to overwhelm them both when they met on the stairs. She had 
 often dreamed of this, but had always put it off to some far-distant 
 day. It was to come gradually, little by little, instead of, as now, 
 abruptly and with no preparation. That she should permit herself 
 the indiscretion of actually intruding herself into his room had never 
 so much as occurred to her. Yet here she was, in his room, and 
 they were talking together, and little by little her embarrassment 
 was wearing away. 
 
 "Yes, yes, I always heard you when you were making tea," re 
 turned the old Englishman ; "I heard the tea things. Then I used 
 to draw my chair and my work-table close to the wall on my side, 
 and sit there and work while you drank your tea just on the other 
 side ; and I used to feel very near to you then. I used to pass the 
 whole evening that way." 
 
 "And, yes yes I did, too," she answered. "I used to make 
 tea just at that time and sit there for a whole hour." 
 
 "And didn t you sit close to the partition on your side? Some 
 times I was sure of it. I could even fancy that I could hear your 
 dress brushing against the wall-paper close beside me. Didn t you 
 sit close to the partition ?" 
 
 "I I don t know where I sat." 
 
 Old Grannis shyly put out his hand and took hers as it lay upon 
 her lap. 
 
 "Didn t you sit close to the partition on your side?" he insisted. 
 
 "No I don t know perhaps sometimes. Oh, yes," she ex 
 claimed, with a little gasp, "oh, yes, I often did." 
 
 Then old Grannis put his arm about her, and kissed her faded 
 cheek, that flushed to pink upon the instant. 
 
 After that they spoke but little. The day lapsed slowly into 
 twilight, and the two old people sat there in the gray evening, 
 quietly, quietly, their hands in each other s hands, "keeping com- 
 
McTeague 207 
 
 pany," but now with nothing to separate them. It had come at last. 
 After all these years they were together; they understood each 
 other. They stood at length in a little Elysium of their own creat 
 ing. They walked hand in hand in a delicious garden where it 
 was always autumn. Far from the world and together they en 
 tered upon the long retarded romance of their commonplace and 
 uneventful lives. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 THAT same night McTeague was awakened by a shrill scream, 
 and woke to find Trina s arms around his neck. She was trembling 
 so that the bed-springs creaked. 
 
 "Huh?" cried the dentist, sitting up in bed, raising his clinched 
 fists. "Huh? What? What? What is it? What is it?" 
 
 "Oh, Mac," gasped his wife, "I had such an awful dream. I 
 dreamed about Maria. I thought she was chasing me, and I couldn t 
 run, and her throat was Oh, she was all covered with blood. 
 Oh-h, I m so frightened!" 
 
 Trina had borne up very well for the first day or so after the 
 affair, and had given her testimony to the coroner with far greater 
 calmness than Heise. It was only a week later that the horror of 
 the thing came upon her again. She was so nervous that she hardly 
 dared to be alone in the daytime, and almost every night woke with 
 a cry of terror, trembling with the recollection of some dreadful 
 nightmare. The dentist was irritated beyond all expression by her 
 nervousness, and especially was he exasperated when her cries woke 
 him suddenly in the middle of the night. He would sit up in bed, 
 rolling his eyes wildly, throwing out his huge fists at what, he 
 did not know exclaiming, "What what " bewildered and hope 
 lessly confused. Then when he realized that it was only Trina, his 
 Danger kindled abruptly. 
 
 ~"Oh, you and your dreams! You go to sleep, or I ll give you a 
 dressing down. Sometimes he would hit her a great thwack with his \ 
 open palm, or catch her hand and bite the tips of her fingers. Trina 
 would lie awake for hours afterward, crying softly to herself. Then, 
 by and by, "Mac," she would say timidly. 
 
 "Huh?" 
 
 "Mac, do you love me?" 
 
 "Huh? What? Go to sleep." 
 
208 McTeague 
 
 "Don t you love me any more, Mac?" 
 
 "Oh, go to sleep. Don t bother me." 
 
 "Well, do you love me, Mac ?" 
 
 "7 guess so." 
 
 "Oh, Mac, I ve only you now, and if you don t love me, what is 
 going to become of me ?" 
 
 "Shut up, an let me go to sleep." 
 
 "Well, just tell me that you love me." 
 
 The dentist would turn abruptly away from her, burying his 
 big blond head in the pillow, and covering up his ears with the 
 blankets. Then Trina would sob herself to sleep. 
 
 The dentist had long since given up looking for a job. Between 
 breakfast and supper time Trina saw but little of him. Once the 
 morning meal over, McTeague bestirred himself, put on his cap 
 he had given up wearing even a hat since his wife had made him 
 sell his silk hat and went out. He had fallen into the habit of 
 taking long and solitary walks beyond the suburbs of the city. 
 Sometimes it was to the Cliff House, occasionally to the Park (where 
 he would sit on the sun-warmed benches, smoking his pipe and read 
 ing ragged ends of old newspapers), but more often it was to the 
 Presidio Reservation. McTeague would walk out to the end of the 
 Union Street car line, entering the Reservation at the terminus, 
 then he would work down to the shore of the bay, follow the shore 
 line to the Old Fort at the Golden Gate, and, turning the Point here, 
 come out suddenly upon the full sweep of the Pacific. Then he 
 would follow the beach down to a certain point of rocks that he 
 knew. Here he would turn inland, climbing the bluffs to a rolling 
 grassy down sown with blue iris and a yellow flower that he did not 
 know the name of. .On the far side of this down was a broad, well- 
 kept road. McTeague would keep to this road until he reached the 
 city again by the way of the Sacramento Street car line. The den 
 tist loved these walks. He liked to be alone. He liked the solitude 
 of the tremendous, tumbling ocean; the fresh, windy downs; he 
 liked to feel the gusty Trades flogging his face, and he would re 
 main for hours watching the roll and plunge of the breakers with 
 the silent, unreasoned enjoyment of a child. All at once he developed 
 a passion for fishing. He would sit all day nearly motionless upon 
 a point of rocks, his fish-line between his fingers, happy if he caught 
 three perch in twelve hours. At noon he would retire to a bit of 
 level turf around an angle of the shore and cook his fish, eating 
 them without salt or knife or fork. He thrust a pointed stick down 
 
McTeague 209 
 
 the mouth of the perch, and turned it slowly over the blaze. When 
 the grease stopped dripping, he knew that it was done, and would 
 devour it slowly and with tremendous relish, picking the bones clean, 
 eating even the head. He remembered how often he used to do this 
 sort of thing when he was a boy in the mountains of Placer County, 
 before he became a car-boy at the mine. The dentist enjoyed him 
 self hugely during these days. The instincts of the old-time miner 
 were returning. In the stress of his misfortune McTeague was 
 lapsing back to his early estate. 
 
 One "evening as he reached home after such a tramp, he was 
 surprised to find Trina standing in front of what had been Zerkow s 
 house, looking at it thoughtfully, her finger on her lips. 
 
 "What you doing here?" growled the dentist as he came up. 
 There was a "Rooms-to-let" sign on the street door of the house. 
 
 "Now we ve found a place to move to," exclaimed Trina. 
 
 "What?" cried McTeague. "There, in that dirty house, where 
 you found Maria?" 
 
 "I can t afford that room in the flat any more, now that you can t 
 get any work to do." 
 
 "But there s where Zerkow killed Maria the very house an 
 you wake up an squeal in the night just thinking of it." 
 
 "I know. I know it will be bad at first, but I ll get used to it, 
 and it s just half again as cheap as where we are now. I was looking 
 at a room; we can have it dirt cheap. It s a back room over the 
 kitchen. A German family are going to take the front part of the 
 house and sublet the rest. I m going to take it. It will be money 
 in my pocket." 
 
 "But it won t be any in mine," vociferated the dentist, angrily. 
 "I ll have to live in that dirty rat hole just so s you can save money. 
 / ain t any the better off for it." 
 
 "Find work to do, and then we ll talk," declared Trina. "I m 
 going to save up some money against a rainy day ; and if I can save 
 more by living here, I m going to do it, even if it is the house Maria 
 was killed in. I don t care." 
 
 "All right," said McTeague, and did not make any further pro 
 test. His wife looked at him surprised. She could not under 
 stand this sudden acquiescence. Perhaps McTeague was so much 
 away from home of late that he had ceased to care where or how 
 he lived. But this sudden change troubled her a little for all that. 
 
 The next day the McTeagues moved for a second time. It did 
 not take them long. They were obliged to buy the bed from the 
 
2io McTeague 
 
 landlady, a circumstance which nearly broke Trina s heart ; and this 
 bed, a couple of chairs, Trina s trunk, an ornament or two, the oil 
 stove, and some plates and kitchen ware were all that .they could call 
 their own now ; and this back room in that wretched house with its 
 grisly memories, the one window looking out into a grimy maze 
 of back yards and broken sheds, was what they now knew as their 
 home. 
 
 The McTeagues now t>egan to sink rapidly lower and lower. 
 They became accustomed to their surroundings. Worst of all, 
 Trina lost her pretty ways and good looks. The combined effects 
 
 * of hard work,, avarice, poor food, and her husband s brutalities told 
 on her swiftly. Her charming little figure grew coarse, stunted, 
 
 "arid dumpy. She, who had once been of a cat-like neatness, now 
 
 x slovened all day about the room in a dirty flannel wrapper, her 
 slippers clap-clapping after her as she walked. At last she even 
 neglected her hair, the wonderful swarthy tiara, the coiffure of a 
 
 . queen, that shaded her little pale forehead. In the morning she 
 braided it before it was half combed, and piled and coiled it about 
 her head in haphazard fashion. It came down half a dozen times 
 a day; by evening it was an unkempt, tangled mass, a veritable 
 rat s nest. 
 
 Ah, no, it was not very gay, that life of hers, when one had to 
 rustle for two, cook and work and wash, to say nothing of paying 
 the rent. What odds was it if she was slatternly, dirty, coarse? 
 Was there time to make herself look otherwise, and who was there 
 to be pleased when she was all prinked out? Surely not a great 
 brute of a husband who bit you like a dog, and kicked and pounded 
 you as though you were made of iron. Ah, no, better let things 
 go and take it as easy as you could. Hump your back, and it was 
 soonest over. 
 
 The one room grew abominably dirty, reeking with the odors of 
 cooking and of "non-poisonous" paint. The bed was not made until 
 late in the afternoon, sometimes not at all. Dirty, unwashed crock 
 ery, greasy knives, sodden fragments of yesterday s meals cluttered 
 the table, while in one corner was the heap of evil-smelling, dirty 
 linen. Cockroaches appeared in the crevices of the woodwork, the 
 wall paper bulged from the damp walls and began to peel. Trina 
 had long ago ceased to dust or to wipe the furniture with a bit of rag. 
 The grime grew thick upon the window panes and in the corners of 
 the room. All the filth of the pi ley invaded their quarters like a 
 rising muddy tide. 
 
McTeague 2 1 1 
 
 Between the windows, however, the faded photograph of the 
 couple in their wedding finery looked down upon the wretchedness, 
 Trina still holding her set bouquet straight before her, McTeague 
 standing at her side, his left foot forward, in the attitude of a Sec 
 retary of State; while nearby hung the canary, the one thing the 
 dentist clung to obstinately, piping and chittering all day in its little 
 gilt prison. 
 
 And the tooth, the gigantic golden molar of French gilt, enormous 
 and ungainly, sprawled its branching prongs in one corner of the 
 room, by the footboard of the bed. The McTeagues had come to use 
 it as a sort of substitute for a table. After breakfast and supper 
 Trina piled the plates and greasy dishes upon it to have them out 
 of the way. 
 
 One afternoon the Other Dentist, McTeague s old-time rival, 
 the wearer of marvelous waistcoats, was surprised out of all coun 
 tenance to receive a visit from McTeague. The Other Dentist was 
 in his operating room at the time, at work upon a plaster-of-paris 
 mold. To his call of "Come right in. Don t you see the sign. 
 Enter without knocking ?" McTeague came in. He noted at once 
 how airy and cheerful was the room. A little fire coughed and 
 tittered on the hearth, a brindled greyhound sat on his haunches 
 watching it intently, a great mirror over the mantel offered to view 
 an array of actresses pictures thrust between the glass and the 
 frame, and a big bunch of freshly-cut violets stood in a glass bowl 
 on the polished cherry-wood table. The Other Dentist came for 
 ward briskly, exclaiming cheerfully: 
 
 "Oh, Doctor-^Mr^ McTeague, how do? how do?" 
 
 The fellow was-actually wearing a velvet smoking jacket. A 
 cigarette was between his lips; his patent leather boots reflected the 
 firelight. McTeague wore a black surah neglige shirt without a cra 
 vat; huge buckled brogans, hob-nailed, gross, incased his feet; the 
 hems of his trousers were spotted with mud ; his coat was frayed at 
 the sleeves and a button was gone. In three days he had not shaved ; 
 his shock of heavy blond hair escaped from beneath the visor of his 
 woolen cap and hung low over his forehead. He stood with awk 
 ward, shifting feet and uncertain eyes before this dapper young 
 fellow who reeked of the barber shop, and whom he had once ordered 
 from his rooms. 
 
 "What can I do for you this morning, Mister McTeague? 
 Something wrong with the teeth, eh ?" 
 
 "No, no." McTeague, floundering in the difficulties of his 
 
2 ! 2 McTeague 
 
 speech, forgot the carefully rehearsed words with which he had in 
 tended to begin this interview. 
 
 "I want to sell you my sign," he said, stupidly. "That big 
 tooth of French gilt you know that you made an offer for once." 
 
 "Oh, / don t want that now/ said the other loftily. "I prefer a 
 little quiet signboard, nothing pretentious just the name, and Den 
 tist 7 after it. These big signs are vulgar. No, I don t want it." 
 
 McTeague remained, looking about on the floor, horribly em 
 barrassed, not knowing whether to go or to stay. 
 
 "But I don t know," said the Other Dentist, reflectively. "If it 
 will help you out any I guess you re pretty hard up I ll well, I 
 tell you what I ll give you five dollars for it." 
 
 "All right, all right." 
 
 On the following Thursday morning McTeague woke to hear 
 the eaves dripping and the prolonged rattle of the rain upon the 
 roof. 
 
 "Raining," he growled, in deep disgust, sitting up in bed, and 
 winking at the blurred window. 
 
 "It s been raining all night," said Trina. She was already up 
 and dressed, and was cooking breakfast on the oil stove. 
 
 McTeague dressed himself, grumbling, "Well, I ll go, anyhow. 
 The fish will bite all the better for the rain." 
 
 "Look here, Mac," said Trina, slicing a bit of bacon as thinly 
 as she could. "Look here, why don t you bring some of your fish 
 home sometime?" 
 
 "Huh !" snorted the dentist, "so s we could have em for break 
 fast. Might save you a nickel, mightn t it ?" 
 
 "Well, and if it did ! Or you might fish for the market. The 
 fishman across the street would buy em of you." 
 
 "Shut up!" exclaimed the dentist, and Trina obediently sub 
 sided. 
 
 "Look here," continued her husband, fumbling in his trousers 
 pocket and bringing out a dollar, "I m sick and tired of coffee and 
 bacon and mashed potatoes. Go over to the market and get some 
 kind of meat for breakfast. Get a steak, or chops, or something." 
 
 "Why, Mac, that s a whole dollar, and he only gave you five 
 for your sign. We can t afford it. Sure, Mac. Let me put that 
 money away against a rainy day. You re just as well off without 
 meat for breakfast." 
 
 "You do as I tell you. Get some steak, or chops, or something." 
 Please, Mac, dear." 
 
McTeague 213 
 
 "Go on, now. I ll bite your fingers again pretty soon." 
 
 "But" 
 
 The dentist took a step toward her, snatching at her hand. 
 
 "All right, I ll go," cried Trina, wincing and shrinking. "I ll 
 go." 
 
 She did not get the chops at the big market, however. Instead, 
 she hurried to a cheaper butcher shop on a side street two blocks 
 away, and bought fifteen cents worth of chops from a side of mut 
 ton some two or three days old. She was gone some little time. 
 
 "Give me the change," exclaimed the dentist, as soon as she 
 returned. Trina handed him a quarter; and when McTeague was 
 about to protest, broke in upon him with a rapid stream of talk that 
 confused him upon the instant. But for that matter, it was never 
 difficult for Trina to deceive the dentist He never went to the 
 bottom of things. He would have believed her if she had told him 
 the chops had cost a dollar. 
 
 "There s sixty cents saved, anyhow," thought Trina, as she 
 clutched the money in her pocket to keep it from rattling. 
 
 Trina cooked the chops, and they breakfasted in silence. .- 
 
 "Now," said McTeague as he rose, wiping the coffee from his 
 thick mustache with the hollow of his palm, "now I m going fishing, 
 rain or no rain. I m going to be gone all day." 
 
 He stood for a moment at the door, his fish-line in his hand, 
 swinging the heavy sinker back and forth. He looked at Trina as 
 she cleared away the breakfast things. 
 
 "So long," said he, nodding his huge square-cut head. This 
 amiability in the matter of leave taking was unusual. Trina put the 
 dishes down and came up to him, her little chin, once so adorable, 
 in the air: 
 
 "Kiss me good-by, Mac," she said, putting her arms around his 
 neck, "You do love me a little yet, don t you, Mac? We ll be 
 happy again some day. This is hard times now, but we ll pull out. 
 You ll find something to do pretty soon." 
 
 "/ guess so," growled McTeague, allowing her to kiss him. 
 
 The canary was stirring nimbly in its cage, and just now broke 
 out into a shrill trilling, its little throat bulging and quivering. The 
 dentist stared at it. "Say," he remarked slowly, "I think I ll take 
 that bird of mine along." 
 
 "Sell it?" inquired Trina. 
 
 "Yes, yes, sell it." 
 
 "Well, you are coming to your senses at last," answered Trina, 
 
214 McTeague 
 
 approvingly. "But don t you let the bird-store man cheat you. 
 That s a good songster ; and with the cage, you ought to make him 
 give you five dollars. You stick out for that at first, anyhow." 
 
 McTeague unhooked the cage and carefully wrapped it in an 
 old newspaper, remarking, "He might get cold. Well, so long," he 
 repeated, "so long." 
 
 "Good-by, Mac." 
 
 When he was gone, Trina took the sixty cents she had stolen 
 from him out of her pocket and recounted it. "It s sixty cents, all 
 right," she said proudly. "But I do believe that dime is too smooth." 
 She looked at it critically. The clock on the power-house of the 
 Sutter Street cable struck eight. "Eight o clock already," she ex 
 claimed. "I must get to work." She cleared the breakfast things 
 from the table, and drawing up her chair and her workbox began 
 painting the sets of Noah s ark animals she had whittled the day 
 before. She worked steadily all the morning. At noon she lunched, 
 warming over the coffee left from breakfast, and frying a couple of 
 sausages. By one she was bending over her table again. Her 
 fingers some of them lacerated by McTeague s teeth flew, and 
 the little pile of cheap toys in the basket at her elbow grew steadily. 
 
 "Where do all the toys go to?" she murmured. "The thousands 
 and thousands of these Noah s arks that I have made horses and 
 chickens and elephants and always there never seems to be enough. 
 It s a good thing for me that children break their things, and that 
 they all have to have birthdays and Christmases." She dipped her 
 brush into a pot of Vandyke brown and painted one of the whittled 
 toy horses in two strokes. Then a touch of ivory black with a 
 small flat brush created the tail and mane, and dots of Chinese 
 white made the eyes. The turpentine in the paint dried it almost 
 immediately, and she tossed the completed little horse into the 
 basket. 
 
 At six o clock the dentist had not returned. Trina waited until 
 seven, and then put her work away, and ate her supper alone. 
 
 "I wonder what s keeping Mac," she exclaimed as the clock 
 from the power-house on Sutter Street struck half-past seven. "I 
 know he s drinking somewhere," she cried, apprehensively. "He 
 had the money from his sign with him." 
 
 At eight o clock she threw a shawl over her head and went over 
 to the harness shop. If anybody would know where McTeague was 
 it would be Heise. But the harness-maker had seen nothing of him 
 since the day before. 
 
McTeague 215 
 
 "He was in here yesterday afternoon, and we had a drink or 
 two at Frenna s. Maybe he s been in there to-day." 
 
 "Oh, won t you go in and see ?" said Trina. "Mac always came 
 home to his supper he never likes to miss his meals and I m get 
 ting frightened about him." 
 
 Heise went into the barroom next door, and returned with no 
 definite news. Frenna had not seen the dentist since he had come 
 in with the harness-maker the previous afternoon. Trina even hum 
 bled herself to ask of the Ryers with whom they had quarreled 
 if they knew anything of the dentist s whereabouts, but received a 
 contemptuous negative. 
 
 "Maybe he s come in while I ve been out," said Trina to her 
 self. She went down Polk Street again, going toward the flat. The 
 rain had stopped, but the sidewalks were still glistening. The cable 
 cars trundled by, loaded with theatregoers. The barbers were just 
 closing their shops. The candy store on the corner was brilliantly 
 lighted and was filling up, while the green and yellow lamps from 
 the drug store directly opposite threw kaleidoscopic reflections deep 
 down into the shining surface of the asphalt. A band of Salva 
 tionists began to play and pray in front of Frenna s saloon. Trina 
 hurried on down the gay street, with its evening s brilliancy and 
 small activities, her shawl over her head, one hand lifting her faded 
 skirt from off the wet pavements. She turned into the alley, entered 
 Zerkow s old home by the ever-open door, and ran upstairs to the 
 room. Nobody. 
 
 "Why, isn t this funny" she exclaimed, half aloud, standing on 
 the threshold, her little milk-white forehead curdling to a frown, one 
 sore finger on her lips. Then a great fear seized upon her. Inevi 
 tably she associated the house with a scene of violent death. 
 
 "No, no," she said to the darkness, "Mac is all right. He can 
 take care of himself." But for all that she had a clear-cut vision of 
 her husband s body, bloated with sea-water, his blond hair stream 
 ing like kelp, rolling inertly in shifting waters. 
 
 "He couldn t have fallen off the rocks," she declared firmly. 
 "There there he is now." She heaved a great sigh of relief as a 
 heavy tread sounded in the hallway below. She ran to the ban 
 isters, looking over, and calling, "Oh, Mac ! Is that you, Mac ?" It 
 was the German whose family occupied the lower floor. The power 
 house clock struck nine. 
 
 "My God, where is Mac?" cried Trina, stamping her foot. 
 
 She put the shawl over her head again, and went out and stood 
 
216 McTeague 
 
 on the corner of the alley and Polk Street, watching and waiting, 
 craning her neck to see down the street. Once, even, she went out 
 upon the sidewalk in front of the flat and sat down for a moment 
 upon the horse-block there. She could not help remembering the 
 day when she had been driven up to that horse-block in a hack. 
 Her mother and father and Owgooste and the twins were with her. 
 It was her wedding day. Her wedding dress was in a huge tin 
 trunk on the driver s seat. She had never been happier before in 
 all her life. She remembered how she got out of the hack and 
 stood for a moment upon the horse-block, looking up at McTeague s 
 windows. She had caught a glimpse of him at his shaving, the 
 lather still on his cheeks, and they had waved their hands at each 
 other. Instinctively Trina looked up at the flat behind her ; looked 
 up at the bay window where her husband s "Dental Parlors" had 
 been. It was all dark ; the windows had the blind, sightless appear 
 ance imparted by vacant, untenanted rooms. A rusty iron rod pro 
 jected mournfully from one of the window ledges. 
 
 "There s where our sign hung once," said Trina. She turned 
 her head and looked down Polk Street toward where the Other 
 Dentist had his rooms, and there, overhanging the street from his 
 window, newly furbished and brightened, hung the huge tooth, her 
 birthday present to her husband, flashing and glowing in the white 
 glare of the electric lights like a beacon of defiance and triumph. 
 
 "Ah, no; ah, no," whispered Trina, choking back a sob. "Life 
 isn t so gay. But I wouldn t mind, no, I wouldn t mind anything, 
 if only Mac was home_all right. She got up from the horse 
 block and stood again on~~the corner of the alley, watching and 
 listening. 
 
 It grew later. The hours passed. Trina kept at her post. The 
 noise of approaching footfalls grew less and less frequent. Little 
 by little Polk , Street dropped back into solitude. Eleven o clock 
 struck from the power-house clock ; lights were extinguished ; at one 
 o clock the cable stopped, leaving an abrupt and numbing silence 
 in the air. All at once it seemed very still. The only noises were 
 the occasional footfalls of a policeman and the persistent calling of 
 ducks and geese in the closed market across the way. The street 
 was asleep. 
 
 When it is night and dark, and one is awake and alone, one s 
 thoughts take the color of the surroundings ; become gloomy, som 
 bre, and very dismal. All at once an idea came to Trina, a dark, 
 terrible idea ; worse, even, than the idea of McTeague s death. 
 
McTeague 217 
 
 "Oh, no," she cried. "Oh, no. It isn t true. But suppose 
 suppose." 
 
 She left her post and hurried back to the house. 
 
 "No, no," she was saying, under her breath, "it isn t possible. 
 Maybe he s even come home already by another way. But suppose 
 suppose suppose." 
 
 She ran up the stairs, opened the door of the room, and paused, 
 out of breath. The room was dark and empty. With cold, trembling 
 fingers she lighted the lamp, and, turning about, looked at her 
 trunk. The lock was burst. 
 
 "No, no, no," cried Trina, "it s not true; it s not true." She 
 dropped on her knees before the trunk, and tossed back the lid, and I 
 plunged her hands down into the corner underneath her wedding N 
 dress, where she always kept the savings. The brass matchsafe 
 and the chamois-skin bag were there. They were empty. 
 
 Trina flung herself full length upon the floor, burying her face 
 in her arms, rolling her head from side to side. Her voice rose to a 
 wail. 
 
 "No, no, no, it s not true; it s not true; it s not true. Oh, he 
 couldn t have done it. Oh, how could he have done it? All my 
 money, all my little savings and deserted me. He s gone, my 
 money s gone, my dear money my dear, dear gold pieces that I ve 
 worked so hard for. Oh, to have deserted me gone for good 
 gone and never coming back gone with my gold pieces. Gone 
 gone gone. I ll never see them again, and I ve worked so hard, 
 so, so hard for him for them. No, no, no, it s not true. It is true rj 
 What will become of me now ? Oh, if you ll only come back you can 
 have all the money half of it. Oh, give me back my money. Give 
 me back my money, and I ll forgive you. You can leave me then if 
 ynn"wa"nt to. Oh, my money. Mac, Mac, you ve gone for good. 
 You don t love me any more, and now I m a beggar. My money s 
 gone, my husband s gone, gone, gone, gone !" 
 
 Her grief was terrible. She dug her nails into her scalp, and 
 clutching the heavy coils of her thick black hair tore it again and 
 again. She struck her forehead with her clinched fists. Her little 
 body shook from head to foot with the violence of her sobbing. She 
 ground her small teeth together and beat her head upon the floor with 
 all her strength. 
 
 Her hair was uncoiled and hanging a tangled, disheveled mass 
 far below her waist ; her dress was torn ; a spot of blood was upon 
 her forehead; her eyes were swollen; her cheeks flamed vermilion 
 
 .T III NORRIS 
 
2i 8 McTeague 
 
 from the fever that raged in her veins. Old Miss Baker found her 
 thus toward five o clock the next morning. 
 
 What had happened between one o clock and dawn of that fearful 
 night Trina never remembered. She could only recall herself, as 
 in a picture, kneeling before her broken and rifled trunk, and then 
 weeks later, so it seemed to her she woke to find herself in her own 
 bed with an iced bandage about her forehead and the little old 
 dressmaker at her side, stroking her hot, dry palm. 
 
 The facts of the matter were that the German woman who lived 
 below had been awakened some hours after midnight by the sounds 
 of Trina s weeping. She had come upstairs and into the room to 
 find Trina stretched face downward upon the floor, half conscious 
 and sobbing, in the throes of an hysteria for which there was no 
 relief. The woman, terrified, had called her husband, and between 
 them they had got Trina upon the bed. Then the German woman 
 happened to remember that Trina had friends in the big flat near 
 by, and had sent her husband to fetch the retired dressmaker, while 
 she herself remained behind to undress Trina and put her to bed. 
 Miss Baker had come over at once, and began to cry herself at the 
 sight of the dentist s poor little wife. She did not stop to ask what 
 the trouble was, and indeed it would have been useless to attempt to 
 get any coherent explanation from Trina at that time. Miss Baker 
 had sent the German woman s husband to get some ice at one of 
 the "all-night" restaurants of the street; had kept cold, wet towels 
 on Trina s head ; had combed and recombed her wonderful thick hair ; 
 and had sat down by the side of the bed, holding her hot hand, with 
 its poor maimed fingers, waiting patiently until Trina should be able 
 to speak. 
 
 Toward morning Trina awoke or perhaps it was a mere regain 
 ing of consciousness looked a moment at Miss Baker, then about the 
 room until her eyes fell upon her trunk with its broken lock. Then 
 she turned over upon the pillow and began to sob again. She 
 refused to answer any of the little dressmaker s questions, shaking 
 her head violently, her face hidden in the pillow. 
 
 By breakfast time her fever had increased to such a point that 
 Miss Baker took matters into her own hands and had the German 
 woman call a doctor. He arrived* some twenty minutes later. He 
 was a big, kindly fellow who lived over the drug store on the cor 
 ner. He had a deep voice and a tremendous striding gait less 
 suggestive of a physician than of a sergeant of a cavalry troop. 
 
 By the time of his arrival little Miss Baker had divined in- 
 
McTeague 219 
 
 tuitively the entire trouble. She heard the doctor s swinging tramp 
 in the entry below, and heard the German woman saying: 
 
 "Righd oop der stairs, at der back of der halle. Der room mit 
 der door oppen." 
 
 Miss Baker met the doctor at the landing; she told him in a 
 whisper of the trouble. 
 
 "Her husband s deserted her, I m afraid, doctor, and took all 
 of her money a good deal of it. It s about killed the poor child. 
 She was out of her head a good deal of the night, and now she s 
 got a raging fever." 
 
 The doctor and Miss Baker returned to the room and entered, 
 closing the door. The big doctor stood for a moment looking down 
 at Trina rolling her head from side to side upon the pillow, her 
 face scarlet, her enormous mane of hair spread out on either side 
 of her. The little dressmaker remained at his elbow, looking from 
 him to Trina. 
 
 "Poor little woman!" said the doctor; "poor little woman!" 
 
 Miss Baker pointed to the trunk, whispering: 
 
 "See, there s where she kept her savings. See, he broke the 
 lock." 
 
 "Well, Mrs. McTeague," said the doctor, sitting down by the 
 bed, and taking Trina s wrist, "a little fever, eh?" 
 
 Trina opened her eyes and looked at him, and then at Miss 
 Baker. She did not seem in the least surprised at the unfamiliar 
 faces. She appeared to consider it all as a matter of course. 
 
 "Yes," she said, with a long, tremulous breath, "I have a fever, 
 and my head my head aches and aches." 
 
 The doctor prescribed rest and mild opiates. Then his eye fell 
 upon the fingers of Trina s right hand. He looked at them sharply. 
 A deep red glow, unmistakable to a physician s eyes, was upon 
 some of them, extending from the finger tips up to the second 
 knuckle. 
 
 "Hello," he exclaimed, "what s the matter here?" In fact, 
 something was very wrong indeed. For days Trina had noticed it. 
 The fingers of her right hand had swollen as never before, aching 
 and discolored. Cruelly lacerated by McTeague s brutality as they 
 were, she had nevertheless gone on about her work on the Noah s ark 
 animals, constantlyjn^ccuitad^wilhJiie^ She 
 
 told as much to the doctor in answer to his questions. He shook his 
 head with an exclamation. 
 
 "Why, this is blood-poisoning, you know," he told her; "the 
 
220 McTeague 
 
 worst kind. You ll have to have those fingers amputated, beyond 
 a doubt, or lose the entire hand or even worse." 
 "And my work!" exclaimed Trina. 
 
 XIX 
 
 ONE can hold a scrubbing-brush with two good fingers and the 
 stumps of two others even if both joints of the thumb are gone, but 
 J it takes considerable practice to get used to it. 
 
 Trina became a scrub-woman. She had taken council of Selina, 
 ] and through her had obtained the position of caretaker in a little 
 memorial kindergarten over on Pacific Street. Like Polk Street, it 
 was an accommodation street, but running through a much poorer 
 and more sordid quarter. Trina had a little room over the kinder 
 garten schoolroom. It was not an unpleasant room. It looked out 
 upon a sunny little court floored with boards and used as the chil 
 dren s playground. Two great cherry trees grew here, the leaves 
 r almost brushing against the window of Trina s room and filtering the 
 sunlight so that it fell in round golden spots upon the floor of the 
 room. "Like gold pieces," Trina said to herself. 
 
 Trina s work consisted in taking care of the kindergarten rooms, 
 scrubbing the floors, washing the windows, dusting and airing, and 
 carrying out the ashes. Besides this she earned some five dollars a 
 month by washing down the front steps of some big flats on Wash 
 ington Street, and by cleaning out vacant houses after the tenants 
 had left. She saw no one. Nobody knew her. She went about 
 her work from dawn to dark, and often entire days passed when 
 , she did not hear the sound of her own voice. She was alone, a 
 I solitary, abandoned woman, lost in the lowest eddies of the great 
 v. city stidfi the tide that always ebbs. 
 
 When Trina liad been discharged from the hospital after the 
 operation on her fingers, she found herself alone in the world, alone 
 / with her five thousand dollars. The interest of this would support 
 her, and yet allow her to save a little. 
 
 But for a time Trina had thought of giving up the fight alto 
 gether and of joining her family in the southern part of the State. 
 But even while she hesitated about this she received a long letter 
 from her mother, an answer to one she herself had written just 
 before the amputation of her right-hand fingers the last letter she 
 \ would ever be able to write. Mrs. Sieppe s letter was one long 
 
McTeague 221 
 
 lamentation ; she had her own misfortunes to bewail as well as those 
 of her daughter. The carpet-cleaning and upholstery business had 
 failed. Mr. Sieppe and Owgooste had left for New Zealand with 
 a colonization company, whither Mrs. Sieppe and the twins were to 
 follow tFem as soofTas the colony established itself. So far from 
 helping Trina in her ill fortune, it was she, her mother, who might 
 some day in the near future be obliged to turn to Trina for aid. 
 So Trina had given up the idea of any help from her family. For 
 that matter she needed none. She still had her five thousand, and\ 
 Uncle Oelbermann paid her the interest with a machine-like regu-J 
 larity. Now that McTeague had left her, there was one less mouth] 
 to feed; and with this saving, together with the little she could 
 earn as scrub-woman, Trina could almost manage to make good the 
 amount she lost by being obliged to cease work upon the Noah s 
 ark animals. 
 
 Little by little her sorrow over the loss of her precious savings 
 overcame the grief of McTeague s desertion of her. Her avarice 
 had grown to be her one dominant passion ; her love of money for 
 the money s sake brooded in her heart, driving out by degrees every 
 other natural affection. She_grew thin and meagre; her flesh clove 
 tight to her s_niall_skeletpn ; her-- : sniall Jgale mouth and little uplifted" 
 chlflTTeV to tiave a certain /feline >bagerness of expression ! liei lun^r 
 narrow eyes glistened continually, as if they caught and held the 
 glint oi metal. Une day as she sat in he"f fQOrh, the empty brass 
 match^Bblc^and the limp chamois bag in her hands, she suddenly 
 exclaimed : 
 
 "I could have forgiven him if he had only gone away and left 
 me my money. I could have yes, I could have forgiven him even 
 this" she looked at the stumps of her fingers. "But now," her 
 teeth closed tight and her eyes flashed, "now I ll never forgive 
 him as long as I live." 
 
 The empty bag and the hollow, light match-box troubled her. \ 
 Day after day she took them from her trunk and wept over them as 
 other women weep over a dead baby s shoe. Her four hundred 
 dollars were gone^ were gone, were^gone. She would never see 
 them again. She^couTd plainly see her husband spending her 
 savings by handfuls ; squandering her beautiful gold pieces that she 
 had been at such pains to polish with soap and ashes. The thought 
 filled her with an unspeakable anguish. She would wake at night 
 from a dream of McTeague reveling down her money, and ask of the 
 darkness, "How much did he spend to-day? How many of the 
 
222 McTeague 
 
 gold pieces are left? Has he broken either of the two twenty-dollar 
 pieces yet? What did he spend it for?" 
 
 The instant she was out of the hospital Trina had begun to save 
 again, but now it was with an eagerness that amounted at times to a 
 veritable frenzy. She even denied herself lights and fuel in order to 
 put by a quarter or so, grudging every penny she was obliged to 
 spend. She did her own washing and cooking. Finally she sold 
 her wedding-dress, that had hitherto lain in the bottom of her 
 trunk. - 
 
 The day she moved from Zerkow s old house, she came suddenly 
 upon the dentist s concertina under a heap of old clothes in the 
 closet. Within twenty minutes she had sold it to the dealer in 
 second-hand furniture, returning to her room with seven dollars 
 in her pocket, happy for the first time since McTeague had 
 left her. 
 
 But for all that the match-box and the bag refused to fill up; 
 after three weeks of the most rigid economy they contained but 
 eighteen dollars and some small change. What was that compared 
 with four hundred? Trina told herself that she must have her 
 money in hand. She longed to see again the heap of it upon her 
 work-table, where she could plunge her hands into it, her face into 
 it, feeling the cool, smooth metal upon her cheeks. At such moments 
 she would see in her imagination her wonderful five thousand dol 
 lars piled in columns, shining and gleaming somewhere at the bot 
 tom of Uncle Oelbermann s vault. She would look at the paper that 
 Uncle Oelbermann had given her, and tell herself that it represented 
 five thousand dollars. But in the end this ceased to satisfy her, she 
 must have the money itself. She must have her four hundred 
 dollars back again, there in her trunk, in her bag and her match 
 box, where she could touch it and see it whenever she desired. 
 
 At length she could stand it no longer, and one day presented 
 herself before Uncle Oelbermann as he sat in his office in the whole 
 sale toy store, and told him she wanted to have four hundred 
 dollars of her money. 
 
 "But this is very irregular, you know, Mrs. McTeague," said 
 the great man. "Not business-like at all." 
 
 But his niece s misfortunes and the sight of her poor maimed hand 
 appealed to him. He opened his check-book. "You understand, of 
 course," he said, "that this will reduce the amount of your interest 
 by just so much." 
 
 "I know, I know. I ve thought of that," said Trina. 
 
McTeague 223 
 
 "Four hundred, did you say?" remarked Uncle Oelbermann, 
 taking- the cap from his fountain pen. 
 
 "Yes, four hundred," exclaimed Trina quickly, her eyes 
 glistening. 
 
 Trina cashed the check and returned home with the money all 
 in twenty-dollar pieces as she had desired in an ecstasy of delight. 
 For half of that night she sat up playing with her money, counting 
 it and recounting it, polishing the duller pieces until they shone. 
 Altogether there were twenty twenty-dollar gold pieces. 
 
 "Oh-h, you beauties !" murmured Trina, running her palms over 
 them, fairly quivering with pleasure. "You beauties! Is there 
 anything prettier than a twenty-dollar gold piece? You dear, dear 
 money ! Oh, don t I love you ! Mine, mine, mine all of you mine/ 
 
 She laid them out in a row on the ledge of the table, or arranged 
 them in patterns triangles, circles, and squares or built them up 
 into a pyramid which she afterward overthrew for the sake of 
 hearing the delicious clink of the pieces tumbling against each other. 
 Then at last she put them away in the brass match-box and chamois 
 bag, delighted beyond words that they were once more full and 
 heavy. 
 
 Then, a few days after, the thought of the money still remaining 
 in Uncle Oelbermann s keeping returned to her. It was hers, all 
 hers all that four thousand six hundred. She could have as much 
 of it or as little of it as she chose. She only had to ask. For a 
 week Trina resisted, knowing very well that taking from her capital 
 was proportionately reducing her monthly income. Then at last 
 she yielded. 
 
 "Just to make it an even five hundred, anyhow," she told herself. 
 That day she drew a hundred dolb~s more, in twenty-dollar gold 
 pieces as before. From that time frina began to draw steadily, 
 upon her capital, a little at a time. It was a passion with her, a 
 mania, a veritable mental disease; a temptation such as drunkards 
 only know. 
 
 It would come upon her all of a sudden. While she was about 
 her work, scrubbing the floor of some vacant house ; or in her room, 
 in the morning, as she made her coffee on the oil stove, or when she 
 woke in the night, a brusque access of cupidity would seize upon 
 her. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes glistened, her breath came short. 
 At times she would leave her work just as it was, put on her old 
 bonnet of black straw, throw her shawl about her, and go straight 
 to Uncle Oelbermann s store and draw against her money. Now it 
 
224 McTeague 
 
 would be a hundred dollars, now sixty ; now she would content her 
 self with only twenty; and once, after a fortnight s abstinence, she 
 permitted herself a positive debauch of five hundred. Little by little 
 she drew her capital from Uncle Oelbermann, and little by little her 
 original interest of twenty-five dollars a month dwindled. 
 
 One day she presented herself again in the office of the whole 
 sale toy store. 
 
 "Will you let me have a check for two hundred dollars, Uncle 
 Oelbermann?" she said. 
 
 The great man laid down his fountain pen and leaned back in 
 his swivel chair with great deliberation. 
 
 "I don t understand, Mrs. McTeague," he said. "Every week 
 you come here and draw out a little of your money. I ve told you 
 that it is not at all regular or business-like for me to let you have it 
 this way. And more than this, it s a great inconvenience to me to 
 give you these checks at unstated times. If you wish to draw out 
 the whole amount, let s have some understanding. Draw it in 
 monthly instalments of, say, five hundred dollars, or else," he 
 added abruptly, "draw it all at once, now, to-day. I would even 
 prefer it that way. Otherwise it s it s annoying. Come, shall I 
 draw you a check for thirty-seven hundred, and have it over and 
 done with?" 
 
 "No, no," cried Trina, with instinctive apprehension, refusing, 
 she did not know why. "No, I ll leave it with you. I won t draw out 
 any more." 
 
 She took her departure, but paused on the pavement outside the 
 store, and stood for a moment lost in thought, her eyes beginning 
 to glisten and her breath coming short. Slowly she turned about 
 and re-entered the store; she came back into the office, and stood 
 trembling at the corner of Uncle Oelbermann s desk. He looked 
 up sharply. Twice Trina tried to get her voice, and when it did 
 come to her, she could hardly recognize it. Between breaths she 
 said: 
 
 "Yes, all right I ll you can give me will you give me a 
 check for thirty-seven hundred? Give me all of my money." 
 
 A few hours later she entered her little room over the kinder 
 garten, bolted the door with shaking fingers, and emptied a heavy 
 canvas sack upon the middle of her bed. Then she opened her trunk, 
 and taking thence the brass match-box and the chamois-skin bag 
 added their contents to the pile. Next she laid herself upon the bed 
 and gathered the gleaming heaps of gold pieces to her with both 
 
McTeague 225 
 
 arms, burying her face in them with long sighs of unspeakable 
 delight. 
 
 It was a little past noon, and the day was fine and warm. The 
 leaves of the huge cherry trees threw off a certain pungent aroma 
 that entered through the open window, together with long thin 
 shafts of golden sunlight. Below, in the kindergarten, the children 
 were singing gayly and marching to the jangling of the piano. 
 Trina heard nothing, saw nothing. She lay on her bed, her eyes 
 closed, her face buried in a pile of gold that she encircled with both 
 her arms. 
 
 Trina even told herself at last that she was happy once more. \ 
 McTeague became a memory a memory that faded a little every j 
 day dim and indistinct in the golden splendor of five thousand 
 dollars. 
 
 "And yet," Trina would say, "I did love Mac, loved him dearly, 
 only a little while ago. Even when he hurt me, it only made me 
 love him more. How is it I ve changed so sudden? How could I 
 forget him so soon? It must be because he stole my money. That 
 is it. I couldn t forgive any one that no, not even my mother. 
 And I never never will forgive him." 
 
 What had become of her husband Trina did not know. She 
 never saw any of the old Polk Street people. There was no way 
 she could have news of him, even if she had cared to have it. She 
 had her money, that was the main thing. Her passion for it ex 
 cluded every other sentiment. There it was in the bottom of her 
 trunk, in the canvas sack, the chamois-skin bag, and the little brass 
 match-safe. Not a day passed that Trina did not have it out where ^ 
 she could see and touch it. One evening she had even spread all 
 the gold pieces between, the sheetsrand had then gone to bed, strip 
 ping herself, ~and had slept all night upon thejnoney, taking a 
 strange-and ecstatic pleasure in the touch of the smooth flat pieces 
 tfie^etigtfr ~~of her entire body."" 
 
 One night, some three months after she had come to live at the 
 kindergarten, Trina was awakened by a sharp tap on the pane of 
 the window. She sat up quickly in bed, her heartlieatiiig thickly, 
 her eyes~rolling wildly in the direction of her trunk. The tap was 
 repeated. Trina rose and went fearfully to the window. The litt!e 
 court below was bright with moonlight, and standing just on the \ 
 edge of the shadow thrown by one of the cherry trees was Mc 
 Teague. A bunch of half-ripe cherries was in his hand. He wasX 
 eating them and throwing the pits at the window. As he caught 
 
McTeague 
 
 sight of her, he made an eager sign for her to raise the sash* Re 
 luctant and wondering, Trina obeyed, and the dentist came quickly 
 forward. He was wearing a pair of blue overalls; a navy-blue 
 flannel shirt without a cravat ; an old coat, faded, rain-washed, and 
 ripped at the seams ; and his woolen cap. 
 
 "Say, Trina/ he exclaimed, his heavy bass voice pitched just 
 above a whisper, "let me in, will you, huh? Say, will you? I m 
 regularly starving, and I haven t slept in a Christian bed for two 
 weeks." 
 
 At sight of him standing there in the moonlight, Trina could 
 only think of him as the man who had beaten and bitten her, had 
 deserted her and stolen her money, had made her suffer as she had 
 never suffered before in all her life. Now that he had spent the 
 money that he had stolen from her, he was whining to come back 
 so that he might steal more, no doubt. Once in her room he could 
 not help but smell out her five thousand dollars. Her indignation 
 rose. 
 
 )"No," she whispered back at him. "No, I will not let you in." 
 "But listen here, Trina, I tell you I am starving, regularly 
 "Hoh !" interrupted Trina scornfully. "A man can t starve with 
 four hundred dollars, I guess." 
 
 "Well well I well " faltered the dentist. "Never mind 
 now. Give me something to eat, an let me in an sleep. I ve been 
 sleeping in the Plaza for the last ten nights, and say, I Damn it, 
 Trina, I ain t had anything to eat since " 
 
 "Where s the four hundred dollars you robbed me of when you 
 deserted me." returned Trina coldly. 
 
 "Well, I ve spent it," growled the dentist. "But you can t see 
 me starve, Trina, no matter what s happened. Give me a little 
 money, then." 
 
 "I ll see you starve before you get any more of my money." 
 
 The dentist stepped back a pace and stared up at her, wonder- 
 stricken. His face was lean and pinched. Never had the jaw bone 
 looked so enormous, nor the square-cut head so huge. The moon 
 light made deep black shadows in the shrunken cheeks. 
 
 "Huh!" asked the dentist, puzzled. "What did you say?" 
 
 "I won t give you any money-r-never again not a cent." 
 
 "But do you know that I m hungry?" 
 
 "Well, I ve been hungry myself. Besides, I don t believe you." 
 
 "Trina, I ain t had a thing to eat since yesterday morning; 
 that s God s truth. Even if I did get off with your money, you 
 
McTeague 227 
 
 can t see me starve, can you? You can t see me walk the streets 
 all night because I ain t got a place to sleep. Will you let me in? 
 Say, will you? Huh?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Well, will you give me some money then just a little? Give 
 me a dollar. Give me half a dol Say, give me a dime, an I can 
 get a cup of coffee. 
 
 "No." 
 
 The dentist paused and looked at her with curious intentness, 
 bewildered, nonplussed. 
 
 "Say, you you must be crazy, Trina. I I wouldn t let a dog 
 go hungry." 
 
 "Not even if he d bitten you, perhaps." 
 
 The dentist stared again. 
 
 There was another pause. McTeague looked up at her in silence, 
 a mean and vicious twinkle coming into his small eyes. He ut 
 tered a low exclamation, and then checked himself. 
 
 "Well, look here, for the last time. I m starving. I ve got no 
 where to sleep. Will you give me some money, or something to 
 eat? Will you let me in?" 
 
 "No no no." 
 
 Trina could fancy she almost saw the brassy glint in her hus 
 band s eyes. He raised one enormous lean fist. Then he growled: ^ 
 
 "If I had hold of you for a minute, by God, I d make you dance. 
 An I will yet, I will yet. Don t you be afraid of that." 
 
 He turned about, the moonlight showing like a layer of snow 
 upon his massive shoulders. Trina watched him as he passed under 
 the shadow of the cherry trees and crossed the little court. She 
 heard his great feet grinding on the board flooring. He disap 
 peared. 
 
 Miser though jsjiejwas^ Trin^w^^nly_Jiuman, and the echo of 
 the dentist s Tieavy feet had not died away before she began to be 
 sorry for what she had done. She stood by the open window in her j 
 nightgown, her finger upon her lips. 
 
 "He did look pinched," she said half aloud. "(Maybe he was 
 hungry. I ought to have given him something. I wish I had, I 
 wish I had. Oh," she cried, suddenly, with a frightened gesture of 
 both hands, "what have I come to be that I would see Mac my 
 husband that I would see him starve rather than give him money? 
 No, no. It s too dreadful. I will give him some. I ll send it to 
 him to-morrow. Where ? well, he ll come back." She leaned from 
 
228 McTeague 
 
 the window and called as loudly as she dared, "Mac, oh, Mac." 
 There was no answer. 
 
 When McTeague had told Trina he had been without food for 
 nearly two days he was speaking the truth. The week before he had 
 spent the last of the four hundred dollars in the bar of a sailors 
 lodging-house near the water front, and since that time had lived a 
 veritable hand-to-mouth existence. 
 
 He had spent her money here and there about the city in royal 
 fashion, absolutely reckless of the morrow, feasting and drinking 
 for the most part with companions he picked up heaven knows 
 where, acquaintances of twenty-four hours, whose names he forgot 
 in two days. Then suddenly he found himself at the end of his 
 money. He no longer had any friends. Hunger rode him and 
 roweled him. He was no longer well fed, comfortable. There 
 was no longer a warm place for him to sleep. He went back to 
 Polk Street in the evening, walking on the dark side of the street, 
 lurking in the shadows, ashamed to have any of his old-time friends 
 see him. He entered Zerkow s old house and knocked at the door 
 of the room Trina and he had occupied. It was empty. 
 
 Next day he went to Uncle Oelbermann s store and asked news 
 of Trina. Trina had not told Uncle Oelbermann of McTeague s 
 brutalities, giving him other reasons to explain the loss of her fin 
 gers ; neither had she told him of her husband s robbery. So when 
 the dentist had asked where Trina could be found, Uncle Oelber 
 mann, believing that McTeague was seeking a reconciliation, had 
 told him without hesitation, and, he added : 
 
 "She was in here only yesterday and drew out the balance of her 
 money. She s been drawing against her money for the last month or 
 so. She s got it all now, I guess." 
 
 "Ah, she s got it all." 
 
 The dentist went away from his bootless visit to his wife shaking 
 with rage, hating her with all the strength of a crude and primitive 
 nature. He clinched his fists till his knuckles whitened, his teeth 
 ground furiously upon one another. 
 
 "Ah, if I had hold of you once, I d make you dance. She had 
 five thousand dollars in that room, while I stood there, not twenty 
 feet away, and told her I was starving, and she wouldn t give me a 
 dime to get a cup of coffee with ; not a dime to get a cup of coffee. 
 Oh, if I once get my hands on you!" His wrath strangled him. 
 He clutched at the darkness in front of him, his breath fairly whis 
 tling between his teeth. 
 
McTeague 229 
 
 That night he walked the streets until the morning, wondering 
 what now he was to do to fight the wolf away. The morning of 
 the next day toward ten o clock he was on Kearney Street, still 
 walking, still tramping the streets, since there was nothing else for 
 him to do. By and by he paused on a corner near a music store, 
 finding a momentary amusement in watching two or three men 
 loading a piano upon a dray. Already half its weight was supported 
 by the dray s backboard. One of the men, a big mulatto, almost 
 hidden under the mass of glistening rosewood, was guiding its 
 course, while the other two heaved and tugged in the rear. Some 
 thing in the street frightened the horses and they shied abruptly. 
 The end of the piano was twitched sharply from the backboard. 
 There was a cry, the mulatto staggered and fell with the falling 
 piano, and its weight dropped squarely upon his thigh, which broke 
 with a resounding crack. 
 
 An hour later McTeague had found his job. The music store 
 engaged him as handler at six dollars a week. McTeague s enor 
 mous strength, useless all his life, stood him in good stead at last. 
 
 He slept in a tiny back room opening from the storeroom of the 
 music store. He was in some sense a watchman as well as han 
 dler, and went the rounds of the store twice every night. His room 
 was a box of a place that reeked with odors of stale tobacco smoke. 
 The former occupant had papered the walls with newspapers and 
 had pasted up figures cut out from the posters of some Kiralfy bal- x ; \ 
 let, very gaudy. By the one window, chittering all day in its little \ 
 gilt prison, hung the canary bird, a tiny atom of life that McTeague J 
 still clung to with a strange obstinacy. 
 
 McTeague drank a good deal of whiskey in these days, but the 
 only effect it had upon him was to increase the viciousness and bad 
 temper that had developed in him since the beginning of his misfor 
 tunes. He terrorized his fellow-handlers, powerful men though 
 they were. For a gruff word, for an awkward movement in loading 
 the pianos, for a surly look or a muttered oath, the dentist s elbow 
 would crook and his hand contract to a mallet-like fist. As often as 
 not the blow followed, colossal in its force, swift as the leap of the 
 piston from its cylinder. 
 
 His hatred of Trina increased from day to day. He d make he^ 
 dance yet. Wait only till he got his hands upon her. She d let him 
 starve, would she? She d turn him out of doors while she hid her 
 five thousand dollars in the bottom of her trunk. Aha, he would see 
 about that some day. She couldn t make small of him. Ah, no. 
 
230 McTeague 
 
 She d dance all right all right. McTeague was not an imagina 
 tive man by nature, but he would lie awake nights, his clumsy wits 
 galloping and frisking under the lash of the alcohol, and fancy him 
 self thrashing his wife, till a sudden frenzy of rage would overcome 
 him, and he would shake all over, rolling upon the bed and biting 
 the mattress. 
 
 On a certain day, about a week after Christmas of that year, 
 McTeague was on one of the top floors of the music store, where 
 the second-hand instruments were kept, helping to move about and 
 rearrange some old pianos. As he passed by one of the counters 
 he paused abruptly, his eye caught by an object that was strangely 
 familiar. 
 
 "Say," he inquired, addressing the clerk in charge, "say, where d 
 this come from?" 
 
 "Why, let s see. We got that from a second-hand store up on 
 Polk Street, I guess. It s a fairly good machine; a little tinkering 
 with the stops and a bit of shellac, and we ll make it about s good 
 as new. Good tone. See." And the clerk drew a long, sonorous 
 wail from the depths of McTeague s old concertina. 
 
 "Well, it s mine," growled the dentist. 
 
 The other laughed. "It s yours for eleven dollars." 
 
 "It s mine," persisted McTeague. "I want it." 
 
 "Go long with you, Mac. What do you mean?" 
 
 "I mean that it s mine, that s what I mean. You got no right to 
 it. It was jioleib from me, that s what I mean," he added, a sullen 
 anger flaming, irp in his little eyes. 
 
 The clerk raised a shoulder and put the concertina on an upper 
 shelf. 
 
 "You talk to the boss about that, t ain t none of my affair. If 
 you want to buy it, it s eleven dollars." 
 
 The dentist had been paid off the day before and had four dol 
 lars in his wallet at the moment. He gave the money to the clerk. 
 
 "Here, there s part of the money. You you put that concei tina 
 aside for me, an I ll give you the rest in a week or so- I ll give it 
 to you to-morrow," he exclaimed, struck with a sudden idea. 
 
 McTeague had sadly missed his concertina. Sunday afternoons, 
 when there was no work to be dbne, he was accustomed to lie flat 
 on his back on his springless bed in the little room in the rear of the 
 music store, his coat and shoes off, reading the paper, drinking 
 steam beer from a pitcher, and smoking his pipe. But he could no 
 longer play his six lugubrious airs upon his concertina, and it was 
 
McTeague 23 1 
 
 a deprivation. He often wondered where it had gone. It had been 
 lost, no doubt, in the general wreck of his fortunes. Once, even, 
 tre dentist had taken a concertina from the lot kept by the music 
 store. It was a Sunday and no one was about. But he found he 
 could not play upon it. The stops were arranged upon a system 
 he did not understand. 
 
 Now his own concertina was come back to him. He would buy 
 it back. He had given the clerk four dollars. He knew where he 
 would get the remaining seven. 
 
 The clerk had told him the concertina had been sold on Polk 
 Street to the second-hand store there. Trina had sold it. Mc 
 Teague knew it. Trina had sold his concertina had stolen it and 
 sold it his concertina, his beloved concertina, that he had had all 
 his life. Why, barring the canary, there was not one of all his be 
 longings that McTeague had cherished more dearly. His steel 
 engraving of "Lorenzo de Medici and his Court" might be lost, his 
 stone pug dog might go, but his concertina ! 
 
 "And she sold it stole it from me and sold it. Just because I 
 happened to forget to take it along with me. Well, we ll just see 
 about that. You ll give me the money to buy it back, or " 
 
 His rage loomed big within him. His hatred of Trina came back 
 upon him like a returning surge. He saw her small, trim mouth, 
 her narrow blue eyes, her black mane of hair, and uptilted chin, and 
 hated her the more because of them. Aha, he d show her; he d 
 make her dance. He d get that seven dollars from her, or he d know 
 the reason why. He went through his work that day, heaving and 
 hauling at the ponderous pianos, handling them with the ease of a 
 lifting crane, impatient for the coming of evening, when he could be 
 left to his own devices. As often as he had a moment to spare he 
 went down the street to the nearest saloon and drank a pony of 
 whiskey. Now and then as he fought and struggled with the vast 
 masses of ebony, rosewood, and mahogany on the upper floor of the 
 music store, raging and chafing at their inertness and unwillingness, 
 while the whiskey pirouetted in his brain, he would mutter to himself: 
 
 "An / got to do this I got to work like a dray horse while she 
 sits at home by her stove and counts her money and sells my con 
 certina." 
 
 Six o clock came. Instead of supper, McTeague drank some 
 more whiskey, five ponies in rapid succession. After supper he was 
 obliged to go out with the dray to deliver a concert grand at the 
 Odd Fellows Hall, where a piano "recital" was to take place. 
 
McTeague 
 
 "Ain t you coming back with us?" asked one of the handlers as 
 he climbed upon the driver s seat after the piano had been put in 
 
 place. 
 
 "No, no," returned the dentist, "I got something else to do. 
 The brilliant lights of a saloon near the City Hall caught his eye. 
 He decided he would have another drink of whiskey. It was about 
 eight o clock. 
 
 The following day was to be a fete day at the kindergarten, the 
 Christmas and New Year festivals combined. All that afternoon the 
 little two-story building on Pacific Street had been filled with a 
 number of grand ladies of the Kindergarten Board, who were hang 
 ing up ropes of evergreen and sprays of holly, and arranging a great 
 Christmas tree that stood in the centre of the ring in the school 
 room. The whole place was pervaded with a pungent, piny odor. 
 Trina had been very busy since the early morning, coming and go 
 ing at everybody s call, now running down the street after another 
 tack-hammer or a fresh supply of cranberries, now tying together 
 the ropes of evergreen and passing them up to one of the grand 
 ladies as she carefully balanced herself on a step-ladder. By even 
 ing everything was in place. As the last grand lady left* the school, 
 she gave Trina an extra dollar for her work, and said : 
 
 "Now, if you ll just tidy up here, Mrs. McTeague, I think that 
 
 will be all. Sweep up the pine needles here you see they are all 
 
 over the floor and look through all the rooms, and tidy up general- 
 
 . ly. Good-night and a Happy New Year," she cried pleasantly as 
 
 she went out. 
 
 Trina put the dollar away in her trunk before she did anything 
 else and cooked herself a bit of supper. Then she came down 
 stairs again. 
 
 The kindergarten was not large. On the lower floor were but 
 two rooms, the main schoolroom and another room, a cloakroom, 
 very small, where the children hung their hats and coats. This 
 cloakroom opened off the back of the main schoolroom. Trina cast 
 a critical glance into both of these rooms. There had been a great 
 deal of going and coming in them during the day, and she decided 
 that the first thing to do would be to scrub the floors. She went up 
 again to her room overhead arrd heated some water over her oil- 
 stove ; then, re-descending, set to work vigorously. 
 
 _Bv nine o clock she had almost finished with the schoolroom. 
 She was down on her hands and knees in the midst of a steaming 
 muck of soapy water. On her feet were a pair of man s shoes 
 
McTeague 233 
 
 fastened with buckles. A dirty cotton gown, damp with the water, 
 clung about her shapeless, stunted figure. From time to time she 
 sat back on her heels to ease the strain of her position, and with one 
 smoking hand, white and parboiled with the hot water, brushed 
 her hair, already streaked with gray, out of her weazened, pale face 
 and the corners of her mouth. 
 
 It was very quiet. A gas-jet without a globe lighted up the 
 place with a crude, raw light. The cat who lived on the premises, 
 preferring to be dirty rather than to be wet, had got into the coal 
 scuttle, and over its rim watched her sleepily with a long, compla 
 cent purr. 
 
 All at once he stopped purring, leaving an abrupt silence in 
 the air like the sudden shutting off a stream of water, while 
 his eyes grew wide, two lambent disks of yellow in the heap of 
 black fur. 
 
 "Who is there ?" cried Trina, sitting back on her heels. In the 
 stillness that succeeded, the water dripped from her hands with the 
 steady tick of a clock. Then a brutal fist swung open the street 
 door of the schoolroom and McTeague came in. He was drunk; 
 not with that drunkenness which is stupid, maudlin, wavering on its 
 feet, but with that which is alert, unnaturally intelligent, vicious, 
 perfectly steady, deadly wicked. Trina only had to look once at 
 him, and in an instant, with some strange sixth sense, born of the 
 occasion, knew what she had to expect. 
 
 ^She jumped up ami ran from Tiimmfb the little cloakroom. She 
 locked and bolted the door after her, and leaned her weight against 
 it, panting and trembling, every nerve shrinking and quivering with 
 the fear of him. 
 
 McTeague put his hand on the knob of the door outside and 
 opened it, tearing off the lock and bolt guard, and sending her stag 
 gering across the room. 
 
 "Mac," she cried to him, as he came in, speaking with horrid 
 rapidity, cringing and holding out her hands, "Mac, listen. Wait a 
 minute look here listen here. It wasn t my fault. 1*11 give you 
 some money. You can come back. I ll do anything you want. 
 Won t you just listen to me? Oh, don t! I ll scream. I can t help 
 it, you know. The people will hear." 
 
 McTeague came toward her slowly, his immense feet dragging 
 and grinding on the floor; his enormous fists, hard as wooden mal 
 lets, swinging at his sides. Trina backed from him to the corner 
 of the room, cowering before him, holding her elbow crooked in 
 
234 McTeague 
 
 front of her face, watching him with fearful intentness, ready to 
 dodge. 
 
 "I want that money," he said, pausing in front of her. 
 
 "What money?" cried Trina. 
 
 "I want that money. You got it that five thousand dollars. I 
 want every nickel of it! You understand?" 
 
 "I haven t it. It isn t here. Uncle Oelbermann s got it." 
 
 "That s a lie. He told me that you came and got it. YouVe 
 had it long enough ; now / want it. Do you hear?" 
 
 "Mac, I can t give you that money. I I won t give it to you," 
 Trina cried, with sudden resolution. 
 
 "Yes, you will. You ll give me every nickel of it." 
 
 "No, no." 
 
 "You ain t going to make small of me this time. Give me that 
 money." 
 
 "No" 
 
 "For the last time, will you give me that money ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "You won t, huh ? You won t give me it ? For the last time." 
 
 "No, no." 
 
 Usually the dentist was slow in his movements, but now the 
 alcohol had awakened in him an ape-like agility. He kept his small 
 dull eyes upon her, and all at once sent his fist into_jjie_middle_of 
 her face with the suddenness of a relaxed spring. 
 
 Beside herself with terror, Trjna_tiirned and fought him back; 
 fought for herjmiserable life with the exasperation and strength of 
 a harassed cat ; and with such energy and such wild, unnatural force, 
 th~at even McTeague "for the mornenf cfrew : T>acEF TfonTHer." But her 
 resistance was the one thing to drive him to the top of his fury. 
 He came back at her again, his eyes drawn to two fine twinkling 
 points, and his enormous fists, clinched till the knuckles whitened, 
 raised in the air. 
 
 Then it became abominable. 
 
 In the schoolroom outside, behind the coal scuttle, the cat listened 
 to the sounds of stamping and struggling and the muffled noise of 
 blows, wildly terrified, his eyes bulging like brass knobs. At last 
 the sounds stopped on a suddeh ; he heard nothing more. Then 
 McTeague came out, closing the door. The cat followed him 
 with distended eyes as he crossed the room and disappeared through 
 the street door. 
 
 The dentist paused for a moment on the sidewalk, looking care- 
 
McTeague 235 
 
 fully up and down the street. It was deserted and quiet. He turned 
 sharply to the right and went down a narrow passage that led into 
 the little courtyard behind the school. A candle was burning in 
 Trina s room. He went up by the outside stairway and entered. 
 
 The trunk stood locked in one corner of the room. The dentist 
 took the lid-lifter from the little oil stove, put it underneath the 
 lock-clasp and wrenched it open. Groping beneath a pile of dresses 
 he found the chamois-skin bag, the little brass match-box, and, at 
 the very bottom, carefully thrust into one corner, the canvas sack 
 crammed to the mouth with twenty-dollar gold pieces. He emptied 
 the chamois-skin bag and the match-box into the pockets of his 
 trousers. But the canvas sack was too bulky to hide about his 
 clothes. 
 
 "I guess I ll just naturally have to carry you" he muttered. 
 He blew out the candle, closed the door, and gained the street 
 again. 
 
 The dentist crossed the city, going back to the music store. It 
 was a little after eleven o clock. The night was moonless, filled 
 with a gray blur of faint light that seemed to come from all quar 
 ters of the horizon at once. From time to time there were sudden 
 explosions of a southeast wind at the street corners. McTeague 
 went on, slanting his head against the gusts, to keep his cap from 
 blowing off, carrying the sack close to his side. Once he looked 
 critically at the sky. 
 
 "I bet it ll rain to-morrow," he muttered, "if this wind works 
 round to the south." 
 
 Oncejn_his little den behind the music store, he washed his 
 hands and forearms, and put on his working clothes, blue overalls 
 and a jumper, over cheap trousers and vest. Then he got together 
 his small belongings an old campaign hat, a pair of boots, a tin 
 of tobacco, and a pinchbeck bracelet which he had found one Sun 
 day in the Park, and which he believed to be valuable. He stripped 
 his blanket from his bed and rolled up in it all these objects, to 
 gether with the canvas sack, fastening the roll with a half hitch 
 such as miners use, the. , instincts of the old-time car-boy coming 
 back to him in his present confusion of mind. He changed his pipe 
 and his knife a huge jack-knife with a yellowed bone handle to 
 the. pockets of his overalls. 
 
 Then at last he stood with his hand on the door, holding up the 
 lamp before blowing it out, looking about to make sure he was ready 
 to go. The wavering light woke his canary. It stirred and began 
 
McTeague 
 
 to chitter feebly, very sleepy and cross at being awakened. Mc 
 Teague started, staring at it, and reflecting. He believed that 
 it would be a long time before any one came into that room again. 
 The canary would be days without food; it was likely it would 
 starve, would die there, hour by hour, in its little gilt prison. Mc 
 Teague resolved to take it with him. He took down the cage, 
 touching it gently with his enormous hands, and tied a couple 
 of sacks about it to shelter the little bird from the sharp night 
 wind. 
 
 Then he went out, locking all the doors behind him, and turned 
 toward the ferry slips. The boats had ceased running hours ago, 
 but he told himself that by waiting till four o clock he could get 
 across the bay on the tug that took over the morning papers. 
 
 Trina lay unconscious, just as she had fallen under the last of 
 McTeague s blows, her body twitching with an occasional hic 
 cough that stirred the pool of blood in which she lay face down 
 ward. Toward morning^she died with a rapid series of hiccoughs 
 that sounded like a piece of clockwork running down. 
 
 The thing had been done in the cloakroom where the kinder 
 garten children hung their hats and coats. There was no other 
 entrance except by going through the main schoolroom. McTeague 
 going out had shut the door of the cloakroom, but had left the 
 street door open ; so when the children arrived in the morning, they 
 entered as usual. 
 
 About half-past eight, two or three five-year-olds, one a little 
 colored girl, came into the schoolroom of the kindergarten with a 
 great chatter of voices, going across to the cloakroom to hang up 
 their hats and coats as they had been taught. 
 
 Half-way across the room one of them stopped and put her small 
 nose in the air, crying, "Um-o-o, what a funnee smell !" The others 
 began to sniff the air as well, and one, the daughter of a butcher, 
 exclaimed, " Tsmells like my pa s shop," adding in the next breath, 
 "Look, what s the matter with the kittee?" 
 
 In fact, the cat was acting strangely. He lay quite flat on the 
 floor, his nose pressed close to the crevice under the door of the 
 little cloakroom, winding his tail slowly back and forth, excited, 
 very eager. At times he would draw back and make a strange little 
 clacking noise down in his throat. 
 
 "Ain t he funnee?" said the little girl again. The cat slunk 
 
McTeague 237 
 
 swiftly away as the children came up. Then the tallest of the little 
 girls swung the door of the little cloakroom wide open and they 
 all ran in. 
 
 XX 
 
 THE day was very hot, and the silence of high noon lay close 
 and thick between the steep slopes of the canons like an invisible, 
 muffling fluid. At intervals the drone of an insect bored the air and 
 trailed slowly to silence again. Everywhere were pungent, aro 
 matic smells. The vast, moveless heat seemed to distil countless 
 odors from the brush odors of warm sap, of pine needles, and of 
 tar-weed, and above all the medicinal odor of witch hazel. As far 
 as one could look, uncounted multitudes of trees and manzanita 
 bushes were quietly and motionlessly growing, growing, growing. 
 A tremendous, immeasurable Life pushed steadily heavenward with 
 out a sound, without a motion. At turns of the road, on the higher 
 points, canons disclosed themselves far away, gigantic grooves in 
 the landscape, deep blue in the distance, opening one into another 
 ocean-deep, silent, huge, and suggestive of colossal primeval forces 
 held in reserve. At their bottoms they were solid, massive ; on their 
 crests they broke delicately into fine serrated edges where the pines 
 and redwoods outlined their million of tops against the high white 
 horizon. Here and there the mountains lifted themselves out of 
 the narrow river beds in groups like giant lions rearing their heads 
 after drinking. The enjire region was untamed. In some places 
 east of the Mississippi ^ature 5 is cosey, intimate, small, and homelike, 
 like a good-natured housewife. In Placer County, California, she is 
 a vast, unconquered ftrtft^ of the Pliocene epoch, savage, sullen, 
 and magnificently indifferent to man. 
 
 But there were men in these mountains, like lice on mammoths 
 hides, fighting them stubbornly, now with hydraulic "monitors," now 
 with drill and dynamite, boring into the vitals of them, or tearing 
 away great yellow gravelly scars in the flanks of them, sucking their 
 blood, extracting gold. 
 
 Here and there at long distances upon the canon sides rose the 
 headgear of a mine, surrounded with its few unpainted houses, and 
 topped by its never-failing feather of black smoke. On near ap 
 proach one heard the prolonged thunder of the stamp-mill, the 
 crusher, the insatiable monster, gnashing the rocks to powder with 
 its long iron teeth, vomiting them out again in a thin stream of wet 
 

 238 McTeague 
 
 gray mud. Its enormous maw, fed night and day with the car-boys 
 loads, gorged itself with gravel, and spat out the gold, grinding 
 the rocks between its jaws, glutted, as it were, with the very en 
 trails of the earth, and growling over its endless meal, like some 
 savage animal, some legendary dragon, some fabulous beast, symbol 
 of inordinate and monstrous gluttony. 
 
 McTeague had left the Overland train at Colfax, and the same 
 afternoon had ridden some eight miles across the mountains in the 
 stage that connects Colfax with Iowa Hill. Iowa Hill was a small 
 one-street town, the headquarters of the_mines of the district. Orig 
 inally it had been built upon the summit of a mountain, but the sides 
 of this mountain have long since been "hydraulicked" away, so that 
 the town now clings to a mere backbone, and the rear windows of 
 the houses on both sides of the street look down over sheer preci 
 pices, into vast pits hundreds of feet deep. 
 
 The dentist stayed overnight at the Hill, and the next morning 
 started off on foot further into the mountains. He still wore his 
 blue overalls and jumper ; his woolen cap was pulled down over his 
 eyes; on his feet were hob-nailed boots he had bought at the store 
 in Colfax ; his blanket roll was over his back ; in his left hand swung 
 the bird cage wrapped in sacks. 
 
 Just outside the town he paused, as if suddenly remembering 
 something. 
 
 "There ought to be a trail just off the road here," he muttered. 
 "There used to be a trail a short cut." 
 
 The next instant, without moving from his position, he saw 
 where it opened just before him. His instinct had halted him at 
 the exact spot. The trail zigzagged down the abrupt descent of the 
 canon, debouching into a gravelly river bed. 
 
 "Indian River," muttered the dentist. "I remember I remem 
 ber. I ought to hear the Morning Star s stamps from here." He 
 cocked his head. A low, sustained roar, like a distant cataract, came 
 to his ears from across the river. "That s right," he said, con 
 tentedly. He crossed the river and regained the road befond. The 
 slope rose under his feet; a little further on he passed the Morning 
 Star mine, smoking and thundering. McTeague pushed steadily 
 on. The road rose with the rise of the mountain, turned at a sharp 
 angle where a great live-oak grew, and held level for nearly a quar 
 ter of a mile. Twice again the dentist left the road and took to the 
 trail that cut through deserted hydraulic pits. He knew exactly 
 where to look for these trails ; not once did his instinct deceive him. 
 
McTeague 239 
 
 He recognized familiar points at once. Here was Cold Canon, 
 where invariably, winter and summer, a chilly wind was blowing; 
 here was where the road to Spencer s branched off; here was 
 Bussy s old place, where at one time there were so many dogs; 
 here was Delmue s cabin, where unlicensed whiskey used to be sold ; 
 here was the plank bridge with its one rotten board; and here 
 the flat overgrown with manzanita, where he once had shot three 
 quail. 
 
 At noon, after he had been tramping for some two hours, he 
 halted at a point where the road dipped suddenly. A little to the 
 right of him, and flanking the road, an enormous yellow gravel-pit 
 like an emptied lake gaped to heaven. Further on, in the distance, 
 a canon zigzagged toward the horizon, rugged with pine-clad moun 
 tain crests. Nearer at hand, and directly in the line of the road, 
 was an irregular cluster of unpainted cabins. A dull, prolonged roar 
 vibrated in the air. McTeague nodded his head as if satisfied. 
 
 "That s the place," he muttered. 
 
 He reshouldered his blanket roll and descended the road. At 
 last he halted again. He stood before a low one-story building, 
 differing from the others in that it was painted. A veranda, shut in 
 with mosquito netting, surrounded it. McTeague dropped his 
 blanket roll on a lumber pile outside, and came up and knocked 
 at the open door. Some one called to him to come in. 
 
 McTeague entered, rolling his eyes about him, noting the 
 changes that had been made since he had last seen this place. A 
 partition had been knocked down, making one big room out of the 
 two former small ones. A counter and railing stood inside the 
 door. There was a telephone on the wall. In one corner he also 
 observed a stack of surveyors instruments; a big drawing-board 
 straddled on spindle legs across one end of the room, a mechanical 
 drawing of some kind, no doubt the plan of the mine, unrolled upon 
 it; a chromo representing a couple of peasants in a plowed field 
 (Millet s "Angelus") was nailed unframed upon the wall, and hang 
 ing from the same wire nail that secured one of its corners in place 
 was a bullion bag and a cartridge belt with a loaded revolver in the 
 pouch. 
 
 The dentist approached the counter and leaned his elbows upon 
 it. Three men were in the room a tall, lean young man, with a 
 thick head of jjair surprisingly gray, who was playing with a half- 
 grown great Dane puppy ; another fellow about as young, but with 
 a jaw almost as salient as McTeague s, stood at the letter-press 
 
240 McTeague 
 
 taking a copy of a letter ; a third man, a little older than the other 
 two, was pottering over a transit. This latter was massively built, 
 and wore overalls and low boots streaked and stained and spotted 
 in every direction with gray mud. The dentist looked slowly from 
 one to the other; then at length, "Is the foreman about?" he asked. 
 
 The man in the muddy overalls came forward. 
 
 "What you want?" 
 
 He spoke with a strong German accent. 
 
 The old invariable formula came back to McTeague on the 
 instant. 
 
 "What s the show for a job?" 
 
 At once the German foreman became preoccupied, looking aim 
 lessly out of the window. There was a silence. 
 
 "You hev been miner alretty ?" 
 
 "Yes, yes." 
 
 "Know how to hendle pick n shov le?" 
 
 "Yes, I know." 
 
 The other seemed unsatisfied. "Are you a Cousin Jack ?" 
 
 The dentist grinned. This prejudice against Cornishmen he re 
 membered too. - 1 
 
 "No. American." 
 
 "How long sence you mine?" 
 
 "Oh, year or two." 
 
 "Show your hends." McTeague exhibited his hard, calloused 
 palms. 
 
 "When ken you go to work? I want a chuck-tender on der 
 night-shift." 
 
 "I can tend a chuck. I ll go on to-night." 
 
 "What s your name?" 
 
 The dentist started. He had forgotten to be prepared for this. 
 
 "Huh? What?" 
 
 "What s the name?" 
 
 McTeague s eye was caught by a railroad calendar hanging over 
 the desk. There was no time to think. 
 
 "Burlington," he said, loudly. 
 
 The German took a card from a file and wrote it down. 
 
 "Give dis card to der boarding-boss, down at der boarding-haus, 
 den gome find me bei der mill at sex o clock, und I set you to work." 
 ^toaigfo^^ and following a_ blind andjunrea.- 
 
 sone?~iipunck McTeague had returned tqJthejBig"Dipper mine. 
 ~~ it seemed to him as though /" 
 
McTeague 241 
 
 away. He picked up his life again exactly where he had left it the 
 day when his mother had sent him away with the traveling dentist, 
 the charlatan who had set up his tent by the bunk house. The house 
 McTeague had once lived in was still there, occupied by one of the 
 shift bosses and his family. The dentist passed it on his way to 
 and from the mine. 
 
 He himself slept in the bunk house with some thirty others of 
 his shift. At half-past five in the evening the cook at the boarding- 
 house sounded a prolonged alarm upon a crowbar bent in the form 
 of a triangle, that hung upon the porch of the boarding-house. 
 McTeague rose and dressed, and with his shift had supper. Their 
 lunch-pails were distributed to them. Then he made his way to the 
 tunnel mouth, climbed into a car in the waiting ore train, and was 
 hauled into the mine. 
 
 Once inside, the hot evening air turned to a cool dampness, and 
 the forest odors gave place to the smell of pale dynamite smoke, 
 suggestive of burning rubber. A cloud of steam came from Mc- 
 Teague s mouth ; underneath, the water swashed and rippled around 
 the car-wheels, while the light from the miners candlesticks threw 
 wavering blurs of pale yellow over the gray rotting quartz of the 
 roof and walls. Occasionally McTeague bent down his head to 
 avoid the sagging of the roof or the projections of an overhanging 
 shute. From car to car all along the line the miners called to one 
 another as the train trundled along, joshing and laughing. 
 
 A mile from the entrance the train reached the breast where 
 McTeague s gang worked. The men clambered from the cars and 
 took up the labor where the day shift had left it, burrowing their 
 way steadily through a primeval river bed. 
 
 The candlesticks thrust into the crevices of the gravel strata 
 lighted up faintly the half dozen moving figures befouled with sweat 
 and with wet gray mould. The picks struck into the loose gravel with 
 a yielding shock. The long-handled shovels slinked amid the piles 
 of bowlders and scraped dully in the heaps of rotten quartz. The 
 Burly drill boring for blasts broke out from time to time in an irreg 
 ular chug-chug, chug-chug, while the engine that pumped the water 
 from the mine coughed and strangled at short intervals. 
 
 McTeague tended the chuck. In a way he was the assistant 
 of the man who worked the Burly. It was his duty to replace the 
 drills in the Burly, putting in longer ones as the hole got deeper 
 and deeper. From time to time he rapped the drill with a pole-pick 
 when it stuck fast or fitchered. 
 
 K III NORRIS 
 
242 McTeague 
 
 Once it even occurred to him that there was a resemblance between 
 his present work and the profession he had been forced to abandon. 
 In the Burly drill he saw a queer counterpart of his old-time dental 
 engine; and what were the drills and chucks but enormous hoe 
 excavators, hard bits and burrs? It was the same_wprk.Jie.Jiajd_ 
 so often performed in his |Tarlprs^" only "magnified, made mon 
 strous, distorted, and grotesqued, the caricature of.. dentistry. 
 
 He passed his nights thus in the midst of the play of crude and 
 simple forces the powerful attacks of the Burly drills; the great 
 exertions of bared, bent backs overlaid with muscle; the brusque, 
 resistless expansion of dynamite; and the silent, vast Titanic force, 
 mysterious and slow, that cracked the timbers supporting the roof 
 of the tunnel, and that gradually flattened the lagging till it was thin 
 as paper. 
 
 :Qjae life pleased the dentist beyond words. The still, colossal 
 mountains took him back again like a returning prodigal, and vague 
 ly, without knowing why, he yielded to their influence their im 
 mensity, their enormous power, crude and blind, reflecting them 
 selves in his own nature, huge, strong, brutal in its simplicity. And 
 this, though he only saw the mountains at night. They appeared 
 far different then than in the daytime. At twelve o clock he 
 came out of the mine and lunched on the contents of his dinner- 
 pail, sitting upon the embankment of the track, eating with both 
 hands, and looking around him with a steady, ox-like gaze. The 
 mountains rose sheer from every side, heaving their gigantic crests 
 far up into the night, the black peaks crowding together and look 
 ing now less like beasts than like a company of cowled giants. In 
 the daytime they were silent, but at night they seemed to stir and 
 rouse themselves. Occasionally the stamp-mill stopped, its thun 
 der ceasing abruptly. Then one could hear the noises that the 
 mountains made in their living. From the canon, from the crowd 
 ing crests, from the whole immense landscape there rose a steady 
 and prolonged sound, coming from all sides at once. It was that 
 incessant and muffled roar which disengages itself from all vast 
 bodies, from oceans, from cities, from forests, from sleeping armies, 
 and which is like the breathing of an infinitely great monster, alive, 
 palpitating. 
 
 , McTeague returned to his work. At six in the morning his shift 
 was taken off, and he went out of the mine and back to the bunk 
 house. All day long he slept, flung at length upon the strong- 
 smelling blankets slept the dreamless sleep of exhaustion, crushed 
 
McTeague 243 
 
 and overpowered with the work, flat and prone upon his belly, till 
 again in the evening the cook sounded the alarm upon the crowbar 
 bent into a triangle. 
 
 Every akernate week the shifts were changed. The second week 
 McTeague s shift worked in the daytime and slept at night. 
 Wednesday night of this second week the dentist woke suddenly. 
 He sat up in his bed in the bunk house, looking about him from side 
 to side ; an alarm clock hanging on the wall, over a lantern, marked 
 half-past three. 
 
 "What was it?" muttered the dentist. "I wonder what it was." 
 The rest of the shift were sleeping soundly, rilling the room with 
 the rasping sound of snoring. Everything was hi its accus 
 tomed place; nothing stirred. But for all that McTeague got up 
 and lighted his miner s candlestick and went carefully about the 
 room, throwing the light into the dark corners, peering under all the 
 beds, including his own. Then he went to the door and stepped 
 outside. The night was warm and still; the moon, very low, and 
 canted on her side like a galleon foundering. The camp was very 
 quiet; nobody was in sight. "I wonder what it was," muttered the 
 dentist. "There was something why did I wake up? Huh?" 
 He made a circuit about the bunk house, unusually alert, his small 
 eyes twinkling rapidly, seeing everything. All was quiet. An old 
 dog who invariably slept on the steps of the bunk house had not 
 even wakened. McTeague went back to bed, but did not sleep. 
 
 "There was something" he muttered, looking in a puzzled way 
 at his canary in the cage that hung from the wall at his bedside, 
 "something. What was it? There is something now. There it is 
 again the same thing." He sat up in bed with eyes and ears 
 strained. "What is it? I don know what it is. I don hear any 
 thing, an I don see anything. I feel something right now; feel 
 it now. I wonder I don know I don know." 
 
 Once more he got up, and this time dressed himself. He made 
 a complete tour of the camp, looking and listening, for what he did 
 not know. He even went to the outskirts of the camp and for 
 nearly half an hour watched the road that led into the camp from 
 the direction of Iowa Hill. He saw nothing; not even a rabbit ; 
 stirred. He went to bed. 
 
 But from this time on there was a change. The dentist grew j 
 restless, uneasy. Suspicion of something, he could not say what, i 
 annoyed him incessantly. He went wide around sharp corners. At 
 every moment he looked sharply over his shoulder. He even went 
 
244 McTeague 
 
 to bed with his clothes and cap on, and at every hour during the 
 night would get up and prowl about the bunk house, one ear turned 
 down the wind, his eyes gimleting the darkness. From time to 
 time he would murmur : 
 
 "There s something. What is it? I wonder what it is. 
 What strange sixth sense stirred in McTeague at .this .lime? 
 What "animal cunning, what brute instinct clamored for recognition 
 and obedience? What lower faculty was it that roused his sus- 
 pTcTorr;iTTat*"drove him out into the night a score of times between 
 dark and dawn, his head in the air, his eyes and ears keenly alert? 
 One night as he stood on the steps of the bunk house, peering 
 into the shadows of the camp, he uttered an exclamation as of a man 
 suddenly enlightened. He turned back into the house> drew from 
 under the bed the blanket roll in which he kept his money hid, and 
 took the canary down from the wall. He strode to the door and 
 disappeared into the night. When the sheriff from Placer County 
 
 and the two deputies from San Francisco reached the Big Dipper 
 
 | mine, McTeague had been gone two days. 
 
 XXI 
 
 "WELL/ said one of the deputies, as he backed the horse into 
 the shafts of the buggy in which the pursuers had driven over from 
 the Hill, "we ve about as good as got him. It isn t hard to follow a 
 man who carries a bird cage with him wherever he goes." 
 
 McTeague crossed the mountains on foot the Friday and Satur 
 day of that week, going over through Emigrant Gap, following the 
 line of the Overland railroad. He reached Reno Monday night. 
 By degrees a vague plan of action outlined itself in the dentist s 
 mind. 
 
 "Mexico," he muttered to himself. "Mexico, that s the place. 
 They ll watch the coast and they ll watch the Eastern trains, but 
 they won t think of Mexico." 
 
 The sense of pursuit which had harassed him during the last 
 week of his stay at the Big Dipper mine had worn off, and he be 
 lieved himself to be very cunning. 
 
 "I m pretty far ahead now, I guess," he said. At Reno he 
 boarded a southbound freight on the line of the Carson and Color 
 ado Railroad, paying for a passage in the caboose. "Freights don 
 
McTeague 245 
 
 run on schedule time," he muttered, "and a conductor on a passen 
 ger train makes it his business to study faces. I ll stay with this 
 train as far as it goes." 
 
 The freight worked slowly southward, through western Nevada, 
 the country becoming hourly more and more desolate and aban 
 doned. After leaving Walker Lake the sage brush country began, 
 and the freight rolled heavily over tracks that threw off visible lay 
 ers of heat. At times it stopped whole half days on sidings or by 
 water tanks, and the engineer and fireman came back to the caboose 
 and played poker with the conductor and train crew. The dentist 
 sat apart, behind the stove, smoking pipe after pipe of cheap tobac 
 co. Sometimes he joined in the poker games. He had learned 
 poker when a boy at the mine, and after a few deals his knowledge 
 returned to him ; but for the most part he was taciturn and unsocia 
 ble, and rarely spoke to the others unless spoken to first. The crew 
 recognized the type, and the impression gained ground among them 
 that he had "done for" a livery stable keeper at Truckee and was 
 trying to get down into Arizona. 
 
 McTeague heard two brakemen discussing him one night as they 
 stood outside by the halted train. "The livery-stable keeper called 
 him a bastard ; that s what Picachos told me," one of them remarked, 
 "and started to draw his gun ; an this fellar did for him with a hay 
 fork. He s a horse doctor, this chap is, and the livery-stable 
 keeper had got the law on him so s he couldn t practice any more, 
 an he was sore about it." 
 
 Near a place called Queens the train re-entered California, and 
 McTeague observed with relief that the line of track which had 
 hitherto held westward curved sharply to the south again. The 
 train was unmolested ; occasionally the crew fought with a gang of 
 tramps who attempted to ride the brake beams, and once in the 
 northern part of Inyo County, while they were halted at a water 
 tank, an immense Indian buck, blanketed to the ground, approached 
 McTeague as he stood on the roadbed stretching his legs, and 
 without a word presented to him a filthy, crumpled letter. The let-\ 
 ter was to the effect that the buck Big Jim was a good Indian and ) 
 deserving of charity ; the signature was illegible. The dentist stared 
 at the letter, returned it to the buck, and regained the train just as 
 it started. Neither had spoken; the buck did not move from his 
 position, and fully five minutes afterward, when the slow-moving 
 freight was miles away, the dentist looked back and saw him still 
 standing motionless between the rails, a forlorn and solitary point 
 
246 McTeague 
 
 of red, lost in the immensity of the surrounding white blur of the 
 
 desert. 
 
 At length the mountains began again, rising up on either side 
 of the track; vast, naked hills of white sand and red rock, spotted 
 with blue shadows. Here and there a patch of green was spread 
 like a gay tablecloth over the sand. All at once Mount Whitney 
 leaped over the horizon. Independence was reached and passed ; the 
 freight, nearly emptied by now, and much shortened, rolled along 
 the shores of Owen Lake. At a place called Keeler it stopped defi 
 nitely. It was the terminus of the road. 
 
 The town of Keeler was a one-street town, not unlike Iowa Hill 
 the post-office, the bar and hotel, the Odd Fellows Hall, and 
 the livery stable being the principal buildings. 
 
 "Where to now?" muttered McTeague to himself as he sat on 
 the edge of the bed in his room in the hotel. He hung the canary in 
 the window, filled its little bathtub, and watched it take its bath 
 with enormous satisfaction. "Where to now?" he muttered again. 
 "This is as far as the railroad goes, an it won do for me to stay 
 in a town yet a while ; no, it won do. I got to clear out. Where 
 to? That s the word, where to? I ll go down to supper now" 
 He went on whispering his thoughts aloud, so that they would take 
 more concrete shape in his mind "I ll go down to supper now, an 
 then I ll hang aroun the bar this evening till I get the lay of this 
 land. Maybe this is fruit country, though it looks more like a 
 cattle country. Maybe it s a mining country. If it s a mining 
 country," he continued, puckering his heavy eyebrows, "if it s a 
 mining country, an the mines are far enough off the roads, maybe 
 I d better get to the mines an lay quiet for a month before I try to 
 get any further south." 
 
 He washed the cinders and dust of a week s railroading from 
 his face and hair, and put on a fresh pair of boots, and went down 
 to supper. The dining-room was of the invariable type of the 
 smaller interior towns of California. There was but one table, cov 
 ered with oilcloth ; rows of benches answered for chairs ; a railroad 
 map, a chromo with a gilt frame protected by mosquito netting, 
 hung on the walls, together with a yellowed photograph of the pro 
 prietor in Masonic regalia. Two. waitresses whom the guests all 
 men called by their first names came and went with large trays. 
 
 Through the windows outside McTeague observed a great num 
 ber of saddle horses tied to trees and fences. Each one of these 
 horses had a riata on the pommel of the saddle. He sat down to 
 
McTeague 247 
 
 the table, eating his thick hot soup, watching his neighbors covertly, 
 listening to everything that was said. It did not take him long to 
 gather that the country to the east and south of Keeler was a cattle 
 country. , 
 
 Not far off, across a range of hills, was the Panamint Valley, 
 where the big cattle ranges were. Every now and then this name 
 was tossed to and fro across the table in the flow of conversation 
 "Over in the Panamint." "Just going down for a rodeo in the 
 Panamint." "Panamint brands." "Has a range down in the Pana 
 mint." 
 
 Then by the remark "Hoh, yes, Gold Gulch, they re down to 
 good pay there. That s on the other side of the Panamint Range. 
 Peters came in yesterday and told me." 
 
 McTeague turned to the speaker. 
 
 "Is that a gravel mine?" he asked. 
 
 "No, no, quartz." 
 
 "I m a miner ; that s why I asked." 
 
 "Well, I ve mined some too. I had a hole in the ground meself, 
 but she was silver ; and when the skunks at Washington lowered the 
 price of silver, where was I ? Fitchered, b God !" 
 
 "I was looking for a job." 
 
 "Well, it s mostly cattle down here in the Panamint, but since 
 the~strik?bver at Gold Gulch some of the boys have gone prospect 
 ing. There s gold in them damn Panamint Mountains. If you can 
 find a good long contact of country rocks you ain t far from it. 
 There s a couple of fellars from Redlands has located four claims 
 around Gold Gulch. They got a vein eighteen inches wide, an 
 Peters says you can trace it for more n a thousand feet. Were you 
 thinking of prospecting over there ?" 
 
 "Well, well, I don know, I don know." 
 
 "Well, I m going over to the other side of the range day after 
 t morrow after some ponies of mine, an I m going to have a look 
 around. You say you ve been a miner?" 
 
 "Yes, yes." 
 
 "If you re going over that way, you might come along and see \ 
 if we can t find a contact, or copper sulphurets, or something. Even I 
 if we don t find color we may find silver-bearing galena." Then, / 
 after a pause, "Let s see^-dicln t catch your name." 
 
 "Huh? My name s Carteij," answered McTeague, promptly. 
 Why he should change his name again the dentist could not say. 
 "Carter" came to his mind at once, and he answered without re- 
 
McTeague 
 
 fleeting that he had registered as "Burlington" when he had arrived 
 at the hotel. 
 
 "Well, my name s Cribbens," answered the other. The two 
 shook hands solemnly. 
 
 "You re about finished?" continued Cribbens, pushing back. 
 "Le s go out in the bar an have a drink on it." 
 
 "Sure, sure," said the dentist. 
 
 The two sat up late that night in a corner of the barroom dis 
 cussing the probability of finding gold in the Panamint hills. It 
 soon became evident that they held differing theories. McTeague 
 clung to the old prospector s idea that there was no way of telling 
 where gold was until you actually saw it. Cribbens had evidently 
 read a good many books upon the subject, and had already pros 
 pected in something of a scientific manner. 
 
 "Shucks!" he exclaimed. "Gi me a long distinct contact be 
 tween sedimentary and igneous rocks, an* I ll sink a shaft without 
 ever seeing color. 
 
 The dentist put his huge chin in the air. "Gold is where you find 
 it," he returned, doggedly. 
 
 "Well, it s my idea as how pardners ought to work along differ 
 ent lines," said Cribbens. He tucked the corners of his mustache 
 into his mouth and sucked the tobacco juice from them. For a 
 moment he was thoughtful, then he blew out his mustache abruptly, 
 
 "Say, Carter, let s make a go of this. You got a little cash, I 
 suppose fifty dollars or so?" 
 
 "Huh? Yes I I" 
 
 "Well, 7 got about fifty. We ll go pardners on the proposition, 
 an we ll dally round the range yonder an see what we can see. 
 What do you say ?" 
 
 "Sure, sure," answered the dentist. 
 
 "Well, it s a go then, hey?" 
 
 "That s the word." 
 
 "Well, le s have a drink on it." 
 
 They drank with profound gravity. 
 
 They fitted out the next day at the general merchandise store of 
 Keeler picks, shovels, prospectors hammers, a couple of cradles, 
 pans, bacon, flour, coffee, and the like, and they bought a burro on 
 which to pack their kit. 
 
 "Say, by jingo, you ain t got a horse," suddenly exclaimed Crib 
 bens as they came out of the store. "You can t get around this coun 
 try without a pony of some kind." 
 
McTeague 249 
 
 Cribbens already owned and rode a buckskin cayuse that had to 
 be knocked in the head and stunned before it could be saddled. "I 
 got an extry saddle an a headstall at the hotel that you can use," he 
 said, "but you ll have to get a horse." 
 
 In the end the dentist bought a mule at the livery stable for 
 forty dollars. It turned out to be a good bargain, however, for the 
 mule was a good traveler and seemed actually to fatten on sage 
 brush and potato parings. When the actual transaction took place, 
 McTeague had been obliged to get the money to pay for the mule 
 out of the canvas sack. Cribbens was with him at the time, and 
 as the dentist unrolled his blankets and disclosed the sack, whistled 
 in amazement. 
 
 "An me asking you if you had fifty dollars!" he exclaimed. 
 "You carry your mine right around with you, don t you?" 
 
 "Huh, I guess so," muttered the dentist. "I I just sold a claim 
 I had up in El Dorado County," he added. 
 
 At five o clock on a magnificent May morning the "pardners" 
 jogged out of Keeler, driving the burro before them. Cribbens rode 
 his cayuse, McTeague following in his rear on the mule. 
 
 "Say," remarked Cribbens, "why in thunder don t you leave 
 that fool canary behind at the hotel? It s going to be in your 
 way all the time, an it will sure die. Better break its neck an 
 chuck it." 
 
 "No, no," insisted the dentist. "I ve had it too long. I ll take 
 it with me." 
 
 "Well, that s the craziest idea I ever heard of," remarked Crib 
 bens, "to take a canary along prospecting. Why not kid gloves, 
 and be done with it?" 
 
 They traveled leisurely to the southeast during the day, fol 
 lowing a well-beaten cattle road, and that evening camped on a 
 spur of some hills at the head of the Panamint Valley where there 
 was a spring. The next day they crossed the Panamint itself. 
 
 "That s a smart looking valley," observed the dentist. 
 
 "Now you re talking straight talk," returned Cribbens, sucking 
 his mustache. The valley was beautiful, wide, level, and very green. 
 Everywhere were herds of cattle, scarcely less wild than deer. 
 Once or twice cowboys passed them on the road, big-boned 
 fellows, picturesque in their broad hats, hairy trousers, jingling 
 spurs, and revolver belts, surprisingly like the pictures McTeague 
 remembered to have seen. Every one of them knew Cribbens, and 
 almost invariably joshed him on his venture. 
 
250 McTeague 
 
 "Say, Crib, ye d best take a wagon train with ye to bring your 
 dust back." 
 
 Cribbens resented their humor, and after they had passed, 
 chewed fiercely on his mustache. 
 
 "I d like to make a strike, b God ! if it was only to get the laugh 
 on them joshers." 
 
 *~ By noon they were climbing the eastern slope of the Panamint 
 Range. Long since they had abandoned the road; vegetation 
 ceased; not a tree was in sight. They followed faint cattle trails 
 that led from one water hole to another. By degrees these water 
 holes grew drier and drier, and at three o clock Cribbens halted and 
 filled their canteens. 
 
 "There ain t any too much water on the other side," he observed 
 grimly. 
 
 "It s pretty hot," muttered the dentist, wiping his streaming 
 forehead with the back of his hand. 
 
 "Huh !" snorted the other more grimly than ever. The motion 
 less air was like the mouth of a furnace. Cribbens s pony lathered 
 and panted. McTeague s mule began to droop his long ears. Only 
 the little burro plodded resolutely on, picking the trail where Mc 
 Teague could see but trackless sand and stunted sage. Toward 
 evening Cribbens, who was in he lead, drew rein on the summit of 
 the hills. 
 
 Behind them was the beautiful green Panamint Valley, but be 
 fore and below them for miles and miles, as far as the eye could 
 reach, a flat, white desert, empty even of sage-brush, unrolled to 
 ward the horizon. In the immediate foreground a broken system 
 of arroyos, and little canons tumbled down to meet it. To the 
 north faint blue hills shouldered themselves above the horizon. 
 
 "Well," observed Cribbens, "we re on the top of the Panamint 
 Range now. It s along this eastern slope, right below us here, that 
 we re going to prospect. Gold Gulch" he pointed with the butt 
 of his quirt "is about eighteen or nineteen miles along here to the 
 north of us. Those hills way over yonder to the northeast are the 
 Telescope hills." 
 
 "What do you call the desert out yonder?" McTeague s eyes 
 wandered over the illimitable stretch of alkali that stretched out 
 forever and forever to the east, to the north, and to the south. 
 
 "That," said Cribbens, "that s Death Valley." 
 
 There was a long pause. The horses panted irregularly, the 
 sweat dripping from their heaving bellies. Cribbens and the den- 
 
McTeague 251 
 
 tist sat motionless in their saddles, looking out over that abominable 
 desolation, silent, troubled. 
 
 "God!" ejaculated Cribbens at length, under his breath, with a 
 shake of his head. Then he seemed to rouse himself. "Well," he 
 remarked, "first thing we got to do now is to find water." 
 
 This was a long and difficult task. They descended into one 
 little canon after another, followed the course of numberless ar- 
 royos, and even dug where there seemed indications of moisture, all 
 to no purpose. But at length McTeague s mule put his nose in the 
 air and blew once or twice through his nostrils. 
 
 "Smells it, the son of a gun !" exclaimed Cribbens. The dentist 
 let the animal have his head, and in a few minutes he had brought 
 them to the bed of a tiny canon where a thin stream of brackish 
 water filtered over a ledge of rocks. 
 
 "We ll camp here," observed Cribbens, "but we can t turn the 
 horses loose. We ll have to picket em with the lariats. I saw some 
 loco-weed back here a piece, and if they get to eating that, they ll 
 sure go plum crazy. The burro won t eat it, but I wouldn t trust 
 the others." 
 
 A new life began for McTeague. After breakfast the "pard- 
 ners" separated, going in opposite directions along the slope of the 
 range, examining rocks, picking and chipping at ledges and bowl 
 ders, looking for signs, prospecting. McTeague went up into the 
 little canons where the streams had cut through the bed rock, search 
 ing for veins of quartz, breaking out this quartz when he had found 
 it, pulverizing and panning it. Cribbens hunted for "contacts," 
 closely examining country rocks and outcrops, continually on the 
 lookout for spots where sedimentary and igneous rock came to 
 gether. 
 
 One day, after a week of prospecting, they met unexpectedly on 
 the slope of an arroyo. It was late in the afternoon. "Hello, pard- 
 ner," exclaimed Cribbens as he came down to where McTeague was 
 bending over his pan. "What luck?" 
 
 The dentist emptied his pan and straightened up. "Nothing, 
 nothing. You struck anything?" 
 
 "Not a trace. Guess we might as well be moving toward camp." 
 They returned together, Cribbens telling the dentist of a group of 
 antelope he had seen. 
 
 "We might lay off to-morrow, an see if we can plug a couple 
 of them fellers. Antelope steak would go pretty well after beans 
 an* bacon an* coffee week in an* week out" 
 
McTeague 
 
 McTeague was answering, when Cribbens interrupted him with 
 an exclamation of profound disgust. "I thought we were the first 
 to prospect along in here, an now look at that. Don t it make you 
 
 sick?" 
 
 He pointed out evidences of an abandoned prospectors camp 
 just before them charred ashes, empty tin cans, one or two gold- 
 miner s pans, and a broken pick. "Don t that make you sick? 
 muttered Cribbens, sucking his mustache furiously. "To think of 
 us mushheads going over ground that s been covered already ! Say, 
 pardner, we ll dig out of here to-morrow. I ve been thinking, any 
 how, we d better move to the south; that water of ours is pretty 
 
 low." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I guess so," assented the dentist. "There ain t any 
 
 gold here." 
 
 "Yes, there is," protested Cribbens doggedly; "there s gold all 
 through these hills, if we could only strike it. I tell you what, 
 pardner, I got a place in mind where I ll bet no one ain t prospected 
 least not very many. There don t very many care to try an get 
 to it. It s over on the other side of Death Valley. It s called Gold 
 Mountain, an there s only one mine been located there, an it s pay-* 
 ing like a nitrate bed. There ain t many people in that country, 
 because it s all hell to get into. First place, you got to cross Death 
 Valley and strike the Armagosa Range fur off to the south. Well, 
 no one ain t stuck on crossing the Valley, not if they can help it. 
 But we could work down the Panamint some hundred or so miles, 
 maybe two hundred, an fetch around by the Armagosa River, way 
 to the south erd. We could prospect on the way. But I guess the 
 Armagosa d be dried up at this season. Anyhow," he concluded, 
 "we ll move camp to the south to-morrow. We got to get new 
 feed an water for the horses. We ll see if we can knock over a 
 couple of antelope to-morrow, and then we ll scoot." 
 
 "I ain t got a gun," said the dentist; "not even a revolver. I " 
 
 "Wait a second/ said Cribbens, pausing in his scramble down 
 the side of one of the smaller gulches. "Here s some slate 
 here; I ain t seen no slate around here yet. Let s see where it 
 goes to." 
 
 McTeague followed him along the side of the gulch. Cribbens 
 went on ahead, muttering to himself from time to time: 
 
 "Runs right along here, even enough, and here s water, too. 
 Didn t know this stream was here ; pretty near dry, though. Here s 
 the slate again. See where it runs, pardner?" 
 
McTeague 253 
 
 "Look at it up there ahead," said McTeague. "It runs right 
 up over the back of this hill." 
 
 "That s right," assented Cribbens. "Hi!" he shouted suddenly, 
 "here s a contact/and here it is again, and there, and yonder. Oh, 
 look at it, will you? That s grano-diorite on slate. Couldn t want 
 it any more distinct than that. God! if we could only find the 
 quartz between the two now." 
 
 "Well, there it is," exclaimed McTeague. "Look on ahead 
 there ; ain t that quartz ?" 
 
 "You re shouting right out loud," vociferated Cribbens, looking 
 where McTeague was pointing. His face went suddenly pale. 
 He turned to the dentist, his eyes wide. 
 
 "By God, pardner," he exclaimed breathlessly. "By God " he 
 broke off abruptly. 
 
 "That s what you been looking for, ain t it?" asked the dentist. 
 
 "Looking for ! Looking for !" Cribbens checked himself. 
 "That s slate all right, and that s grano-diorite, / know" he bent 
 down and examined the rock "and here s the quartz between em ; 
 there can t be no mistake about that. Gi me that hammer," he cried 
 excitedly. "Come on, git to work. Jab into the quartz with your 
 pick ; git out some chunks of it." Cribbens went down on his hands 
 and knees, attacking the quartz vein furiously. The dentist followed 
 his example, swinging his pick with enormous force, splintering 
 the rocks at every stroke. Cribbens was talking to himself in his 
 excitement. 
 
 "Got you this time, you son of a gun ! By God ! I guess we got 
 you this time, at last. Looks like it, anyhow. Get a move on, pard 
 ner. There ain t anybody round, is there? Hey?" Without look 
 ing, he drew his revolver and threw it to the dentist. "Take the 
 gun an* look around, pardner. If you see any son of a gun, any 
 where, plug him. This yere s our claim. I guess we got it this 
 time, pardner. Come on." He gathered up the chunks of quartz 
 he had broken out, and put them in his hat and started toward their 
 camp. The two went along with great strides, hurrying as fast 
 as they could over the uneven ground. 
 
 "I don know," exclaimed Cribbens breathlessly, "I don want to 
 say too much. Maybe we re fooled. Lord, that damn camp s a long 
 ways off. Oh, I ain t goin to fool along this way. Come on, pard 
 ner." He broke into a run. McTeague followed at a lumbering 
 gallop. Over the scorched, parched ground, stumbling and tripping 
 over sage-brush and sharp-pointed rocks, under the palpitating heat 
 
McTeague 
 
 of the desert sun, they ran and scrambled, carrying the quartz lumps 
 in their hats. 
 
 "See any color in it, pardner?" gasped Cribbens. "I can t, can 
 you? Twouldn t be visible nohow, I guess. Hurry up. Lord, we 
 ain t ever going to get to that camp." 
 
 Finally they arrived. Cribbens dumped the quartz fragments 
 into a pan. 
 
 "You pestle her, pardner, an I ll fix the scales." McTeague 
 ground the lumps to fine dust in the iron mortar while Cribbens set 
 up the tiny scales and got out the "spoons" from their outfit. 
 
 "That s fine enough," Cribbens exclaimed, impatiently. "Now 
 we ll spoon her. Gi me the water." 
 
 Cribbens scooped up a spoonful of the fine white powder and 
 began to spoon it carefully. The two were on their hands and knees 
 upon the ground, their heads close together, still panting with 
 excitement and the exertion of their run. 
 
 "Can t do it," exclaimed Cribbens, sitting back on his heels, 
 "hand shakes so. You take it, pardner. Careful, now." 
 
 McTeague took the horn spoon and began rocking it gently in his 
 huge fingers, sluicing the water over the edge a little at a time, 
 each movement washing away a little more of the powdered quartz. 
 The two watched it with the intensest eagerness. 
 
 "Don t see it yet ; don t see it yet," whispered Cribbens, chewing 
 his mustache. "Leetle faster, pardner. That s the ticket. Careful, 
 steady, now-; leetle more, leetle more. Don t see color yet, do 
 you?" 
 
 The quartz sediment dwindled by degrees as McTeague spooned 
 it steadily. Then at last a thin streak of a foreign substance began 
 to show just along the edge. It was yellow. 
 
 Neither spoke. Cribbens dug his nails into the sand, and ground 
 his mustache between his teeth. The yellow streak broadened as the 
 quartz sediment washed away. Cribbens whispered : 
 
 "We got it, pardner. That s gold." 
 
 McTeague washed the last of the white quartz dust away, and 
 let the water trickle after it. A pinch of gold, fine as flour, was 
 left in the bottom of the spoon. 
 
 "There you are," he said. The two looked at each other. Then 
 Cribbens rose into the air with a great leap and a yell that could 
 have been heard for half a mile. 
 
 "Yee-e-ow ! We got it, we struck it. Pardner, we got it. Out 
 of sight. We re millionaires." He snatched up his revolver and 
 
McTeague 
 
 fired it with inconceivable rapidity. "Put it there, old man/* he 
 shouted, gripping McTeague s palm. 
 
 "That s gold, all right," muttered McTeague, studying the con 
 tents of the spoon. 
 
 "You bet your great-grandma s Cochin-China Chessy cat it s 
 gold/ shouted Cribbens. "Here, now, we got a lot to do. We got to 
 stake her out an* put up the location notice. We ll take our full 
 acreage, you bet. You we haven t weighed this yet. Where s the 
 scales ?" He weighed the pinch of gold with shaking hands. "Two 
 grains," he cried. "That ll run five dollars to the ton. Rich, it s 
 rich; it s the richest kind of pay, pardner. We re millionaires. 
 Why don t you say something? Why don t you get excited? Why 
 don t you run around an do something." 
 
 "Huh!" said McTeague, rolling his eyes. "Huh! / know, I 
 know, we ve struck it pretty rich." 
 
 "Come on," exclaimed Cribbens, jumping up again. "We ll 
 stake her out an* put up the location notice. Lord, suppose any one 
 should have come on her while we ve been away." He reloaded his 
 revolver deliberately. "We ll drop him all right, if there s any one 
 fooling around there; I ll tell you that right now. Bring the rifle, 
 pardner, an if you see any one, plug him, an ask him what he wants 
 afterward." 
 
 They hurried back to where they had made their discovery. 
 
 "To think," exclaimed Cribbens, as he drove the first stake, "to 
 think those other mushheads had their camp within gunshot of her 
 and never located her. Guess they didn t know the meaning of a 
 contact. Oh, I knew I was solid on contacts/ " 
 
 They staked out their claim, and Cribbens put up the notice of 
 location. It was dark before they were through. Cribbens broke 
 off some more chunks of quartz in the vein. 
 
 "I ll spoon this, too, just for the fun of it, when I get home," 
 he explained, as they tramped back to the camp. 
 
 "Well," said the dentist, "we got the laugh on those cowboys." 
 
 "Have we?" shouted Cribbens. "Have we? Just wait and see 
 the rush for this place when we tell em about it down in Keeler. 
 Say, what ll we call her?" 
 
 "I don know, I don know." 
 
 "We might call her the Last Chance. Twas our last chance, 
 wasn t it? We d a gone antelope shooting to-morrow, and the 
 next day we d V say, what you stopping for?" he added, inter 
 rupting himself. "What s up." 
 
256 McTeaguc 
 
 The dentist had paused abruptly on the crest of a cation. Crib- 
 bens, looking back, saw him standing motionless in his tracks. 
 
 "What s up?" asked Cribbens a second time. 
 
 McTeague slowly turned his head and looked over one shoulder, 
 then over the other. Suddenly he wheeled sharply about, cocking 
 the Winchester and tossing it to his shoulder. 
 
 Cribbens ran back to his side, whipping out his revolver. 
 
 "What is it?" he cried. "See anybody?" He peered on ahead 
 through the gathering twilight. 
 
 "No, no." 
 
 "Hear anything?" 
 
 "No, didn t hear anything." 
 
 "What is it then? What s up?" 
 
 "I don know, I don know," muttered the dentist, lowering the 
 rifle. "There was something." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Something didn t you notice ?" 
 
 "Notice what?" 
 
 "I don know. Something something or other." 
 
 "Who? What? Notice what? What did you see? 55 
 
 The dentist let down the hammer of the rifle. 
 
 "I guess it wasn t anything," he said rather foolishly. 
 
 "What d you think you saw anybody on the claim?" 
 
 "I didn t see anything. I didn t hear anything, either. I_had 
 an idea, that s all; came all of a sudden, like that. Something, I 
 don know what." 
 
 "I guess you just imagined something. There ain t anybody 
 within twenty miles of us, I guess." 
 
 "Yes, I guess so, just imagined it, that s the word." 
 
 Half an hour later they had the fire going. McTeague was 
 frying strips of bacon over the coals, and Cribbens was still chat 
 tering and exclaiming over their great strike. All at once Mc 
 Teague put down the frying-pan. 
 
 "What s that?" he growled. 
 
 "Hey? What s what?" exclaimed Cribbens, getting up. 
 
 "Didn t you notice something ?" 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "Off there." The dentist made a vague gesture toward the 
 eastern horizon. "Didn t you hear something I mean see some 
 thing I mean " 
 
 "What s the matter with you, pardner?" 
 
McTeague 257 
 
 "Nothing. I guess I just imagined it. 
 
 But it was not imagination. Until midnight the partners lay 
 broad awake, rolled in their blankets under the open sky, talking 
 and discussing and making plans. At last Cribbens rolled over 
 on his side and slept. The dentist could not sleep. 
 
 What ! It was warning him again, that strange sixth sense, that ! 
 obscure brute instinct. It was aroused again and clamoring to be 
 obeyed. Here, in these desolate barren hills, twenty miles from 
 the nearest human being, it stirred and woke and roweled him to 
 be moving on. It had goaded him to flight from the Big Dipper 
 mine, and he had obeyed. But now it was different; now he had 
 suddenly become rich ; he had lighted on a treasure a treasure far 
 more valuable than the Big Dipper mine itself. How was he to 
 leave that? He could not move on now. He turned about in his 
 blankets. No, he would not move on. Perhaps it was his fancy, 
 after all. He saw nothing, heard nothing. The emptiness of 
 primeval desolation stretched from him leagues and leagues upon 
 either hand. The gigantic silence of the night lay close over every 
 thing, like a muffling Titanic palm. Of what was he suspicious? 
 In that treeless waste an object could be seen at half a day s journey 
 distant. In that vast silence the click of a pebble was as audible 
 as a pistol-shot. And yet there was nothing, nothing. 
 
 The dentist settled himself in his blankets and tried to sleep. 
 In five minutes he was sitting up, staring into the blue-gray shim 
 mer of the moonlight, straining his ears, watching and listening 
 intently. Nothing was in sight. The browned and broken flanks of 
 the Panamint hills lay quiet and familiar under the moon. The 
 burro moved its head with a clinking of its bell; and McTeague s 
 mule, dozing on three legs, changed its weight to another foot, 
 with a long breath. Everything fell silent again. 
 
 "What is it?" muttered the dentist. "If I could only see some 
 thing, hear something." 
 
 He threw off the blankets, and, rising, climbed to the summit 
 of the nearest hill and looked back in the direction in which he and 
 Cribbens had traveled a fortnight before. For half an hour he 
 waited, watching and listening in vain. But as he returned to camp, 
 and prepared to roll his blankets about him, the strange impulse 
 rose in him again abruptly, never so strong, never so insistent. It 
 seemed as though he were bitted and ridden; as if some unseen 
 hand were turning him toward the east; some unseen heel spurring 
 him to precipitate and instant flight. 
 
258 McTeague 
 
 Flight from what? "No," he muttered under his breath. "Go 
 now and leave the claim, and leave a fortune ! What a fool I d be, 
 when I v,an t see anything or hear anything. To leave a fortune! 
 No, I won t. No, by God!" He drew Cribbens s Winchester to 
 ward him and slipped a cartridge into the magazine. 
 
 "No," he growled. "Whatever happens, I m going to stay. If 
 anybody comes He depressed the lever of the rifle, and sent 
 the cartridge clashing into the breech. 
 
 "I ain t going to sleep," he muttered under his mustache. "I 
 can t sleep; I ll watch." He rose a second time, clambered to the 
 nearest hilltop and sat down, drawing the blanket around him, and 
 laying the Winchester across his knees. The hours passed. The 
 dentist sat on the hilltop a motionless, crouching figure, inky black 
 against the pale blur of the sky. By and by the edge of the eastern 
 horizon began to grow blacker and more distinct in outline. The 
 dawn was coming. Once more McTeague felt the mysterious in 
 tuition of approaching danger; an unseen hand seemed reining his 
 head eastward; a spur was in his flanks that seemed to urge him 
 to hurry, hurry, hurry. The influence grew stronger with every 
 moment. The dentist set his great jaws together and held his 
 ground. 
 
 "No," he growled between his set teeth. "No, I ll stay." He 
 made a long circuit around the camp, even going as far as the first 
 stake of the new claim, his Winchester cocked, his ears pricked, his 
 eyes alert. There was nothing; yet as plainly as though it were 
 shouted at the very nape of his neck he felt an enemy. It was not 
 fear. McTeague was not afraid. 
 
 "If I could only see something somebody," he muttered, as he 
 held the cocked rifle ready, "I I d show him." 
 
 He returned to camp. Cribbens was snoring. The burro had 
 come down to the stream for its morning drink. The mule was 
 awake and browsing. McTeague stood irresolutely by the cold 
 ashes of the camp-fire, looking from side to side with all the sus 
 picion and wariness of a tracked stag. Stronger and stronger grew 
 the strange impulse. It seemed to him that on the next instant he 
 must perforce wheel sharply eastward and rush away headlong in 
 a clumsy, lumbering gallop. He fought against it with all the 
 ferocious obstinacy of his simple brute nature. 
 
 "Go, and leave the mine? Go and leave a million dollars? No, 
 no, I won t go. No, I ll stay. Ah," he exclaimed, under his breath, 
 with a shake of his huge head, like an exasperated and harassed 
 
McTeague 259 
 
 brute, "ah, show yourself, will you?" He brought the rifle to his 
 shoulder and covered point after point along the range of hills to 
 the west. "Come on, show yourself. Come on a little, all of you. 
 I ain t afraid of you; but don t skulk this way. You ain t going to 
 drive me away from my mine. I m going to stay." 
 
 An hour passed. Then two. The stars winked out, and the 
 dawn whitened. The air became warmer. The whole east, clean of 
 clouds, flamed opalescent from horizon to zenith, crimson at the 
 base, where the earth blackened against it; at the top fading from 
 pink to pale yellow, to green, to light blue, to the turquoise iri 
 descence of the desert sky. The long, thin shadows of the early 
 hours drew backward like receding serpents, then suddenly the sun 
 looked over the shoulder of the world, and it was day. 
 
 At that moment McTeague was already eight miles away from 
 the camp, going steadily eastward. He was descending the lowest 
 spurs of the Panamint hills, following an old and faint cattle trail. 
 Before him he drove his mule, laden with blankets, provisions for 
 six days, Cribbens s rifle, and a canteen full of water. Securely bound 
 to the pommel of the saddle was the canvas sack with its precious 
 five thousand dollars, all in twenty-dollar gold pieces. But strange 
 enough in that horrid waste of sand and sage was the object that 
 McTeague himself persistently carried the canary in its cage, 
 about which he had carefully wrapped a couple of old flour-bags. 
 
 At about five o clock that morning McTeague had crossed sev 
 eral trails which seemed to be converging, and, guessing that they 
 led to a water hole, had followed one of them and had brought up 
 at a sort of small sun-dried sink, which, nevertheless, contained a 
 little water at the bottom. He watered the mule here, refilled the 
 canteen, and drank deep himself. He had also dampened the old 
 flour sacks around the bird cage to protect the little canary as far 
 as possible from the heat that he knew would increase now with 
 every hour. He had made ready to go forward again, but had 
 paused irresolute again, hesitating for the last time. 
 
 "I m a fool," he growled, scowling back at the range behind him. 
 "I m a fool. What s the matter with me? I m just walking right 
 away from a million dollars. I know it s there. No, by God!" he 
 exclaimed, savagely. I ain t going to do it. I m going back. I 
 can t leave a mine like that." He had wheeled the mule about, and 
 had started to return on his tracks, grinding his teeth fiercely, in 
 clining his head forward as though butting against a wind that 
 would beat him back. "Go on, go on," he cried, sometimes ad- 
 
a6o McTeague 
 
 dressing the mule, sometimes himself. "Go on, go back, go back." 
 I will go back." It was as though he were climbing a hill that 
 grew steeper with every stride. The strange impelling instinct 
 fought his advance yard by yard. By degrees the dentist s steps 
 grew slower; he stopped, went forward again cautiously, almost 
 feeling his way, like someone approaching a pit in the darkness. 
 He stopped again, hesitating, gnashing his teeth, clinching his fists 
 with blind fury. Suddenly he turned the mule about, and once 
 more set his face to the eastward. 
 
 "I can t," he cried aloud to the desert; 1 can t, I can t. It s 
 stronger than I am. I can t go back. Hurry now, hurry, hurry7 
 hurry." 
 
 He hastened on furtively, his head and shoulders bent. At times 
 one could almost say he crouched as he pushed forward with long 
 strides ; now and then he even looked over his shoulder. Sweat 
 rolled from him, he lost his hat, and the matted mane of thick yellow 
 hair swept over his forehead and shaded his small twinkling eyes. 
 At times with a vague, nearly automatic gesture, he reached his 
 hand forward, the fingers prehensile, and directed toward the hori 
 zon, as if he would clutch it and draw it nearer; and at intervals 
 he muttered, "Hurry, hurry, hurry on, hurry on." For now at last 
 McTeague was afraid. 
 
 His plans were uncertain. He remembered what Cribbens had 
 said about the Armagosa Mountains in the country on the other 
 side of Death Valley. It was all hell to get into that country, Crib 
 bens had said, and not many men went there, because of the terrible 
 valley of alkali that barred the way, a horrible vast sink of white 
 sand and salt below even the sea level, the dry bed, no doubt, of 
 some prehistoric lake. But McTeague resolved to make a circuit 
 of the valley, keeping to the south, until he should strike the Arma 
 gosa River. He would make a circuit of the valley and come up 
 on the other side. He would get into that country around Gold 
 Mountain in the Armagosa hills, barred off from the world by the 
 leagues of the red-hot alkali of Death Valley. "They" would hard 
 ly reach him there. He would stay at Gold Mountain two or three 
 months, and then work his way down into Mexico. 
 
 McTeague tramped steadily- forward, still descending the lower 
 irregularities of the Panamint Range. By nine o clock the slope 
 flattened out abruptly; the hills were behind him; before him, to 
 the east, all was level. He had reached the region where even the 
 sand and sage-brush begin to dwindle, giving place to white, pow- 
 
McTeague 261 
 
 dered alkali. The trails were numerous, but old and faint; and 
 they had been made by cattle, not by men. They led in all direc 
 tions but one north, south, and west; but not one, however faint, 
 struck out toward the valley. 
 
 "If I keep along the edge of the hills where these trails are," 
 muttered the dentist, "I ought to find water up in the arroyos from 
 time to time." 
 
 At once he uttered an exclamation. The mule had begun to 
 squeal and lash out with alternate hoofs, his eyes rolling, his ears 
 flattened. He ran a few steps, halted, and squealed again. Then, 
 suddenly wheeling at right angles, set off on a jog trot to the north, 
 squealing and kicking from time to time. McTeague ran after 
 him, shouting and swearing, but for a long time the mule would 
 not allow himself to be caught. He seemed more bewildered than 
 frightened. 
 
 "He s eatun some of that loco-weed that Cribbens spoke about," 
 panted McTeague. "Whoa, there; steady, you." At length the 
 mule stopped of his own accord, and seemed to come to his senses 
 again. McTeague came up and took the bridle rein, speaking to 
 him and rubbing his nose. 
 
 "There, there, what s the matter with you?" The mule was 
 docile again. McTeague washed his mouth and set forward once 
 more. 
 
 The day was magnificent. From horizon to horizon was one 
 vast span of blue, whitening as it dipped earthward. Miles upon 
 miles to the east and southeast the desert unrolled itself, white, 
 naked, inhospitable, palpitating and shimmering under the sun, 
 unbroken by so much as a rock or cactus stump. In the distance it 
 assumed all manner of faint colors, pink, purple, and pale orange. 
 To the west rose the Panamint Range, sparsely sprinkled with gray 
 sage-brush ; here the earths and sands were yellow, ochre, and rich, 
 deep red, the hollows and canons picked out with intense blue 
 shadows. It seemed strange that such barrenness could exhibit 
 this radiance of color, but nothing could have been more beautiful 
 than the deep red of the higher bluffs and ridges, seamed with pur 
 ple shadows, standing sharply out against the pale-blue whiteness 
 of the horizon. 
 
 By nine o clock the sun stood high in the sky. The heat was 
 intense; the atmosphere was thick and heavy with it. McTeague 
 gasped for breath and wiped the beads of perspiration from his 
 forehead, his cheeks, and his neck. Every inch and pore of his 
 
262 McTeague 
 
 Ain was tingling and pricking under the merciless lash of the sun s 
 rays. 
 
 "If it gets much hotter," he muttered, with a long breath, "if it 
 gets much hotter, I I don know " he wagged his head and wiped 
 the sweat from his eyelids, where it was running like tears. 
 
 The sun rose higher ; hour by hour, as the dentist tramped stead 
 ily on, the heat increased. The baked dry sand crackled into in 
 numerable tiny flakes under his feet. The twigs of the sage-brush 
 snapped like brittle pipestems as he pushed through them. It 
 grew hotter. At eleven the earth was like the surface of a furnace ; 
 the air, as McTeague breathed it in, was hot to his lips and the 
 roof of his mouth. The sun was a disk of molten brass swimming 
 in the burned-out blue of the sky. McTeague stripped off his 
 woolen shirt and even unbuttoned his flannel undershirt, tying a 
 handkerchief loosely about his neck. 
 
 "Lord!" he exclaimed. "I never knew it could get as hot as 
 this." 
 
 The heat grew steadily fiercer. All distant objects were visibly 
 shimmering and palpitating under it. At noon a mirage appeared 
 on the hills to the northwest. McTeague halted the mule and drank 
 from the tepid water in the canteen, dampening the sack around the 
 canary s cage. As soon as he ceased his tramp and the noise of his 
 crunching, grinding footsteps died away, the silence, vast, illimita 
 ble, enfolded him like an immeasurable tide. From all that gigantic 
 landscape, that colossal reach of baking sand, there arose not a 
 single sound. Not a twig rattled, not an insect hummed, not a bird 
 or beast invaded that huge solitude with call or cry. Everything 
 as far as the eye could reach, to north, to south, to east, and west, 
 lay inert, absolutely quiet and moveless under the remorseless 
 scourge of the noon sun. The very shadows shrank away, hiding 
 under sage-bushes, retreating to the furthest nooks and crevices in 
 the canons of the hills. All the world was one gigantic, blinding 
 glare, silent, motionless : "If it gets much hotter," murmured the 
 dentist again, moving his head from side to side, "if it gets much 
 hotter, I don know what I ll do." 
 
 Steadily the heat increased. At three o clock it was even more 
 terrible than it had been at noon. 
 
 "Ain t it ever going to let up?" groaned the dentist, rolling his 
 eyes at the sky of hot blue brass. Then, as he spoke, the stillness 
 was abruptly stabbed through and through by a shrill sound that 
 seemed to come from all sides at once. It ceased; then, as Me- 
 
McTeague 263 
 
 Teague took another forward step, began again with the sudden 
 ness of a blow, shriller, nearer at hand, a hideous, prolonged note 
 that brought both man and mule to an instant halt. 
 
 "I know what that is," exclaimed the dentist. His eyes searched 
 the ground swiftly until he saw what he expected he should see 
 the round thick coil, the slowly waving clover-shaped head and 
 erect whirring tail with its vibrant rattles. 
 
 For fully thirty seconds the man and the snake remained look 
 ing into each other s eyes. Then the snake uncoiled and swiftly 
 wound from sight amid the sage-brush. McTeague drew breath 
 again, and his eyes once more beheld the illimitable leagues of 
 quivering sand and alkali. 
 
 "Good Lord ! What a country !" he exclaimed. But his voice 
 was trembling as he urged forward the mule once more. 
 
 Fiercer and fiercer grew the heat as the afternoon advanced. 
 At four McTeague stopped again. He was dripping at every pore, 
 but there was no relief in perspiration. The very touch of his 
 clothes upon his body was unendurable. The mule s ears were 
 drooping and his tongue lolled from his mouth. The cattle trails 
 seemed to be drawing together toward a common point ; perhaps a 
 water hole was near by. 
 
 "I ll have to lay up, sure," muttered the dentist. "I ain t made 
 to travel in such heat as this." 
 
 He drove the mule up into one of the larger canons and halted 
 in the shadow of a pile of red rock. After a long search he found 
 water, a few quarts, warm and brackish, at the bottom of a hollow 
 of sun-cracked mud ; it was little more than enough to water the 
 mule and refill his canteen. Here he camped, easing the mule of the 
 saddle, and turning him loose to find what nourishment he might. 
 A few hours later the sun set in a cloudless glory of red and gold, 
 and the heat became by degrees less intolerable. McTeague cooked 
 his supper, chiefly coffee and bacon, and watched the twilight come 
 on, reveling in the delicious coolness of the evening. As he spread 
 his blankets on the ground he resolved that hereafter he would 
 travel only at night, laying up in the daytime in the shade of the 
 canons. He was exhausted with his terrible day s march. Never 
 in his life had sleep seemed so sweet to him. 
 
 But suddenly he was broad awake, his jaded senses all alert. 
 
 "What was that?" he muttered. "I thought I heard some 
 thing saw something." 
 
 He rose to his feet, reaching for the Winchester. Desolation 
 
264 McTeague 
 
 lay still around him. There was not a sound but his own breathing ; 
 on the face of the desert not a grain of sand was in motion. Mc 
 Teague looked furtively and quickly from side to side, his teeth set, 
 his eyes rolling. Once more the rowel was in his flanks, once more 
 an unseen hand reined him toward the east. After all the miles of 
 that dreadful day s flight he was no better off than when he started. 
 If anything, he was worse, for never had that mysterious instinct 
 in him been more insistent than now ; never had the impulse toward 
 precipitate flight been stronger; never had the spur bit deeper. 
 Every nerve of his body cried aloud for rest; yet every instinct 
 seemed aroused and alive, goading him to hurry on, to hurry on. 
 
 "What w/ iD then? What is it?" he cried, between his teeth. 
 "Can t I ever x ^et rid of you^? Ain t I ever going to shake you off? 
 Don keep it up this way. Show yourselves. Let s have it out right 
 away. Come on. I ain t afraid if you ll only come on; but don t 
 skulk this way." Suddenly he cried aloud in a frenzy of exasper 
 ation, "Damn you, come on, will you? Come on and have it out." 
 His rifle was at his shoulder, he was covering bush after bush, rock 
 after rock, aiming at every denser shadow. All at once, and quite 
 involuntarily, his forefinger crooked, and the rifle spoke and flamed. 
 The canons roared back the echo, tossing it out far over the desert 
 in a rippling, widening wave of sound. 
 
 McTeague lowered the rifle hastily, with an exclamation of dis 
 may. 
 
 "You fool," he said to himself, "you fool. You ve done it now. 
 They could hear that miles away. You ve done it now." 
 
 He stood listening intently, the rifle smoking in his hands. The 
 last echo died away. The smoke vanished, the vast silence closed 
 upon the passing echoes of the rifle as the ocean closes upon a ship s 
 wake. Nothing moved; yet McTeague bestirred himself sharply, 
 rolling up his blankets, resaddling the mule, getting his outfit to 
 gether again. From time to time he muttered: 
 
 "Hurry now; hurry on. You fool, you ve done it now. They 
 could hear that miles away. Hurry now. They ain t far off 
 now." 
 
 As he depressed the lever of the rifle to reload it, he found that 
 the magazine was empty. He clapped his hands to his sides, feeling 
 rapidly first in one pocket, then in another. He had forgotten to 
 take extra cartridges with him. McTeague swore under his breath 
 as he flung the rifle away. Henceforth he must travel unarmed. 
 
 A little more water had gathered in the mud hole near which he 
 
McTeague 265 
 
 had camped. He watered the mule for the last time and wet the 
 sacks around the canary s cage. Then once more he set forward. 
 
 But there was a change in the direction of McTeague s flight. 
 Hitherto he had held to the south, keeping upon the very edge of 
 the hills; now he turned sharply at right angles. The slope fell 
 away beneath his hurrying feet; the sage-brush dwindled, and at 
 length ceased ; the sand gave place to a fine powder, white as snow ; 
 and an hour after he had fired the rifle his mule s hoofs were crisp 
 ing and cracking the sun-baked flakes of alkali on the surface of 
 Death Valley. 
 
 Tracked and harried, as he felt himself to be, from one camping 
 place to another, McTeague had suddenly resolved to make one last 
 effort to rid himself of the enemy that seemed to hang upon his 
 heels. He would strike straight out into that horrible wilderness 
 where even the beasts were afraid. He would cross Death Valley 
 at once and put its arid wastes between him and his pursuer. 
 
 "You don t dare follow me now," he muttered, as he hurried on. 
 "Let s see you come out here after me." 
 
 He hurried on swiftly, urging the mule to a rapid racking walk. 
 Toward four o clock the sky in front of him began to flush pink and 
 golden. McTeague halted and breakfasted, pushing on again im 
 mediately afterward. The dawn flamed and glowed like a brazier, 
 and the sun rose a vast red-hot coal floating in fire. An hour passed, 
 then another, and another. It was about nine o clock. Once more 
 the dentist paused, and stood panting and blowing, his arms dan 
 gling, his eyes screwed up and blinking as he looked about him. 
 
 Far behind him the Panamint hills were already but blue hum 
 mocks on the horizon. Before him and upon either side, to the 
 north and to the east and to the south, stretched primordial deso 
 lation. League upon league the infinite reaches of dazzling white 
 alkali laid themselves out like an immeasurable scroll unrolled from 
 horizon to horizon ; not a bush, not a twig relieved that horrible mo 
 notony. Even the sand of the desert would have been a welcome 
 sight ; a single clump of sage-brush would have fascinated the eye ; 
 but this was worse than the desert. It was abominable, this hideous 
 sink of alkali, this bed of some primeval lake lying so far below 
 the level of the ocean. The great mountains of Placer County had 
 been merely indifferent to man; but this awful sink of alkali was 
 openly and unreservedly iniquitous and malignant. 
 
 McTeague had told himself that the heat upon the lower slopes 
 of the Panamint had been dreadful ; here in Death Valley it became 
 
 L III NORRIS 
 
266 McTeague 
 
 a thing of terror. There was npjonger any shadow _but_his_,awn. 
 He was scorched and parched from head to heel. It seemed to 
 him that the smart of his tortured body could not have been keener 
 if he had been flayed. 
 
 "If it gets much hotter," he muttered, wringing the sweat from 
 his thick fell of hair and mustache, "if it gets much hotter, I don 
 know what I ll do." He was thirsty, and drank a little from his 
 canteen. "I ain t got any too much water," he murmured, shaking 
 the canteen. "I got to get out of this place in a hurry, sure." 
 
 By eleven o clock the heat had increased to such an extent that 
 McTeague could feel the burning of the ground come prinking and 
 stinging through the soles of his boots. Every step he took threw 
 up clouds of impalpable alkali dust, salty and choking, so that he 
 strangled and coughed and sneezed with it. 
 
 "Lord! what a country!" exclaimed the dentist. 
 
 . An hour later, the mule stopped and lay down, his jaws wide 
 / open, his ears dangling. McTeague washed his mouth with a hand- 
 ful of water and for a second time since sunrise wetted the flour- 
 sacks around the bird cage. The air was quivering and palpitating 
 like that in the stoke-hole of a steamship. The sun, small and con 
 tracted, swam molten overhead. 
 
 "I can t stand it," said McTeague at length. "I ll have to stop 
 and make some kinda shade." 
 
 The mule was crouched upon the ground, panting rapidly, with 
 half-closed eyes. The dentist removed the saddle, and, unrolling 
 his blanket, propped it up as best he could between him and the 
 sun. As he stooped down to crawl beneath it, his palm touched 
 the ground. He snatched it away with a cry of pain. The surface 
 alkali was oven-hot ; he was obliged to scoop out a trench in it be 
 fore he dared to lie down. 
 
 By degrees the dentist began to doze. He had had little or no 
 
 sleep the night before, and the hurry of his flight under the blazing 
 
 sun had exhausted him. But his rest was broken ; between waking 
 
 and sleeping, all manner of troublous images galloped through his 
 
 brain. He thought he was back in the Panamint hills again with 
 
 Cribbens. They had just discovered the mine and were returning 
 
 / f toward camp. McTeague saw himself as another man, striding 
 
 1 along over the sand and sage-brush. At once he saw himself stop 
 
 v and wheel sharply about, peering back suspiciously. There was 
 
 something behind him ; something was following him. He looked, 
 
 as it were, over the shoulder of this other McTeague, and saw down 
 
McTeague 267 
 
 there, in the half light of the canon, something dark crawling upon 
 the ground, an indistinct gray figure, man or brute, he did not 
 know. Then he saw another, and another ; then another. A score 
 of black, crawling objects were following him, crawling from bush 
 to bush, converging upon him. "They? were after him, were clos 
 ing in upon him, were within touch" of his hand, were at his feet 
 were at his throat. 
 
 McTeague jumped up with a shout, oversetting the blanket. 
 There was nothing in sight. For miles around, the alkali was 
 empty, solitary, quivering and shimmering under the pelting fire of 
 the afternoon s sun. 
 
 But once more the spur bit into his body, goading him on. 
 There was to be no rest, no going back, no pause, no stop. Hurry, 
 hurry, hurry on. The brute that in him slept so close to the surface 
 was alive and alert, and tugging to be gone. There was no resist 
 ing that instinct. The brute felt an enemy, scented the trackers, 
 clamored and struggled and fought, and would not be gainsaid. 
 
 "I can t go on," groaned McTeague, his eyes sweeping the hori 
 zon behind him, "I m beat out. I m dog tired. I ain t slept any for 
 two nights." But for all that he roused himself again, saddled the 
 mule, scarcely less exhausted than himself, and pushed on once 
 more over the scorching alkali and under the blazing sun. 
 
 From that time on the fear never left him, the spur never ceased 
 to bite, the instinct that goaded him to flight never was dumb; 
 hurry or halt, it was all the same. On he went, straight on, chasing 
 the receding horizon; flagellated with heat; tortured with thirst; 
 Crouching over ; looking furtively behind, and at times reaching his 
 hand forward, the fingers prehensile, grasping, as it were, toward 
 the horizon, that always fled before him. 
 
 The sun set upon the third day of McTeague s flight, night came 
 on, the stars burned slowly into the cool dark purple of the sky. 
 The gigantic sink of white alkali glowed like snow. McTeague, 
 now far into the desert, held steadily on, swinging forward with 
 great strides. His enormous strength held him doggedly to his 
 work. Sullenly, with his huge jaws gripping stolidly together, he 
 pushed on. At midnight he stopped. 
 
 "Now," he growled, with a certain desperate defiance, as though 
 he expected to be heard, "Now, I m going to lay up and get some 
 sleep. You can come or not." 
 
 He cleared away the hot surface alkali, spread out his blanket, 
 and slept until the next day s heat aroused him. His water was 
 
268 McTeague 
 
 so low that he dared not make coffee now, and so breakfasted with 
 out it. Until ten o clock he tramped forward, then camped again 
 in the shade of one of the rare rock ledges, and "lay up" during the 
 heat of the day. By five o clock he was once more on. the march. 
 
 He traveled on for the greater part of that night, stopping only 
 once toward three in the morning to water the mule from the can 
 teen. Again the red-hot day burned up over the horizon. Even at 
 six o clock it was hot. 
 
 "It s going to be worse than ever to-day/ he groaned. "I wish 
 I could find another rock to camp by. Ain t I ever going to get out 
 of this place?" 
 
 There was no change in the character of the desert. Always 
 the same measureless leagues of white-hot alkali stretched away 
 toward the horizon on every hand. Here and there the flat, daz 
 zling surface of the desert broke and raised into long low mounds, 
 from the summit of which McTeague could look for miles and 
 miles over its horrible desolation. No shade was in sight. Not a 
 rock, not a stone broke the monotony of the ground. Again and 
 again he ascended the low unevennesses, looking and searching for a 
 camping place, shading his eyes from the glitter of sand and sky. 
 
 He tramped forward a little further, then paused at length in a 
 hollow between two breaks, resolving to make camp there. 
 
 Suddenly there was a shout. 
 
 "Hands up. By damn, J got the drop on you!" 
 
 McTeague looked up. 
 
 It was Marcus. 
 
 XXII 
 
 WITHIN a month after his departure from San Francisco, Mar 
 cus had "gone in on a cattle ranch" in the Panamint Valley with 
 an Englishman, an acquaintance of Mr. Sieppe s. His headquar 
 ters were at a place called Modoc, at the lower extremity of the 
 valley, about fifty miles by trail to the south of Keeler. 
 
 His life was the life of a cowboy. He realized his former vision 
 of himself, booted, sombreroed, and revolvered, passing his days in 
 the saddle and the better part of his nights around the poker tables 
 j in Modoc s one saloon. To his intense satisfaction he even involved 
 himself in a gun fight that arose over a disputed brand, with the 
 result that two fingers of his left hand were shot away. 
 
McTeague 269 
 
 News from the outside world filtered slowly into the Panamint 
 Valley, and the telegraph had never been built beyond Keeler. At 
 intervals one of the local papers of Independence, the nearest large 
 town, found its way into the cattle camps on the ranges, and occa 
 sionally one of the Sunday editions of a Sacramento journal, weeks 
 old, was passed from hand to hand. Marcus ceased to hear from the 
 Sieppes. As for San Francisco, it was as far from him as was 
 London or Vienna. 
 
 One day, a fortnight after McTeague s flight from San Fran 
 cisco, Marcus rode into Modoc, to find a group of men gathered 
 about a notice affixed to the outside of the Wells-Fargo office. It 
 was an offer of reward for the arrest and apprehension of a mur 
 derer. The crime had been committed in San Francisco, but the 
 man wanted had been traced as far as the western portion of Inyo 
 County, and was believed at that time to be in hiding in either the 
 Pinto or Panamint hills, in the vicinity of Keeler. 
 
 Marcus reached Keeler on the afternoon of that same day. 
 Half a mile from the town his pony fell and died from exhaustion. 
 Marcus did not stop even to remove the saddle. He arrived in the 
 barroom of the hotel in Keeler just after the posse had been made 
 up. The sheriff, who had come down from Independence that morn 
 ing, at first refused his offer of assistance. He had enough men 
 already too many, in fact. The country traveled through would 
 be hard, and it would be difficult to find water for so many men 
 and horses. 
 
 "But none of you fellers have ever seen um," vociferated Mar 
 cus, quivering with excitement and wrath. "I know um well. I 
 could pick um out in a million. I can identify um, and you fellers 
 can t. And I knew I knew good God! I knew that girl his 
 wife in Frisco. She s a cousin of mine, she is she was I thought 
 cnce of This thing s a personal matter of mine an that money 
 he got away with, that five thousand, belongs to me by rights. Oh, 
 never mind, I m going along. Do you hear?" he shouted, his fists 
 raised, "I m going along, I tell you. There ain t a man of you big 
 enough to stop me. Let s see you try and stop me going. Let s see 
 you once, any two of you." He filled the barroom with his clamor. 
 
 "Lord love you, come along, then," said the sheriff. 
 
 The posse rode out of Keeler that same night. The keeper of 
 the general merchandise store, from whom Marcus had borrowed 
 a second pony, had informed them that Cribbens and his partner, 
 whose description tallied exactly with that given in the notice of 
 
270 McTeague 
 
 reward, had outfitted at his place with a view to prospecting in the 
 Panamint hills. The posse trailed them at once to their first camp, 
 at the head of the valley. It was an easy matter. It was only 
 necessary to inquire of the cowboys and range riders of the valley if 
 they had seen and noted the passage of two men, one of whom car 
 ried a bird cage. 
 
 Beyond this first camp the trail was lost, and a week was wasted 
 in a bootless search around the mine at Gold Gulch, whither it 
 seemed probable the partners had gone. Then a traveling pedler, 
 who included Gold Gulch in his route, brought in the news of a 
 wonderful strike of gold-bearing quartz some ten miles to the 
 south on the western slope of the range. The two men from Keeler 
 had made a strike, the pedler had said, and added the curious detail 
 that one of the men had a canary bird in a cage with him. 
 
 The posse made Cribbens s camp three days after the unaccount 
 able disappearance of his partner. Their man was gone, but the 
 narrow hoof prints of a mule, mixed with those of huge hob-nailed 
 boots, could be plainly followed in the sand. Here they picked up 
 the trail and held to it steadily till the point was reached where, 
 instead of tending southward, it swerved abruptly to the east. The 
 men could hardly believe their eyes. 
 
 "It ain t reason," exclaimed the sheriff. "What in thunder is he 
 up to? This beats me. Cutting out into Death Valley at this time 
 of year." 
 
 "He s heading for Gold Mountain over in the Armagosa, sure." 
 
 The men decided that this conjecture was true. It was the only 
 inhabited locality in that direction. A discussion began as to the 
 further movements of the posse. 
 
 "I don t figure on going into that alkali sink with no eight men 
 and horses," declared the sheriff. "One man can t carry enough 
 water to take him and his mount across, let alone eight. No, sir. 
 Four couldn t do it. No, three couldn t. We ve got to make a cir 
 cuit round the valley and come up on the other side and head him 
 off at Gold Mountain. That s what we got to do, and ride like hell 
 to do it, too." 
 
 But Marcus protested with all the strength of his lungs against 
 abadoning the trail now that they had found it. He argued that 
 they were but a day and a half behind their man now. There was 
 no possibility of their missing the trail as distinct in the white 
 alkali as in snow. They could make a dash into the valley, secure 
 their man, and return long before their water failed them. He, for 
 
McTeague 271 
 
 one, would not give up the pursuit, now that they were so close. 
 In the haste of the departure from Keeler the sheriff had neglected 
 to swear him in. He was under no orders. He would do as he 
 pleased. 
 
 "Go on, then, you darn fool," answered the sheriff. "We l! cut 
 on round the valley, for all that. It s a gamble he ll be at Gold 
 Mountain before you re half-way across. But if you catch him, 
 here" he tossed Marcus a pair of handcuffs "put em on him and 
 bring him back to Keeler." 
 
 Two days after he had left the posse, and when he was already 
 far out in the desert, Marcus s horse gave out. In the fury of his 
 impatience he had spurred mercilessly forward on the trail, and on 
 the morning of the third day found that his horse was unable to 
 move. The joints of his legs seemed locked rigidly. He would go 
 his own length, stumbling and interfering, then collapse helplessly 
 upon the ground with a pitiful groan. He was used up. 
 
 Marcus believed himself to be close upon McTeague now. The 
 ashes at his last camp had still been smouldering. Marcus took 
 what supplies of food and water he could carry, and hurried on. 
 But McTeague was further ahead than he had guessed, and by 
 evening of his third day upon the desert Marcus, raging with thirst, 
 had drunk his last mouthful of water and had flung away the empty 
 canteen. 
 
 "If he ain t got water with um," he said to himself as he pushed 
 on. "If he ain t got water with um, by damn ! I ll be in a bad way. 
 I will, for a fact." 
 
 At Marcus s shout McTeague looked up and around him. For 
 the instant he saw no one. The white glare of alkali was still un 
 broken. Then his swiftly rolling eyes lighted upon a head and 
 shoulder that protruded above the low crest of the break directly in 
 front of him. A man was there, lying at full length upon the 
 ground, covering him with a revolver. For a few seconds Mc 
 Teague looked at the man stupidly, bewildered, confused, as yet 
 without definite thought. Then he noticed that the man was sin 
 gularly like Marcus Schouler. It was Marcus Schouler. How in 
 the world did Marcus Schouler come to be in that desert? What 
 did he mean by pointing a pistol at him that way? He d best look 
 out or the pistol would go off. Then his thoughts readjusted them 
 selves with a swiftness born of a vivid sense of danger. Here was 
 
McTeague 
 
 the enemy at last, the tracker he had felt upon his footsteps. Now 
 at length he had "come on" and shown himself, after all those 
 days of skulking. McTeague was glad of it. He d show him 
 now. They two would have it out right then and there. His rifle ! 
 He had thrown it away long since. He was helpless. Marcus had 
 ordered him to put up his hands. If he did not, Marcus would kill 
 him. He had the drop on him. McTeague stared, scowling fiercely 
 at the leveled pistol. He did not move. 
 
 "Hands up!" shouted Marcus a second time. "I ll give you 
 three to do it in. One, two " 
 
 Instinctively McTeague put his hands above his head. 
 
 Marcus rose and came toward him over the break. 
 
 "Keep em up," he cried. "If you move em once I ll kill you, 
 sure." 
 
 He came up to McTeague and searched him, going through his 
 pockets; but McTeague had no revolver; not even a hunting knife. 
 
 "What did you do with that money, with that five thousand 
 dollars?" 
 
 "It s on the mule," answered McTeague sullenly. 
 
 Marcus grunted, and cast a glance at the mule, who was stand 
 ing some distance away, snorting nervously, and from time to time 
 flattening his long ears. 
 
 "Is that it there on the horn of the saddle, there in that canvas 
 sack?" Marcus demanded. 
 
 "Yes, that s it." 
 
 I A gleam of satisfaction came into Marcus s eyes, and under his 
 > breath he muttered: 
 
 "Got it at last." 
 
 He was singularly puzzled to know what next to do. He had got 
 McTeague. There he stood at length, with his big hands over his 
 head, scowling at him sullenly. Marcus had caught his enemy, had 
 run down the man for whom every officer in the State had been 
 looking. What should he do with him now ? He couldn t keep him 
 standing there forever with his hands over his head. 
 
 "Got any water ?" he demanded. 
 
 "There s a canteen of water on the mule." 
 
 Marcus moved toward the mule and made as if to reach the 
 bridle-rein. The mule squealed, threw up his head, and galloped to a 
 little distance, rolling his eyes and flattening his ears. 
 
 Marcus swore wrathfully. 
 
 "He acted that way once before," explained McTeague, his hands 
 
McTeague 273 
 
 still in the air. "He ate some loco-weed back in the hills before I 
 started." 
 
 For a moment Marcus hesitated. While he was catching the mule 
 McTeague might get away. But where to, in heaven s name? A 
 rat could not hide on the surface of that glistening alkali, and besides, 
 all McTeague s store of provisions and his priceless supply of water 
 were on the mule. Marcus ran after the mule, revolver in hand, 
 shouting and cursing. But the mule would not be caught. He 
 acted as if possessed, squealing, lashing out, and galloping in wide 
 circles, his head high in the air. 
 
 "Come on," shouted Marcus, furious, turning back to McTeague. 
 "Come on, help me catch him. We got to catch him. All the water 
 we got is on the saddle." 
 
 McTeague came up. 
 
 "He s eatun some loco-weed," he repeated. "He went kinda 
 crazy once before." 
 
 "If he should take it into his head to bolt and keep on running " 
 
 Marcus did not finish. A sudden great fear seemed to widen \ 
 around and inclose the two men. Once their water gone, the end I 
 would not be long. 
 
 "We can catch him all right," said the dentist. "I caught him 
 once before." 
 
 "Oh, I guess we can catch him," answered Marcus reassuringly. 
 
 Already the sense of enmity between the two had weakened in 
 the face of a common peril. Marcus let down the hammer of his 
 revolver and slid it back into the holster. 
 
 The mule was trotting on ahead, snorting and throwing up great 
 clouds of alkali dust. At every step the canvas sack jingled, and 
 McTeague s bird cage, still wrapped in the flour-bags, bumped 
 against the saddle-pads. By and by the mule stopped, blowing out 
 his nostrils excitedly. 
 
 "He s clean crazy," fumed Marcus, panting and swearing. 
 
 "We ought to come upon him quiet," observed McTeague. 
 
 "I ll try and sneak up," said Marcus ; "two of us would scare him 
 again. You stay here." 
 
 Marcus went forward a step at a time. He was almost within 
 arm s length of the bridle when the mule shied from him abruptly 
 and galloped away. 
 
 Marcus danced with rage, shaking his fists, and swearing hor 
 ribly. Some hundred yards away the mule paused and began blow 
 ing and snuffing in the alkali as though in search of feed. Then, 
 
274 McTeague 
 
 for no reason, he shied again, and started off on a jog trot toward 
 the east. 
 
 "We ve got to follow him/ exclaimed Marcus as McTeague 
 came up. "There s no water within seventy miles of here." 
 
 Then began an interminable pursuit. Mile after mile, under the 
 terrible heat of the desert sun, the two men followed the mule, 
 racked with a thirst that grew fiercer every hour. A dozen times 
 they could almost touch the canteen of water, and as often the dis 
 traught animal shied away and fled before them. At length Marcus 
 cried : 
 
 "It s no use, we can t catch him, and we re killing ourselves with 
 thirst. We got to take our chances." He drew his revolver from 
 its holster, cocked it, and crept forward. 
 
 "Steady, now," said McTeague; "it won t do to shoot through 
 the canteen." 
 
 Within twenty yards Marcus paused, made a rest of his left fore 
 arm and fired. 
 
 "You got him," cried McTeague. "No, he s up again. Shoot him 
 again. He s going to bolt." 
 
 Marcus ran on, firing as he ran. The mule, one foreleg trailing, 
 scrambled along, squealing and snorting. , Marcus fired his last 
 shot. The mule pitched forward upon his head, then, rolling side- 
 wise, fell upon the canteen, bursting it open and spilling its entire 
 contents into the sand. 
 
 Marcus and McTeague ran up, and Marcus snatched the bat 
 tered canteen from under the reeking, bloody hide. There was no 
 water left. Marcus flung the canteen from him and stood up, facing 
 McTeague. There was a pause. 
 
 "We re dead men," said Marcus. 
 
 McTeague looked from him out over the desert. Chaotic deso 
 lation stretched from them on either hand, flaming and glaring with 
 the afternoon heat. There was the brazen sky and the leagues upon 
 leagues of alkali, leper white. There was nothing more. They 
 were in the heart of Death Valley. 
 
 "Not a drop of water," muttered McTeague; "not a drop of 
 water." 
 
 "We can drink the mule s blood," said Marcus. "It s been done 
 before. But but " he looked down at the quivering, gory body 
 "but I ain t thirsty enough for that yet." 
 
 "Where s the nearest water?" 
 
 "Well, it s about a hundred miles or more back of us in the 
 
McTeague 275 
 
 Panamint hills," returned Marcus doggedly. "We d be crazy long 
 before we reached it. I tell you, we re done for, by damn, we re 
 done for. We ain t ever going to get outa here." 
 
 "Done for ?" murmured the other, looking about stupidly. "Done 
 for, that s the word. Done for? Yes, I guess we re done for." 
 
 "What are we going to do now?" exclaimed Marcus sharply, 
 after a while. 
 
 "Well, let s let s be moving along somewhere." 
 
 "Where, I d like to know? What s the good of moving on." 
 
 "What s the good of stopping here?" 
 
 There was a silence. 
 
 "Lord, it s hot," said the dentist finally, wiping his forehead with 
 the back of his hand. Marcus ground his teeth. 
 
 "Done for," he muttered ; "done for." 
 
 "I never was so thirsty," continued McTeague. "I m that dry 
 I can hear my tongue rubbing against the roof of my mouth." 
 
 "Well, we can t stop here," said Marcus finally; "we got to 
 go somewhere. We ll try and get back, but it ain t no manner 
 of use. Anything we want to take along with us from the mule? 
 We can" 
 
 Suddenly he paused. In an instant the eyes of the two doomed 
 men had met as the same thought simultaneously rose in their minds. 
 The canvas sack with its five thousand dollars was still tied to the 
 horn of the saddle. 
 
 .Marcus had emptied his revolver at the mule, and though he still 
 wore his cartridge belt, he was for the moment as unarmed as 
 McTeague. 
 
 "I guess," began McTeague coming forward a step, "I guess, 
 even if we are done for, I ll take some of my truck along." 
 
 "Hold on," exclaimed Marcus, with rising aggressiveness. 
 "Let s talk about that. I ain t so sure about who that who that 
 money belongs to." 
 
 "Well, I am, you see," growled the dentist. 
 
 The old enmity between the two men, their ancient hate, was 
 flaming up again. 
 
 "Don t try an load that gun either," cried McTeague, fixing 
 Marcus with his little eyes. 
 
 "Then don t lay your finger on that sack," shouted the other. 
 "You re my prisoner, do you understand? You ll do as I say." 
 Marcus had drawn the handcuffs from his pocket, and stood ready 
 with his revolver held as a club. "You soldiered me out of that 
 
276 McTeague 
 
 money once, and played me for a sucker, an it s my turn now 
 Don t you lay your finger on that sack." 
 
 Marcus barred McTeague s way, white with passion. McTeague 
 did not answer. His eyes drew to two fine, twinkling points, and 
 and his enormous hands knotted themselves into fists, hard as 
 wooden mallets. He moved a step nearer to Marcus, then another. 
 Suddenly the men grappled, and in another instant were rolling 
 and struggling upon the hot white ground. McTeague thrust 
 Marcus backward until he tripped and fell over the body of the dead 
 mule. The little bird cage broke from the saddle with the violence 
 of their fall, and rolled out upon the ground, the flour-bags slip 
 ping from it. McTeague tore the revolver from Marcus s grip 
 and struck out with it blindly. Clouds of alkali dust, fine and pun- 
 /gent, enveloped the two fighting men, all but strangling them. 
 
 McTeague did not know how he killed his enemy, but all at 
 once Marcus grew still beneath his blows. Then there was a 
 sudden last return of energy. McTeague s right wrist was caught, 
 something clicked upon it, then the struggling body fell limp and 
 motionless with a long breath. 
 
 . As McTeague rose to his feet, he felt a pull at his right wrist ; 
 j something held it fast. Looking down, he saw that Marcus in 
 \ that last struggle had found strength to handcuff their wrists to 
 gether. Marcus was dead now ; McTeague was locked to the body. 
 \ I All about him, vast, interminable, stretehed the measureless leagues 
 P of Death Valley. 
 
 McTeague remained stupidly looking around him, now at the 
 distant horizon, now at the ground, now at the half-dead canary 
 chittering feebly in its little gilt prison. 
 
 THE END 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANK NORRIS 
 
Copyright, 1899, 1900, by 
 Doubleday & McClure Company 
 
DEDICATED TO 
 
 Gilbert 3. 
 
The following novel was completed March 22, 1899, and sent to the printer 
 in October of the same year. After the plates had been made notice was 
 received that a play called "A Man s Woman" had been written by Anne 
 Crawford Flexner, and that this title had been copyrighted. 
 
 As it was impossible to change the name of the novel at the time this 
 notice was received, it has been published under its original title. 
 
 F. N. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
A MAN S WOMAN 
 
 AT four o clock in the morning everybody in the tent was still 
 asleep, exhausted by the terrible march of the previous day. The 
 hurnmocky ice and pressure-ridges that Bennett had foreseen had 
 at last been met with, and, though camp had been broken at six 
 o clock and though men and dogs had hauled and tugged and 
 wrestled with the heavy sledges until five o clock in the afternoon, 
 only a mile and a half had been covered. But though the progress 
 was slow, it was yet progress. It was not the harrowing, heart 
 breaking immobility of those long months aboard the "Freja." 
 Every yard to the southward, though won at the expense of a battle 
 with the ice, brought them nearer to Wrangel Island and ultimate 
 safety. 
 
 Then, too, at supper time the unexpected had happened. Ben 
 nett, moved no doubt by their weakened condition, had dealt out 
 extra rations to each man ; one and two-thirds ounces of butter and 
 six and two-thirds ounces of aleuronate bread a veritable luxury 
 after the unvarying diet of pemmican, lime juice, and dried potatoes 
 of the past fortnight. The men had got into their sleeping-bags 
 early, and until four o clock in the morning had slept profoundly, 
 inert, stupefied, almost without movement. But a few minutes 
 after four o clock Bennett awoke. He was usually up about half 
 an hour before the others. On the day before he had been able to 
 get a meridian altitude of the sun, and was anxious to complete his 
 calculations as to the expedition s position on the chart that he had 
 begun in the evening. 
 
 He pushed back the flap of the sleeping-bag and rose to his full 
 height, passing his hands over his face, rubbing the sleep from his 
 eyes. He was an enormous man, standing six feet two inches in 
 his reindeer footnips and having the look more of a prize-fighter 
 than of a scientist. Even making allowances for its coating of dirt 
 
 (281) 
 
282 A Man s Woman 
 
 and its harsh, black stubble of half a week s growth, the face was 
 not pleasant. Bennett was an ugly man. His lower jaw was huge 
 almost to deformity, like that of the bulldog, the chin salient, the 
 mouth close-gripped, with great lips, indomitable, brutal. The fore 
 head was contracted and small,, the forehead of men of single ideas, 
 and the eyes, too, were small and twinkling, one of them marred by 
 a sharply defined cast. 
 
 But as Bennett was fumbling in the tin box that was lashed upon 
 the number four sledge, looking for his notebook wherein he had 
 begun his calculations for latitude, he was surprised to find a copy 
 of the record he had left in the instrument box under the cairn at 
 Cape Kamenni at the beginning of his southerly march. He had 
 supposed that this copy had been mislaid, and was not a little relieved 
 to come across it now. He read it through hastily, his mind re 
 viewing again the incidents of the last few months. Certain ex 
 tracts of this record ran as follows : 
 
 "Arctic steamer Freja, on ice off Cape Kamenni, New Siberian Islands, 
 76 deg. 10 min. north latitude, 150 deg. 40 min. east longitude, July 12, 1891. 
 . . . We accordingly froze the ship in on the last day of September, 1890, 
 and during the following winter drifted with the pack in a northwesterly 
 direction. . . . On Friday, July 10, 1891, being in latitude 76 deg. 10 
 min. north; longitude 150 deg. 10 min. east, the Freja was caught in a 
 severe nip between two floes and was crushed, sinking in about two hours. 
 We abandoned her, saving 200 days provisions and all necessary clothing, 
 instruments, etc. . . . 
 
 "I shall now attempt a southerly march over the ice to Kolyuchin Bay by 
 way of Wrangel Island, where provisions have been cached, hoping to fall 
 in with the relief ships or steam whalers on the way. Our party consists of 
 the following twelve persons: . . . All well with the exception of Mr. 
 Ferriss, the chief engineer, whose left hand has been badly frostbitten. No 
 scurvy in the party as yet. We have eighteen Ostiak dogs with us in prime 
 condition, and expect to drag our ship s boat upon sledges. 
 
 "WARD BENNETT, 
 "Commander Freja Arctic Exploring Expedition." 
 
 Bennett returned this copy of the record to its place in the box, 
 and stood for a moment in the centre of the tent, his head bent to 
 avoid the ridge-pole, looking thoughtfully upon the ground. 
 
 Well, so far all had gone right no scurvy, provisions in plenty. 
 The dogs were in good condition, his men cheerful, trusting in him 
 as in a god, and surely no leader could wish for a better lieutenant 
 
A Man s Woman 283 
 
 and comrade than Richard Ferriss but this hummocky ice these 
 pressure-ridges which the expedition had met the day before. In 
 stead of turning at once to his ciphering Bennett drew the hood of 
 the wolfskin coat over his head, buttoned a red flannel mask across 
 his face, and, raising the flap of the tent, stepped outside. 
 
 Under the lee of the tent the dogs were sleeping, moveless 
 bundles of fur, black and white, perceptibly steaming. The three 
 great McClintock sledges, weighted down with the "Freja s" boats 
 and with the expedition s impedimenta, lay where they had been 
 halted the evening before. 
 
 In the sky directly in front of Bennett as he issued from the 
 tent three moons, hooped in a vast circle of nebulous light, shone 
 roseate through a fine mist, while in the western heavens streamers 
 of green, orange, and vermilion light, immeasurably vast, were 
 shooting noiselessly from horizon to zenith. 
 
 But Bennett had more on his mind that morning than mock- 
 moons and auroras. To the south and east, about a quarter of a 
 mile from the tent, the pressure of the floes had thrown up an 
 enormous ridge of shattered ice-cakes, a mound, a long hill of blue- 
 green slabs and blocks huddling together at every conceivable angle. 
 It was nearly twenty feet in height, quite the highest point that 
 Bennett could discover. Scrambling and climbing over countless 
 other ridges that intervened, he made his way to it, ascended it 
 almost on hands and knees, and, standing upon its highest point, 
 looked long and carefully to the southward. 
 
 A wilderness beyond all thought, words, or imagination desolate 
 stretched out before him there forever and forever ice, ice, ice, 
 fields and floes of ice, laying themselves out under that gloomy sky, 
 league after league, endless, sombre, infinitely vast, infinitely 
 formidable. But now it was no longer the smooth ice over which the 
 expedition had for so long been traveling. In every direction, in 
 tersecting one another at ten thousand points, crossing and recross- 
 ing, weaving a gigantic, bewildering network of gashed, jagged, 
 splintered ice-blocks, ran the pressure-ridges and hummocks. In 
 places a score or more of these ridges had been wedged together to 
 form one huge field of broken slabs of ice miles in width, miles in 
 length. From horizon to horizon there was no level place, no open 
 water, no pathway. The view to the southward resembled a tem 
 pest-tossed ocean suddenly frozen. 
 
 One of these ridges Bennett had just climbed, and upon it he 
 now stood. Even for him, unincumbered, carrying no weight, the 
 
284 A Man s Woman 
 
 climb had been difficult ; more than once he had dipped and fallen. 
 At times he had been obliged to go forward almost on his hands 
 and knees. And yet it was across that jungle of ice, that unspeak 
 able tangle of blue-green slabs and cakes and blocks, that the ex 
 pedition must now advance, dragging its boats, its sledges, its pro 
 visions, instruments, and baggage. 
 
 Bennett stood looking. Before him lay his task. There under 
 his eyes was the Enemy. Face to face with him was the titanic 
 primal strength of a chaotic world, the stupendous still force 
 of a merciless nature, waiting calmly, waiting silently to close 
 upon and crush him. For a long time he stood watching. Then 
 the great brutal jaw grew more salient than ever, the teeth set 
 and clinched behind the close-gripped lips, the cast in the small 
 twinkling eyes grew suddenly more pronounced. One huge fist 
 raised, and the arm slowly extended forward like the resistless 
 moving of a piston. Then when his arm was at its full reach Ben 
 nett spoke as though in answer to the voiceless, terrible challenge 
 measured. 
 
 "But I ll break you, by God ! believe me, I will." 
 
 After a while he returned to the tent, awoke the cook, and while 
 breakfast was being prepared completed his calculations for lati 
 tude, wrote up his ice-journal, and noted down the temperature and 
 the direction and velocity of the wind. As he was finishing, Richard 
 Ferriss, who was the chief engineer and second in command, awoke 
 and immediately asked the latitude. 
 
 "Seventy-four-fifteen," answered Bennett without looking up. 
 
 "Seventy-four-fifteen," repeated Ferriss, nodding his head; "we 
 didn t make much distance yesterday." 
 
 "I hope we can make as much to-day," returned Bennett grimly 
 as he put away his observation journal and notebooks. 
 
 "How s the ice to the south ard ?" 
 
 "Bad ; wake the men." 
 
 After breakfast and while the McClintocks were being loaded 
 Bennett sent Ferriss on ahead to choose a road through and over 
 the ridges. It was dreadful work. For two hours Ferriss wan 
 dered about amid the broken ice all but hopelessly bewildered. But 
 at length, to his great satisfaction, he beheld a fairly open stretch 
 about a quarter of a mile in length lying out to the southwest and 
 not too far out of the expedition s line of march. Some dozen 
 ridges would have to be crossed before this level was reached; but 
 there was no help for it, so Ferriss planted his flags where the 
 
A Man s Woman 285 
 
 heaps of ice-blocks seemed least impracticable and returned toward 
 the camp. It had already been broken, and on his way he met the 
 entire expedition involved in the intricacies of the first rough ice. 
 
 All of the eighteen dogs had been harnessed to the number two 
 sledge, that carried the whaleboat and the major part of the pro 
 visions, and every man of the party, Bennett included, was strain 
 ing at the haul-ropes with the dogs. Foot by foot the sledge came 
 over the ridge, grinding and lurching among the ice-blocks; then, 
 partly by guiding, partly by lifting, it was piloted down the slope, 
 only in the end to escape from all control and come crashing down 
 ward among the dogs, jolting one of the medicine chests from its 
 lashings and butting its nose heavily against the foot of the next 
 hummock immediately beyond. But the men scrambled to their 
 places again, the medicine chest was replaced, and Muck Tu, the 
 Eskimo dog-master, whipped forward his dogs. Ferriss, too, laid 
 hold. The next hummock was surmounted, the dogs panting, and 
 the men, even in that icy air, reeking with perspiration. Then sud 
 denly and without the least warning Bennett and McPherson, who 
 were in the lead, broke through some young ice into water up to 
 their breasts, Muck Tu and one of the dogs breaking through im 
 mediately afterward. The men were pulled out, or, of their own 
 efforts, climbed up on the ice again. But in an instant their clothes 
 were frozen to rattling armor. 
 
 "Bear off to the eastward, here!" commanded Bennett, shaking 
 the icy, stinging water from his sleeves. "Everybody on the ropes 
 now !" 
 
 Another pressure-ridge was surmounted, then a third, and by 
 an hour after the start they had arrived at the first one of Ferriss s 
 flags. Here the number two sledge was left, and the entire ex 
 pedition, dogs and men, returned to camp to bring up the number 
 one McClintock loaded with the "Freja s" cutter and with the sleep 
 ing-bags, instruments, and tent. This sledge was successfully 
 dragged over the first two hummocks, but as it was being hauled up 
 the third its left-handed runner suddenly buckled and turned under it 
 with a loud snap. There was nothing for it now but to remove 
 the entire load and to set Hawes, the carpenter, to work upon its 
 repair. 
 
 "Up your other sledge !" ordered Bennett. 
 
 Once more the expedition returned to the morning s camping- 
 place, and, harnessing itself to the third McClintock, struggled for 
 ward with it for an hour and a half until it was up with the first 
 
286 A Man s Woman 
 
 sledge and Ferriss s flag. Fortunately the two dog-sleds, four and 
 five, were light, and Bennett, dividing his forces, brought them up 
 in a single haul. But Hawes called out that the broken sledge was 
 now repaired. The men turned to at once, reloaded it, and hauled 
 it onward, so that by noon every sledge had been moved forward 
 quite a quarter of a mile. 
 
 But now, for the moment, the men, after going over the same 
 ground seven times, were used up, and Muck Tu could no longer 
 whip the dogs to their work. Bennett called a halt. Hot tea was 
 made, and pemmican and hardtack served out. 
 
 "We ll have easier hauling this afternoon, men," said Bennett; 
 "this next ridge is the worst of the lot; beyond that Mr. Ferriss 
 says we ve got nearly a quarter of a mile of level floes." 
 
 On again at one o clock ; but the hummock of which Bennett 
 had spoken proved absolutely impassable for the loaded sledges, 
 It was all one that the men lay to the ropes like draught-horses, and 
 that Muck Tu flogged the dogs till the goad broke in his hands. The 
 men lost their footing upon the slippery ice and fell to their knees ; 
 the dogs lay down in the traces groaning and whining. The sledge 
 would not move. 
 
 "Unload !" commanded Bennett. 
 
 The lashings were taken off, and the loads, including the great, 
 cumbersome whaleboat itself, carried over the hummock by hand. 
 Then the sledge itself was hauled over and reloaded upon the other 
 side. Thus the whole five sledges. 
 
 The work was bitter hard ; the knots of the lashings were frozen 
 tight and coated with ice; the cases of provisions, the medicine 
 chests, the canvas bundle of sails, boat-covers, and tents unwieldy 
 and of enormous weight; the footing on the slippery, uneven ice 
 precarious, and more than once a man, staggering under his load, 
 broke through the crust into water so cold that the sensation was 
 like that of burning. 
 
 But at last everything was over, the sledges reloaded, and the 
 forward movement resumed. Only one low hummock now inter 
 vened between them and the longed-for level floe. 
 
 However, as they were about to start forward again a lamentable 
 gigantic sound began vibrating in their ears, a rumbling, groaning 
 note rising by quick degrees to a strident shriek. Other sounds, 
 hollow and shrill treble mingling with diapason joined in the 
 first. The noise came from just beyond the pressure-mound at the 
 foot of which the party had halted. 
 
A Man s Woman 287 
 
 "Forward!" shouted Bennett; "hurry there, men!" 
 
 Desperately eager, the men bent panting to their work. The 
 sledge bearing the whaleboat topped the hummock. 
 
 "Now, then, over with her!" cried Ferriss. 
 
 But it was too late. As they stood looking down upon it for 
 an instant, the level floe, their one sustaining hope during all the 
 day, suddenly cracked from side to side with the noise of ordnance. 
 Then the groaning and shrieking recommenced. The crack imme 
 diately closed up, the pressure on the sides of the floe began again, 
 and on the smooth surface of the ice, domes and mounds abruptly 
 reared themselves. As the pressure increased these domes and 
 mounds cracked and burst into countless blocks and slabs. Ridge 
 after ridge was formed in the twinkling of an eye. Thundering like 
 a cannonade of siege guns, the whole floe burst up, jagged, splin 
 tered, hummocky. In less than three minutes, and while the "Fre- 
 ja s" men stood watching, the level stretch toward which since 
 morning they had struggled with incalculable toil was ground up 
 into a vast mass of confused and pathless rubble. 
 
 "Oh, this will never do," muttered Ferriss, disheartened. 
 
 "Come on, men !" exclaimed Bennett. "Mr. Ferriss, go for 
 ward, and choose a road for us." 
 
 The labor of the morning was recommenced. With infinite pa 
 tience, infinite hardship, the sledges one by one were advanced. So 
 heavy were the three larger McClintocks that only one could be 
 handled at a time, and that one taxed the combined efforts of men 
 and dogs to the uttermost. The same ground had to be covered 
 seven times. For every yard gained seven had to be traveled. It 
 was not a march, it was a battle ; a battle without rest and without 
 end and without mercy; a battle with an Enemy whose power was 
 beyond all estimate and whose movements were not reducible to 
 any known law. A certain course would be mapped, certain plans 
 formed, a certain objective determined, and before the course could 
 be finished, the plans executed, or the objective point attained the 
 perverse, inexplicable movement of the ice baffled their determina 
 tion and set at naught their best ingenuity. 
 
 At four o clock it began to snow. Since the middle of the fore 
 noon the horizon had been obscured by clouds and mist so that no 
 observation for position could be taken. Steadily the clouds had 
 advanced, and by four o clock the expedition found itself enveloped 
 by wind and driving snow. The flags could no longer be distin 
 guished; thin and treacherous ice was concealed under drifts; the 
 
2 88 A Man s Woman 
 
 dogs floundered helplessly ; the men could scarcely open their eyes 
 against the wind and fine, powder-like snow, and at times when 
 they came to drag forward the last sledge they found it so nearly 
 buried in the snow that it must be dug out before it could! be 
 moved. 
 
 Toward half-past five the odometer on one of the dog-sleds 
 registered a distance of three-quarters of a mile made since morn 
 ing. Bennett called a halt, and camp was pitched in the lee of one 
 of the larger hummocks. The alcohol cooker was set going, and 
 supper was had under the tent, the men eating as they lay in their 
 sleeping-bags. But even while eating they fell asleep, drooping 
 lower and lower, finally collapsing upon the canvas floor of the 
 tent, the food still in their mouths. 
 
 Yet, for all that, the night was miserable. Even after that day 
 of superhuman struggle they were not to be allowed a few hours 
 of unbroken rest. By midnight the wind had veered to the east and 
 was blowing a gale. An hour later the tent came down. Ex 
 hausted as they were, they must turn out and wrestle with that slat 
 ting, ice-sheathed canvas, and it was not until half an hour later 
 that everything was fast again. 
 
 Once more they crawled into the sleeping-bags, but soon the 
 heat from their bodies melted the ice upon their clothes, and pools 
 of water formed under each man, wetting him to the skin. Sleep 
 was impossible. It grew colder and colder as the night advanced, 
 and the gale increased. At three o clock in the morning the cen 
 tigrade thermometer was at eighteen degrees below. The cooker 
 was lighted again, and until six o clock the party huddled wretch 
 edly about it, dozing and waking, shivering continually. 
 
 Breakfast at half-past six o clock; under way again an hour 
 later. There was no change in the nature of the ice. Ridge suc 
 ceeded ridge, hummock followed upon hummock. The wind was 
 going down, but the snow still fell as fine and bewildering as ever. 
 The cold was intense. Dennison, the doctor and naturalist of the 
 expedition, having slipped his mitten, had his hand frostbitten be 
 fore he could recover it. Two of the dogs, Big Joe and Stryelka, 
 were noticeably giving out. 
 
 But Bennett, his huge jaws clinched, his small, distorted eyes 
 twinkling viciously through the apertures of the wind-mask, his 
 harsh, black eyebrows lowering under the narrow, contracted fore 
 head, drove the expedition to its work relentlessly. Not Muck Tu, 
 the dog-master, had his Ostiaks more completely under his control 
 
A Man s Woman 289 
 
 than he his men. He himself did the work of three. On that vast 
 frame of bone and muscle, fatigue seemed to leave no trace. Upon 
 that inexorable bestial determination difficulties beyond belief left 
 no mark. Not one of the twelve men under his command fighting 
 the stubborn ice with tooth and nail who was not galvanized with his 
 tremendous energy. It was as though a spur were in their flanks, 
 a lash upon their backs. Their minds, their wills, their efforts, their 
 physical strength to the last ounce and pennyweight belonged indis- 
 solubly to him. For the time being they were his slaves, his serfs, 
 his beasts of burden, his draught animals, no better than the dogs 
 straining in the traces beside them. Forward they must and 
 would go until they dropped in the harness or he gave the word 
 to pause. 
 
 At four o clock in the afternoon Bennett halted. Two miles 
 had been made since the last camp, and now human endurance could 
 go no further. Sometimes when the men fell they were unable to 
 get up. It was evident there was no more in them that day. 
 
 In his ice- journal for that date Bennett wrote : 
 
 ". . . Two miles covered by 4 P.M. Our course continued to be south, 
 20 degrees west (magnetic). The ice still hummocky. At this rate we 
 shall be on half rations long before we reach Wrangel Island. No observa 
 tion possible since day before yesterday, on account of snow and clouds. 
 Stryelka, one of our best dogs, gave out to-day. Shot him and fed him to 
 the others. Our advance to the southwest is slow but sure, and every day 
 brings nearer our objective. Temperature at 6 P.M., 6.8 degrees Fahr, 
 (minus 14 degrees C.). Wind, east; force, 2." 
 
 The next morning was clear for two hours after breakfast, and 
 when Ferriss returned from his task of path-finding he reported 
 to Bennett that he had seen a great many water-blinks off to the 
 southwest. 
 
 "The wind of yesterday has broken the ice up," observed Ben 
 nett ; "we shall have hard work to-day." 
 
 A little after midday, at a time when they had wrested some 
 thousand yards to the southward from the grip of the ice, the ex 
 pedition came to the first lane of open water, about three hundred 
 hundred feet in width. Bennett halted the sledges and at once set 
 about constructing a bridge of floating cakes of ice. But the work 
 of keeping these ice-blocks in place long enough for the transfer of 
 even a single sledge seemed at times to be beyond their most stren 
 uous endeavor. The first sledge with the cutter crossed in safety. 
 
 M III NORRIS 
 
290 A Man s Woman 
 
 Then came the turn of number two, loaded with the provisions 
 and whaleboat. It was two-thirds of the way across when the oppo 
 site side of the floe abruptly shifted its position, and thirty feet 
 of open water suddenly widened out directly in front of the line 
 of progress. 
 
 "Cut loose !" demanded Bennett upon the instant. The ice-block 
 upon which they were gathered was set free in the current. The 
 situation was one of the greatest peril. The entire expedition, men 
 and dogs together, with their most important sledge, was adrift. 
 But the oars and mast and the pole of the tent were had from the 
 whaleboat, and little by little they ferried themselves across. The 
 gap was bridged again and the dog-sleds transferred. 
 
 But now occurred the first real disaster since the destruction of 
 the ship. Half-way across the crazy pontoon bridge of ice, the- 
 dogs, harnessed to one of the small sleds, became suddenly terrified. 
 Before any one could interfere they had bolted from Muck Tu s 
 control in a wild break for the further side of the ice. The sled 
 was overturned ; pell-mell the dogs threw themselves into the water ; 
 the sled sank, the load-lashing parted, and two medicine chests, the 
 bag of sewing materials of priceless worth a coil of wire ropes, 
 and three hundred and fifty pounds of pemmican were lost in the 
 twinkling of an eye. 
 
 Without comment Bennett at once addressed himself to making 
 the best of the business. The dogs were hauled upon the ice; the 
 few loads that yet remained upon the sled were transferred to 
 another; that sled was abandoned, and once more the expedition 
 began its never-ending battle to the southward. 
 
 The lanes of open water, as foreshadowed by the water-blinks 
 that Ferriss had noted in the morning, were frequent; alternating 
 steadily with hummocks and pressure-ridges. But the perversity of 
 the ice was all but heart-breaking. At every hour the lanes opened 
 and closed. At one time in the afternoon they had arrived upon 
 the edge of a lane wide enough to justify them in taking to their 
 boats. The sledges were unloaded, and stowed upon the boats 
 themselves, and oars and sails made ready. Then as Bennett was 
 about to launch the lane suddenly closed up. What had been water 
 became a level floe, and again the. process of unloading and reload 
 ing had to be undertaken. 
 
 That evening Big Joe and two other dogs, Gavriga and Patsy, 
 were shot because of their uselessness in the traces. Their bodies 
 were cut up to feed their mates. 
 
A Man s Woman 291 
 
 "I can spare the dogs," wrote Bennett in his journal for that day a 
 Sunday "but McPherson, one of the best men of the command, gives me 
 some uneasiness. His frozen footnips have chafed sores in his ankle. One 
 of these has ulcerated, and the doctor tells me is in a serious condition. His 
 pain is so great that he can no longer haul with the others. Shall relieve 
 him from work during the morrow s march. Less than a mile covered to 
 day. Meridian observation for latitude impossible on account of fog. Divine 
 services at 5:30 P.M." 
 
 A week passed, then another. There was no change, neither in 
 the character of the ice nor in the expedition s daily routine. Their 
 toil was incredible; at times an hour s unremitting struggle would 
 gain but a few yards. The dogs, instead of aiding them, were 
 rapidly becoming mere incumbrances. Four more had been killed, 
 a fifth had been drowned, and two, wandering from camp, had 
 never returned. The second dog-sled had been abandoned. The 
 condition of McPherson s foot was such that no work could be 
 demanded from him. Hawes, the carpenter, was down with fever 
 and kept everybody awake all night by talking in his sleep. Worse 
 than all, however, Ferriss s right hand was again frostbitten, and 
 this time Dennison, the doctor, was obliged to amputate it above the 
 wrist. 
 
 "... But I am no whit disheartened," wrote Bennett. "Succeed I 
 must and shall." 
 
 A few days after the operation on Ferriss s hand Bennett de 
 cided it would be advisable to allow the party a full twenty-four 
 hours rest. The march of the day before had been harder than 
 any they had yet experienced, and, in addition to McPherson and 
 the carpenter, the doctor himself was upon the sick list. 
 
 In the evening Bennett and Ferriss took a long walk or rather 
 climb over the ice to the southwest, picking out a course for the 
 next day s march. 
 
 A great friendship, not to say affection, had sprung up between 
 these two men, a result of their long and close intimacy on board 
 the "Freja" and of the hardships and perils they had shared during 
 the past few weeks while leading the expedition in the retreat to 
 the southward. When they had decided upon the track of the mor 
 row s advance they sat down for a moment upon the crest of a 
 hummock to breathe themselves, their elbows on their knees, look 
 ing off to the south over the desolation of broken ice. 
 
292 A Man s Woman 
 
 With his one good hand Ferriss drew a pipe and a handful of 
 tea leaves wrapped in oiled paper from the breast of his deer-skin 
 parkie. 
 
 "Do you mind filling this pipe for me, Ward?" he asked of Ben 
 nett. 
 
 Bennett glanced at the tea leaves and handed them back to 
 Ferriss, and in answer to his remonstrance produced a pouch of his 
 own. 
 
 "Tobacco!" cried Ferriss, astonished; "why, I thought we 
 smoked our last aboard ship." 
 
 "No, I saved a little of mine." 
 
 "Oh, well," answered Ferriss, trying to interfere with Bennett, 
 who was filling his pipe, "I don t want your tobacco; this tea does 
 very well." 
 
 "I tell you I have eight-tenths of a kilo left," lied Bennett, light 
 ing the pipe and handing it back to him. "Whenever you want a 
 smoke you can set to me." 
 
 Bennett lighted a pipe of his own, and the two began to smoke. 
 
 " M, ah !" murmured Ferriss, drawing upon the pipe ecstatical 
 ly, "I thought I never was going to taste good weed again till we 
 should get home." 
 
 Bennett said nothing. There was a long silence. Home! what 
 did not that word mean for them ? To leave all this hideous, grisly 
 waste of ice behind, to have done with fighting, to rest, to forget 
 responsibility, to have no more anxiety, to be warm once more 
 warm and well fed and dry to see a tree again, to rub elbows with 
 one s fellows, to know the meaning of warm handclasps and the 
 faces of one s friends. 
 
 "Dick," began Bennett abruptly after a long while, "if we get 
 stuck here in this damned ice I m going to send you and probably 
 Metz on ahead for help. We ll make a two-man kayak for you to 
 use when you reach the limit of the pack, but besides the kayak 
 you ll carry nothing but your provisions, sleeping-bags, and rifle, 
 and travel as fast as you can." Bennett paused for a moment, then 
 in a different voice continued: "I wrote a letter last night that I 
 was going to give you in case I should have to send you on such 
 a journey, but I think I might as well give it to you now." 
 
 He drew from his pocket an envelope carefully wrapped in 
 oilskin. 
 
 "If anything should happen to the expedition to me I want 
 you to see that this letter is delivered." 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 293 
 
 He paused again. 
 
 "You see, Dick, it s like this; there s a girl" his face flamed 
 suddenly, "no no, a woman, a grand, noble, man s woman, back 
 in God s country who is a great deal to me everything in fact. 
 She doesn t know, hasn t a guess that I care. I never spoke to her 
 about it. But if anything should turn up I should want her to know 
 how it had been with me, how much she was to me. So I ve writ 
 ten her. You ll see that she gets it, will you?" 
 
 He handed the little package to Ferriss, and continued indif 
 ferently, and resuming his accustomed manner: 
 
 "If we get as far as Wrangel Island you can give it back to me. 
 We are bound to meet the relief ships or the steam whalers in that 
 latitude. Oh, you can look at the address," added Bennett as Fer 
 riss, turning the envelope bottom side up, was thrusting it into his 
 breast pocket; "you know her even better than I do. It s Lloyd 
 Searight." 
 
 Ferriss s teeth shut suddenly upon his pipestem. 
 
 Bennett rose. "Tell Muck Tu," he said, "in case I don t think 
 of it again, that the dogs must be fed from now on from those that 
 die. I shall want the dog biscuit and dried fish for our own use." 
 
 "I suppose it will come to that," answered Ferriss. 
 
 "Come to that!" returned Bennett grimly; "I hope the dogs 
 themselves will live long enough for us to eat them. And, don t 
 misunderstand," he added; "I talk about our getting stuck in the 
 ice, about my not pulling through; it s only because one must fore 
 see everything, be prepared for everything. Remember I shall 
 pull through." 
 
 But that night, long after the rest were sleeping, Ferriss, who 
 had not closed his eyes, bestirred himself, and, as quietly as possi 
 ble, crawled from his sleeping-bag. He fancied there was some 
 slight change in the atmosphere, and wanted to read the barometer 
 affixed to a stake just outside the tent. Yet when he had noted that 
 it was, after all, stationary, he stood for a moment looking out 
 across the ice with unseeing eyes. Then from a pocket in his furs 
 he drew a little folder of morocco. It was pitiably worn, stained 
 with sea-water, patched and repatched, its frayed edges sewed to 
 gether again with ravelings of cloth and sea-grasses. Loosening 
 with his teeth the thong of walrus-hide with which it was tied, 
 Ferriss opened it and held it to the faint light of an aurora just 
 paling in the northern sky. 
 
 "So," he muttered after a while, "so Bennett, too " 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 For a long time Ferriss stood looking at Lloyd s picture till the 
 purple streamers in the north faded into the cold gray of the 
 heavens. Then he shot a glance above him. 
 
 "God Almighty bless her and keep her!" he prayed. 
 Far off, many miles away, an ice-floe split with the prolonged 
 reverberation of thunder. The aurora was gone. Ferriss returned 
 to the tent. 
 
 The following week the expedition suffered miserably. Snow 
 storm followed snowstorm, the temperature dropped to twenty-two 
 degrees below the freezing-point, and gales of wind from the east 
 whipped and scourged the struggling men incessantly with myriad 
 steel-tipped lashes. At night the agony in their feet was all but 
 unbearable. It was impossible to be warm, impossible to be dry. 
 Dennison, in a measure, recovered his health, but the ulcer on Mc- 
 Pherson s foot had so eaten the flesh that the muscles were visible. 
 Hawes s monotonous chatter and crazy whimperings filled the tent 
 every night. 
 
 The only pleasures left them, the only breaks in the monotony 
 of that life, were to eat, and, when possible, to sleep. Thought, 
 reason, and reflection dwindled in their brains. Instincts the prim 
 itive, elemental impulses of the animal possessed them instead. 
 To eat, to sleep, to be warm they asked nothing better. The 
 night s supper was a vision that dwelt in their imaginations hour 
 after hour throughout the entire day. Oh, to sit about the blue 
 flame of alcohol sputtering underneath the old and battered cooker 
 of sheet-iron! To smell the delicious savor of the thick, boiling 
 soup! And then the meal itself to taste the hot, coarse, meaty 
 food; to feel that unspeakably grateful warmth and glow, that 
 almost divine sensation of satiety spreading through their poor, 
 shivering bodies, and then sleep ; sleep, though quivering with cold ; 
 sleep, though the wet searched the flesh to the very marrow ; sleep, 
 though the feet burned and crisped with torture; sleep, sleep, the 
 dreamless stupefaction of exhaustion, the few hours oblivion, the 
 day s short armistice from pain! 
 
 But stronger, more insistent that even these instincts of the 
 animal was the blind, unreasoned impulse that set their faces to the 
 southward: "To get forward, to get forward." Answering the re 
 sistless influence of their leader, that indomitable man of iron whom 
 no fortune could break nor bend, and who imposed his will upon 
 them as it were a yoke of steel this idea became for them a sort of 
 obsession. Forward, if it were only a yard; if it were only a foot. 
 
A Man s Woman 295 
 
 Forward over the heart-breaking, rubble ice; forward against the 
 biting, shrieking wind; forward in the face of the blinding snow; 
 forward through the brittle crusts and icy water ; forward, although 
 every step was an agony, though the haul-rope cut like a dull knife, 
 though their clothes were sheets of ice. Blinded, panting, bruised, 
 bleeding, and exhausted, dogs and men, animals all, the expedition 
 struggled forward. 
 
 One day, a little before noon, while lunch was being cooked, the 
 sun broke through the clouds, and for upward of half an hour the 
 ice-pack was one blinding, diamond glitter. Bennett ran for his 
 sextant and got an observation, the first that had been possible for 
 nearly. a month. He worked out their latitude that same evening. 
 
 The next morning Ferriss was awakened by a touch on his 
 shoulder. Bennett was standing over him. 
 
 "Come outside here a moment," said Bennett in a low voice. 
 "Don t wake the men." 
 
 "Did you get our latitude?" asked Ferriss as the two came out 
 of the tent. 
 
 "Yes, that s what I want to tell you." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Seventy- four-nineteen." 
 
 "Why, what do you mean?" asked Ferriss quickly. 
 
 "Just this: That the ice-pack we re on is drifting faster to the 
 north than we are marching to the south. We are further north 
 now than we were a month ago for all our marching." 
 
 II 
 
 BY eleven o clock at night the gale had increased to such an 
 extent and the sea had begun to build so high that it was a question 
 whether or not the whaleboat would ride the storm. Bennett 
 finally decided that it would be impossible to reach the land 
 stretching out in a long, dark blur to the southwest that night, 
 and that the boat must run before the wind if he was to keep her 
 afloat. The number two cutter, with Ferriss in command, was a 
 bad sailer, and had fallen astern. She was already out of hailing 
 distance; but Bennett, who was at the whaleboat s tiller, in the 
 instant s glance that he dared to shoot behind him saw with satis 
 faction that Ferriss had followed his example. 
 
296 A Man s Woman 
 
 The whaleboat and the number two cutter were the only boats 
 now left to the expedition. The third boat had been abandoned 
 long before they had reached open water. 
 
 An hour later Adler, the sailing-master, who had been bailing, 
 and who sat facing Bennett, looked back through the storm ; then, 
 turning to Bennett, said: 
 
 "Beg pardon, sir, I think they are signaling us." 
 
 Bennett did not answer, but, with his hand gripping the tiller, 
 kept his face to the front, his glance alternating between the heav 
 ing prow of the boat and the huge gray billows hissing with froth 
 careering rapidly alongside. To pause for a moment, to vary by 
 ever so little from the course of the storm, might mean the drown 
 ing of them all. After a few moments Adler spoke again, touching 
 his cap. 
 
 "I m sure I see a signal, sir." 
 
 "No, you don t," answered Bennett. 
 
 "Beg pardon, I m quite sure I do." 
 
 Bennett leaned toward him, the cast in his eyes twinkling with a 
 wicked light, the furrow between the eyebrows deepening. "I tell 
 you, you don t see any signal; do you understand? You don t see 
 any signal until I choose to have you.". 
 
 The night was bitter hard for the occupants of the whaleboat. 
 In their weakened condition they were in no shape to fight a polar 
 hurricane in an open boat. 
 
 For three weeks they had not known the meaning of full rations. 
 During the first days after the line of march over the ice had been 
 abruptly changed to the west in the hope of reaching open water, 
 only three-quarter rations had been issued, and now for the last 
 two days half rations had been their portion. The gnawing of hun 
 ger had begun. Every man was perceptibly weaker. Matters 
 were getting desperate. 
 
 But by seven o clock the next morning the storm had blown 
 itself out. To Bennett s inexpressible relief the cutter hove in view. 
 Shaping their course to landward once more, the boats kept com 
 pany, and by the middle of the afternoon Bennett and the crew of 
 the whaleboat successfully landed upon a bleak, desolate, and wind- 
 scourged coast. But in some way, never afterward sufficiently ex 
 plained, the cutter under Ferriss s command was crushed in the 
 floating ice within one hundred yards of the shore. The men anct 
 stores were landed the water being shallow enough for wading 
 but the boat was a hopeless wreck. 
 
A Man s Woman 297 
 
 "I believe it s Cape Shelaski," said Bennett to Ferriss when 
 camp had been made and their maps consulted. "But if it is, it s 
 charted thirty-five minutes too far to the west." 
 
 Before breaking camp the next morning Bennett left this record 
 under a cairn of rocks upon the highest point of the cape, further 
 marking the spot by one of the boat s flags : 
 
 "The Freja Arctic Exploring Expedition landed at this point October 28, 
 1891. Our ship was nipped and sunk in 76 deg. 10 min. north latitude on 
 the i2th of July last. I then attempted a southerly march to Wrangel Island, 
 but found such a course impracticable on account of northerly drift of ice. 
 On the ist of October I accordingly struck off to the westward to find open 
 water at the limit of the ice, being compelled to abandon one boat and two 
 sledges on the way. A second boat was crushed beyond repair in drifting 
 ice while attempting a landing at this place. Our one remaining boat being 
 too small to accommodate the members of the expedition, circumstances 
 oblige me to begin an overland march toward Kolyuchin Bay, following 
 the line of the coast. We expect either to winter among the Chuckch set- 
 Clements mentioned by Nordenskjold as existing upon the eastern shores of 
 Kolyuchin Bay or to fall in with the relief ships or the steam whalers en 
 route. By issuing half rations I have enough provisions for eighteen days, 
 and have saved all records, observations, papers, instruments, etc. Inclosed 
 is the muster roll of the expedition. No scurvy as yet and no deaths. Our 
 sick are William Hawes, carpenter, arctic fever, serious; David McPherson, 
 seaman, ulceration of left foot, serious. The general condition of the rest 
 of the men is fair, though much weakened by exposure and lack of food. 
 "(Signed) WARD BENNETT, 
 
 "Commanding." 
 
 But during the night, their first night on land, Bennett resolved 
 upon a desperate expedient. Not only the boat was to be aban 
 doned; but also the sledges, and not only the sledges, but every 
 article of weight not absolutely necessary to the existence of the 
 party. Two weeks before, the sun had set not to rise again for six 
 months. Winter was upon them and darkness. The Enemy was 
 drawing near. The great remorseless grip of the Ice was closing. 
 It was no time for half-measures and hesitation ; now it was life or 
 death. 
 
 The sense of their peril, the nearness of the Enemy, strung Ben 
 nett s nerves taut as harp-strings. His will hardened to the flinty 
 hardness of the ice itself. His strength of mind and of body seemed 
 suddenly to quadruple itself. His determination was that of the bat 
 tering-ram, blind, deaf, resistless. The ugly set of his face became 
 
298 A Man s Woman 
 
 all the more ugly, the contorted eyes flashing, the great jaw all but 
 simian. He appeared physically larger. It was no longer a man ; 
 it was a giant, an ogre, a colossal Jotun hurling ice-blocks, fighting 
 out a battle unspeakable, in the dawn of the world, in chaos and in 
 darkness. 
 
 The impedimenta of the expedition were broken up into packs 
 that each man carried upon his shoulders. From now on every 
 thing that hindered the rapidity of their movements must be left 
 behind. Six dogs (all that remained of the pack of eighteen) still 
 accompanied them. 
 
 Bennett had hoped and had counted upon his men for an aver 
 age daily march of sixteen miles, but the winter gales driving down 
 from the northeast beat them back ; the ice and snow that covered 
 the land were no less uneven than the hummocks of the pack. All 
 game had migrated far to the southward. 
 
 Every day the men grew weaker and weaker; their provisions 
 dwindled. Again and again one or another of them, worn out 
 beyond human endurance, would go to sleep while marching and 
 would fall to the ground. 
 
 Upon the third day of this overland march one of the dogs sud 
 denly collapsed upon the ground, exhausted and dying. Bennett 
 had ordered such of the dogs as gave out cut up and their meat added 
 to the store of the party s provisions. Ferriss and Muck Tu had 
 started to pick up the dead dog when the other dogs, famished and 
 savage, sprang upon their fallen mate. The two men struck and 
 kicked, all to no purpose; the dogs turned upon them snarling and 
 snapping. They, too, demanded to live; they, too, wanted to be 
 fed. It was a hideous business. There in that half-night of the 
 polar circle, lost and forgotten on a primordial shore, back into 
 the stone age once more, men and animals fought one another for 
 the privilege of eating a dead dog. 
 
 But their life was not all inhuman ; Bennett at least could rise 
 even above humanity ; though his men must perforce be dragged so 
 far below it. At the end of the first week Hawes, the carpenter, 
 died. When they awoke in the morning he was found motionless 
 and stiff in his sleeping-bag. Some sort of grave was dug, the poor 
 racked body lowered into it, and before it was filled with snow and 
 broken ice Bennett, standing quietly in the midst of the bare 
 headed group, opened his prayer-book and began with the tremen 
 dous words, "I am the Resurrection and the Life " 
 
 It was the beginning of the end. A week later the actual star- 
 
A Man s Woman 299 
 
 vation began. Slower and slower moved the expedition on its 
 daily march, faltering, staggering, blinded and buffeted by the 
 incessant northeast winds, cruel, merciless, keen as knife-blades. 
 Hope long since was dead ; resolve wore thin under friction of dis 
 aster ; like a rat, hunger gnawed at them hour after hour ; the cold 
 was one unending agony. Still Bennett was unbroken, still he 
 urged them forward. For so long as they could move he would 
 drive them on. 
 
 Toward four o clock on the afternoon of one particularly hard 
 day, word was passed forward to Bennett at the head of the line 
 that something was wrong in the rear. 
 
 "It s Adler; he s down again and can t get up; asks you to leave 
 him." 
 
 Bennett halted the line and went back some little distance to find 
 Adler lying prone upon his back, his eyes half closed, breathing 
 short and fast. He shook him roughly by the shoulder. 
 
 "Up with you !" 
 
 Adler opened his eyes and shook his head. 
 
 "I I m done for this time, sir; just leave me here please." 
 
 "H up!" shouted Bennett; "you re not done for; I know better." 
 
 "Really, sir, I I can t" 
 
 "H up!" 
 
 "If you would only please for God s sake, sir. It s more than 
 I m made for." 
 
 Bennett kicked him in the side. 
 
 "H up with you !" 
 
 Adler struggled to his feet again, Bennett aiding him. 
 
 "Now, then, can you go five yards?" 
 
 "I think I don t know perhaps " 
 
 "Go them, then." 
 
 The other moved forward. 
 
 "Can you go five more; answer, speak up, can you?" 
 
 Adler nodded his head. 
 
 "Go them and another five and another there that s some 
 thing like a man, and let s have no more woman s drivel about 
 dying." 
 
 "But" 
 
 Bennett came close to him, shaking a forefinger in his face, 
 thrusting forward his chin wickedly. 
 
 "My friend, I ll drive you like a dog, but," his fist clinched in 
 the man s face, "I ll make you pull through." 
 
joo A Man s Woman 
 
 Two hours later Adler finished the day s march at the head of 
 the line. 
 
 The expedition began to eat its dogs. Every evening Bennett 
 sent Muck Tu and Adler down to the shore to gather shrimps, 
 though fifteen hundred of these shrimps hardly filled a gill measure. 
 The party chewed reindeer-moss growing in scant patches in the 
 snow-buried rocks, and at times made a thin, sickly infusion from 
 the arctic willow. Again and again Bennett despatched the Es 
 kimo and Clarke, the best shots in the party, on hunting expedi 
 tions to the southward. Invariably they returned empty-handed. 
 Occasionally they reported old tracks of reindeer and foxes, but 
 the winter colds had driven everything far inland. Once only Clarke 
 shot a snow-bunting, a little bird hardly bigger than a sparrow, 
 Still Bennett pushed forward. 
 
 One morning in the beginning of the third week, after a break 
 fast of two ounces of dog meat and a half cup of willow tea, Ferriss 
 and Bennett found themselves a little apart from the others. The 
 men were engaged in lowering the tent. Ferriss glanced behind 
 to be assured he was out of hearing, then : 
 
 "How about McPherson ?" he said in a low voice. 
 
 McPherson s foot was all but eaten to the bone by now. It was 
 a miracle how the man had kept up thus far. But at length he had 
 begun to fall behind; every day he straggled more and more, and 
 the previous evening had reached camp nearly an hour after the tent 
 had been pitched. But he was a plucky fellow, of sterner stuff than 
 the sailing-master, Adler, and had no thought of giving up. 
 
 Bennett made no reply to Ferriss, and the chief engineer did not 
 repeat the question. The day s march began ; almost at once breast- 
 high snowdrifts were encountered, and when these had been left 
 behind the expedition involved itself upon the precipitate slopes of 
 a huge talus of ice and bare, black slabs of basalt. Fully two hours 
 were spent in clambering over this obstacle, and on its top Bennett 
 halted to breathe the men. But when they started forward again it 
 was found that McPherson could not keep his feet. When he had 
 fallen, Adler and Dennison had endeavored to lift him, but they 
 themselves were so weak that they, too, fell. Dennison could not 
 rise of his own efforts, and instead of helping McPherson had to 
 be aided himself. Bennett came forward, put an arm about Mc 
 Pherson, and hauled him to an upright position. The man took 
 a step forward, but his left foot immediately doubled under him, 
 and he came to the ground again. Three times this manoeuvre 
 
A Man s Woman 301 
 
 was repeated; so far from marching, McPherson could not even 
 stand. 
 
 "If I could have a day s rest " began McPherson, unsteadily.. 
 Bennett cast a glance at Dennison, the doctor. Dennison shook his 
 head. The foot, the entire leg below the knee, should have been 
 amputated days ago. A month s rest even in a hospital at home 
 would have benefited McPherson nothing. 
 
 For the fraction of a minute Bennett debated the question, then 
 he turned to the command: "Forward, men!" 
 
 "What wh " began McPherson, sitting upon the ground, 
 looking from one face to another, bewildered, terrified. Some of 
 the men began to move off. 
 
 W a it wait," exclaimed the cripple, "I I can get along I 
 He rose to his knees, made a great effort to regain his footing, and 
 once more came crashing down upon the ice. 
 
 "Forward!" 
 
 "But but but Oh, you re not going to leave me, sir?" 
 
 "Forward !" 
 
 "He s been my chum, sir, all through the voyage," said one of 
 the men, touching his cap to Bennett ; "I had just as soon be left 
 with him. I m about done myself." 
 
 Another joined in : 
 
 "I ll stay, too I can t leave it s it s too terrible." 
 
 There was a moment s hesitation. Those who had begun to 
 move on halted. The whole expedition wavered. 
 
 Bennett caught the- dog-whip from Muck Tu s hand. His voice 
 rang like the alarm of a trumpet. 
 
 "Forward !" 
 
 Once more Bennett s discipline prevailed. His iron hand shut 
 down upon his men, more than ever resistless. Obediently they 
 turned their faces to the southward. The march was resumed. 
 
 Another day passed, then two. Still the expedition struggled 
 on. With every hour their sufferings increased. It did not seem 
 that anything human could endure such stress and yet survive. To 
 ward three o clock in the morning of the third night Adler woke 
 Bennett. 
 
 "It s Clarke, sir ; he and I sleep in the same bag. I think he s 
 going, sir." 
 
 One by one the men in the tent were awakened, and the train- 
 oil-lamp was lighted. 
 
 Clarke lay in his sleeping-bag unconscious, and at long intervals 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 drawing a faint, quick breath. The doctor bent over him, feeling 
 his pulse, but shook his head hopelessly. 
 
 "He s dying quietly exhaustion from starvation." 
 
 A few moments later Clarke began to tremble slightly, the mouth 
 opened wide ; a faint rattle came from the throat. 
 
 Four miles was as much as could be made good the next day, 
 and this though the ground was comparatively smooth. Ferriss was 
 continually falling. Dennison and Metz were a little light-headed, 
 and Bennett at one time wondered if Ferriss himself had absolute 
 control of his wits. Since morning the wind had been blowing 
 strongly in their faces. By noon it had increased. At four o clock 
 a violent gale was howling over the reaches of ice and rock-ribbed 
 land. It was impossible to go forward while it lasted. The 
 stronger gusts fairly carried their feet from under them. At half- 
 past four the party halted. The gale was now a hurricane. The 
 expedition paused, collected itself, went forward ; halted again, 
 again attempted to move, and came at last to a definite standstill in 
 whirling snow-clouds and blinding, stupefying blasts. 
 
 "Pitch the tent!" said Bennett quietly. "We must wait now 
 till it blows over." 
 
 In the lee of a mound of ice-covered rock some hundred yards 
 from the coast the tent was pitched, and supper, such as it was, 
 eaten in silence. All knew what this enforced halt must mean for 
 them. That supper each man could hold his portion in the hollow 
 of one hand was the last of their regular provisions. March they 
 could not. What now? Before crawling into their sleeping-bags, 
 and at Bennett s request, all joined in repeating the Creed and the 
 Lord s Prayer. 
 
 The next day passed, and the next, and the next. The gale 
 continued steadily. The southerly march was discontinued. All 
 day and all night the men kept in the tent, huddled in the sleeping- 
 bags, sometimes sleeping eighteen and twenty hours out of the 
 twenty- four. They lost all consciousness of the lapse of time ; sen 
 sation even of suffering left them ; the very hunger itself had ceased 
 to gnaw. Only Bennett and Ferriss seemed to keep their heads. 
 Then slowly the end began. 
 
 For that last week Bennett s . entries in his ice- journal were as 
 follows : 
 
 "November 2gth Monday Camped at 4:30 P.M. about 100 yards from the 
 coast. Open water to the eastward as far as I can see. If I had not been 
 
A Man s Woman 303 
 
 compelled to abandon my boats but it is useless to repine. I must look 
 our situation squarely in the face. At noon served out last beef-extract, 
 which we drank with some willow tea. Our remaining provisions consist 
 of four-fifteenths of a pound of pemmican per man, and the rest of the dog 
 meat. Where are the relief ships? We should at least have met the steam 
 whalers long before this. 
 
 "November 3oth Tuesday The doctor amputated Mr. Ferriss s other 
 hand to-day. Living gale of wind from northeast. Impossible to march 
 against it in our weakened condition ; must camp here till it abates. Made 
 soup of the last of the dog meat this afternoon. Our last pemmican gone. 
 
 "December ist Wednesday Everybody getting weaker. Metz breaking 
 down. Sent Adler down to the shore to gather shrimps. We had about a 
 mouthful apiece for lunch. Supper a spoonful of glycerine and hot water. 
 
 "December 2d Thursday Metz died during the night. Hansen dying. 
 Still blowing a gale from the northeast. A hard night. 
 
 "December 3d Friday Hansen died during early morning. Muck Tu 
 shot a ptarmigan. Made soup. Dennison breaking down. 
 
 "December 4th Saturday Buried Hansen under slabs of ice. Spoonful 
 of glycerine and hot water at noon. 
 
 "December sth Sunday Dennison found dead this morning between 
 Adler and myself. Too weak to bury him, or even carry him out of the 
 tent. He must lie where he is. Divine services at 5:30 P.M. Last spoonful 
 of glycerine and hot water." 
 
 The next day was Monday, and at some indeterminate hour of 
 the twenty-four, though whether it was night or noon he could not 
 say, Ferriss woke in his sleeping-bag and raised himself on an elbow, 
 and for a moment sat stupidly watching Bennett writing in his 
 journal. Noticing that he was awake, Bennett looked up from the 
 page and spoke in a voice thick and muffled because of the swelling 
 of his tongue. 
 
 "How long has this wind been blowing, Ferriss?" 
 
 "Since a week to-day," answered the other. 
 
 Bennett continued his writing. 
 
 ". . . Incessant gales of wind for over a week. Impossible to move 
 against them in our weakened condition. But to stay here is to perish. 
 God help us. It is the end of everything." 
 
 Bennett drew a line across the page under the last entry, and, 
 still holding the book in his hand, gazed slowly about the tent. 
 
 There were six of them left five huddled together in that 
 miserable tent the sixth, Adler, being down on the shore gathering 
 shrimps. In the strange and gloomy half-light that filled the tent 
 
304 A Man s Woman 
 
 these survivors of the "Freja" looked less like men than beasts. 
 Their hair and beards were long, and seemed one with the fur 
 covering of their bodies. Their faces were absolutely black with 
 dirt, and their limbs were monstrously distended and fat fat as 
 things bloated and swollen are fat. It was the abnormal fatness of 
 starvation, the irony of misery, the huge joke that arctic famine 
 plays upon those whom it afterward destroys. The men moved 
 about at times on their hands and knees; their tongues were dis 
 tended, round, and slate-colored, like the tongues of parrots, and 
 when they spoke they bit them helplessly. 
 
 Near the flap of the tent lay the swollen dead body of Dennison. 
 Two of the party dozed inert and stupefied in their sleeping-bags. 
 Muck Tu was in the corner of the tent boiling his sealskin footnips 
 over the sheet-iron cooker. Ferriss and Bennett sat on opposite 
 sides of the tent, Bennett using his knee as a desk, Ferriss trying 
 to free himself from the sleeping-bag with the stumps of his arms. 
 Upon one of these stumps, the right one, a tin spoon had been lashed. 
 
 The tent was full of foul smells. The smell of drugs and of 
 mouldy gunpowder, the smell of dirty rags, of unwashed bodies, the 
 smell of stale smoke, of scorching sealskin, of soaked and rotting 
 canvas that exhaled from the tent cover every smell but that of 
 food. 
 
 Outside the unleashed wind yelled incessantly, like a Sabbath of 
 witches, and spun about the pitiful shelter and went rioting past, 
 leaping and somersaulting from rock to rock, tossing handfuls of 
 dry, dust-like snow into the air; folly-stricken, insensate, an enor 
 mous, mad monster gamboling there in some hideous dance of 
 death, capricious, headstrong, pitiless as a famished wolf. 
 
 In front of the tent and over a ridge of barren rocks was an arm 
 of the sea dotted with blocks of ice moving silently and swiftly on 
 ward; while back from the coast, and back from the tent and to 
 the south and to the west and to the east, stretched the illimitable 
 waste of land, rugged, gray, harsh; snow and ice and rock, rock 
 and ice and snow, stretching away there under the sombre sky 
 forever and forever; gloomy, untamed, terrible, an empty region 
 the scarred battlefield of chaotic forces, the savage desolation of a 
 prehistoric world. 
 
 "Where s Adler?" asked Ferriss. 
 
 "He s away after shrimps," responded Bennett. 
 
 Bennett s eyes returned to his journal and rested on the open 
 page thoughtfully. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 305 
 
 "Do you know what I ve just written here, Ferriss?" he asked, 
 adding without waiting for an answer; "I ve written, It s the end 
 of everything/ 
 
 "I suppose it is," admitted Ferriss, looking about the tent. 
 
 "Yes, the end of everything. It s come at last. 
 Well." There was a long silence. One of the men in the sleeping- 
 bags groaned and turned upon his face. Outside the wind lapsed 
 suddenly to a prolonged sigh of infinite sadness, clamoring again 
 upon the instant. 
 
 "Dick," said Bennett, returning his journal to the box of records, 
 "it is the end of everything, and just because it is I want to talk to 
 you to ask you something." 
 
 Ferriss came nearer. The horrid shouting of the wind deadened 
 the sound of their voices ; the others could not hear, and by now 
 it would have mattered very little to any of them if they had. 
 
 "Dick," began Bennett, "nothing makes much difference now. In 
 a few hours we shall all be like Dennison here;" he tapped the; 
 body of the doctor, who had died during the night. It was already 
 frozen so hard that his touch upon it resounded as if it had been a 
 log of wood. "We shall be like this pretty soon. But before well, 
 while I can, I want to ask you something about Lloyd Searight. 
 You ve known her all your life, and you saw her later than I did 
 before we left. You remember I had to come to the ship two days 
 before you, about the bilge pumps." 
 
 While Bennett had been speaking Ferriss had been sitting very 
 erect upon his sleeping-bag, drawing figures and vague patterns in 
 the fur of his deerskin coat with the tip of the tin spoon. Yes, 
 Bennett was right; he, Ferriss, had known her all his life, and it 
 was no doubt because of this very fact that she had come to be so 
 dear to him. But he had not always known it, had never dis 
 covered his love for her until the time was at hand to say good- 
 by, to leave her for this mad dash for the Pole. It had been too 
 late to speak then, and Ferriss had never told her. She was never 
 to know that he, too like Bennett cared. 
 
 "It seems rather foolish," continued Bennett clumsily, "but if I 
 thought she had ever cared for me in that way why, it would 
 make this that is coming to us seem I don t know easier to be 
 borne perhaps. I say it very badly, but it would not be so hard to 
 die if I thought she had ever loved me a bit." 
 
 Ferriss was thinking very fast. Why was it he had never 
 guessed something like this? But in Ferriss s mind the idea of the 
 
306 A Man s Woman 
 
 love of a woman had never associated itself with Bennett, that great, 
 harsh man of colossal frame, so absorbed in his huge projects, so 
 welded to his single aim, furthering his purposes to the exclusion 
 of every other thought, desire, or emotion. Bennett was a man s 
 man. But here Ferriss checked himself. Bennett himself had 
 called her a man s woman, a grand, splendid man s woman. He 
 was right ; he was right. She was no less than that ; small wonder, 
 after all, that Bennett had been attracted to her. What a pair they 
 were, strong, masterful both, insolent in the consciousness of their 
 power ! 
 
 "You have known her so well and for so long," continued Ben 
 nett, "that I am sure she must have said something to you about 
 me. Tell me, did she ever say anything or not that but imply in 
 her manner, give you to understand that she would have married 
 me if I had asked her?" 
 
 Ferriss found time, even in such an hour, to wonder at the sud 
 den and unexpected break in the uniform hardness of Bennett s 
 character. Ferriss knew him well by now. Bennett was not a 
 man to ask concessions, to catch at small favors. What he wanted 
 he took with an iron hand, without ruth and without scruple. But 
 in the unspeakable dissolution in which they were now involved did 
 anything make a difference? The dreadful mill in which they had 
 been ground had crushed from them all petty distinctions of per 
 sonality, individuality. Humanity the elements of character com 
 mon to all men only remained. 
 
 But Ferriss was puzzled as to how he should answer Bennett. 
 On the one hand was the woman he loved, and on the other Bennett, 
 his best friend, his chief, his hero. They, too, had lived together for 
 so long, had fought out the fight with the Enemy shoulder to 
 shoulder, had battled with the same dangers, had dared the same 
 sufferings, had undergone the same defeats and disappointments. 
 
 Ferriss felt himself in grievous straits. Must he tell Bennett 
 the truth? Must this final disillusion be added to that long train 
 of- others, the disasters, the failures, the disappointments, and de 
 ferred hopes of all those past months ? Must Bennett die hugging to 
 his heart this bitterness as well? 
 
 "I sometimes thought," observed Bennett with a weak smile, 
 "that she did care a little. I ve surely seen something like that in 
 her eyes at certain moments. I wish I had spoken. Did she ever 
 say anything to you ? Do you think she would have married me if I 
 had asked her?" He paused, waiting for an answer. 
 
A Man s Woman 307 
 
 "Oh yes," hazarded Ferriss. driven to make some sort of 
 response, hoping to end the conversation ; "yes, I think she 
 would." 
 
 "You do?" said Bennett quickly. "You think she would? What 
 did she say? Did she ever say anything to you?" 
 
 The thing was too cruel ; Ferriss shrank from it. But suddenly 
 an idea occurred to him. Did anything make any difference now? 
 Why not tell his friend that which he wanted to hear, even if it 
 were not the truth? After all that Bennett had suffered why could 
 he not die content at least in this? What did it matter if he spoke? 
 Did anything matter at such a time when they were all to die 
 within the next twenty- four hours? Bennett was looking straight 
 into his eyes : there was no time to think of consequences. Con 
 sequences? But there were to be no consequences. This was the 
 end. Yet could Ferriss make Bennett receive such an untruth? 
 Ferriss did not believe that Lloyd cared for Bennett; knew that 
 she did not, in fact, and if she had cared, did Bennett think for an 
 instant that she of all women would have confessed the fact, con 
 fessed it to him, Bennett s most intimate friend ? Ferriss had known 
 Lloyd well for a long time, had at last come to love her. But could 
 he himself tell whether or no Lloyd cared for him? No, he could 
 not, certainly he could not. 
 
 Meanwhile Bennett was waiting for his answer. Ferriss s mind 
 was all confused. He could no longer distinguish right from wrong. 
 If the lie would make Bennett happier in this last hour of his life, 
 why not tell the lie? 
 
 "Yes," answered Ferriss, "she did say something once." 
 
 "She did?" 
 
 "Yes," continued Ferriss slowly, trying to invent the most plausi 
 ble lie. "We had been speaking of the expedition and of you. I 
 don t know how the subject was brought up, but it came in very 
 naturally at length. She said yes, I recall it. She said: You 
 must bring him back to me. Remember he is everything to me 
 everything in the world/ fi 
 
 "She " Bennett cleared his throat, then tugged at his mus 
 tache ; "she said that ?" 
 
 Ferriss nodded. 
 
 "Ah!" said Bennett with a quick breath, then he added: "I m 
 glad of that; you haven t any idea how glad I am, Dick in spite 
 of everything." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I guess I have," murmured Ferriss. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 "No, no, indeed, you haven t," returned the other. "One has to 
 love a woman like that, Dick, and have her and find out and have 
 things come right, to appreciate it. She would have been my wife 
 after all. I don t know how to thank you, Dick. Congratulate me." 
 
 He rose, holding out his hand ; Ferriss feebly rose, too, and in 
 stinctively extended his arm, but withdrew it suddenly. Bennett 
 paused abruptly, letting his hand fall to his side, and the two men 
 remained there an instant, looking at the stumps of Ferriss s arms, 
 the tin spoon still lashed to the right wrist. 
 
 A few hours later Bennett noted that the gale had begun per 
 ceptibly to abate. By afternoon he was sure that the storm would 
 be over. As he turned to re-enter the tent after reading the wind- 
 gauge he noted that Kamiska, their one remaining dog, had come 
 back, and was sitting on a projection of ice a little distance away, 
 uncertain as to her reception after her absence. Bennett was per 
 suaded that Kamiska had not run away. Of all the Ostiaks she had 
 been the most faithful. Bennett chose to believe that she had wan 
 dered from the tent and had lost herself in the blinding snow. But 
 here was food. Kamiska could be killed; life could be prolonged a 
 day or two, perhaps three, while the strongest man of the party, 
 carrying the greater portion of the dog meat on his shoulders, could 
 push forward and, perhaps, after all, reach Kolyuchin Bay and the 
 Chuckch settlements and return with aid. But who could go? 
 Assuredly not Ferriss, so weak he could scarcely keep on his feet; 
 not Adler, who at times was delirious, and who needed the dis 
 cipline of a powerful leader to keep him to his work ; Muck Tu, the 
 Eskimo, could not be trusted with the lives of all of them, and the 
 two remaining men were in all but a dying condition. Only one 
 man of them all was equal to the task, only one of them who still 
 retained his strength of body and mind; he himself, Bennett. Yes, 
 but to abandon his men ? 
 
 He crawled into the tent again to get the rifle with which to 
 shoot the dog, but suddenly possessed of an idea, paused for a 
 moment, seated on the sleeping-bag, his head in his hands. 
 
 Beaten? Was he beaten at last? Had the Enemy conquered? 
 Had the Ice inclosed him in its vast, remorseless grip? Then once 
 more his determination grew big within him; for a last time that 
 iron will rose up in mighty protest of defeat. No, no, no; he was 
 not beaten; he would live; he, the strongest, the fittest, would sur 
 vive. Was it not right that the mightiest should live? Was it not 
 the great law of nature? He knew himself to be strong enough to 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 move ; to inarch, perhaps, for two whole days ; and now food had 
 come to them, to him. Yes, but to abandon his men?" 
 
 He had left McPherson, it is true; but then the lives of all of 
 them had been involved one life- against eleven. Now he was 
 thinking only of himself. But Ferriss no, he could not leave 
 Ferriss. Ferriss would come with him. They would share the dog 
 meat between them the whole of it. He, with Ferriss, would push 
 on. He would reach Kolyuchin Bay and the settlements. He would 
 be saved ; he would reach home ; would come back come back to 
 Lloyd, who loved him. Yes, but to abandon his men? 
 
 Then Bennett s great fist closed, closed and smote heavily upon 
 his knee. 
 
 "No," he said decisively. 
 
 He had spoken his thoughts aloud, and Ferriss, who had crawled 
 into his sleeping-bag again, looked at him curiously. Even Muck 
 Tu turned his head from the sickening mess reeking upon the 
 cooker. There was a noise of feet at the flap of the tent. 
 
 It s Adler," muttered Ferriss. 
 
 \dler tore open the flap. 
 
 i hen he shouted to Bennett: "Three steam whalers off the foot 
 
 .he floe, sir; boat putting off! What orders, sir?" 
 
 Bennett looked at him stupidly, as yet without definite thought. 
 
 "What did you say?" 
 
 The men in the sleeping-bags, roused by Adler s shout, sat up 
 and listened stolidly. 
 
 "Steam whalers?" said Bennett slowly. "Where? I guess not," 
 he added, shaking his head. 
 
 Adler was swaying in his place with excitement. 
 
 "Three whalers," he repeated, "close in. They ve put off oh, 
 my God ! Listen to that." 
 
 The unmistakable sound of a steamer s whistle, raucous and 
 prolonged, came to their ears from the direction of the coast. One 
 of the men broke into a feeble cheer. The whole tent was rousing 
 up. Again and again came the hoarse, insistent cry of the whistle. 
 
 "What orders, sir?" repeated Adler. 
 
 A clamor of voices filled the tent. 
 
 Ferriss came quickly up to Bennett, trying to make himself 
 heard. 
 
 "Listen!" he cried with eager intentness, "what I told you a 
 while ago about Lloyd I thought it s all a mistake, you don t 
 understand " 
 
2 io A Man s Woman 
 
 Bennett was not listening. 
 
 "What orders, sir?" exclaimed Adler for the third time. 
 
 Bennett drew himself up. 
 
 "My compliments to the officer in command. Tell him there are 
 six of us left tell him oh, tell him anything you damn please. 
 Men," he cried, his harsh face suddenly radiant, "make ready to get 
 out of this ! We re going home, going home to those who love us, 
 
 men." 
 
 Ill 
 
 As Lloyd Searight turned into Calumet Square on her way from 
 the bookseller s, with her purchases under her arm, she was sur 
 prised to notice a drop of rain upon the back of one of her white 
 gloves. She looked up quickly; the sun was gone. On the east 
 side of the square, under the trees, the houses that at this hour of 
 the afternoon should have been overlaid with golden light were in 
 shadow. The heat that had been palpitating through all the city s 
 streets since early morning was swiftly giving place to a certain 
 cool and odorous dampness. There was even a breeze beginning to 
 stir in the tops of the higher elms. As the drops began to thicken 
 upon the warm, sun-baked asphalt underfoot Lloyd sharply quick 
 ened her pace. But the summer storm was coming up rapidly. By 
 the time she reached the great granite-built agency on the opposite 
 side of the square she was all but running, and as she put her key 
 in the door the rain swept down with a prolonged and muffled 
 roar. 
 
 She let herself into the spacious, airy hallway of the agency, 
 shutting the door by leaning against it, and stood there for an instant 
 to get her breath. Rownie, the young mulatto girl, one of the ser 
 vants of the house, who was going upstairs with an armful of clean 
 towels, turned about at the closing of the door and called : 
 
 "Jus in time, Miss Lloyd ; jus in time. I reckon Miss Wakeley 
 and Miss Esther Thielman going to get for sure wet. They ain t 
 neither one of em took ary umberel." 
 
 "Did Miss Wakeley and Miss Thielman both go out?" de 
 manded Lloyd quickly. "Did they both go on a call ?" 
 
 "Yes, Miss Lloyd," answered Rownie. "I don t know because 
 why Miss Wakeley went, but Miss Esther Thielman got a typhoid 
 call another one. That s three f om this house come next Sun- 
 
A Man s Woman 311 
 
 day week. I reckon Miss Wakeley going out meks you next on call, 
 Miss Lloyd." 
 
 While Rownie had been speaking Lloyd had crossed the hall to 
 where the roster of the nurses names, in little movable slides, hung 
 against the wall. As often as a nurse was called out she removed 
 her name from the top of this list and slid it into place at the bot 
 tom, so that whoever found her name at the top of the roster knew 
 that she was "next on call" and prepared herself accordingly. 
 
 Lloyd s name was now at the top of the list. She had not been 
 gone five minutes from the agency, and it was rare for two nurses 
 to be called out in so short a time. 
 
 "Is it your tu n?" asked Rownie as Lloyd faced quickly about. 
 
 "Yes, yes," answered Lloyd, running up the stairs, adding as she 
 passed the mulatto: "There s been no call sent in since Miss Thiel- 
 man left, has there, Rownie?" Rownie shook her head. 
 
 Lloyd went directly to her room, tossed her books aside without 
 removing the wrappers, and set about packing her satchel. When 
 this was done she changed her tailor-made street dress and crisp 
 skirt for clothes that would not rustle when she moved, and put 
 herself neatly to rights, stripping off her rings and removing the 
 dog-violets from her waist. Then she went to the round, old- 
 fashioned mirror that hung between the windows of her room, and 
 combed back her hair in a great roll from her forehead and temples, 
 and stood there a moment or so when she had done, looking at 
 her reflection. 
 
 She was tall and of a very vigorous build, full-throated, deep- 
 chested, with large, strong hands and solid, round wrists. Her 
 face was rather serious; one did not expect her to smile easily; the 
 eyes dull blue, with no trace of sparkle and set deep under heavy, 
 level eyebrows. Her mouth was the mouth of the obstinate, of the 
 strong-willed, and her chin was not small. But her hair was a 
 veritable glory, a dull-red flame, that bore back from her face in 
 one great solid roll, dull red, like copper or old bronze, thick, 
 heavy, almost gorgeous in its sombre radiance. Dull-red hair, dull- 
 blue eyes, and a faint, dull glow forever on her cheeks, Lloyd was 
 a beautiful woman; much about her that was regal, for she was 
 very straight as well as very tall, and could look down upon most 
 women and upon not a few men. 
 
 Lloyd turned from the mirror, laying down the comb. She had 
 yet to pack her nurse s bag, or, since this was always ready, to 
 make sure that none of its equipment was lacking. She was very 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 proud of this bag, as she had caused it to be made after her own 
 ideas and design. It was of black Russia leather and in the form 
 of an ordinary valise, but set off with a fine silver clasp bearing 
 her name and the agency s address. She brought it from the 
 closet and ran over its contents, murmuring the while to herself : 
 
 "Clinical thermometer brandy hypodermic syringe vial of 
 oxalic-acid crystals minim-glass temperature charts; yes, yes, 
 everything right." 
 
 While she was still speaking Miss Douglass, the fever nurse, 
 knocked at her door, and, finding it ajar, entered without further 
 ceremony. 
 
 "Are you in, Miss Searight ?" called Miss Douglass, looking about 
 the room, for Lloyd had returned to the closet and was busy wash 
 ing the minim-glass. 
 
 "Yes, yes," cried Lloyd, "I am. Sit down." 
 
 ^Rownie told me you are next on call," said the other, dropping 
 on Lloyd s couch. 
 
 "So I am; I was very nearly caught, too. I ran over across the 
 square for five minutes, and while I was gone Miss Wakeley and 
 Esther Thielman were called. My name is at the top now." 
 
 "Esther got a typhoid case from Dr. Pitts. Do you know, Lloyd, 
 that s let me see, that s four seven nine that s ten typhoid cases 
 in the city that I can think of right now." 
 
 "It s everywhere; yes, I know," answered Lloyd, coming out of 
 the room, carefully drying the minim-glass. 
 
 "We are going to have trouble with it," continued the fever 
 nurse; "plenty of it before cool weather comes. It s almost 
 epidemic." 
 
 Lloyd held the minim-glass against the light, scrutinizing it 
 with narrowed lids. 
 
 "What did Esther say when she knew it was an infectious 
 case?" she asked. "Did she hesitate at all?" 
 
 "Not she!" declared Miss Douglass. "She s no Harriet Freeze." 
 
 Lloyd did not answer. This case of Harriet Freeze was one 
 that the nurses of the house had never forgotten and would never 
 forgive. Miss Freeze, a young Englishwoman, newly graduated, 
 suddenly called upon to nurse & patient stricken with smallpox, 
 had flinched and had been found wanting at the crucial moment, 
 had discovered an excuse for leaving her post, having once accepted 
 it. It was cowardice in the presence of the Enemy. Anything 
 could have been forgiven but that. On the girl s return to the 
 
A Man s Woman 313 
 
 agency nothing was said, no action taken, but for all that she was 
 none the less expelled dishonorably from the midst of her com 
 panions. Nothing could have been stronger than the esprit de corps 
 of this group of young women, whose lives were devoted to an 
 unending battle with disease. 
 
 Lloyd continued the overhauling of her equipment, and began 
 ruling forms for nourishment charts, while Miss Douglass impor 
 tuned her to subscribe to a purse the nurses were making up for 
 an old cripple dying of cancer. Lloyd refused. 
 
 "You know very well, Miss Douglass, that I only give to charity 
 through the association." 
 
 "I know," persisted the other, "and I know you give twice as 
 much as all of us put together, but with this poor old fellow it s 
 different. We know all about him, and every one of us in the house 
 has given something. You are the only one that won t, Lloyd, and 
 I had so hoped I could make it up to fifty dollars." 
 
 " No." 
 
 "We need only three dollars now. We can buy that little cigar 
 stand for him for fifty dollars." 
 
 "No." 
 
 "And you won t give us just three dollars?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Well, you give half and I ll give half," said Miss Douglass. 
 
 "Do you think it s a question of money with me?" Lloyd smiled. 
 
 Indeed this was a poor argument with which to move Lloyd 
 Lloyd, whose railroad stock alone brought her some fifteen thousand 
 dollars a year. 
 
 "Well, no; I don t mean that, of course, but, Lloyd, do let us 
 have three dollars, and I can send word to the old chap this very 
 afternoon. It will make him happy for the rest of his life." 
 
 "No no no, not three dollars, nor three cents." 
 
 Miss Douglass made a gesture of despair. She might have ex 
 pected that she could not move Lloyd. Once her mind was made 
 up, one might argue with her till one s breath failed. She shook 
 her head at Lloyd and exclaimed, but not ill-naturedly : 
 
 "Obstinate ! Obstinate ! Obstinate !" 
 
 Lloyd put away the hypodermic syringe and the minim-glass 
 in their places in the bag, added a little ice-pick to its contents, and 
 shut the bag with a snap. 
 
 "Now," she announced, "I m ready." 
 
 When Miss Douglass had taken herself away Lloyd settled her- 
 
 N III NORRIS 
 
2 14 A Man s Woman 
 
 self in the place she had vacated, and, stripping the wrappings from 
 the books and magazines she had bought, began to turn the pages, 
 looking at the pictures. But her interest flagged. She tried to 
 read, but soon cast the book from her and leaned back upon the 
 great couch, her hands clasped behind the great bronze-red coils 
 at the back of her head, her dull-blue eyes fixed and vacant. 
 
 For hours the preceding night she had lain broad awake in her 
 bed, staring at the shifting shadow pictures that the electric lights, 
 shining through the trees down in the square, threw upon the walls 
 and ceiling of her room. She had eaten but little since morning; 
 a growing spirit of unrest had possessed her for the last two days. 
 Now it had reached a head. She could no longer put her thoughts 
 from her. 
 
 It had all come back again for the fiftieth time, for the hun 
 dredth time, the old, intolerable burden of anxiety growing heavier 
 month by month, year by year. It seemed to her that a shape of 
 terror, formless, intangible, and invisible, was always by her, now 
 withdrawing, now advancing, but always there ; there close at hand 
 in some dark corner where she could not see, ready at every instant 
 to assume a terrible and all too well-known form, and to jump at 
 her from behind, from out the dark, and to clutch her throat with 
 cold fingers. The thing played with her, tormented her ; at times it 
 all but disappeared; at times she believed she had fought it from 
 her for good, and then she would wake of a night, in the stillness 
 and in the dark, and know it to be there once more at her bedside 
 at her back at her throat till her heart went wild with fear, 
 and the suspense of waiting for an Enemy that would not strike, 
 but that lurked and leered in dark corners, wrung from her a sup 
 pressed cry of anguish and exasperation, and drove her from her 
 sleep with streaming eyes and tight-shut hands and wordless 
 prayers. 
 
 For a few moments Lloyd lay back upon the couch, then re 
 gained her feet with a brusque harassed movement of head and 
 shoulders. 
 
 "Ah, no," she exclaimed under her breath, "it is too dreadful." 
 
 She tried to find diversion in her room, rearranging the few 
 ornaments, winding the clock that struck ships bells instead of 
 hours, and turning the wicks of the old Empire lamps that hung in 
 brass brackets on either side of the fireplace. Lloyd, after building 
 the agency, had felt no scruple in choosing the best room in the 
 house and furnishing it according to her taste. Her room was 
 
A Man s Woman 315 
 
 beautiful, but very simple in its appointments. There were great 
 flat wall-spaces unspoiled by bric-a-brac, the floor marquetry, with 
 but few rugs. The fireplace and its appurtenances were of brass; 
 her writing-desk, a huge affair, of ancient and almost black San 
 Domingo mahogany. 
 
 But soon she wearied of the small business of pottering about 
 her clock and lamps, and, turning to the window, opened it, and, 
 leaning upon her elbows, looked down into the square. 
 
 By now the thunderstorm was gone, like the withdrawal of a 
 dark curtain; the sun was out again over the city. The square, 
 deserted but half an hour ago, was reinvaded with its little peo 
 ple of nursemaids, gray-coated policemen, and loungers reading 
 their papers on the benches near the fountain. The elms still 
 dripped, their wet leaves glistening again to the sun. There was a 
 delicious smell in the air a smell of warm, wet grass, of leaves 
 and drenched bark from the trees. On the far side of the square, 
 seen at intervals in the spaces between the foliage, a passing truck 
 painted vermilion set a brisk note of color in the scene. A news 
 boy appeared chanting the evening editions. On a sudden and 
 from somewhere close at hand an unseen hand-piano broke out into 
 a gay, jangling quickstep, marking the time with delightful pre 
 cision. 
 
 A carriage, its fine lacquered flanks gleaming in the sunlight, 
 rolled through the square, on its way, no doubt, to the very fashion 
 able quarter of the city just beyond. Lloyd had a glimpse of the 
 girl leaning back in its cushions, a girl of her own age, with whom 
 she had some slight acquaintance. For a moment Lloyd, ridden 
 with her terrors, asked herself if this girl, with no capabilities for 
 either great happiness or great sorrow, were not perhaps, after all, 
 happier than she. But she recoiled instantly, murmuring to herself 
 with a certain fierce energy. 
 
 "No, no; after all, I have lived." 
 
 And how had she lived? For the moment Lloyd was wiling to 
 compare herself with the girl in the landau. Swiftly she ran over 
 her own life from the time when left an orphan ; in the year of her 
 majority she had become her own mistress and the mistress of the 
 Searight estate. But even at that time she had long since broken 
 away from the conventional world she had known. Lloyd was a 
 nurse in the great St. Luke s Hospital even then, had been a pro 
 bationer there at the time of her mother s death, six months before. 
 She had always been ambitious, but vaguely so, having no deter- 
 
o t 6 A Man s Woman 
 
 mined object in view. She recalled how at that time she knew only 
 that she was in love with her work, her chosen profession, and was 
 accounted the best operating nurse in the ward. 
 
 She remembered, too, the various steps of her advancement, the 
 positions she had occupied; probationer first, then full member of 
 the active corps, next operating nurse, then ward manager, and, 
 after her graduation, head nurse of ward four, where the maternity 
 cases were treated. Then had come the time when she had left the 
 hospital and practiced private nursing by herself, and at last, not 
 so long ago, the day when her Idea had so abruptly occurred to 
 her; when her ambition, no longer vague, no longer personal, had 
 crystallized and taken shape ; when she had discovered a use for her 
 money and had built and founded the house on Calumet Square. 
 For a time she had been the superintendent of nurses here, until her 
 own theories and ideas had obtained and prevailed in its manage 
 ment. Then, her work fairly started, she had resigned her position 
 to an older woman, and had taken her place in the rank and file of 
 the nurses themselves. She wished to be one of them, living the 
 same life, subject to the same rigorous discipline, and to that end 
 she had never allowed it to be known that she was the founder of 
 the house. The other nurses knew that she was very rich, very 
 independent and self-reliant, but that was all. Lloyd did not know 
 and cared very little how they explained the origin and support of 
 the agency. 
 
 Lloyd was animated by no great philanthropy, no vast love of 
 humanity in her work; only she wanted, with all her soul she 
 wanted, to count in the general economy of things; to choose a 
 work and do it; to help on, donner un coup d epaule; and this, 
 supported by her own stubborn energy and her immense wealth, 
 she felt that she was doing. To do things had become her creed; 
 to do things, not to think them ; to do things, not to talk them ; to do 
 things, not to read them. No matter how lofty the thoughts, how 
 brilliant the talk, how beautiful the literature for her, first, last, and 
 always, were acts, acts, acts concrete, substantial, material acts. 
 The greatest and happiest day of her life had been when at last she 
 laid her bare hand upon the rough, hard stone of the house in the 
 square and looked up at the fagade, her dull-blue eyes flashing with 
 the light that so rarely came to them, while she murmured between 
 her teeth 
 
 "I_Hdid this." 
 
 As she recalled this moment now, leaning upon her elbows, look- 
 
A Man s Woman 317 
 
 ing down upon the trees and grass and asphalt of the square, and 
 upon a receding landau, a wave of a certain natural pride in her 
 strength, the satisfaction of attainment, came to her. Ah ! she was 
 better than other women ; ah ! she was stronger than other women ; 
 she was carrying out a splendid work. She straightened herself to 
 her full height abruptly, stretching her outspread hands vaguely to 
 the sunlight, to the city, to the world, to the great engine of life, 
 whose lever she could grasp and could control, smiling proudly, 
 almost insolently, in the consciousness of her strength, the fine stead 
 fastness of her purpose. Then all at once the smile was struck from 
 her lips, the stiffness of her poise suddenly relaxed. There, there 
 it was again, the terror, the dreadful fear she dared not name, back 
 in its place once more at her side, at her shoulder, at her throat, 
 ready to clutch at her from out the dark. 
 
 She wheeled from the window, from the sunlight, her hands 
 Clasped before her trembling lips, the tears brimming her dull-blue 
 eyes. For forty-eight hours she had fought this from her. But now 
 it was no longer to be resisted. 
 
 "No, no," she cried half aloud. "I am no better, no stronger 
 than the others. What does it all amount to when I know that, 
 after all, I am just a woman just a woman whose heart is slowly 
 breaking?" 
 
 But there was an interruption. Rownie had knocked twice at 
 her door before Lloyd had heard her. When Lloyd had opened the 
 door the girl handed her a card with an address written on it in 
 the superintendent s hand. 
 
 "This here jus now come in f om Dr. Street, Miss Lloyd," said 
 Rownie; "Miss Bergyn" (this was the superintendent nurse) "ast 
 me to give it to you." 
 
 It was a call to an address that seemed familiar to Lloyd at 
 first; but she did not stop at that moment to reflect. Her stable 
 telephone hung against the wall of the closet. She rang for Lewis> 
 and while waiting for him to get around dressed for the street. 
 
 For the moment, at the prospect of action, even her haunting 
 fear drew off and stood away from her. She was absorbed in her 
 work upon the instant alert, watchful, self-reliant. What the case 
 was she could only surmise. How long she would be away she had 
 no means of knowing a week, a month, a year, she could not tell. 
 But she was ready for any contingency. Usually the doctors in 
 formed the nurses as to the nature of the case at the time of send 
 ing for them, but Dr. Street had not done so now. 
 
318 A Man s Woman 
 
 However, Rownie called up to her that her coupe was at the 
 door. Lloyd caught up her satchels and ran down the stairs, crying 
 good-by to Miss Douglass, whom she saw at the further end of 
 the hall. In the hallway by the vestibule she changed the slide bear 
 ing her name from the top to the bottom of the roster. 
 
 How about your mail?" cried Miss Douglass after her. 
 
 "Keep it here for me until I see how long I m to be away," an 
 swered Lloyd, her hand upon the knob. "I ll let you know." 
 
 Lewis had put Rox in the shafts, and while the coupe spun over 
 the asphalt at a smart clip Lloyd tried to remember where she had 
 heard of the address before. Suddenly she snapped her fingers; 
 she knew the case, had even been assigned to it some eight months 
 before. 
 
 "Yes, yes, that s it Campbell wife dead Lafayette Avenue 
 little daughter, Hattie hip disease hopeless poor little baby." 
 
 Arriving at the house, Lloyd found the surgeon, Dr. Street, and 
 Mr. Campbell, who was a widower, waiting for her in a small draw 
 ing-room off the library. The surgeon was genuinely surprised and 
 delighted to see her. Most of the doctors of the city knew Lloyd 
 for the best trained nurse in the hospitals. 
 
 "Oh it s you, Miss Searight ; good enough !" The surgeon in 
 troduced her to the little patient s father, adding: "If any one can 
 pull us through, Campbell, it will be Miss Searight." 
 
 The surgeon and nurse began to discuss the case. 
 
 "I think you know it already, don t you, Miss Searight?" said 
 the surgeon. "You took care of it a while last winter. Well, there 
 was a little improvement in the spring, not so much pain, but that 
 in itself is a bad sign. We have done what we could, Farnham and 
 I. But it don t yield to treatment ; you know how these things are 
 stubborn. We made a preliminary examination yesterday. Si 
 nuses have occurred, and the probe leads down to nothing but dead 
 bone. Farnham and I had a consultation this morning. We must 
 play our last card. I shall exsect the joint to-morrow." 
 
 Mr. Campbell drew in his breath and held it for a moment, look 
 ing out of the window. 
 
 Very attentive, Loyd merely nodded her head, murmuring: 
 
 "I understand." 
 
 When Dr. Street had gone Lloyd immediately set to work. The 
 operation was to take place at noon the following day, and she fore 
 saw there would be no sleep for her that night. Street had left 
 everything to her, even to the sterilizing of his instruments. Until 
 
A Man s Woman 319 
 
 daylight the following morning Lloyd came and went about the 
 house with an untiring energy, yet with the silence of a swiftly 
 moving shadow, getting together the things needed for the opera 
 tion strychnia tablets, absorbent cotton, the rubber tubing for the 
 tourniquet, bandages, salt, and the like-^-and preparing the little 
 chamber adjoining the sick-room as an operating-room. 
 
 The little patient herself, Hattie, hardly into her teens, remem 
 bered Lloyd at once. Before she went to sleep Lloyd contrived to 
 spend an hour in the sick-room with her, told her as much as was 
 necessary of what was contemplated, and, by her cheery talk, her 
 gentleness and sympathy, inspired the little girl with a certain sense 
 of confidence and trust in her. 
 
 "But but but just how bad will it htirt, Miss Searight?" in 
 quired Hattie, looking at her, wide-eyed and serious. 
 
 "Dear, it won t hurt you at all; just two or three breaths of the 
 ether and you will be sound asleep. When you wake tip it will be 
 all over and you will be well." 
 
 Lloyd made the ether cone from a stiff towel, and set it on Hat- 
 tie s dressing-table. Last of all and just before the operation the 
 gauze sponges occupied her attention. The daytime brought her no 
 rest. Hattie was not to have any breakfast, but toward the middle 
 of the forenoon Lloyd gave her a stimulating enema of whiskey and 
 water, following it about an hour later by a hundredth grain of 
 atropia. She braided the little girl s hair in two long plaits so that 
 her head would rest squarely and flatly upon the pillow. Hattie 
 herself was now ready for the surgeon. 
 
 Now there was nothing more to be done. Lloyd could but wait. 
 She took her place at the bedside and tried to talk as lightly as was 
 possible to her patient. But now there was a pause in the round 
 of action. Her mind, no longer keenly intent upon the immediate 
 necessities of the moment, began to hark back again to the one great 
 haunting fear that for so long had overshadowed it. Even while 
 she exerted herself to be cheerful and watched for the smiles on 
 Hattie s face her hands twisted tight and tighter under the folds 
 of her blouse, and some second self within her seemed to say : 
 
 "Suppose, suppose it should come, this thing I dread but dare 
 not name, what then, what then? Should I not expect it? Is it 
 not almost a certainty? Have I not been merely deceiving myself 
 with the forlornest hopes? Is it not the most reasonable course 
 to expect the worst? Do not all indications point that way? Has 
 not my whole life been shaped to this end? Was not this calamity, 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 this mighty sorrow, prepared for me even before I was born ? And 
 one can do nothing, absolutely nothing, nothing, but wait and hope 
 and fear, and eat out one s heart with longing." 
 
 There was a knock at the door. Instead of calling to enter 
 Lloyd went to it softly and opened it a few inches. Mr. Campbell 
 was there. 
 
 "They ve come Street and the assistant." 
 
 Lloyd heard a murmur of voices in the hall below and the clos 
 ing of the front door. 
 
 Farnham and Street went at once to the operating-room to 
 make their hands and wrists aseptic. Campbell had gone down 
 stairs to his smoking-room. It had been decided though contrary 
 to custom that Lloyd should administer the anaesthetic. 
 
 At length Street tapped with the handle of a scalpel on the door 
 to say that he was ready. 
 
 "Now, dear," said Lloyd, turning to Hattie, and picking up the 
 ether cone. 
 
 But the little girl s courage suddenly failed her. She began to 
 plead in a low voice choked with tears. Her supplications were 
 pitiful; but Lloyd, once more intent upon her work, every faculty 
 and thought concentrated upon what must be done, did not tem 
 porize an instant. Quietly she gathered Hattie s frail wrists in the 
 grip of one strong palm, and held the cone to her face until she 
 had passed off with a long sigh. She picked her up lightly, car 
 ried her into the next room, and laid her upon the operating-table. 
 At the last moment Lloyd had busied herself with the preparation 
 of her own person. Over her dress she passed her hospital blouse, 
 which had been under a dry heat for hours. She rolled her sleeves 
 up from her strong white forearms with their thick wrists and fine 
 blue veining, and for upward of ten minutes scrubbed them with 
 a new nail-brush in water as hot as she could bear it. After this 
 she let her hands and forearms lie in the permanganate of potash 
 solution till they were brown to the elbow, then washed away the 
 stain in the oxalic-acid solution and in sterilized hot water. Street 
 and Farnham, wearing their sterilized gowns and gloves, took their 
 places. There was no conversation. The only sounds were an 
 occasional sigh from the patient, a direction given in a low tone, 
 and, at intervals, the click of the knives and scalpel. From outside 
 the window came the persistent chirping of a band of sparrows. 
 
 Promptly the operation was begun ; there was no delay, no hesi 
 tation; what there was to be done had been carefully planned be- 
 
A Man s Woman 321 
 
 forehand, even to the minutest details. Street, a master of his pro 
 fession, thoroughly familiar with every difficulty that might present 
 itself during the course of the work in hand, foreseeing every con 
 tingency, prepared for every emergency, calm, watchful, self-con 
 tained, set about the exsecting of the joint with no trace of com 
 punction, no embarrassment, no misgiving. His assistants, as well 
 as he himself, knew that life or death hung upon the issue of the 
 next ten minutes. Upon Street alone devolved the life of the little 
 girl. A second s hesitation at the wrong stage of the operation, a 
 slip of bistoury or scalpel, a tremor of the wrist, a single instant s 
 clumsiness of the fingers, and the Enemy watching for every 
 chance, intent for every momentarily opened chink or cranny where 
 in he could thrust his lean fingers entered the frail tenement with 
 a leap, a rushing, headlong spring that jarred the house of life to 
 its foundations. Lowering close over her head Lloyd felt the 
 shadow of his approach. He had arrived there in that common 
 place little room, with its commonplace accessories, its ornaments, 
 that suddenly seemed so trivial, so impertinent the stopped French 
 clock, with its simpering, gilded cupids, on the mantelpiece; the 
 photograph of a number of picnickers "grouped" on a hotel piazza 
 gazing with monolithic cheerfulness at this grim business, this 
 struggle of the two world forces, this crisis in a life. 
 
 Then abruptly the operation was over. 
 
 The nurse and surgeons eased their positions immediately, draw 
 ing, long breaths. They began to talk, commenting upon the oper 
 ation, and Lloyd, intensely interested, asked Street why he had, 
 contrary to her expectations, removed the bone above the lesser 
 trochanter. He smiled, delighted at her intelligence. 
 
 "It s better than cutting through the neck, Miss Searight," he 
 told her. "If I had gone through the neck, don t you see, the tro 
 chanter major would come over the hole and prevent the dis 
 charges." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I see, of course," assented Lloyd. 
 
 The incision was sewn up, and when all was over Lloyd carried 
 Hattie back to the bed in the next room. Slowly the little girl 
 regained consciousness, and Lloyd began to regard her once more 
 as a human being. During the operation she had forgotten the very 
 existence of Hattie Campbell, a little girl she knew. She had only 
 seen a bit of mechanism out of order and in the hands of a repairer. 
 It was always so with Lloyd. Her charges were not infrequently 
 persons whom she knew, often intimately, but during the time of 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 their sickness their personalities vanished for the trained nurse; 
 she saw only the "case," only the mechanism, only the deranged 
 clockwork in imminent danger of running down. 
 
 But the danger was by no means over. The operation had been 
 near the trunk. There had been considerable loss of blood, and the 
 child s power of resistance had been weakened by long periods of 
 suffering. Lloyd feared that the shock might prove too great. 
 Farnham departed, but for a little while the surgeon remained with 
 Lloyd to watch the symptoms. At length, however, he too, pressed 
 for time, and expected at one of the larger hospitals of the city, 
 went away, leaving directions for Lloyd to telephone him in case 
 of the slightest change. At this hour, late in the afternoon, there 
 were no indications that the little girl would not recover from the 
 shock. Street believed she would rally and ultimately regain her 
 health. 
 
 "But," he told Lloyd as he bade her good-by, "I don t need to 
 impress upon you the need of care and the greatest vigilance ; abso 
 lute rest is the only thing; she must see nobody, not even her 
 father. The whole system is numbed and deadened just yet, but 
 there will be a change either for better or worse some time to-night." 
 
 For thirty-six hours Lloyd had not [closed an eye, but of that 
 she had no thought. Her supper was sent up to her, and she pre 
 pared herself for her night s watch. She gave the child such nour 
 ishment as she believed she could stand, and from time to time took 
 her pulse, making records of it upon her chart for the surgeon s in 
 spection later on. At intervals she took Hattie s temperature, plac 
 ing the clinical thermometer in the armpit. Toward nine in the 
 evening, while she was doing this for the third time within the 
 hour, one of the house servants came to the room to inform her that 
 she was wanted on the telephone. Lloyd hesitated, unwilling to 
 leave Hattie- for an instant. However, the telephone was close at 
 hand, and it was quite possible that Dr. Street had rung her up to 
 ask for news. 
 
 But it was the agency that had called, and Miss Douglass in 
 formed her that a telegram had arrived there for her a few mo 
 ments before. Should she hold it or send it to her by Rownie? 
 Lloyd reflected a moment. 
 
 "Oh open it and read it to me," she said. "It s a call, isn t it ? 
 or no; send it here by Rownie, and send my hospital slippers 
 with her, the ones without heels. But don t ring up again to-night ; 
 we re expecting a crisis almost any moment." 
 
A Man s Woman 323 
 
 Lloyd returned to the sick-room, sent away the servant, and 
 once more settled herself for the night. Hattie had roused for 
 a moment. 
 
 "Am I going to get well, am I going to get well, Miss Sea- 
 right?" 
 
 Lloyd put her finger to her lips, nodding her head, and Hattie 
 closed her eyes again with a long breath. A certain great tender 
 ness and compassion for the little girl grew big in Lloyd s heart. 
 To herself she said: 
 
 "God helping me, you shall get well. They believe in me, these 
 people If any one could pull us through it would be Miss Sea- 
 right. We will pull through/ yes, for I ll do it." 
 
 The night closed down, dark and still and very hot. Lloyd, 
 regulating the sick-room s ventilation, opened one of the windows 
 from the top. The noises of the city, steadily decreasing as the 
 hours passed, reached her ears in a subdued, droning murmur. On 
 her bed, that had for so long been her bed of pain, Hattie lay with 
 closed eyes, inert, motionless, hardly seeming to breathe, her life in 
 the balance; unhappy little invalid, wasted with suffering, with 
 drawn, pinched face and bloodless lips, and at her side Lloyd, her 
 dull-blue eyes never leaving her patient s face, alert and vigilant, 
 despite her long wakefulness, her great bronze-red flame of hair 
 rolling from her forehead and temples, the sombre glow in her cheeks 
 no whit diminished by her day of fatigue, of responsibility and un 
 tiring activity. 
 
 For the time being she could thrust her fear, the relentless En 
 emy that for so long had hung upon her heels, back and away from 
 her. There was another Enemy now to fight or was it another 
 was it not the same Enemy, the very same, whose shadow loomed 
 across that sick-bed, across the frail, small body and pale, drawn 
 face? 
 
 With her pity and compassion for the sick child there arose in 
 Lloyd a certain unreasoned, intuitive obstinacy, a banding together 
 of all her powers and faculties in one great effort at resistance, a 
 steadfastness under great stress, a stubbornness, that shut its ears 
 and eyes. It was her one dominant characteristic rising up, strong 
 and insistent the instant she knew herself to be thwarted in her de 
 sires or checked in a course she believed to be right and good. And 
 now as she felt the advance of the Enemy and saw the shadow 
 growing darker across the bed her obstinacy hardened like tem 
 pered steel. 
 
324 A Man s Woman 
 
 "No," she murmured, her brows leveled, her lips compressed, 
 "she shall not die. I will not let her go." 
 
 A little later, perhaps an hour after midnight, at a time when 
 she believed Hattie to be asleep, Lloyd, watchful as ever, noted that 
 her cheeks began alternately to puff out and contract with her 
 breathing. In an instant the nurse was on her feet. She knew the 
 meaning of this sign. Hattie had fainted while asleep. Lloyd took 
 the temperature. It was falling rapidly. The pulse was weak, rapid, 
 and irregular. It seemed impossible for Hattie to take a deep 
 breath. 
 
 Then swiftly the expected crisis began to develop itself. Lloyd 
 ordered Street to be sent for, but only as a matter of form. Long 
 before he could arrive the issue would be decided. She knew that 
 now Hattie s life depended on herself alone. 
 
 "Now," she murmured, as though the Enemy she fought could 
 hear her, "now let us see who is the stronger. You or I." 
 
 Swiftly and gently she drew the bed from the wall and raised 
 its foot, propping it in position with half a dozen books. Then, 
 while waiting for the servants, whom she had despatched for hot 
 blankets, administered a hypodermic injection of brandy. 
 
 "We will pull you through," she kept saying to herself, "we will 
 pull you through. I shall not let you go." 
 
 The Enemy was close now, and the fight was hand to hand. 
 Lloyd could almost feel, physically, actually, feel the slow, sullen, 
 resistless pull that little by little was dragging Hattie s life from her 
 grip. She set her teeth, holding back with all her might, bracing 
 herself against the strain, refusing with all her inborn stubbornness 
 to yield her position. 
 
 "No no," she repeated to herself, "you shall not have her. I 
 will not give her up; you shall not triumph over me." 
 
 Campbell was in the room, warned by the ominous coming and 
 going of hushed footsteps. 
 
 "What is the use, nurse? It s all over. Let her die in peace. 
 It s too cruel; let her die in peace." 
 
 The half-hour passed, then the hour. Once more Lloyd admin 
 istered hypodermically the second dose of brandy. Campbell, un 
 able to bear the sight, had withdrawn to the adjoining room, where 
 he could be heard pacing the floor. From time to time he came back 
 for a moment, whispering: 
 
 "Will she live, nurse? Will she live? Shall we pull her 
 through ?" 
 
A Man s Woman 325 
 
 "I don t know," Lloyd told him. "I don t know. Wait. Go 
 back. I will let you know." 
 
 Another fifteen minutes passed. Lloyd fancied that the heart s 
 action was growing a little stronger. A great stillness had settled 
 over the house. The two servants waiting Lloyd s orders in the 
 hall outside the door refrained even from whispering. From the 
 next room came the muffled sound of pacing footsteps, hurried, ir 
 regular, while with that strange perversity which seizes upon the 
 senses at moments when they are more than usually acute Lloyd 
 began to be aware of a vague, unwonted movement in the city itself, 
 outside there behind the drawn curtains and half-opened window 
 a faint, uncertain agitation, a trouble, a passing ripple on the still 
 black pool of the night, coming and going, and coming again, each 
 time a little more insistent, each time claiming a little more atten 
 tion and notice. It was about half-past three o clock. But the Tit 
 tle patient s temperature was rising there could be no doubt about 
 that. The lungs expanded wider and deeper. Hattie s breathing 
 was unmistakably easier; and as Lloyd put her fingers to the wrist 
 she could hardly keep back a little exultant cry as she felt the 
 pulse throbbing fuller, a little slower, a little more regularly. Now 
 she redoubled her attention. Her hold upon the little life shut 
 tighter; her power of resistance, her strength of purpose, seemed 
 to be suddenly quadrupled. She could imagine the Enemy drawing 
 off; she could think that the grip of cold fingers was loosening. 
 
 Slowly the crisis passed off, slowly the reaction began. Hattie 
 was still unconscious, but there was a new look upon her face a 
 look that Lloyd had learned to know from long experience, an in 
 tangible and most illusive expression, nothing, something, the sign 
 that only those who are trained to search for "it may see and appre 
 ciate the earliest faint flicker after the passing of the shadow. 
 
 "Will she live, will she live, nurse?" came Mr. Campbell s 
 whisper at her shoulder. 
 
 "I think I am almost sure but we must not be too certain yet. 
 Still there s a chance; yes, there s a chance." 
 
 Campbell, suddenly gone white, put out his hand and leaned a 
 moment against the mantelpiece. He did not now leave the room. 
 The door-bell rang. 
 
 "Dr. Street," murmured Lloyd. 
 
 But what had happened in the city? There in the still dark 
 hours of that hot summer night an event of national, perhaps even 
 international, importance had surely transpired. It was in the air 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 a sense of a Great Thing come suddenly to a head somewhere in 
 the world. Footsteps sounded rapidly on the echoing sidewalks. 
 Here and there a street door opened. From corner to corner, grow 
 ing swiftly nearer, came the cry of newsboys chanting extras. A 
 subdued excitement was abroad, finding expression in a vague mur 
 mur, the mingling of many sounds into one huge note a note that 
 gradually swelled and grew louder and seemed to be rising from 
 all corners of the city at once. 
 
 There was a step at the sick-room door. Dr. Street ? No, Row- 
 nie Rownie with two telegrams for Lloyd. 
 
 Lloyd took them from her, then with a sharp, brusque move 
 ment of her head and suddenly smitten with an idea, turned from 
 them to listen to the low, swelling murmur of the city. These 
 despatches no, they were no "call" for her. She guessed what 
 they might be. Why had they come to her now? Why was there 
 this sense of some great tidings in the wind? The same tidings 
 that had come to the world might come to her in these despatches. 
 Might it not be so ? She caught her breath quickly. The terror, the 
 fearful anxiety that had haunted and oppressed her for so long, 
 was it to be lifted now at last ? The Enemy that lurked in the dark 
 corners, ever ready to clutch her, was it to be driven back and away 
 from her forever? She dared not hope for it. But something was 
 coming to her ; she knew it, she felt it ; something was preparing for 
 her, coming to her swifter with every second coming, coming, 
 coming from out the north. She saw Dr. Street in the room, though 
 how and when he had arrived she could not afterward recall. Her 
 mind was all alert, intent upon other things, listening, waiting. The 
 surgeon had been leaning over the bed. Suddenly he straightened 
 up, saying aloud to Campbell : 
 
 "Good, good, we re safe. We have pulled through." 
 
 Lloyd tore open her telegrams. One was signed "Bennett," the 
 other "Ferriss." 
 
 "Thank God!" exclaimed Mr. Campbell. 
 
 "Oh," cried Lloyd, a great sob shaking her from head to heel, 
 a smile of infinite happiness flashing from her face. "Oh yes, 
 thank God, we we have pulled through." 
 
 "Am I going to get well, am I going to get well, Miss Searight?" 
 Hattie, once more conscious, raised her voice weak and faint. 
 
 Lloyd was on her knees beside her, her head bent over her. 
 
 "Hush; yes, dear, you are safe." Then the royal bronze-red 
 hair bent lower still. The dull-blue eyes were streaming now, the 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 327 
 
 voice one low quiver of sobs. Tenderly, gently Lloyd put an arm 
 about the child, her head bending lower and lower. Her cheek 
 touched Hattie s. For a moment the little girl, frail, worn, piti 
 fully wasted, and the strong, vigorous woman, with her imperious 
 will and indomitable purpose, rested their heads upon the same pil 
 low, both broken with suffering, the one of the body, the other of 
 the mind. 
 
 "Safe; yes, dear, safe," whispered Lloyd, her face all but hid 
 den. "Safe, safe, and saved to me. Oh, dearest of all the world !" 
 
 And then to her ears the murmur of .the city seemed to leap 
 suddenly to articulate words, the clanging thunder of the entire 
 nation the whole round world thrilling with this great news that 
 had come to it from out the north in the small hours of this hot 
 summer s night. And the chanting cries of the street rolled to her 
 like the tremendous diapason of a gigantic organ : 
 
 "Rescued, rescued, rescued!" 
 
 IV 
 
 ON the day that Lloyd returned to the house on Calumet Square 
 (Hattie s recovery being long since assured), and while she was un 
 packing he"r valise and settling herself again in her room, a mes 
 senger boy brought her a note. 
 
 "Have just arrived in the city. When may I see you? 
 
 "BENNETT." 
 
 News of Ward Bennett and of Richard Ferrjss had not been 
 wanting during the past fortnight or so. Their names and that of 
 the ship herself, even the names of Adler, Hansen, Clarke, and 
 Dennison, even Muck Tu, even that of Kamiska, the one surviving 
 dog, filled the mouths and minds of men to the exclusion of every 
 thing else. 
 
 The return of the expedition after its long imprisonment in the 
 ice and at a time when all hope of its safety had been abandoned 
 was one of the great events of that year. The fact that the ex 
 pedition had failed to reach the Pole, or to attain any unusually high 
 latitude, was forgotten or ignored. Nothing was remembered but 
 the masterly retreat toward Kolyuchin Bay, the wonderful march 
 over the ice, the indomitable courage, unshaken by hardship, perils, 
 
328 A Man s Woman 
 
 obstacles, and privations almost beyond imagination. All this, to 
 gether with a multitude of details, some of them palpably fictitious, 
 the press of the city where Bennett and Ferriss both had their 
 homes published and republished and published again and again. 
 News of the men, their whereabouts and intentions, invaded the 
 ick-room where Lloyd watched over the convalescence of her little 
 parent by the very chinks of the windows. 
 
 Lloyd learned how the ship had been "nipped"; how, after in 
 conceivable toil, the members of the expedition had gained the land ; 
 how they had marched southward toward the Chuckch settlements ; 
 how, at the eleventh hour, the survivors, exhausted and starving, 
 had been rescued by the steam whalers ; how these whalers them 
 selves had been caught in the ice, and how the survivors of the 
 "Freja" had been obliged to spend another winter in the Arctic. 
 She learned the details of their final return. In the quiet, darkened 
 room where Hattie lay she heard from without the echo of the 
 thunder of the nations; she saw how the figure of Bennett towered 
 suddenly magnificent in the world; how that the people were 
 brusquely made aware of a new hero. She learned that honors 
 came thronging about him unsought ; that the King of the Belgians 
 had conferred a decoration upon him; that the geographical so 
 cieties of continental Europe had elected him to honorary member 
 ship ; that the President and the Secretary of War had sent telegrams 
 of congratulations. 
 
 "And what does he do," she murmured, "the first of all upon 
 his return? Asks to see me me!" 
 
 She sent an answer to his note by the same boy who brought 
 it, naming the following afternoon, explaining that two days later 
 she expected to go into the country to a little town called Bannister 
 to take her annual fortnight s vacation. 
 
 "But what of of the other?" she murmured as she stood at the 
 window of her room watching the messenger boy bicycling across 
 the square. "Why does not he he, too ?" 
 
 She put her chin in the air and turned about, looking ab 
 stractedly at the rugs on the parquetry. 
 
 Lloyd s vacation had really begun two days before. Her name 
 was off the roster of the house, and till the end of the month her 
 time was her own. The afternoon was hot and very still. Even in 
 the cool, stone-built agency, with its windows wide and heavily 
 shaded with awnings, the heat was oppressive. For a long time 
 Lloyd had been shut away from fresh air and the sun, and now she 
 
A Man s Woman 329 
 
 suddenly decided to drive out in the city s park. She rang up her 
 stable and ordered Lewis to put her ponies to her phaeton. 
 
 She spent a delightful two hours in the great park, losing herself 
 in its furthest, shadiest, and most unfrequented corners. She drove 
 herself, and intelligently. Horses were her passion, and not Lewis 
 himself understood their care and management better. Toward the 
 cool of the day and just as she had pulled the ponies down to a 
 walk in a long, deserted avenue overspanned with elms and great 
 cottonwoods she was all at once aware of an open carriage that had 
 turned into the far end of the same avenue approaching at an easy 
 trot. It drew near, and she saw that its only occupant was a man 
 leaning back rather limply in the cushions. As the eye of the 
 trained nurse fell upon him she at once placed him in the category 
 of convalescents or chronic invalids, and she was vaguely speculat 
 ing as to the nature of his complaint when the carriage drew op 
 posite her phaeton, and she recognized Richard Ferriss. 
 
 Ferriss, but not the same Ferriss to whom she had said good-by 
 on that never-to-be-forgotten March afternoon, with its gusts and 
 rain, four long years ago. The Ferriss she had known then had 
 been an alert, keen man, with quick, bright eyes, alive to every 
 impression, responsive to every sensation, living his full allowance 
 of life. She was looking now at a man unnaturally old, of dead 
 ened nerves, listless. As he caught sight of her and recognized 
 her he suddenly roused himself with a quick, glad smile and with a 
 look in his eyes that to Lloyd was unmistakable. But there was 
 not that joyful, exuberant start she had anticipated, and, for that 
 matter, wished. Neither did Lloyd set any too great store by the 
 small amenities of life, but that Ferriss should remain covered hurt 
 her a little. She wondered how she could note so trivial a detail 
 at such a moment. But this was Ferriss. 
 
 Her heart was beating fast and thick as she halted her ponies. 
 The driver of the carriage jumped down and held the door for 
 Ferriss, and the chief engineer stepped quickly toward her. 
 
 So it was they met after four years and such years unex 
 pectedly, without warning or preparation, and not at all as she had 
 expected. What they said to each other in those first few moments 
 Lloyd could never afterward clearly remember. One incident alone 
 detached itself vividly from the blur. 
 
 "I have just come from the square," Ferriss had explained, 
 "and they told me that you had left for a drive out here only the 
 moment before, so there was nothing for it but to come after you." 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 ^a n t we walk a little ?" she remembered she had asked after 
 Ae. "We can have the carriages wait; or do you feel strong 
 t, /gh? I forgot" 
 
 But he interrupted her, protesting his fitness. 
 
 "The doctor merely sent me out to get the air, and it s humiliating 
 to be wheeled about like an old woman." 
 
 Lloyd passed the reins back of her to Lewis, and, gathering her 
 skirts about her, started to descend from the phaeton. The step 
 was rather high from the ground. Ferriss stood close by. Why 
 did he not help her? Why did he stand there, his hands in his 
 pockets, so listless and unconscious of her difficulty. A little glow 
 of irritation deepened the dull crimson of her cheeks. Even re 
 turned Arctic explorers could not afford to ignore entirely life s 
 little courtesies and he of all men. 
 
 "Well," she said, expectantly, hesitating before attempting to 
 descend. 
 
 Then she caught Ferriss s eyes fixed upon her. He was smiling a 
 little, but the dull, stupefied expression of his face seemed for a 
 brief instant to give place to one of great sadness. He raised a 
 shoulder resignedly, and Lloyd, with the suddeness of a blow, 
 remembered that Ferriss had no hands. 
 
 She dropped back in the seat of the phaeton, covering her eyes, 
 shaken and unnerved for the moment with a great thrill of infinite 
 pity of shame at her own awkwardness, and of horror as for one 
 brief instant the smiling summer park, the afternoon s warmth, the 
 avenue of green, over-arching trees, the trim, lacquered vehicles 
 and glossy-brown horses were struck from her mind, and she had 
 a swift vision of the Ice, the darkness of the winter night, the 
 lacerating, merciless cold, the blinding, whirling, dust-like snow. 
 
 For half an hour they walked slowly about in the park, the 
 carriages following at a distance. They did not talk very much. 
 It seemed to Lloyd that she would never tire of scrutinizing his 
 face, that her interest in his point of view, his opinions, would never 
 flag. He had had an experience that came but to few men. For 
 four years he had been out of the world, had undergone privation 
 beyond conception. What now was to be his attitude? How had 
 he changed? That he had not changed to her Lloyd knew in an 
 .instant. He still loved her; that was beyond all doubt. But this 
 terrible apathy that seemed now to be a part of him ! She had heard 
 of the numbing stupor that invades those who stay beyond their 
 time in the Ice, but never before had she seen it in its reality. It 
 
A Man s Woman 331 
 
 was not a lack" of intelligence; it seemed rather to be the machinery 
 of intelligence rusted and clogged from long disuse. He deliberated 
 long before he spoke. It took him some time to understand things. 
 Speech did not come to him readily, and he became easily confused 
 in the matter of words. Once, suddenly, he had interrupted her, 
 breaking out with : 
 
 "Oh, the smell of the trees, of the grass! Isn t it wonderful; 
 isn t it wonderful?" And a few seconds later, quite irrelevantly: 
 "And, after all, we failed/ 
 
 At once Lloyd was all aroused, defending him against himself. 
 
 "Failed ! And you say that? If you did not reach the Pole, what 
 then? The world will judge you by results perhaps, and the world s 
 judgment will be wrong. Is it nothing that you have given the world 
 an example of heroism 
 
 "Oh, don t call it that." 
 
 "Of heroism, of courage, of endurance? Is it nothing that you 
 have overcome obstacles before which other men would have died? 
 Is it nothing that you have shown us all how to be patient, how to be 
 strong? There are some things better even than reaching the Pole. 
 To suffer and be calm is one of them ; not to give up never to be 
 beaten is another. Oh, if I were a man ! Ten thousand, a hundred 
 thousand people are reading to-night of what you have done of 
 what you have done, you understand, not of what you have failed to 
 do. They have seen you have shown them what the man can do 
 who says / will, and you have done a little more, have gone a little 
 further, have been a little braver, a little hardier, a little nobler, a 
 little more determined than any one has ever been before. Whoever 
 fails now can not excuse himself by saying that he has done as much 
 as a man can do. He will have to remember the men of the Freja/ 
 He will have to remember you. Don t you suppose I am proud 
 of you ; don t you suppose that I am stronger and better because of 
 what you have done ? Do you think it is nothing for me to be sitting 
 here beside you, here in this park to be yes, to be with you? 
 Can t you understand ? Isn t it something to me that you are the man 
 you are ; not the man whose name the people are shouting just now, 
 not the man to whom a king gave a bit of ribbon and enamel, but 
 the man who lived like a man, who would not die just because it was 
 easier to die than to live, who fought like a man, not only for him 
 self, but r or the lives of those he led, who showed us all how to be 
 strong, and how strong one could be if one would only try? What 
 does the Pole amount to? The world wants men, great, strong, 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 harsh, brutal men men with purposes, who let nothing, nothing, 
 nothing stand in their way." 
 
 "You mean Bennett," said Ferriss, looking up quickly. "You 
 commenced by speaking of me, but it s Bennett you are talking of 
 
 now." 
 
 But he caught her glance and saw that she was looking stead 
 fastly at him at him. A look was in her face, a light in her dull- 
 blue eyes, that he had never seen there before. 
 
 "Lloyd," he said quietly, "which one of us, Bennett or I, were you 
 speaking of just then? You know what I mean; which one of us?" 
 
 "I was speaking of the man who was strong enough to do great 
 things," she said. 
 
 Ferriss drew the stumps of his arms from his pockets and smiled 
 at them grimly. 
 
 "H m, can one do much this way ?" he muttered. 
 
 With a movement she did not try to restrain Lloyd put both her 
 hands over his poor, shapeless wrists. Never in her life had she 
 been so strongly moved. Pity, such as she had never known, a 
 tenderness and compassion such as she had never experienced, went 
 knocking at her breast. She had no words at hand for so great 
 emotions. She longed to tell him what was in her heart, but all 
 speech failed. 
 
 "Don t!" she exclaimed. "Don t! I will not have you. 
 
 A little later, as they were returning toward the carriages, Lloyd, 
 after a moment s deliberation upon the matter, said : 
 
 "Can t I set you down somewhere near your rooms? Let your 
 carriage go." 
 
 He shook his head: "I ve just given up my downtown rooms. 
 Bennett and I have taken other rooms much further uptown. In 
 fact, I believe I am supposed to be going there now. It would be 
 quite out of your way to take me there. We are much quieter out 
 there, and people can t get at us so readily. The doctor says we 
 both need rest after our shaking up. Bennett himself iron as he is 
 is none too strong, and what with the mail, the telegrams, re 
 porters, deputations, editors, and visitors, and the like, we are kept 
 on something of a strain. Besides we have still a good deal of 
 work to do getting our notes into shape." 
 
 Lewis brought the ponies to the edge of the walk, and Lloyd 
 and Ferriss separated, she turning the ponies heads homeward, 
 starting away at a brisk trot, and leaving him in his carriage, which 
 he had directed to carry him to his new quarters. 
 
A Man s Woman 333 
 
 But at the turn of the avenue Lloyd leaned from the phaeton and 
 looked back. The carriage was just disappearing down the vista of 
 elms and cottonwoods. She waved her hand gayly, and Ferriss 
 responded with the stump of one forearm. 
 
 On the next day but one, a Friday, Lloyd was to go to the 
 country. Every year in the heat of the summer Lloyd spent her short 
 vacation in the sleepy and old-fashioned little village of Bannister. 
 The country around the village was part of the Searight estate. It 
 was quiet, off the railroad, just the place to forget duties, respon 
 sibilities, and the wearing anxieties of sick-rooms. But Thursday 
 afternoon she expected Bennett. 
 
 Thursday morning she was in her room. Her trunk was al 
 ready packed. There was nothing more to be done. She was off 
 duty. There was neither care nor responsibility upon her mind. But 
 she was too joyful, too happily exalted, too exuberant in gayety to 
 pass her time in reading. She wanted action, movement, life, and 
 instinctively threw open a window of her room, and, according to 
 her habit, leaned upon her elbows and looked out and down upon the 
 square. The morning was charming. Later in the day it probably 
 would be very hot, but as yet the breeze of the earliest hours was 
 jtirring nimbly. The cool of it put a brisker note in the sombre 
 glow of her cheeks, and just stirred a lock that, escaping from her 
 gorgeous coils of dark-red hair, hung curling over her ear and neck. 
 Into her eyes of dull blue like the blue of old china the morn 
 ing s sun sent an occasional unwonted sparkle. Over the asphalt 
 and over the green grass-plots of the square the shadows of the 
 venerable elms wove a shifting maze of tracery. Traffic avoided the 
 place. It was invariably quiet in the square, and one as now 
 could always hear the subdued ripple and murmur of the fountain 
 in the centre. 
 
 But the crowning delight of that morning was the sudden appear 
 ance of a robin in a tree close to Lloyd s window. He was searching 
 his breakfast. At every moment he came and went between the 
 tree-tops and the grass-plots, very important, very preoccupied, 
 chittering and calling the while, as though he would never tire. 
 Lloyd whistled to him, and instantly he answered, cocking his head 
 sidewise. She whistled again, and he piped back ah impudent re 
 sponse, and for quite five minutes the two held an elaborate alter 
 cation between tree-top and window-ledge. Lloyd caught herself 
 laughing outright and aloud for no assignable reason. "Ah, the 
 world was a pretty good place after all !" 
 
334 A Man s Woman 
 
 A little later, and while she was still at the window, Rownie 
 brought her a note from Bennett, sent by special messenger. 
 
 "Ferriss woke up sick this morning. Nobody here but the two of us; 
 can t leave him alone. BENNETT." 
 
 "Oh !" exclaimed Lloyd Searight a little blankly. 
 
 The robin and his effrontery at once ceased to be amusing. She 
 closed the window abruptly, shutting out the summer morning s 
 gayety and charm, turning her back upon the sunlight. 
 
 Now she was more in the humor of reading. On the great divan 
 against the wall lay the month s magazines and two illustrated 
 weeklies. Lloyd had bought them to read on the train. But now she 
 settled herself upon the divan and, picking up one of the weeklies, 
 turned its leaves listlessly. All at once she came upon two pictures 
 admirably reproduced from photographs, and serving- as illustra 
 tions to the weekly s main article "The Two Leaders of the Freja 7 
 Expedition." One was a picture of Bennett, the other of Ferriss. 
 
 The suddenness with which she had conie upon his likeness 
 almost took Lloyd s breath from her. It was the last thing she had 
 expected. If he himself had abruptly entered the room in person she 
 could hardly have been more surprised. Her heart gave a great 
 leap, the dull crimson of her cheeks shot to her forehead. Then, with 
 a charming movement, at once impulsive and shamefaced, smiling 
 the while, her eyes half-closing, she laid her cheek upon the picture, 
 murmuring to herself words that only herself should hear. The 
 next day she left for the country. 
 
 On that same day when Dr. Pitts arrived at the rooms Ferriss 
 and Bennett had taken he found the anteroom already crowded with 
 visitors a knot of interviewers, the manager of a lecture bureau, 
 as well as the agent of a patented cereal (who sought the man of the 
 hour for an indorsement of his article), and two female reporters. 
 
 Decidedly Richard Ferriss was ill; there could be no doubt 
 about that. Bennett had not slept the night before, but had gone 
 to and fro about the rooms tending to his wants with a solicitude and 
 a gentleness that in a man so harsh and so toughly fibred seemed 
 strangely out of place. Bennett was far from well himself. The 
 terrible milling which he had undergone had told even upon that 
 enormous frame, but his own ailments were promptly ignored now 
 that Ferriss, the man of all men to him, was "down." 
 
 "I didn t pull through with you, old man," he responded to all 
 of Ferriss s protests, "to have you get sick on my hands at this time 
 
A Man s Woman 335 
 
 of day. No more of your damned foolishness now. Here s the 
 quinine. Down with it !" 
 
 Bennett met Pitts at the door of Ferriss s room, and before 
 going in drew him into a corner. 
 
 "He s a sick boy, Pitts, and is going to be worse, though he s 
 just enough of a fool boy not to admit it. I ve seen them start off 
 this gait before. Remember, too, when you look him over, that 
 it s not as though he had been in a healthy condition before. Our 
 work in the ice ground him down about as fine as he could go and 
 yet live, and the hardtack and salt pork on the steam whalers were 
 not a good diet for a convalescent. And see here, Pitts," said 
 Bennett, clearing his throat, "I well, I m rather fond of that fool 
 boy in there. We are not taking any chances, you understand." 
 
 After the doctor had seen the chief engineer and had prescribed 
 calomel and a milk diet, Bennett followed him out into the hall and 
 accompanied him to the door. 
 
 "Verdict?" he demanded, fixing the physician intently with his 
 small, distorted eyes. But Pitts was non-committal. 
 
 "Yes, he s a sick boy, but the thing, whatever it is going to be, 
 has been gathering slowly. He complains of headache, great weak 
 ness and nausea, and you speak of frequent nose-bleeds during the 
 night. The abdomen is tender upon pressure, which is a symptom 
 I would rather not have found. But I can t make any positive 
 diagnosis as yet. Some big sickness is coming on that, I am 
 afraid, is certain. I shall come out here to-morrow. But, Mr. 
 Bennett, be careful of yourself. Even steel can weaken, you know. 
 You see this rabble" (he motioned with his head toward the ante 
 room, where the other visitors were waiting) "that is hounding you? 
 Everybody knows where you are. Man, you must have rest. I 
 don t need to look at you more than once to know that. Get away! 
 Get away even from your mails ! Hide from everybody for a 
 while ! Don t think you can nurse your friend through these next 
 few weeks, because you can t." 
 
 "Well," answered Bennett, "wait a few days. We ll see by the 
 end of the week." 
 
 The week passed. Ferriss went gradually from bad to worse, 
 though as yet the disease persistently refused to declare itself. 
 He was quite helpless, and Bennett watched over him night and 
 day, pottering around him by the hour, giving him his medicines, 
 cooking his food, and even when Ferriss complained of the hotness 
 of the bedclothes, changing the very linen that he might lie upon 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 cool sheets. But at the end of the week Dr. Pitts declared that 
 Bennett himself was in great danger of breaking down, and was of 
 no great service to the sick man. 
 
 "To-morrow," said the doctor, "I shall have a young fellow here 
 who happens to be a cousin of mine. He is an excellent trained 
 nurse, a fellow we can rely upon. He ll take your place. I ll have 
 him here to-morrow, and you must get away. Hide somewhere. 
 Don t even allow your mail to be forwarded. The nurse and I will 
 take care of iMr. Ferriss. You can leave me your address, and I 
 will wire you if it is necessary. Now be persuaded like a reason 
 able man. I will stake my professional reputation that you will 
 knock under if you stay here with a sick man on your hands and 
 newspaper men taking the house by storm at all hours of the day. 
 Come, now, will you go? Mr. Ferriss is in no danger, and you will 
 do him more harm by staying than by going. So long as you re 
 main here you will have this raft of people in the rooms at all 
 hours. Deny yourself! Keep them out! Keep out the American 
 reporter when he goes gunning for a returned explorer! Do you 
 think this," and he pointed again to the crowd in the anteroom, "is 
 the right condition for a sick man s quarters? You are imperiling 
 his safety, to say nothing of your own, by staying beside him you 
 draw the fire, Mr. Bennett." 
 
 "Well, there s something in that," muttered Bennett, pulling at 
 his mustache. "But " Bennett hesitated, then: "Pitts, I want 
 you to take my place here if I go away. Have a nurse if you like, 
 but I shouldn t feel justified in leaving the boy in his condition un 
 less I knew you were with him continually. I don t know what your 
 practice is worth to you, say for a month, or until the boy is out of 
 danger, but make me a proposition. I think we can come to an 
 understanding." 
 
 "But it won t be necessary to have a doctor with Mr. Ferriss 
 constantly. I should see him every day and the nurse " 
 
 Bennett promptly overrode his objections. Harshly and abrupt 
 ly he exclaimed: "I m not taking any chances. It shall be as I 
 say. I want the boy well, and I want you and the nurse to see to 
 it that he gets well. I ll meet the expenses." 
 
 Bennett did not hear the doctor s response and his suggestion as 
 to the advisability of taking Ferriss to his own house in the country 
 while he could be moved. For the moment he was not listening. 
 An idea had abruptly presented itself to him. He was to go to the 
 country. But where? A grim smile began to relax the close- 
 
A Man s Woman 337 
 
 gripped lips and the hard set of the protruding jaw. He tugged 
 again at his mustache, scowling at the doctor, trying to hide his 
 humor. 
 
 "Well, that s settled then," he said; "I ll get away to-morrow 
 somewhere." 
 
 "Whereabouts ?" demanded the doctor. "I shall want to let you 
 know how we progress/ 
 
 Bennett chose to feel a certain irritation. What business of 
 Pitts s was it whom he went to see, or, rather, where he meant 
 to go? 
 
 "You told me to hide away from everybody, not even to allow 
 my mail to be forwarded. But I ll let you know where to reach 
 me, of course, as soon as I get there. It won t be far from town." 
 
 "And I will take your place here with Mr. Ferriss; somebody 
 will be with him at every moment, and I shall only wire you," con 
 tinued the doctor, "in case of urgent necessity. I want you to have 
 all the rest you can, and stay away as long as possible. I shan t 
 annoy you with telegrams unless I must. You ll understand that 
 no news is good news." 
 
 On that particular morning Lloyd sat in her room in the old 
 farmhouse that she always elected to call her home as often as she 
 visited Bannister. It was some quarter of a mile outside the little 
 village, and on the road that connected it with the railway at Fourth 
 Lake, some six miles over the hills to the east. It was yet early in 
 the morning, and Lloyd was writing letters that she would post at 
 Fourth Lake later in the forenoon. She intended driving over to 
 the lake. Two days before Lewis had arrived with Rox, the ponies 
 and the phaeton. Lloyd s dog-cart, a very gorgeous, high-wheeled 
 affair, was always kept at Bannister. 
 
 The room in which she now sat was delightful. Everything was 
 white, from the curtains of the bed to the chintz hangings on the 
 walls. A rug of white fur was on the floor. The panelings and 
 wooden shutters of the windows were painted white. The fireplace 
 was set in glossy-white tiles, and its opening covered with a screen 
 of white feathers. The windows were flung wide, and a great flood 
 of white sunlight came pouring into the room. Lloyd herself was 
 dressed in white, from the clean, crisp scarf tied about her neck 
 to the tip of her canvas tennis shoes. And in all this array of white 
 only the dull-red flame of her high-piled hair in the sunshine 
 glowing like burnished copper set a vivid note of color, the little 
 
 O III NORRIS 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 strands and locks about her neck and ears coruscating as the breeze 
 from the open windows stirred them. 
 
 The morning was veritably royal still, cool, and odorous of 
 woods and cattle and growing grass. A great sense of gayety, of 
 exhilaration, was in the air. Lloyd was all in tune with it. While 
 she wrote her left elbow rested on the table, and in her left hand 
 she held a huge, green apple, unripe, sour, delicious beyond words, 
 and into which she bit from time to time with the silent enjoyment 
 of a schoolgirl. 
 
 Her letter was to Hattie s father, Mr. Campbell, and she wrote 
 to ask if the little girl might not spend a week with her at Ban 
 nister. When the letter was finished and addressed she thrust it 
 into her belt, and, putting on her hat, ran downstairs. Lewis had 
 brought the dog-cart to the gate, and stood waiting in the road by 
 Rox s head. But as Lloyd went down the brick-paved walk of the 
 front yard Mrs. Applegate, who owned the farmhouse, and who 
 was at once Lloyd s tenant, landlady, housekeeper, and cook, ap 
 peared on the porch of the house, the head of a fish in her hand, 
 and Charley- Joe, the yellow tomcat, at her heels, eying her with 
 painful intentness. 
 
 "Say, Miss Searight," she called, her forearm across her fore 
 head to shade her eyes, the hand still holding the fish s head, "say, 
 while you re out this morning will you keep an eye out for that dog 
 of our n you know, Dan .the one with liver n white spots? He s 
 run off again ain t seen him since yesterday noon. He gets away 
 an goes off fighting other dogs over the whole blessed county. 
 There ain t a dog big r little within ten mile that Dan ain t licked. 
 He d sooner fight than he would eat, that dog." 
 
 "I will, I will," answered Lloyd, climbing to the high seat, "and 
 if I find him I shall drag him back by the scruff of his neck. Good- 
 morning, Lewis. Why have you put the overhead check on Rox?" 
 
 Lewis touched his cap. 
 
 "He feels his oats some this morning, and if he gets his lower 
 jaw agin his chest there s no holding of him, Miss no holding of 
 him in the world." 
 
 Lloyd gathered up the reins and spoke to the horse, and Lewis 
 stood aside. 
 
 Rox promptly went up into the air on his hind legs, shaking his 
 head with a great snort. 
 
 "Steady, you old pig," said Loyd, calmly. "Soh, soh, who s 
 trying to kill you?" 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 339 
 
 "Hadn t I better come with you, Miss?" inquired Lewis 
 anxiously. 
 
 Lloyd shook her head. "No, indeed," she said decisively. 
 
 Rox, after vindicating his own independence by the proper 
 amount of showing off, started away down the road with as high 
 an action as he could command, playing to the gallery, looking back 
 and out of the tail of his eye to see if Lewis observed what a ter 
 rible fellow he was that morning. 
 
 "Well, of all the critters!" commented Mrs. Applegate from 
 the porch. But Charley- Joe, with an almost hypnotic fixity in his 
 yellow eyes, and who during the last few minutes had several times 
 opened his mouth wide in an ineffectual attempt to mew, suddenly 
 found his voice with a prolonged and complaining note. 
 
 "Well, heavens an airth, take your fish, then!" exclaimed Mrs. 
 Applegate, suddenly remembering the cat. "An get off n my porch 
 with it." She pushed him away with the side of her foot, and 
 Charley- Joe, with the fish s head in his teeth, retired around the 
 corner of the house by the rain barrel, where at intervals he could 
 be heard growling to himself in a high-pitched key, pretending the 
 approach of some terrible enemy. 
 
 Meanwhile Lloyd, already well on her way, was having an excit 
 ing tussle with Rox. The horse had begun by making an exhibition 
 of himself for all who could see, but in the end he had so worked 
 upon his own nerves that instead of frightening others he only 
 succeeded in terrifying himself. He was city-bred, and the sudden 
 change from brick houses to open fields had demoralized him. He 
 began to have a dim consciousness of just how strong he was. 
 There was nothing vicious about him. He would not have lowered 
 himself to kick, but he did want, with all the big, strong heart of 
 him, to run. 
 
 But back of him there he felt it thrilling along the tense-drawn 
 reins was a calm, powerful grip, even, steady, masterful. Turn 
 his head he could not, but he knew very well that Lloyd had taken 
 a double twist upon the reins, and that her hands, even if they 
 were gloved in white, were strong strong enough to hold him to 
 his work. And besides this he could tell it by the very feel of the 
 bit he knew that she did not take him very seriously, that he could 
 not make her afraid of him. He knew that she could tell at once 
 whether he shied because he was really frightened or because he 
 wanted to break the shaft, and that in the latter case he would get 
 the whip and mercilessly, too across his haunch, a degradation, 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 above all things, to be avoided. And she had called him an old pig 
 once already that morning. 
 
 Lloyd drove on. She keenly enjoyed this struggle between the 
 horse s strength and her own determination, her own obstinacy. 
 No, she would not let Rox have his way ; she would not allow him 
 to triumph over her for a single moment. She would neither be 
 forced nor tricked into yielding a single point, however small. She 
 would be mistress of the situation. 
 
 By the end of half an hour she had him well in hand, and was 
 bowling smoothly along a level stretch of road at the foot of an 
 abrupt rise of land covered with scrub oak and broken with out- 
 croppings of granite of a curious formation. Just beyond here the 
 road crossed the canal by a narrow in fact, a much too narrow 
 plank bridge without guard-rails. The wide-axled dog-cart had 
 just sufficient room on either hand, and Lloyd, too good a whip 
 to take chances with so nervous a horse as Rox, drew him down to 
 a walk as she approached it. But of a sudden her eyes were ar 
 rested by a curious sight. She halted the cart. 
 
 At the roadside, some fifty yards from the plank bridge, were 
 two dogs. Evidently there had just been a dreadful fight. Herr 
 and there a stone was streaked with blood. The grass and smaller 
 bushes were flattened out, and tufts of hair were scattered about 
 upon the ground. Of the two dogs Lloyd recognized one upon the 
 instant. It was Dan, the "liver n white" fox-hound of the farm 
 house the fighter and terror of the country. But he was lying 
 upon his side now, the foreleg broken, or rather crushed, as if in 
 a vice ; the throat torn open, the life-blood in a great pool about his 
 head. He was dead, or in the very throes of death. Poor Dan, he 
 had fought his last fight, had found more than his match at last. 
 
 Lloyd looked at the other dog the victor; then looked at him 
 a second time and a third. 
 
 "Well," she murmured, "that s a strange-looking dog." 
 
 In fact, he was a curious animal. His broad, strong body was 
 covered with a brown fur as dense, as thick, and as soft as a wolf s ; 
 the ears were pricked and pointed, the muzzle sharp, the eyes slant 
 and beady. The breast was disproportionately broad, the forelegs 
 short and apparently very powerful. Around his neck was a broad 
 nickeled collar. 
 
 But as Lloyd sat in the cart watching him he promptly demon 
 strated the fact that his nature was as extraordinary as his looks. 
 He turned again from a momentary inspection of the intruders, 
 
A Man s Woman 341 
 
 sniffed once or twice at his dead enemy, then suddenly began to 
 eat him. 
 
 Lloyd s gorge rose with anger and disgust. Even if Dan had 
 been killed, it had been in fair fight, and there could be no doubt 
 that Dan himself had been the aggressor. She could even feel a 
 little respect for the conqueror of the champion, but to turn upon 
 the dead foe, now that the heat of battle was past, and (in no spirit 
 of hate or rage) deliberately to eat him. What a horror! She took 
 out her whip. 
 
 "Shame on you!" she exclaimed. "Ugh! what a savage; I 
 shan t allow you !" 
 
 A farm-hand was coming across the plank bridge, and as he 
 drew near the cart Lloyd asked him to hold Rox for a moment. 
 Rox was one of those horses who, when standing still, are docile 
 as a kitten, and she had no hesitancy in leaving him with a man at 
 his head. She jumped out, the whip in her hand. Dan was beyond 
 all help, but she wanted at least to take his collar back to Mrs. 
 Applegate. The strange dog permitted himself to be driven off a 
 little distance. Part of his strangeness seemed to be that through 
 it all he retained a certain placidity of temper. There was no 
 ferocity in his desire to eat Dan. 
 
 "That s just what makes it so disgusting," said Lloyd, shaking 
 her whip at him. He sat down upon his haunches, eying her 
 calmly, his tongue lolling. When she had unbuckled Dan s collar 
 and tossed it into the cart under the seat she inquired of the farm 
 hand as to where the new dog came from. 
 
 "It beats me, Miss Searight," he answered; "never saw such 
 a bird in these parts before ; t other belongs down to Applegate s." 
 
 "Come, let s have a look at you," said Lloyd, putting back the 
 whip ; "let me see your collar." 
 
 Disregarding the man s warning, she went up to the stranger, 
 whistling and holding out her hand, and he came up to her a little 
 suspiciously at first, but in the end wagging his tail, willing to be 
 friendly. Lloyd parted the thick fur around his neck and turned 
 the plate of the collar to the light. On the plate was engraved: 
 "Kamiska, Arctic S. S. Freja. Return to Ward Bennett." 
 
 "Anything on the collar?" asked the man. 
 
 Lloyd settled a hairpin in a coil of hair at the back of her neck. 
 
 "Nothing nothing that I can make out." 
 
 She climbed into the cart again and dismissed the farm-hand 
 with a quarter. He disappeared around the turn of the road. But 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 as she was about to- drive on, Lloyd heard a great clattering of 
 stones upon the hill above her, a crashing in the bushes, and a 
 shrill whistle thrice repeated. Kamiska started up at once, cocking 
 alternate ears, then turned about and ran up the hill to meet Ward 
 Bennett, who came scrambling down, jumping from one granite 
 outcrop to another, holding on the while by the lower branches of 
 the scrub oak-trees. 
 
 He was dressed as if for an outing, in knickerbockers and huge, 
 hob-nailed shoes. He wore an old shooting-coat and a woolen cap ; 
 a little leather sack was slung from his shoulder, and in his hand 
 he carried a short-handled geologist s hammer. 
 
 And then, after so long a time, Lloyd saw his face again the 
 rugged, unhandsome face; the massive jaw, huge almost to de 
 formity; the great, brutal, indomitable lips; the square-cut chin 
 with its forward, aggressive thrust; the narrow forehead, seamed 
 and contracted, and the twinkling, keen eyes so marred by the cast, 
 so heavily shadowed by the shaggy eyebrows. When he spoke the 
 voice came heavy and vibrant from the great chest, a harsh, deep 
 bass, a voice in which to command men, not a voice in which to 
 talk to women. 
 
 Lloyd, long schooled to self-repression and the control of her 
 emotions when such repression and control were necessary, sat ab 
 solutely moveless on her high seat, her hands only shutting tighter 
 and tighter upon the reins. She had often wondered how she would 
 feel, what was to be her dominant impulse, at such moments as 
 these, and now she realized that it was not so much joy, not so much 
 excitement, as a resolute determination not for one instant to lose 
 her poise. 
 
 She was thinking rapidly. For four years they had not met. At 
 one time she believed him to be dead. But in the end he had been 
 saved, had come back, and, ignoring the plaudits of an entire Chris 
 tendom, had addressed himself straight to her. For one of them, 
 at least, this meeting was a crisis. What would they first say to 
 each other ? how be equal to the situation ? how rise to its dramatic 
 possibilities? But the moment had come to them suddenly, had 
 found them all unprepared. There was no time to think of adequate 
 words. Afterward, when she reviewed this encounter, she told her 
 self that they both had failed, and that if the meeting had been faith 
 fully reproduced upon the stage or in the pages of a novel it would 
 have seemed tame and commonplace. These two, living the actual 
 scene, with all the deep, strong, real emotions of them surging to 
 
A Mans Woman 343 
 
 the surface, the vitality of them, all aroused and vibrating, sud 
 denly confronting actuality itself, were not even natural ; were not 
 even "true to life." It was as though they had parted but a fort 
 night ago. 
 
 Bennett caught his cap from his head and came toward her, 
 exclaiming : 
 
 "Miss Searight, I believe." 
 
 And she, reaching her right hand over the left, that still held 
 the reins, leaned from her high seat, shaking hands with him and 
 replying : 
 
 "Well Mr. Bennett, I m so very glad to see you again. Where 
 did you come from?" 
 
 "From the city and from seventy-six degrees north latitude." 
 
 "I congratulate you. We had almost given up hope of you." 
 
 "Thank you," he answered. "We were not so roseate with hope 
 ourselves all the time. But I have not felt as though I had really 
 come back until this well, until I had reached the road between 
 Bannister and Fourth Lake, for instance," and his face relaxed to 
 its characteristic grim smile. 
 
 "You reached it too late, then," she responded. "Your dog has 
 killed our Dan, and, what is much worse, started to eat him. He s 
 a perfect savage." 
 
 "Kamiska? Well," he added, reflectively, "it s my fault for set 
 ting her a bad example. I ate her trace-mate, and was rather close 
 to eating Kamiska herself at one time. But I didn t come down 
 here to talk about that." 
 
 "You are looking rather worn, Mr. Bennett." 
 
 "I suppose. The doctor sent me into the country to call back 
 the roses to my pallid cheek. So I came down here to geologize. 
 I presume that excuse will do as well as another." Then suddenly 
 he cried: "Hello, steady there; quick, Miss Searight!" 
 
 It all came so abruptly that neither of them could afterward 
 reconstruct the scene with any degree of accuracy. Probably in 
 scrambling down the steep slope of the bank Bennett had loosened 
 the earth or smaller stones that hitherto had been barely sufficient 
 support to the mass of earth, gravel, rocks, and bushes that all at 
 once, and with a sharp, crackling noise, slid downward toward the 
 road from the overhanging bank. The slip was small, hardly more 
 than three square yards of earth moving from its place, but it came 
 with a smart, quick rush, throwing up a cloud of dust and scat 
 tering pebbles and hard clods of dirt far before its advance. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 As Rox leaped Lloyd threw her weight too suddenly on trie 
 reins, the horse arched his neck, and the overhead check snapped like 
 a harp-string. Again he reared from the object of his terror, shak 
 ing his head from side to side, trying to get a purchase on the bit. 
 Then his lower jaw settled against his chest, and all at once he real 
 ized that no pair of human hands could hold him now. He did not 
 rear again; his haunches suddenly lowered, and with the hoofs of 
 his hind feet he began feeling the ground for his spring. But now 
 Bennett was at his head, gripping at the bit, striving to thrust him 
 back. Lloyd, half risen from her seat, each rein wrapped twice 
 around her hands, her long, strong arms at their fullest reach, held 
 back against the horse with all her might, her body swaying and 
 jerking with his plunges. But the overhead check once broken Lloyd 
 might as well have pulled against a locomotive. Bennett was a 
 powerful man by nature, but his great strength had been not a lit 
 tle sapped by his recent experiences. Between the instant his hand 
 caught at the bit and that in which Rox had made his first ineffec 
 tual attempt to spring forward he recognized the inequality of the 
 contest. He could hold Rox back for a second or two, perhaps 
 three, then the horse would get away from him. He shot a glance 
 about him. Not twenty yards away was the canal and the peril 
 ously narrow bridge the bridge without the guard-rail. 
 
 "Quick, Miss Searight!" he shouted. "Jump! We can t hold 
 him. Quick, do as I tell you, jump !" 
 
 But even as he spoke Rox dragged him from his feet, his hoofs 
 trampling the hollow road till it reverberated like the roll of drums. 
 Bracing himself against every unevenness of the ground, his teeth 
 set, his face scarlet, the veins in his neck swelling, suddenly blue- 
 black, Bennett wrenched at the bit till the horse s mouth went 
 bloody. But all to no purpose ; faster and faster Rox was escaping 
 from his control. 
 
 "Jump, I tell you !" he shouted again, looking over his shoulder ; 
 "another second and he s away." 
 
 Lloyd dropped the reins and turned to jump. But the lap-robe 
 had slipped down to the bottom of the cart when she had risen, and 
 was in a tangle about her feet. The cart was rocking like a ship in 
 a storm. Twice she tried to free herself, holding to the dashboard 
 with one hand. Then the cart suddenly lurched forward and she 
 fell to her knees. Rox was off ; it was all over. 
 
 Not quite. In one brief second of time a hideous vision come 
 and gone between two breaths Lloyd saw the fearful thing done 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 345 
 
 there in the road, almost within reach of her hand. She saw the 
 man and horse at grapples, the yellow reach of road that lay between 
 her and the canal, the canal itself, and the narrow bridge. Then she 
 saw the short-handled geologist s hammer gripped in Bennett s fist 
 heave high in the air. Down it came, swift, resistless, terrible 
 one blow. The cart tipped forward as Rox, his knees bowing from 
 under him, slowly collapsed. Then he rolled upon the shaft that 
 snapped under him, and the cart vibrated from end to end as a long, 
 shuddering tremble ran through him with his last deep breath. 
 
 WHEN Lloyd at length managed to free herself and jump to the 
 ground Bennett came quickly toward her and drew her away to 
 the side of the road. 
 
 "Are you hurt?" he demanded. "Tell me, are you hurt?" 
 
 "No, no; not in the least." 
 
 "Why in the world did you want to drive such a horse? Don t 
 ever take such chances again. I won t have it." 
 
 For a few moments Lloyd was too excited to trust herself to 
 talk, and could only stand helplessly to one side, watching Bennett 
 as he stripped off the harness from the dead horse, stowed it away 
 under the seat of the cart, and rolled the cart itself to the edge of 
 the road. Then at length she said, trying to smile and to steady 
 her voice: 
 
 "It it seems to me, Mr. Bennett, you do about about as you 
 like with my sta-bub-ble." 
 
 "Sit down!" he commanded, "you are trembling all over. Sit 
 down on that rock there." 
 
 " and with me," she added, sinking down upon the bowlder he 
 had indicated with a movement of his head, his hands busy with the 
 harness. 
 
 "I m sorry I had to do that," he explained ; "but there was no 
 help for it nothing else to do. He would have had you in the 
 canal in another second, if he did not kill you on the way there." 
 
 "Poor old Rox," murmured Lloyd; "I was very fond of Rox." 
 
 Bennett put himself in her way as she stepped forward. He 
 had the lap-robe over his arm and the whip in his hand. 
 
 "No, don t look at him. He s not a pretty sight. Come, shall I 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 take you home? Don t worry about the cart; I will see that it is 
 sent back." 
 
 "And that Rox is buried somewhere? I don t want him left 
 out there for the crows." In spite of Bennett s injunction she looked 
 over her shoulder for a moment as they started off down the road. 
 "I only hope you were sure there was nothing else to do, Mr. Ben 
 nett," she said. 
 
 "There was no time to think," he answered, "and I wasn t tak 
 ing any chances." 
 
 But the savagery of the whole affair stuck in Lloyd s imagina 
 tion. There was a primitiveness, a certain hideous simplicity in the 
 way Bennett had met the situation that filled her with wonder and 
 with even a little terror and mistrust of him. The vast, brutal di 
 rectness of the deed was out of place and incongruous at this end- 
 of-the-century time. It ignored two thousand years of civilization. 
 It was a harsh, clanging, brazen note, powerful, uncomplicated, 
 which came jangling in, discordant and inharmonious with the tune 
 of the age. It savored of the days when men fought the brutes with 
 their hands or with their clubs. But also it was an indication of a 
 force and a power of mind that stopped at nothing to attain its 
 ends, that chose the shortest cut, the most direct means, disdainful 
 of hesitation, holding delicacy and finessing in measureless contempt, 
 rushing straight to its object, driving in, breaking down resistance, 
 smashing through obstacles with a boundless, crude, blind Brobding- 
 nag power, to oppose which was to be trampled underfoot upon the 
 instant. 
 
 It was long before their talk turned from the incident of the 
 morning, but when it did its subject was Richard Ferriss. Bennett 
 was sounding his praises and commenting upon his pluck and en 
 durance during the retreat from the ship, when Lloyd, after hesi 
 tating once or twice, asked: 
 
 "How is Mr. Ferriss? In your note you said he was ill." 
 
 "So he is," he told her, "and I could not have left him if I 
 was not sure I was doing him harm by staying. But the doctor 
 is to wire me if he gets any worse, and only if he does. I am to 
 believe that no news is good news." 
 
 But this meeting with Lloyd and the intense excitement of 
 those few moments by the canal had quite driven from Bennett s 
 mind the fact that he had not forwarded his present address either 
 to Ferriss or to his doctor. He had so intended that morning, but 
 all the faculties of his mind were suddenly concentrated upon an- 
 
A Man s Woman 347 
 
 other issue. For the moment he believed that he had actually 
 written to Dr. Pitts, as he had planned, and when he thought of his 
 intended message at all, thought of it as an accomplished fact. The 
 matter did not occur to him again. 
 
 As he walked by Lloyd s side, listening to her and talking to her, 
 snapping the whip the while, or flicking the heads from the mullein 
 stalks by the roadside with its lash, he was thinking how best he 
 might say to her what he had come from the city to say. To lead 
 up to his subject, to guide the conversation, to prepare the right 
 psychological moment skilfully and without apparent effort, were 
 manoeuvres in the game that Bennett ignored and despised. He 
 knew only that he loved her, that she was there at his side, that the 
 object of all his desires and hopes was within his reach. Straight 
 as a homing pigeon he went to his goal." 
 
 "Miss Searight," he began, his harsh, bass voice pitched even 
 lower than usual, "what do you think I am down here for? This 
 is not the only part of the world where I could recuperate, I sup 
 pose, and as for spending God s day in chipping at stones, like a 
 professor of a young ladies seminary" he hurled the hammer 
 from him into the bushes "that for geology ! Now we can talk. 
 You know very well that I love you, and I believe that you love me. 
 I have come down here to ask you to marry me." 
 
 Lloyd might have done any one of a dozen things might have 
 answered in any one of a dozen ways. But what she did do, what 
 she did say, took Bennett completely by surprise. A little coldly and 
 very calmly she answered : 
 
 "You believe you say you believe that I " she broke off, then 
 began again: "It is not right for you to say that to me. I have 
 never led you to believe that I cared for you. Whatever our rela 
 tions are to be, let us have that understood at once." 
 
 Bennett uttered an impatient exclamation. "I am not good at 
 fencing and quibbling," he declared. "I tell you that I love you 
 with all my heart. I tell you that I want you to be my wife, and I 
 tell you that I know you do love me. You are not like other 
 women; why should you coquette with me? Good God! are you 
 not big enough to be above such things ? I know you are. Of all 
 the people in the world we two ought to be above pretence, ought 
 to understand each other. If I did not know you cared for me I 
 would not have spoken." 
 
 "I don t understand you," she answered. "I think we had bet 
 ter talk of other things this morning." 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 "I came down here to talk of just this and nothing else," he 
 
 declared. 
 
 "Very well, then," she said, squaring her shoulders with a quick, 
 brisk movement, "we will talk of it. You say we two should under 
 stand each other. Let us come to the bottom of things at once, 
 despise quibbling and fencing as much, perhaps, as you. Tell me 
 how have I ever led you to believe that I cared for you?" 
 
 "At a time when our last hope was gone," answered Bennett, 
 meeting her eyes, "when I was very near to death and thought 
 that I should go to my God within the day, I was made happier than 
 I think I ever was in my life before by finding out that I was dear 
 to you that you loved me." 
 
 Lloyd searched his face with a look of surprise and bewilder 
 ment. 
 
 "I do not understand you," she repeated. 
 
 "Oh!" exclaimed Bennett with sudden vehemence, "you could 
 say it to Ferriss ; why can t you say it to me ?" 
 
 "To Mr. Ferriss?" 
 
 "You could tell him that you cared." 
 
 "I tell Mr. Ferriss that I cared for you ?" She began to smile. 
 "You are a little absurd, Mr. Bennett." 
 
 "And I can not see why you should deny it now. Or if any 
 thing has caused you to change your mind to be sorry for what 
 you said, why should I not know it? Even a petty thief may be 
 heard in his own defence. I loved you because I believed you to be 
 a woman, a great, strong, noble, man s woman, above little things, 
 above the little, niggling, contemptible devices of the drawing-room. 
 I loved you because the great things of the world interested you, 
 because you had no place in your life for petty graces, petty affecta 
 tions, petty deceits and shams and insincerities. If you did not love 
 me, why did you say so? If you do love me now, why should you 
 not admit it? Do you think you can play with me? Do you think 
 you can coquette with me? If you were small enough to stoop to 
 such means, do you think I am small enough to submit to them ? I 
 have known Ferriss too well. I know him to be incapable of such 
 falsity as you would charge him with. To have told such a lie, such 
 an uncalled-for, useless, gratuitous lie, is a thing he could not have 
 done. You must have told him that you cared. Why aren t you 
 you of all women brave enough, strong enough, big enough to 
 stand by your words?" 
 
 "Because I never said them. What do you think of me? Even 
 
A Man s Woman 349 
 
 if I did care, do you suppose I would say as much and to another 
 man? Oh!" she exclaimed with sudden indignation, "let s talk of 
 something else. This is too preposterous." 
 
 "You never told Ferriss that you cared for me?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Bennett took off his cap. "Very well, then. That is enough. 
 Good-by, Miss Searight." 
 
 "Do you believe I told Mr. Ferriss I loved you?" 
 
 "I do not believe that the- man who has been more to me than a 
 brother is a liar and a rascal." 
 
 "Good-morning, Mr. Bennett." 
 
 They had come rather near to the farmhouse by this time. 
 Without another word Bennett gave the whip and lap-robe into 
 her hands, and, turning upon his heel, walked away down the road. 
 
 Lloyd told Lewis as much of the morning s accident by the canal 
 as was necessary, and gave orders about the dog-cart and the bury 
 ing of Rox. Then slowly, her eyes fixed and wide, she went up 
 to her own room and, without removing either her hat or her gloves, 
 sat down upon the edge of the bed, letting her hands fall limply into 
 her lap, gazing abstractedly at the white curtain just stirring at the 
 open window. 
 
 She could not say which hurt her most that Ferriss had told 
 the lie or that Bennett believed it. But why, in heaven s name why, 
 had Ferriss so spoken to Bennett; what object had he in view; what 
 had he to gain by it? Why had Ferriss, the man who loved her, 
 chosen so to humiliate her, to put her in a position so galling to her 
 pride, her dignity? Bennett, too, loved her. How could he be 
 lieve that she had so demeaned herself? 
 
 She had been hurt and to the heart, at a point where she be 
 lieved herself most unassailable, and he who held the weapon was 
 the man that with all the heart of her and soul of her she loved. 
 
 Much of the situation was all beyond her. Try as she would she 
 could not understand. One thing, however, she saw clearly, un 
 mistakably: Bennett believed that she loved him, believed that she 
 had told as much to Ferriss, and that when she had denied all 
 knowledge of Ferriss s lie she was only coquetting with him. She 
 knew Bennett and his character well enough to realize that an idea 
 once rooted in his mind was all but ineradicable. Bennett was not 
 a man of easy changes ; nothing mobile about him. 
 
 The thought of this belief of Bennett s was intolerable. As she 
 sat there alone in her white room the dull crimson of her cheeks 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 flamed suddenly scarlet, and with a quick, involuntary gesture she 
 threw her hand, palm outward, across her face to hide it from the 
 sunlight. She went quickly from one mood to another. Now her 
 anger grew suddenly hot against Ferriss. How had he dared? 
 How had he dared to put this indignity, this outrageous insult, upon 
 her? Now her wrath turned upon Bennett. What audacity had 
 been his to believe that she would so forget herself? She set her 
 teeth in her impotent anger, rising to her feet, her hands clinching, 
 tears of sheer passion starting to her eyes. 
 
 For the greater part of the afternoon she kept to her room, 
 pacing the floor from wall to wall, trying to think clearly, to re 
 solve upon something that would readjust the situation, that would 
 give her back her peace of mind, her dignity, and her happiness of 
 the early morning. For now the great joy that had come to her 
 in his safe return was all but gone. For one moment she even told 
 herself she could not love him, but the next was willing to admit 
 that it was only because of her love of him, as strong and deep as 
 ever, that the humiliation cut so deeply and cruelly now. Ferriss 
 had lied about her, and Bennett had believed the lie. To meet 
 Bennett again under such circumstances was not to be thought of 
 for one moment. Her vacation was spoiled ; the charm of the 
 country had vanished. Lloyd returned to the city the next day. 
 
 She found that she was glad to get back to her work. The sub 
 dued murmur of the city that hourly assaulted her windows was a 
 relief to her ears after the profound and numbing silence of the 
 country. The square was never so beautiful as at this time of 
 summer, and even the restless shadow pictures, that after dark were 
 thrown upon the ceiling of her room by the electrics shining through 
 the great elms in the square below, were a pleasure. 
 
 On the morning after her arrival and as she was unpacking her 
 trunk Miss Douglass came into her room and seated herself, ac 
 cording to her custom, on the porch. After some half-hour s give- 
 and-take talk, the fever nurse said: 
 
 "Do you remember, Lloyd, what I told you about typhoid in the 
 spring that it was almost epidemic?" 
 
 Lloyd nodded, turning about from her trunk, her arms full of 
 dresses. 
 
 "It s worse than ever now," continued Miss Douglass; "three 
 of our people have been on cases only in the short time you have 
 been away. And there s a case out in Medford that has killed one 
 nurse." 
 
A Man s Woman 351 
 
 "Well!" exclaimed Lloyd in some astonishment, "it seems to 
 me that one should confine typhoid easily enough." 
 
 "Not always, not always," answered the other; "a virulent case 
 would be quite as bad as yellow fever or smallpox. You remember 
 when we were at the hospital Miss Helmuth, that little Polish 
 nurse, contracted it from her case and died even before her patient 
 did. Then there was Eva Blayne. She very nearly died. I did 
 like the way Miss Wakeley took this case out at Medford even 
 when the other nurse had died. She never hesitated for " 
 
 "Has one of our people got this case?" inquired Lloyd. 
 
 "Of course. Didn t I tell you?" 
 
 "I hope we cure it," said Lloyd, her trunk-tray in her hands. 
 "I don t think we have ever lost a case yet when good nursing could 
 pull it through, and in typhoid the whole treatment really is the 
 nursing." 
 
 "Lloyd," said Miss Douglass decisively, "I would give any 
 thing I can think of now to have been on that hip disease case of 
 yours and have brought my patient through as you did. You 
 should hear what Dr. Street says of you and the little girl s 
 father. By the way, I had nearly forgotten. Hattie Campbell 
 that s her name, isn t it ? telephoned to know if you had come back 
 from the country yet. That was yesterday. I said we expected 
 you to-day, and she told me to say she was coming to see you." 
 
 The next afternoon toward three o clock Hattie and her father 
 drove to the square in an open carriage, Hattie carrying a great 
 bunch of violets for Lloyd. The little invalid was well on the way 
 to complete recovery by now. Sometimes she was allowed to 
 walk a little, but as often as not her maid wheeled her about in an 
 invalid s chair. She drove out in the carriage frequently by way 
 of exercise. She would, no doubt, always limp a little, but in the 
 end it was certain she would be sound and strong. For Hattie and 
 her father Lloyd had become a sort of tutelary semi-deity. In what 
 was left of the family she had her place, hardly less revered than 
 even the dead wife. Campbell himself, who had made a fortune in 
 Bessemer steel, a well-looking, well-groomed gentleman, smooth- 
 shaven and with hair that was none too gray, more than once 
 caught himself standing before Lloyd s picture that stood on the 
 mantelpiece in Hattie s room, looking at it vaguely as he clipped 
 the nib from his cigar. 
 
 But on this occasion as the carriage stopped in front of the 
 ample pile of the house Hattie called out, "Oh, there she is now," 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 and Lloyd came down the steps, carrying her nurse s bag in her 
 
 hand. 
 
 "Are we too late?" began Hattie; "are you going out; are you 
 on a case? Is that why you ve got your bag? We thought you 
 were on a vacation." 
 
 Campbell, yielding to a certain feeling of uneasiness that Lloyd 
 should stand on the curb while he remained seated, got out of the 
 carriage and stood at her side, gravely listening to the talk between 
 the nurse and her one-time patient. Lloyd was obliged to explain, 
 turning now to Hattie, now to her father. She told them that she 
 was in something of a hurry. She had just been specially called 
 to take a very bad case of typhoid fever in a little suburb of the 
 city, called Medford. It was not her turn to go, but the physicians 
 in charge of the case, as sometimes happened, had asked especially 
 for her. 
 
 "One of our people, a young woman named Miss Wakeley, has 
 been on this case," she continued, "but it seems she has allowed 
 herself to contract the disease herself. She went to the hospital 
 this noon." 
 
 Campbell, his gravity suddenly broken up, exclaimed: 
 
 "Surely, Miss Searight, this is not the same case I read of in 
 yesterday s paper it must be, too Medford was the name of 
 the place. That case has killed one nurse already, and now the 
 second one is down. Don t tell me you are going to take the 
 same case." 
 
 "It is the same case," answered Lloyd, "and, of course, I am 
 going to take it. Did you ever hear of a nurse doing otherwise? 
 Why, it would seem seem so funny " 
 
 There was no dissuading her, and Campbell and Hattie soon 
 ceased even to try. She was impatient to be gone. The station was 
 close at hand, and she would not hear of taking the carriage thither. 
 However, before she left them she recurred again to the subject of 
 her letter to Mr. Campbell, and then and there it was decided that 
 Hattie and her maid should spend the following ten days at Lloyd s 
 place in Bannister. The still country air, now that Hattie was able 
 to take the short journey, would be more to her than many medi 
 cines, and the ponies and Lloyd s phaeton would be left there with 
 Lewis for her use. 
 
 "And write often, won t you, Miss Searight?" exclaimed Hattie 
 as Lloyd was saying good-by. Lloyd shook her head. 
 
 "Not that of all things," she answered. "If I did that we might 
 
A Man s Woman 353 
 
 have you, too, down with typhoid. But you may write to me, and 
 I hope you will," and she gave Hattie her new address. 
 
 "Harriet," said Campbell as the carriage drove back across the 
 square, the father and daughter waving their hands to Lloyd, briskly 
 on her way to the railroad station, "Harriet." 
 
 "Yes, papa." 
 
 "There goes a noble woman. Pluck, intelligence, strong will 
 she has them all and a great big heart that heart that " He 
 clipped the end of a cigar thoughtfully and fell silent. 
 
 A day or two later, as Hattie was sitting in her little wheel 
 chair on the veranda of Mrs. Applegate s house watching Charley- 
 Joe hunting grasshoppers underneath the currant bushes, she was 
 surprised by the sharp closing of the front gate. A huge man with 
 one squint eye and a heavy, square-cut jaw was coming up the 
 walk, followed by a strange-looking dog. Charley-Joe withdrew 
 swiftly to his particular hole under the veranda, moving rapidly, 
 his body low to the ground, taking an unnecessary number of very 
 short steps. 
 
 The little city-bred girl distinguished the visitor from a coun 
 tryman at once. Hattie had ideas of her own as to propriety, and 
 so rose to her feet as Bennett came up, and after a moment s hesi 
 tation made him a little bow. Bennett at once gravely took off his 
 cap. 
 
 "Excuse me," he said as though Hattie were twenty-five instead 
 of twelve. "Is Miss Searight at home?" 
 
 "Oh," exclaimed Hattie, delighted, "do you know Miss Sea- 
 right? She was my nurse when I was so sick because you know 
 I had hip disease and there was an operation. No, she s not here 
 any more. She s gone away, gone back to the city." 
 
 "Gone back to the city?" 
 
 "Yes, three or four days ago. But I m going to write to her 
 this afternoon. Shall I say who called?" Then, without waiting 
 for a reply, she added, "I guess I had better introduce myself. My 
 name is Harriet Campbell, and my papa is Craig V. Campbell, of 
 the Hercules Wrought Steel Company in the city. Won t you have 
 a chair?" 
 
 The little convalescent and the arctic explorer shook hanks with 
 great solemnity. 
 
 "I m so pleased tojneet you," said Bennett. "I haven t a card, 
 but my name is Ward Bennett of the Freja expedition," he added. 
 But, to his relief, the little girl had not heard of him. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 "Very well," she said, "I ll tell Miss Searight Mr. Bennett 
 called." 
 
 "No," he replied, hesitatingly, "no, you needn t do that." 
 
 "Why, she won t answer my letter, you know," explained Hattie, 
 "because she is afraid her letters would give me typhoid fever, that 
 they might" she continued carefully, hazarding a remembered 
 phrase "carry the con-ta-gion. You see, she has gone to nurse a 
 dreadful case of typhoid fever out at Medford, near the city, and 
 we re so worried and anxious about her papa and I. One nurse 
 that had this case has died already and another one has caught the 
 disease and is very sick, and Miss Searight, though she knew just 
 how dangerous it was, would go, just like like " Hattie hesi 
 tated, then confused memories of her school reader coming to her, 
 finished with "like Casabianca." 
 
 "Oh," said Bennett, turning his head so as to fix her with his 
 one good eye. "She has gone to nurse a typhoid fever patient, has 
 she?" 
 
 "Yes, and papa told me " and Hattie became suddenly very 
 grave, "that we might might oh, dear never see her again." 
 
 "Hum! Whereabouts is this place in Medford? She gave you 
 her address; what is it?" Hattie told him, and he took himself 
 abruptly away. 
 
 Bennett had gone some little distance down the road before the 
 real shock came upon him. Lloyd was in a position of imminent 
 peril; her life was in the issue. With blind, unreasoned directness 
 he leaped at once to this conclusion, and as he strode along with 
 teeth and fists tight shut he kept muttering to himself: "She may 
 die, she may die we we may never see her again." Then sudden 
 ly came the fear, the sickening sink of heart, the choke at the throat, 
 first the tightening and then the sudden relaxing of all the nerves. 
 Lashed and harried by the sense of a fearful calamity, an unspeak 
 able grief that was pursuing him, Bennett did not stop to think, 
 to reflect. He chose instantly to believe that Lloyd was near her 
 death, and once the idea was fixed in his brain it was not thereafter 
 lo be reasoned away. Suddenly, at a turn in the road, he stopped, 
 his hands deep in his pockets, his boot-heel digging into the ground. 
 "Now, then," he exclaimed, "what s to be done?" 
 
 Just one thing: Lloyd must leave the case at once, that very 
 day if it were possible. He must save he/; must turn her back 
 from this destruction toward which she was rushing, impelled by 
 such a foolish, mistaken notion of duty. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 355 
 
 "Yes," he said, "there s just that to be done, and, by God ! it 
 shall be done." 
 
 But would Lloyd be turned back from a course she had chosen 
 for herself? Could he persuade her? Then with this thought of 
 possible opposition Bennett s resolve all at once tightened to the 
 sticking point. Never in the darkest hours of his struggle with the 
 Arctic ice had his determination grown so fierce ; never had his 
 resolution so girded itself, so nerved itself to crush down resistance. 
 The force of his will seemed brusquely to be quadrupled and dec 
 upled. He would do as he desired ; come what might he would gain 
 his end. He would stop at nothing, hesitate at nothing. It would 
 probably be difficult to get her from her post, but with all his giant s 
 strength Bennett set himself to gain her safety. 
 
 A great point that he believed was in his favor, a consideration 
 that influenced him to adopt so irrevocable a resolution, was his 
 belief that Lloyd loved him. Bennett was not a woman s man. 
 Men he could understand and handle like so many manikins, but 
 the nature of his life and work did not conduce to a knowledge of 
 women. Bennett did not understand them. In his interview with 
 "Lloyd when she had so strenuously denied Ferriss s story Bennett 
 could not catch the ring of truth. It had gotten into his mind that 
 Lloyd loved him. He believed easily what he wanted to believe, 
 and his faith in Lloyd s love for him had become a part and parcel 
 of his fundamental idea of things, not readily to be driven out even 
 by Lloyd herself. 
 
 Bennett s resolution was taken. Never had he failed in accom 
 plishing that upon which he set his mind. He would not fail now. 
 Beyond a certain limit a limit which now he swiftly reached and 
 passed Bennett s determination to carry his point became, as it 
 were, a sort of obsession; the sweep of the tremendous power he 
 unchained carried his own self along with it in its resistless onrush. 
 At such times there was no light of reason in his actions. He saw 
 only his point, beheld only his goal; deaf to all voices that would 
 call him back, blind to all considerations that would lead him to 
 swerve, reckless of everything that he trampled underfoot, he stuck 
 to his aim until that aim was an accomplished fact. When the grip 
 of the Ice had threatened to close upon him and crush him, he had 
 hurled himself against its barriers with an energy and resolve to 
 conquer that was little short of directed frenzy. So it was with 
 him now. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 When Lloyd had parted from the Campbells in the square before 
 the house, she had gone directly to the railway station of a suburban 
 line, and, within the hour, was on her way to Medford. As always 
 happened when an interesting case was to be treated, her mind 
 became gradually filled with it to the exclusion of everything else. 
 The Campbells, and Bennett s ready acceptance ol a story that put 
 her in so humiliating a light, were forgotten as the train swept her 
 from the heat and dust of the city out into the green reaches of 
 country to the southward. What had been done upon the case she 
 had no means of telling. She only knew that the case was of un 
 usual virulence and well advanced. It had killed one nurse already 
 and seriously endangered the life of another, but so far from re 
 flecting on the danger to herself, Lloyd felt a certain exhilaration 
 in the thought that she was expected to succeed where others had 
 succumbed. Another battle with the Enemy was at hand, the Ene 
 my who, though conquered on a hundred fields, must inevitably 
 trumph in the end. Once again this Enemy had stooped and caught 
 a human being in his cold grip. Once again Life and Death were at 
 grapples, and Death was strong, and from out the struggles a cry 
 had come had come to her a cry lor help. 
 
 All the exuberance of battle grew big within her breast. She 
 was impatient to be there there at hand to face the Enemy 
 again across the sick-bed, where she had so often faced and out 
 fought him before; and, matching her force against his force, her 
 obstinacy against his strength the strength that would pull the 
 life from her grasp her sleepless vigilance against his stealth, her 
 intelligence against his cunning, her courage against his terrors, 
 her resistance against his attack, her skill against his strategy, her 
 science against his world-old, world-wide experience, win the fight, 
 save the life, hold firm against his slow, resistless pull, and triumph 
 again, if it was only for the day. 
 
 Succeed she would and must. Her inborn obstinacy, her sturdy 
 refusal to yield her ground, whatever it should be, her stubborn 
 power of resistance, her tenacity of her chosen course, came to her 
 aid as she drew swiftly near to the spot whereon the battle would 
 be fought. Mentally she braced herself, holding back with all her 
 fine, hard-tempered, native strefigth. No, she would not yield the 
 life to the Enemy; no, she would not give up; no, she would not 
 recede. Let the Enemy do his worst she was strong against his 
 efforts. 
 
 At Medford, which she reached toward four in the afternoon, 
 
A Man s Woman 357 
 
 after an hour s ride from the city, she found a conveyance waiting 
 for her, and was driven rapidly through streets bordered with 
 villas and closely shaven lawns to a fair-sized country seat on the 
 outskirts of the town. The housekeeper met her at the door with 
 the information that the doctor was, at the moment, in the sick 
 room, and had left orders that the nurse should be brought to him 
 the moment she arrived. The housekeeper showed Lloyd the way 
 to the second landing, knocking upon the half-open door at the end 
 of the hall, and ushering her in without waiting for an answer. 
 
 Lloyd took in the room at a glance the closely drawn curtains, 
 the screen between the bed and the windows, the doctor standing 
 on the hearth-rug, and the fever-inflamed face of the patient on the 
 pillow. Then all her power of self-repression could not keep her 
 from uttering a smothered exclamation. 
 
 For she, the woman whom, with all the savage energy of him, 
 Bennett loved, had, at peril of her life, come to nurse Bennett s 
 nearest friend, the man of all others dear to him Richard Ferriss. 
 
 VI 
 
 Two days after Dr. Pitts had brought Ferriss to his country 
 house in the outskirts of Medford he had been able to diagnose his 
 sickness as typhoid fever, and at once had set about telegraphing 
 the fact to Bennett. Then it had occurred to him that he did not 
 know where Bennett had gone. Bennett had omitted notifying him 
 of his present whereabouts, and, acting upon Dr. Pitts s advice, had 
 hidden himself away from everybody. Neither at his club nor at 
 his hotel, where his mail accumulated in extraordinary quantities, 
 had any forwarding address been left. Bennett would not even 
 know that Ferriss had been moved to Medford. So much the worse. 
 It could not be helped. There was nothing for the doctor to do 
 but to leave Bennett in ignorance and go ahead and fight for the 
 life of Ferriss as best he could. Pitts arranged for a brother phy 
 sician to take over his practice, and devoted himself entirely to 
 Ferriss. And Ferriss sickened and sickened, and went steadily from 
 bad to worse. The fever advanced regularly to a certain stage, a 
 stage of imminent danger, and there paused. Rarely had Pitts been 
 called upon to fight a more virulent form of the disease. 
 
 What made matters worse was that Ferriss hung on for so long 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 a time without change one way or another. Pitts had long since 
 been convinced of ulceration in the membrane of the intestines, but 
 it astonished him that this symptom persisted so long .without signs 
 either of progressing or diminishing. The course of the disease 
 was unusually slow. The first nurse had already had time to sicken 
 and die; a second had been infected, and yet Ferriss "hung on," 
 neither sinking nor improving, yet at every hour lying perilously 
 near death. It was not often that death and life locked horns for 
 so long, not often that the chance was so even. Many was the hour, 
 many was the moment, when a hair would have turned the balance, 
 and yet the balance was preserved. 
 
 At her abrupt recognition of Ferriss, in this patient whom she 
 had been summoned to nurse, and whose hold upon life was so piti 
 fully weak, Lloyd s heart gave a great leap and then sank ominously 
 in her breast. Her first emotion was one of boundless self-reproach. 
 Why had she not known of this? Why had she not questioned 
 Bennett more closely as to his friend s sickness? Might she not 
 have expected something like this? Was not typhoid the one evil 
 to be feared and foreseen after experiences such as Ferriss had 
 undergone the fatigue and privations of the march over the ice, 
 and the subsequent months aboard the steam whaler, with its bad 
 food, its dirt, and its inevitable overcrowding? 
 
 And while she had been idling in the country, this man, whom 
 she had known since her girlhood better and longer than any of her 
 few acquaintances, had been struck down, and day by day had 
 weakened and sickened and wasted, until now, at any hour, at any 
 moment, the life might be snuffed out like the light of a spent candle. 
 What a miserable incompetent had she been ! That day in the park 
 when she had come upon him, so weak and broken and far spent, 
 why had she not, with all her training and experience, known that 
 even then the flame was flickering down to the socket, that a link in 
 the silver chain was weakening? Now, perhaps, it was too late. 
 But quick her original obstinacy rose up in protest. No ! she would 
 not yield the life. No, no, no ; again and a thousand times no ! He 
 belonged to her. Others she had saved, others far less dear to her 
 than Ferriss. Her last patient the little girl she had caught back 
 from death at the eleventh hour, and of all men would she not 
 save Ferriss? In such sickness as this it was the nurse and not 
 the doctor who must be depended upon. And, once again, never so 
 strong, never so fine, never so glorious, her splendid independence, 
 her pride in her own strength, her indomitable self-reliance leaped 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 359 
 
 in her breast, leaped and stood firm, hard as tempered steel, head 
 to the Enemy, daring the assault, defiant, immovable, unshaken in 
 its resolve, unconquerable in the steadfast tenacity of its purpose. 
 
 The story that Ferriss had told to Bennett, that uncalled-for and 
 inexplicable falsehood, was a thing forgotten. Death stood at the 
 bedhead, and in that room the little things of life had no place. The 
 king was holding court, and the swarm of small, every-day issues, 
 like a crowd of petty courtiers, were not admitted to his presence. 
 Ferriss s life was in danger. Lloyd saw no more than that. At once 
 she set about the work. 
 
 In a few rapid sentences exchanged in low voices between her 
 and the doctor Lloyd made herself acquainted with the case. 
 
 "We ve been using the ice-pack and wet-pack to bring down the 
 temperature in place of the cold bath," the doctor explained. "I m 
 afraid of pericarditis." 
 
 "Quinine?" inquired Lloyd. 
 
 "From twenty to forty grains in the morning and evening. 
 Here s the temperature chart for the last week. If we reach this 
 point in axilla again " he indicated one hundred and two degrees 
 with a thumb-nail "we ll have to risk the cold bath, but only in 
 that case." 
 
 "And the tympanites?" 
 
 Dr. Pitts put his chin in the air. 
 
 "Grave there s an intestinal ulcer, no doubt of it, and if it 
 perforates well, we can send for the undertaker then." 
 
 "Has he had hemorrhages?" 
 
 "Two in the first week, but not profuse he seemed to rally 
 fairly well afterward. We have been injecting ether in case of 
 anaemia. Really, Miss Searight, the case is interesting, but wicked, 
 wicked as original sin. Killed off my first nurse out of hand- 
 good little boy, conscientious enough; took no care of himself; ate 
 his meals in the sick-room against my wishes ; off he went dicrotic 
 pulse, diarrhoea, vomiting, hospital, thrombosis of pulmonary artery, 
 pouf, requiescat." 
 
 "And Miss Wakeley?" 
 
 "Knocked under yesterday, and she was fairly saturated with 
 creolin night and morning. I don t know how it happened. . 
 Well, God for us all. Here he is that s the point for us." He 
 glanced toward the bed, and for the third time Lloyd looked at the 
 patient. 
 
 Ferriss was in a quiet delirium, and, at intervals, from behind 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 his lips, dry and brown and fissured, there came the sounds of low 
 and indistinct muttering. Barring a certain prominence of the 
 cheek-bones, his face was not very wasted, but its skin was a strange, 
 dusky pallor. The cold pack was about his head like a sort ,of 
 caricatured crown. 
 
 "Well," repeated Pitts in a moment, "I ve been waiting for you 
 to come to get a little rest. Was up all last night. Suppose you 
 take over charge." 
 
 Lloyd nodded her head, removing her hat and gloves, making 
 herself ready. Pitts gave her some final directions, and left her 
 alone in the sick-room. For the moment there was nothing to do 
 for the patient. Lloyd put on her hospital slippers and moved 
 silently about the room, preparing for the night, and making some 
 few changes in the matter of light and ventilation. Then for a 
 while the medicine occupied her attention, and she was at some 
 pains to carefully sort out the antiseptics and disinfectants from the 
 drugs themselves. These latter she arranged on a table by them 
 selves studying the labels assuring herself of their uses. Quinine 
 for the regular morning and evening doses, sulphonal and trional for 
 insomnia, ether for injections in case of anaemia after hemorrhage, 
 morphine for delirium, citrate of caffein for weakness of the heart, 
 tincture of valerian for the tympanites, bismuth to relieve nausea 
 and vomiting, and the crushed ice wrapped in flannel cloths for the 
 cold pack in the event of hyperpyrexia. 
 
 Later in the evening she took the temperature in the armpit, 
 noted the condition of the pulse, and managed to get Ferriss still 
 in his quiet, muttering delirium to drink a glass of peptonized 
 milk. She administered the quinine, reading the label, as was her 
 custom, three times, once as she took it up, again as she measured 
 the dose, and a last time as she returned the bottle to its place. 
 Everything she did, every minute change in Ferriss s condition, 
 she entered upon a chart, so that in the morning when Dr. Pitts 
 should relieve her he could grasp the situation at a glance. 
 
 The night passed without any but the expected variations of 
 the pulse and temperature, though toward daylight Lloyd could 
 fancy that Ferriss, for a few moments, came out of his delirium and 
 was conscious of his surroundings. For a few seconds his eyes 
 seemed to regain something of their intelligence, and his glance 
 moved curiously about the room. But Lloyd, sitting near the foot 
 board of the bed, turned her head from him. It was not expedient 
 that Ferriss should recognize her now. 
 
A Man s Woman 361 
 
 \ 
 
 Lloyd could not but commend the wisdom of bringing Ferriss 
 to Dr. Pitts s own house in so quiet a place as Medford. The doctor 
 risked nothing. He was without a family, the only other occupants 
 of the house being the housekeeper and cook. On more than one 
 occasion, when an interesting case needed constant watching, Pitts 
 had used his house as a sanatorium. Quiet as the little village itself 
 was, the house was removed some little distance from its outskirts. 
 The air was fine and pure. The stillness, the calm, the unbroken re 
 pose, was almost Sabbath-like. In the early watches of the night, 
 just at the turn of the dawn, Lloyd heard the faint rumble of a 
 passing train at the station nearly five miles away. For hours that 
 and the prolonged stridulating of the crickets were the only sounds. 
 Then at last, while it was yet dark, a faint chittering of waking 
 birds began from under the eaves and from the apple-trees in the 
 yard about the house. Lloyd went to the window, and, drawing 
 aside the curtains, stood there for a moment looking out. She could 
 see part of the road leading to the town, and, in the distance, the 
 edge of the town itself, a few well-kept country residences of subur 
 ban dwellers of the city, and, further on, a large, rectangular, brick 
 building with cupola and flagstaff, perhaps the public school or the 
 bank or the Odd Fellows Hall. Nearer by were fields and cor 
 ners of pasture land, with here and there the formless shapes of 
 drowsing cows. One of these, as Lloyd watched, changed position, 
 and she could almost hear the long, deep breath that accompanied 
 the motion. Far off, miles upon miles, so it seemed, a rooster was 
 crowing at exact intervals. All at once, and close at hand, another 
 answered a gay, brisk carillon that woke the echoes in an instant. 
 For the first time Lloyd noticed a pale, dim belt of light low in the 
 east. 
 
 Toward eight o clock in the morning the doctor came to relieve 
 her, and while he was examining the charts and she was making 
 her report for the night the housekeeper announced breakfast. 
 
 "Go down to your breakfast, Miss Searight," said the doctor. 
 "I ll stay here the while. The housekeeper will show you to your 
 room." 
 
 But before breakfasting Lloyd went to the room the housekeeper 
 had set apart for her a different one than had been occupied by 
 either of the previous nurses changed her dress, and bathed her 
 face and hands in a disinfecting solution. When she came out of 
 her room the doctor met her in the hall ; his hat and stick were in 
 his hand. "He has gone to sleep," he informed her, "and is resting 
 
 P III NORRIS 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 quietly. I am going to get a mouthful of fresh air along the road. 
 The housekeeper is with him. If he wakes she ll call him. I will not 
 be gone fifteen minutes. I ve not been out of the house for five 
 days, and there s no danger." 
 
 Breakfast had been laid in what the doctor spoke of as the glass- 
 room. This was an inclosed veranda, one side being of glass and 
 opening by French windows directly upon a little lawn that sloped 
 away under the apple-trees to the road. It was a charming apart 
 ment, an idea of a sister of Dr. Pitts, who at one time had spent 
 two years at Medford. Lloyd breakfasted here alone, and it was 
 here that Bennett found her. 
 
 The one public carriage of Medford, a sort of four-seated carry 
 all, that met all the trains at the depot, had driven to the gate at 
 the foot of the yard, and had pulled up, the horses reeking and 
 blowing. Even before it had stopped, a tall, square-shouldered man 
 had alighted, but it was not until he was half-way up the gravel 
 walk that Lloyd had recognized him. Bennett caught sight of her 
 at the same moment, and strode swiftly across the lawn and came 
 into the breakfast-room by one of the open French windows. At 
 once the room seemed to shrink in size; his first step upon the floor 
 a step that was almost a stamp, so eager it was, so masterful and 
 resolute set the panes of glass jarring in their frames. Never 
 had Bennett seemed more out of place than in this almost dainty 
 breakfast-room, with its small, feminine appurtenances, its fragile 
 glassware, its pots of flowers and growing plants. The incon 
 gruous surroundings emphasized his every roughness, his every 
 angularity. Against its background of delicate, mild tints his figure 
 loomed suddenly colossal ; the great span of his chest and shoulders 
 seemed never so huge. His face; the great, brutal jaw, with its 
 aggressive, bullying, forward thrust; the close-gripped lips, the 
 contracted forehead, the small eyes, marred with the sharply defined 
 cast, appeared never so harsh, never so massive, never so significant 
 of the resistless, crude force of the man, his energy, his overpowering 
 determination. As he towered there before her, one hand gripped 
 upon a chair-back, it seemed to her that the hand had but to close 
 to crush the little varnished woodwork to a splinter, and when he 
 spoke Lloyd could imagine that the fine, frail china of the table 
 vibrated to the deep-pitched bass of his voice. 
 
 Lloyd had only to look at him once to know that Bennett was 
 at the moment aroused and agitated to an extraordinary degree. 
 His face was congested and flaming. Under his frown his eyes 
 
A Man s Woman 363 
 
 seemed flashing veritable sparks; his teeth were set; in his temple 
 a vein stood prominent and throbbing. But Lloyd was not sur 
 prised. Bennett had, no doubt, heard of Ferriss s desperate illness. 
 Small wonder he was excited when the life of his dearest friend was 
 threatened. Lloyd could ignore her own quarrel with Bennett at 
 such a moment. 
 
 "I am so sorry," she began, "that you could not have known 
 sooner. But you remember you left no address. There was " 
 
 "What are you doing here?" he broke in abruptly. "What is 
 the use why" he paused for a moment to steady his voice "you 
 can t stay here," he went on. "Don t you know the risk you are 
 running? You can t stay here another moment." 
 
 "That," answered Lloyd, smiling, "is a matter that is interest 
 ing chiefly to me. I suppose you know that, Mr. Bennett." 
 
 "I know that you are risking your life and " 
 
 "And that, too, is my affair." 
 
 "I have made it mine," he responded quickly. "Oh," he ex 
 claimed sharply, striking the back of the chair with his open palm, 
 "why must we always be at cross-purposes with each other? I m 
 not good at talking. What is the use of tangling ourselves with 
 phrases? I love you, and I ve come out here to ask you, to beg 
 you, you understand, to leave this house, where you are foolishly 
 risking your life. You must do it," he went on rapidly. "I love 
 you too well. Your life is too much to me to allow you to hazard 
 it senselessly, foolishly. There are other women, other nurses, who 
 can take your place. But you are not going to stay here." 
 
 Lloyd felt her indignation rising. 
 
 "This is my profession," she answered, trying to keep back her 
 anger. "I am here because it is my duty to be here." Then sud 
 denly, as his extraordinary effrontery dawned upon her, she ex 
 claimed, rising to her feet: "Do I need to explain to you what I do? 
 I am here because I choose to be here. That is enough. I don t 
 care to go any further with such a discussion as this." 
 
 "You will not leave here, then?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Bennett hesitated an instant, searching for his words, then: 
 
 "I do not know how to ask favors. I ve had little experience in 
 that sort of thing. You must know how hard it is for me, and you 
 must understand to what lengths I am driven then, when I entreat 
 you, when I beg of you, as humbly as it is possible for me to do 
 so, to leave this house, now at once. There is a train to the city 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 within the hour; some one else can take your place before noon. 
 We can telegraph ; will you go ?" 
 
 "You are absurd." 
 
 "Lloyd, can t you see ; don t you understand ? It s as though I 
 saw you rushing toward a precipice with your eyes shut." 
 
 "My place is here. I shall not leave." 
 
 But Bennett s next move surprised her. His eagerness, his agi 
 tation left him upon the instant. He took out his watch. 
 
 "I was wrong," he said quietly. "The next train will not go 
 for an hour and a quarter. There is more time than I supposed." 
 Then, with as much gentleness as he could command, he added: 
 "Lloyd, you are going to take that train !" 
 
 "Now, you are becoming a little more than absurd," she answered. 
 "I don t know, Mr. Bennett, whether or not you intend to be offen 
 sive, but I think you are succeeding rather well. You came to this 
 house uninvited ; you invade a gentleman s private residence, and 
 you attempt to meddle and to interfere with me in the practice of 
 my profession. If you think you can impress me with heroics and 
 declamation, please correct yourself at once. You have only suc 
 ceeded in making yourself a little vulgar." 
 
 "That may be true or not," he answered with an indifferent 
 movement of his shoulders. "It is all one to me. I have made up 
 my mind that you shall leave this house this morning, and believe 
 me, Miss Searight, I shall carry my point." 
 
 For the moment Lloyd caught her breath. For the moment 
 she saw clearly with just what sort of man she had to deal. There 
 was a conviction in his manner now that he had quieted himself 
 that suddenly appeared unanswerable. It was like the slow, still 
 moving of a piston. 
 
 But the next moment her own character reasserted itself. She 
 remembered what she was herself. If he was determined, she was 
 obstinate; if he was resolved, she was stubborn; if he was power 
 ful, she was unyielding. Never had she conceded her point before ; 
 never had she allowed herself to be thwarted in the pursuance of 
 a course she believed to be right. Was she, of all women, to yield 
 now? The consciousness of her own power of resistance came 
 suddenly to her aid. Bennett was strong, but was she not strong 
 herself? Where under the blue sky was the power that could break 
 down her will? When death itself could not prevail against her, 
 what in life could shake her resolution? 
 
 Suddenly the tremendous import of the moment, the magnitude 
 
A Man s Woman 365 
 
 of the situation, flashed upon Lloyd. Both of them had staked 
 everything upon this issue. Two characters of extraordinary power 
 clashed violently together. There was to be no compromise, 
 no, half-measures. Either she or Bennett must in the end be 
 beaten. One of them was to be broken and humbled beyond all 
 retrieving. There in that commonplace little room, with its trivial 
 accessories, its inadequate background, a battle royal swiftly pre 
 pared itself. With the abruptness of an explosion the crisis devel 
 oped. 
 
 "Do I need to tell you," remarked Bennett, "that your life is 
 rather more to me than any other consideration in the world? Do 
 you suppose when the lives of every member of my command de 
 pended upon me I was any less resolved to succeed than I am now? 
 I succeeded then, and I shall succeed now, now when there is much 
 more at stake. I am not accustomed to failure, and I shall not fail 
 now. I assure you that I shall stop at nothing." 
 
 It was beyond Lloyd to retain her calmness under such aggres 
 sion. It seemed as though her self-respect demanded that she 
 should lose her temper. 
 
 "And you think you can drive me as you drove your deck 
 hands?" she exclaimed. "What have you to do with me? Am I 
 your subordinate ? Do you think you can bully me ? We are not in 
 Kolyuchin Bay, Mr. Bennett." 
 
 "You re the woman I love," he answered with an abrupt return 
 of vehemence, "and, by God ! I shall stop at nothing to save your 
 life." 
 
 "And my love for you, that you pretend is so much to you, I 
 suppose that this is the means you take to awaken it. Admitting, 
 for the moment, that you could induce me to shirk my duty, how 
 should I love you for it? Ask yourself that." 
 
 But Bennett had but one answer to all her words. He struck his 
 fist into the palm of his hand as he answered : 
 
 "Your life is more to me than any other consideration." 
 
 "But my life how do you know it is a question of my life? 
 Come, if we are to quarrel, let us quarrel upon reasonable grounds. 
 It does not follow that I risk my life by staying " 
 
 "Leave the house first; we can talk of that afterward." 
 
 "I have allowed you to talk too much already," she exclaimed 
 angrily. "Let us come to the bottom of things at once. I will not 
 be influenced nor cajoled nor bullied into leaving my post. Now, 
 do you understand? That is my final answer. You who were a 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 commander, who were a leader of men, what would you have done 
 if one of your party had left his post at a time of danger? I can 
 tell you what you would have done you would have shot him, 
 after first disgracing him, and now you would disgrace me. Is it 
 reasonable? Is it consistent?" 
 
 Bennett snapped his fingers. 
 
 "That for consistency !" 
 
 "And you would be willing to disgrace me to have me disgrace 
 myself?" 
 
 "Your life " began Bennett again. 
 
 But suddenly Lloyd flashed out upon him with : "My life ! My 
 life! Are there not some things better than life? You, above all 
 men, should understand that much. Oh, be yourself, be the man I 
 thought you were. You have your code; let me have mine. You 
 could not be what you are, you could not have done what you did, 
 if you had not set so many things above merely your life. Admit 
 that you could not have loved me unless you believed that I could 
 do the same. How could you still love me if you knew I had 
 failed in my duty? How could you still love me if you knew that 
 you had broken down my will? I know you better than you know 
 yourself. You loved me because you knew me to be strong and 
 brave and to be above petty deceptions and shams and subterfuges. 
 And now you ask me to fail, to give up, to shirk, and you tell me you 
 do so because you love me." 
 
 "That is all so many words to me. I can not argue with 
 you, and there is no time for it. I did not come here to 
 converse." 
 
 Never in her life before had Lloyd been so angry as at that 
 moment. The sombre crimson of her cheeks had suddenly given 
 place to an unwonted paleness; even her dull-blue eyes, that so 
 rarely sparkled, were all alight. She straightened herself. 
 
 "Very well, then," she answered quietly, "Our conversation can 
 stop where it is. You will excuse me, Mr. Bennett, if I leave you. 
 I have my work to do." 
 
 Bennett was standing between her and the door. He did not 
 move. Very gravely he said: 
 
 "Don t. Please don t bring it to that." 
 
 Lloyd flashed a look at him, her eyes wide, exclaiming: 
 
 "You don t mean you don t dare " 
 
 "I tell you again that I mean to carry my point." 
 
 "And I tell you that I shall not leave my patient" 
 
A Man s Woman 367 
 
 Bennett met her glance for an instant, and, holding her gaze 
 with his, answered but two words. Speaking in a low voice and 
 with measured slowness, he said: 
 
 "You shall." 
 
 There was a silence. The two stood there, looking straight into 
 one another s eyes, their mutual opposition at its climax. The sec 
 onds began to pass. The conflict between the man s aggression and 
 the woman s resistance reached its turning point. Before another 
 word should be spoken, before the minute should pass, one of the 
 two must give ground. 
 
 And then it was that Lloyd felt something break down within 
 her, something to which she could not put a name. A mysterious 
 element of her character, hitherto rigid and intact, was beginning 
 at last to crumble. Somewhere a breach had been opened; some 
 where the barrier had been undermined. The fine steadfastness that 
 was hers, and that she had so dearly prized, her strength in which 
 she had gloried, her independence, her splendid arrogant self-con 
 fidence and conscious power, seemed all at once to weaken before 
 this iron resolve that shut its ears and eyes, this colossal, untu 
 tored, savage intensity of purpose. 
 
 And abruptly her eyes were opened, and the inherent weakness 
 of her sex became apparent to her. Was it a mistake, then ? Could 
 not a woman be strong? Was her strength grafted upon elemental 
 weakness not her individual weakness, but the weakness of her 
 sex, the intended natural weakness of the woman? Had she built 
 her fancied impregnable fortress upon sand? 
 
 But habit was too strong. For an instant, brief as the opening 
 and shutting of an eye, a vision was vouchsafed to her, one of those 
 swift glimpses into unplumbed depths that come sometimes to the 
 human mind in the moments of its exaltation, but that are gone 
 with such rapidity that they may not be trusted. For an instant 
 Lloyd saw deep down into the black, mysterious gulf of sex 
 down, down, down where, immeasurably below the world of little 
 things, the changeless, dreadful machinery of Life itself worked, 
 clashing and resistless in its grooves. It was a glimpse fortunately 
 brief, a vision that does not come too often, lest reason, brought to 
 the edge of the abyss, grow giddy at the sight and, reeling, topple 
 headlong. But quick the vision passed, the gulf closed, and she felt 
 the firm ground again beneath her feet. 
 
 "I shall not," she cried. 
 
 Was it the same woman who had spoken but one moment before? 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 Did her voice ring with the same undaunted defiance? Was there 
 not a note of despair in her tones, a barely perceptible quaver, the 
 symbol of her wavering resolve? Was not the very fact that she 
 must question her strength proof positive that her strength was 
 waning ? 
 
 But her courage was unshaken, even if her strength was break 
 ing. To the last she would strive, to the end she would hold her 
 forehead high. Not till the last hope had been tried would she 
 acknowledge her defeat. 
 
 "But in any case," she said, "risk is better than certainty. If I 
 risk my life by staying, it is certain that he will die if I leave him 
 at this critical moment." 
 
 "So much the worse, then you can not stay." 
 
 Lloyd stared at him in amazement. 
 
 "It isn t possible; I don t believe you can understand. Do you 
 know how sick he is? Do you know that he is lying at the point 
 of death at this very moment, and that the longer I stay away from 
 him the more his life is in peril ? Has he not rights as well as I ; 
 has he not a right to live? It is not only my own humiliation that 
 is at stake, it is the life of your dearest friend, the man who stood by 
 you, and helped you, and who suffered the same hardships and pri 
 vations as yourself." 
 
 "What s that ?" demanded Bennett with a sudden frown. 
 
 "If I leave Mr. Ferriss now, if he is left alone here for so much 
 as half an hour, I will not answer " 
 
 "Ferriss ! What are you talking about ? What is your patient s 
 name ?" 
 
 "Didn t you know?" 
 
 "Ferriss ! Dick Ferriss ! Don t tell me it s Dick Ferriss." 
 
 "I thought all the time you knew that you had heard. Yes, it is 
 Mr. Ferriss." 
 
 "Is he very sick? What is he doing out here? No, I had not 
 heard ; nobody told me. Pitts was to write to to wire. Will he 
 pull through? What s the matter with him? Is it he who had 
 typhoid?" 
 
 "He is very dangerously ill. Dr. Pitts brought him here. This 
 is his house. We do not know if he will get well. It is only 
 by watching him every instant that we can hope for anything. At 
 this moment there is no one with him but a servant. Now, Mr. 
 Bennett, am I to go to my patient ?" 
 
 "But but we can get some one else." 
 
A Man s Woman 369 
 
 "Not before three hours, and it s only the truth when I tell you 
 he may die at any minute. Am I to go?" 
 
 In a second of time the hideous situation leaped up before Ben 
 nett s eyes. Right or wrong, the conviction that Lloyd was terribly 
 imperiling her life by remaining at her patient s bedside had sunk 
 into his mind and was not be eradicated. It was a terror that had 
 gripped him close and that could not be reasoned away. But Fer- 
 riss? What of him? Now it had brusquely transpired that his life, 
 too, hung in the balance. How to decide? How to meet this abon- 
 inable complication wherein he must sacrifice the woman he so 
 dearly loved or the man who was the Damon to his Pythias, the 
 Jonathan to his David? 
 
 "Am I to go ?" repeated Lloyd for the third time. 
 
 Bennett closed his eyes, clasping his head with both hands. 
 
 "Great God, wait wait I can t think I I, oh, this is ter 
 rible !" 
 
 Lloyd drove home her advantage mercilessly. 
 
 "Wait? I tell you we can t wait." 
 
 Then Bennett realized with a great spasm of horror that for 
 him there was no going back. All his life, accustomed to quick 
 decisions in moments of supreme peril, he took his decision now, 
 facing, with such courage as he could muster, its unspeakable con 
 sequences, consequences that he knew must harry and hound him 
 all the rest of his life. Whichever way he decided, he opened his 
 heart to the beak and talons of a pitiless remorse. He could no 
 longer see, in the dreadful confusion of his mind, the right of things 
 or the wrong of things, could not accurately weigh chances or pos 
 sibilities. For him only two alternatives presented themselves, the 
 death of Ferriss or the death of Lloyd. He could see no compro 
 mise, could imagine no escape. It was as though a headsman with 
 ready axe stood at his elbow, awaiting his commands. And, be 
 sides all this, he had long since passed the limit though perhaps he 
 did not know it himself where he could see anything but the point 
 he had determined to gain, the goal he had determined to reach. His 
 mind was made up. His furious energy, his resolve to conquer at 
 all costs, had become at last a sort of directed frenzy. The engine 
 he had set in motion was now beyond his control. He could not 
 now whether he would or no reverse its action, swerve it from its 
 iron path, call k back from the monstrous catastrophe toward which 
 it was speeding him. 
 
 "God help us all!" he muttered. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 "Well," said Lloyd expectantly. 
 
 Bennett drew a deep breath, his hands falling helplessly at his 
 sides. In a way he appeared suddenly bowed; the great frame of 
 bone and sinew seemed in some strange, indefinable manner to 
 shrink, to stagger under the sudden assumption of an intolerable 
 burden a burden that was never to be lifted. 
 
 Even then, however, Bennett still believed in the wisdom of 
 his course, still believed himself to be right. But, right or 
 wrong, he now must go forward. Was it fate, was it doom, was 
 it destiny? 
 
 Bennett s entire life had been spent in the working out of great 
 ideas in the face of great obstacles; continually he had been called 
 upon to overcome enormous difficulties with enormous strength. 
 For long periods of time he had been isolated from civilization, had 
 been face to face with the simple, crude forces of an elemental 
 world forces that were to be combated and overthrown by means 
 no less simple and crude than themselves. He had lost the faculty, 
 possessed, no doubt, by smaller minds, of dealing with complicated 
 situations. To resort to expedients, to make concessions, was all 
 beyond him. For him a thing was absolutely right or absolutely 
 wrong, and between the two there was no gradation. For so long a 
 time had he looked at the larger, broader situations of life that his 
 mental vision had become all deformed and confused. He saw 
 things invariably magnified beyond all proportion, or else dwarfed 
 to a littleness that was beneath consideration. Normal vision was 
 denied him. It was as though he studied the world through one or 
 the other end of a telescope, and when, as at present, his emotions 
 were aroused, matters were only made the worse. The idea that 
 Ferriss might recover, though Lloyd should leave him at this mo 
 ment, hardly presented itself to his mind. He was convinced that 
 if Lloyd went away Ferriss would die; Lloyd had said as much 
 herself. The hope that Lloyd might, after all, nurse him through 
 his sickness without danger to herself was so remote that he did not 
 consider it for one instant. If Lloyd remained she, like the other 
 nurse, would contract the disease and die. 
 
 These were the half-way measures Bennett did not understand, 
 the expedients he could no longer see. It was either Lloyd or Fer 
 riss. He must choose between them. 
 
 Bennett went to the door of the room, closed it and leaned 
 against it. 
 
 "No," he said. 
 
A Man s Woman 371 
 
 Lloyd was stricken speechless. For the instant she shrank before 
 him as if from a murderer. Bennett now knew precisely the ter 
 rible danger in which he left the man who was his dearest friend. 
 Would he actually consent to his death? It was almost beyond 
 belief, and for the moment Lloyd herself quailed before him. Her 
 first thoughts were not of herself, but of Ferriss. If he was Ben 
 nett s friend he was her friend, too. At that very moment he might 
 be dying for want of her care. She was fast becoming desperate. 
 For the moment she could put all thought of herself and of her own 
 dignity in the background. 
 
 "What is it you want?" she cried. "Is it my humiliation you 
 ask ? Well, then, you have it. It is as hard for me to ask favors as 
 it is for you. I am as proud as you, but I entreat you, you hear me, 
 as humbly as I can, to let me go. What do you want more than 
 that? Oh, can t you understand? While we talk here, while you 
 keep me here, he may be dying. Is it a time for arguments, is it a 
 time for misunderstandings, is it a time to think of ourselves, of 
 our own lives, our own little affairs?" She clasped her hands. 
 "W T ill you please can I, can I say more than that; will you please 
 let me go?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 With a great effort Lloyd tried to regain her self-control. She 
 paused a moment, then : 
 
 "Listen !" she said. "You say that you love me ; that I am more 
 to you than even Mr. Ferriss, your truest friend. I do not wish 
 to think of myself at such a time as this, but supposing that you 
 should make me that I should consent to leave my patient. Think 
 of me then, afterward. Can I go back there to the house, the house 
 that I built? Can I face the women of my profession? What would 
 they think of me? What would my friends think of me I who 
 have held my head so high? You will ruin my life. I should have 
 to give up my profession. Oh, can t you see in what position you 
 would place me?" Suddenly the tears sprang to her eyes. "No!" 
 she cried vehemently. "No, no, no, I will not, I will not be dis 
 graced!" 
 
 "I have no wish to disgrace you," answered Bennett. "It is 
 strange for you to say that to me, if I love you so well that I can 
 give up Ferriss for " 
 
 "Then, if you love me so much as that, there must be one thing 
 that you would set even above my life. Dq you wish to make me 
 hate you?" 
 
372 A Man s Woman 
 
 "There is nothing in the world more to me than your life ; you 
 know that. How can you think it of me ?" 
 
 "Because you don t understand because you don t know that 
 oh, that I love you ! I no I didn t mean I didn t mean" 
 
 What had she said? What had happened? How was it that 
 the words that yesterday she would have been ashamed to so much 
 as whisper to herself had now rushed to her lips almost of their 
 own accord? After all those years of repression, suddenly the 
 sweet, dim thought she had hidden in her secretest heart s heart had 
 leaped to light and to articulate words. Unasked, unbidden, she 
 had told him that she loved him. She, she had done this thing when, 
 but a few moments before, her anger against him had shaken her 
 to her very finger-tips. The hot, intolerable shame of it smote like 
 fire into her face. Her world was cracking about her ears; every 
 thing she had prized the dearest was being torn from her, every 
 thing she had fancied the strongest was being overthrown. Had 
 she, she who had held herself so proud and high, come at last 
 to this? 
 
 Swiftly she turned from him and clasped her hands before her 
 eyes and sank down into the chair she had quitted, bowing her head 
 upon her arms, hiding her face, shutting herself from the light of 
 day, quivering and thrilling with an agony of shame and with an 
 utter, an abject self-contempt that was beyond all power of expres 
 sion. But the instant she felt Bennett s touch upon her shoulder 
 she sprang up as if a knife had pierced her, and shrank from him, 
 turning her head away, her hand, palm outward, before her eyes. 
 
 "Oh, please !" she begged piteously, almost inarticulately in the 
 stress of her emotion, "don t if you are a man don t take advan 
 tage please, please don t touch me. Let me go away." 
 
 She was talking to deaf ears. In two steps Bennett had reached 
 her side and had taken her in his arms. Lloyd could not resist. 
 Her vigor of body as well as of mind was crushed and broken and 
 beaten down; and why was it that in spite of her shame, that in 
 spite of her unutterable self-reproach, the very touch of her cheek 
 upon his shoulder was a comfort? Why was it that to feel herself 
 carried away in the rush of this harsh, impetuous, masculine power 
 was a happiness ? Why was it that to know that her prided fortitude 
 and hitherto unshaken power were being overwhelmed and broken 
 with a brutal, ruthless strength was an exultation and a glory? 
 Why was it that she who but a moment before quailed from his 
 lightest touch now put her arms about his neck and clung to him 
 
A Man s Woman 373 
 
 with a sense of protection and of refuge, the need of which she had 
 always and until that very moment disdained? 
 
 "Why should you be sorry because you spoke?" said Bennett. 
 "I knew that you loved me and you knew that I loved you. What 
 does it matter if you said it or did not say it ? We know each other, 
 you and I. We understand. You knew that I loved you. You 
 think that I have been strong and determined, and have done the 
 things I set out to do; what I am is what you made me. What I 
 have done I have done because I thought you would approve. Do 
 you think I would have come back if I had not known that I was 
 coming back to you?" Suddenly an impatient exclamation escaped 
 him, and his clasp about her tightened. "Oh! words the mere 
 things that one can say seem so pitiful, so miserably inadequate. 
 Don t you know, can t you feel what you are to me? Tell me, do you 
 think I love you ?" 
 
 But she could not bear to meet his glance just yet. Her eyes 
 were closed, and she could only nod her head. 
 
 But Bennett took her head in both his hands and turned her 
 face to his. Even yet she kept her eyes closed. 
 
 "Lloyd," he said, and his voice was almost a command; "Lloyd, 
 look at me. Do you love me?" 
 
 She drew a deep breath. Then her sweet dull-blue eyes opened, 
 and through the tears that brimmed them and wet her lashes she 
 looked at him and met his glance fearlessly and almost proudly, and 
 her voice trembled and vibrated with an infinite tenderness as she 
 answered : 
 
 "I do love you, Ward; love you with all my heart." 
 
 Then, after a pause, she said, drawing a little from him and 
 resting a hand upon either shoulder : 
 
 "But, listen, dear; we must not think of ourselves now. We 
 must think of him, so sick and weak and helpless. This is a terrible 
 moment in our lives. I don t know why it has come to us. I don t 
 know why it should all have happened as it has this morning. Just 
 a few moments ago I was angry as I never was in my life before 
 and at you and now it seems to me that I never was so happy; I 
 don t know myself any more. Everything is confused ; all we can do 
 is to hold to what we know is right and trust that everything will 
 be well in the end. It is a crisis, isn t it? And all our lives and all 
 our happiness depend upon how we meet it. I am all different now. 
 I am not the woman I was a half-hour ago. You must be brave 
 for me now, and you must be strong for me and help me to do my 
 
274 A Man s Woman 
 
 duty. We must live up to the best that is in us and do what we 
 think is right, no matter what risks we run, no matter what the 
 consequences are. I would not have asked you to help me before 
 before what has happened but now I need your help. You have 
 said I helped you to be brave; help me to be brave now, and to 
 do what I know is right." 
 
 But Bennett was still blind. If she had been dear to him before, 
 how doubly so had she become since she had confessed her love for 
 him! Ferriss was forgotten, ignored. He could not let her go, he 
 could not let her run the slightest risk. Was he to take any chance 
 of losing her now ? He shook his head. 
 
 "Ward!" she exclaimed with deep and serious earnestness, "if 
 you do not wish me to risk my life by going to my post, be careful, 
 oh, be very careful, that you do not risk something that is more 
 to us both than life itself, by keeping me from it. Do you think I 
 could love you so deeply and so truly as I do if I had not kept my 
 standards high ; if I had not believed in the things that were better 
 than life, and stronger than death, and dearer to me than even love 
 itself? There are some things I can not do: I can not be false, I 
 can not be cowardly, I can not shirk my duty. Now I am helpless 
 in your hands. You have conquered, and you can do with me as 
 you choose. But if you make me do what is false, and! what is 
 cowardly, and what is dishonorable; if you stand between me and 
 what I know is my duty, how can I love you, how can I love you ?" 
 
 Persistently, perversely, Bennett stopped his ears to every con 
 sideration, to every argument. She wished to hazard her life. That 
 was all he understood. 
 
 "No, Lloyd," he answered, "you must not do it." 
 
 " and I want to love you," she went on, as though she had not 
 heard. "I want you to be everything to me. I have trusted you 
 so long had faith in you so long, I don t want to think of you as 
 the man who failed me when I most needed his help, who made me 
 do the thing that was contemptible and unworthy. Believe me," she 
 went on with sudden energy, "you will kill my love for you if you 
 persist." 
 
 But before Bennett could answer there was a cry. 
 
 "It is the servant," exclaimed Lloyd quickly. "She has been 
 watching there in the room with him." 
 
 "Nurse Miss Searight," came the cry, "quick there is some 
 thing wrong I don t know oh, hurry !" 
 
 "Do you hear?" cried Lloyd. "It is the crisis he may be dying. 
 
A Man s Woman 375 
 
 Oh, Ward, it is the man you love ! We can save him." She stamped 
 her foot in the frenzy of her emotion, her hands twisting together. 
 "I will go. I forbid you to keep to hinder to to, oh, what is to 
 become of us ? If you love me, if you love him Ward, will you let 
 me go?" 
 
 Bennett put his hands over his ears, his eyes closed. In the 
 horror of that moment, when he realized that no matter how he 
 might desire it he could not waver in his resolution, it seemed to him 
 that his reason must give way. But he set his back to the door, his 
 hand gripped tight upon the knob, and through his set teeth his 
 answer came as before : 
 "No." 
 
 "Nurse Miss Searight, where are you? Hurry, oh, hurry!" 
 
 "Will you let me go?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Lloyd caught at his hand, shut so desperately upon the knob, 
 striving to loosen his clasp. She hardly knew what she was doing; 
 she threw her arms about his neck, imploring, commanding, now 
 submissive, now imperious, her voice now vibrating with anger, 
 now trembling with passionate entreaty. 
 
 "You are not only killing him, you are killing my love for you 
 will you let me go? the love that is so dear to me? Let me love 
 you, Ward ; listen to me ; don t make me hate you ; let me love you, 
 dear" 
 
 "Hurry, oh, hurry!" 
 
 "Let me love you ; let him live. I want to love you. It s the 
 best happiness in my life. Let me be happy. Can t you see what 
 this moment is to mean for us? It is our happiness or wretched 
 ness forever. Will you let me go?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "For the last time, Ward, listen ! It is my love for you and his 
 life. Don t crush us both yes, and yourself. You who can, who 
 are so powerful, don t trample all our happiness underfoot." 
 
 "Hurry, hurry; oh, will nobody come to help?" 
 
 "Will you let me go?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Her strength seemed all at once to leave her. All the fabric of 
 her character, so mercilessly assaulted, appeared in that moment to 
 reel, topple, and go crashing to its wreck. She was shattered, 
 broken, humbled, and beaten down to the dust. Her pride was gone, 
 her faith in herself was gone, her fine, strong energy was gone. The 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 pity of it, the grief of it; all that she had held dearest; her fine and 
 confident steadfastness; the great love that had brought such hap 
 piness into her life that had been her inspiration all torn from her 
 and tossed aside like chaff. And her patient Ferriss, the man who 
 loved her, who had undergone such suffering, such hardship, who 
 trusted her and whom it was her duty to nurse back to life and 
 health if he should perish for want of her care, then what infinite 
 sorrow, then what endless remorse, then what long agony of unavail 
 ing regret! Her world, her universe grew dark to her; she was 
 driven from her firm stand. She was lost, she was whirled away 
 away with the storm, landmarks obliterated, lights gone ; away with 
 the storm ; out into the darkness, out into the void, out into the 
 waste places and wilderness and trackless desolation. 
 
 "Hurry, oh, hurry!" 
 
 It was too late. She had failed ; the mistake had been made, the 
 question had been decided. That insensate, bestial determination, 
 iron-hearted, iron-strong, had beaten down opposition and carried 
 its point. Life and love had been crushed beneath its trampling 
 without pity, without hesitation. The tragedy of the hour was 
 done; the tragedy of the long years to come was just beginning. 
 
 Lloyd sank down in the chair before the table, and the head that 
 she had held so high bowed down upon her folded arms. The 
 violence of her grief shook her from head to foot like a dry, light 
 weed. Her heart seemed literally to be breaking. She must set 
 her teeth with all her strength to keep from groaning aloud, from 
 crying out in her hopeless sorrow, her impotent shame and despair. 
 
 Once more came the cry for help. Then the house fell silent. 
 The minutes passed. But for Lloyd s stifled grief there was no 
 sound. Bennett leaning heavily against the door, his great shoul 
 ders stooping and bent, his face ashen, his eyes fixed did not 
 move. He did not speak to Lloyd. There was no word of comfort 
 he could address to her that would have seemed the last mockery. 
 He had prevailed, as he knew he should, as he knew he must, when 
 once his resolve was taken. The force that, once it was unleashed, 
 was beyond him to control, had accomplished its purpose. His will 
 remained unbroken; but at what cost? However, that was for 
 future consideration. The costs?. Had he not his whole life before 
 him in which to count them? The present moment still called upon 
 him to act. He looked at his watch. 
 
 The next quarter of an hour was all a confusion to him. Its in 
 cidents refused to define themselves upon his memory when after- 
 
A Man s Woman 377 
 
 ward he tried to recall them. He could remember, however, that 
 when he helped Lloyd into the carryall that was to take her to the 
 depot in the village she had shrunk from his touch and had drawn 
 away from him as if from a criminal a murderer. He placed her 
 satchel on the front seat with the driver, and got up beside the 
 driver himself. She had drawn her veil over her face, and during 
 the drive sat silent and motionless. 
 
 "Can you make it?" asked Bennett of the driver, watch in hand. 
 The time was of the shortest, but the driver put the whip to his 
 horses, and, at a run, they reached the railway station a few mo 
 ments ahead of time. Bennett told the driver to wait, and -while 
 Lloyd remained in her place he bought her ticket for the city. 
 Then he went to the telegraph office and sent a peremptory despatch 
 to the house on Calumet Square. 
 
 A few moments later the train had come and gone, an abrupt 
 eruption of roaring iron and shrieking steam. Bennett was left on 
 the platform alone, watching it lessen to a smoky blur where the 
 rails converged toward the horizon. For an instant he stood watch 
 ing, watching a resistless, iron-hearted force whirling her away, 
 out of his reach, out of his life. Then he shook himself, turning 
 sharply about. 
 
 "Back to the doctor s house now," he commanded the driver; 
 "on the run, you understand." 
 
 But the other protested. His horses were all but exhausted. 
 Twice they had covered that distance at top speed and under the 
 whip. He refused to return. Bennett took the young man by the 
 arm and lifted him from his seat to the ground. Then he sprang 
 to his place and lashed the horses to a gallop. 
 
 When he arrived at Dr. Pitts s house he did not stop to tie the 
 horses, but threw the reins over their backs and entered the front 
 hall, out of breath and panting. But the doctor, during Bennett s 
 absence, had returned, and it was he who met him half-way up the 
 stairs. 
 
 "How is he?" demanded Bennett. "I have sent for another 
 nurse; she will be out here on the next train. I wired from the 
 station." 
 
 "The only objection to that," answered the doctor, looking fixed 
 ly at him, "is that it is not necessary. Mr. Ferriss has just died." 
 
378 A Man s Woman 
 
 VII 
 
 THROUGHOUT her ride from Medford to the city it was impos 
 sible for Lloyd, so great was the confusion in her mind, to think 
 connectedly. She had been so fiercely shocked, so violently shat 
 tered and weakened, that for a time she lacked the power and even 
 the desire to collect and to concentrate her scattering thoughts. For 
 the time being she felt, but only dimly, that a great blow had fallen, 
 that a great calamity had overwhelmed her, but so extraordinary 
 was the condition of her mind that more than once she found herself 
 calmly awaiting the inevitable moment when the full extent of the 
 catastrophe would burst upon her. For the moment she was merely 
 tired. She was willing even to put off this reaction for a while, 
 willing to remain passive and dizzied and stupefied, resigning her 
 self helplessly and supinely to the swift current of events. 
 
 Yet while that part of her mind which registered the greater, 
 deeper, and more lasting impressions remained inactive, the smaller 
 faculty, that took cognizance of the little, minute-to-minute matters, 
 was as busy and bright as ever. It appeared that the blow had 
 been struck over this latter faculty, and not, as one so often sup 
 poses, through it. She seemed in that hour to understand the rea 
 sonableness of this phenomenon, that before had always appeared 
 so inexplicable, and saw how great sorrow as well as great joy 
 strikes only at the greater machinery of the brain, overpassing and 
 ignoring the little wheels and cogs, that work on as briskly as ever 
 in storm or calm, being moved only by temporary and trivial emo 
 tions and impressions. 
 
 So it was that for upward of an hour while the train carried her 
 swiftly back to the city, Lloyd sat quietly in her place, watching 
 the landscape rushing past her and cut into regular divisions by the 
 telegraph poles like the whirling pictures of a kinetoscope. She 
 noted, and even with some particularity, the other passengers a 
 young girl in a smart tailor-made gown reading a book, cutting the 
 leaves raggedly with a hairpin ; a well-groomed gentleman with a 
 large stomach, who breathed loudly through his nose; the book agent 
 with his oval boxes of dried figs and endless thread of talk; a woman 
 with a little boy who wore spectacles and who was continually 
 
 king unsteady raids upon the water-cooler, and the brakeman and 
 tram conductor laughing and chatting in the foreward seat. 
 
A Man s Woman 379 
 
 She took an interest in every unusual feature of the country 
 through which the train was speeding, and noted each stop or in 
 crease of speed. She found a certain diversion, as she had often 
 done before, in watching for the mile-posts and in keeping count 
 of the miles. She even asked the conductor at what time the train 
 would reach the city, and uttered a little murmur of vexation when 
 she was told that it was a half -hour late. The next instant she was 
 asking herself why this delay should seem annoying to her. Then, 
 toward the close of the afternoon, came the city itself. First a 
 dull -gray smudge on the horizon, then a world of grimy streets, 
 rows of miserable tenements festooned with rags, then a tunnel or 
 two, and at length the echoing glass-arched terminal of the station. 
 Lloyd alighted, and, remembering that the distance was short, 
 walked steadily toward her destination till the streets and neigh 
 borhood became familiar. Suddenly she came into the square. 
 Directly opposite was the massive granite front of the agency. She 
 paused abruptly. She was returning to the house after abandoning 
 her post. What was she to say to them, the other women of her 
 profession ? 
 
 Then all at once came the reaction. Instantly the larger ma 
 chinery of the mind resumed its functions, the hurt of the blow 
 came back. With a fierce wrench of pain the wound reopened, 
 full consciousness returned. Lloyd remembered then that she had 
 proved false to her trust at a moment of danger, that Ferriss would 
 probably die because of what she had done, that her strength of 
 will and of mind wherein she had gloried was broken beyond re 
 demption; that Bennett had failed her, that her love for him, the 
 one great happiness of her life, was dead and cold and could never 
 be revived, and that in the eyes of the world she stood dishonored 
 and disgraced. 
 
 Now she must enter that house, now she must face its inmates, 
 her companions. What to say to them? How explain her defec 
 tion? How tell them that she had not left her post of her own 
 will? Lloyd fancied herself saying in substance that the man 
 who loved her and whom she loved had made her abandon her 
 patient. She set her teeth. No, not that confession of miserable 
 weakness; not that of all things. And yet the other alternative, 
 what was that? It could be only that she had been afraid she, 
 Lloyd Searight! Must she, who had been the bravest of them all, 
 stand before that little band of devoted women in the light of a 
 self-confessed coward? 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 She remembered the case of the young English woman, Harriet 
 Freeze, who, when called upon to nurse a smallpox patient, had 
 been found wanting in courage at the crucial moment, and had dis 
 covered an excuse for leaving her post. Miss Freeze had been 
 expelled dishonorably from the midst of her companions. And 
 now she, Lloyd, standing apparently convicted of the same dis 
 honor, must face the same tribunal. There was no escape. She 
 must enter that house, she must endure that ordeal, and this at 
 precisely the time when her resolution had been shattered, her will 
 broken, her courage daunted. For a moment the idea of flight 
 suggested itself to her she would avoid the issue. She would hide 
 from reproach and contumely, and without further explanation go 
 back to her place in the country at Bannister. But the little ex 
 igencies of her position made this impossible. Besides her nurse s 
 bag, her satchel was the only baggage she had at that moment, and 
 she knew that there was but little money in her purse. 
 
 All at once she realized that while debating the question she had 
 been sitting on one of the benches under the trees in the square. 
 The sun was setting ; evening was coming on. Maybe if she waited 
 itntil six o clock she could enter the house while the other nurses 
 were at supper, gain her room unobserved, then lock herself in and 
 deny herself to all callers. But Lloyd made a weary, resigned move 
 ment of her shoulders. Sooner or later she must meet them all eye 
 to eye. It would be only putting off the humiliation. 
 
 She rose, and, turning to the house, began to walk slowly toward 
 it. Why put it off? It would be as hard at one time as another. 
 But so great was her sense of shame that even as she walked she 
 fancied that the very passers-by, the loungers on the benches around 
 the fountain, must know that here was a disgraced woman. Was 
 it not apparent in her very face, in the very uncertainty of her 
 gait? She told herself she had not done wisely to sit even for a 
 moment upon the bench she had just quitted. She wondered if she 
 had been observed, and furtively glanced about her. There ! Was 
 not that nurse-maid studying her too narrowly? And the police 
 man close at hand, was he not watching her quizzically? She 
 quickened her gait, moved with a sudden impulse to get out of 
 sight, to hide within doors where? In the house? There where, 
 so soon as she set foot in it, her companions, the other nurses, must 
 know her dishonor ? Where was she to go ? Where to turn ? What 
 was to become of her? 
 
 But she must go to the house. It was inevitable. She went 
 
A Man s Woman 381 
 
 forward, as it were, step by step. That little journey across the 
 square under the elms and cottonwoods was for her a veritable 
 chemin de la croLv. Every step was an agony ; every yard covered 
 only brought her nearer the time and place of exposure. It was 
 all the more humiliating because she knew that her impelling mo 
 tive was not one of duty. There was nothing lofty in the matter 
 nothing self-sacrificing. She went back because she had to go 
 back. Little material necessities, almost ludicrous in their petti 
 ness, forced her on. 
 
 As she came nearer she looked cautiously at the windows of the 
 agency. Who would be the first to note her home-coming? Would 
 it be Miss Douglass, or Esther Thielman, or Miss Bergyn, the 
 superintendent nurse? What would first be said to her? With 
 what words would she respond? Then how the news of the be 
 trayal of her trust would flash from room to room ! How it would 
 be discussed, how condemned, how deplored! Not one of the 
 nurses of that little band but would not feel herself hurt by what 
 she had done by what she had been forced to do. And the news of 
 her failure would spread to all her acquaintances and friends 
 throughout the city. Dr. Street would know it ; every physician 
 to whom she had hitherto been so welcome an aid would know it. 
 In all the hospitals it would be a nine days gossip. Campbell 
 would hear of it, and Hattie. 
 
 All at once, within thirty feet of the house, Lloyd turned about 
 and walked rapidly away from it. The movement was all but 
 involuntary; every instinct in her, every sense of shame, brusquely 
 revolted. It was stronger than she. A power, for the moment 
 irresistible, dragged her back from that doorway. Once entering 
 here, she left all hope behind. Yet the threshold must be crossed, 
 yet the hope must be abandoned. 
 
 She felt that if she faced about now a second time she would in 
 deed attract attention. So, while her cheeks flamed hot at the mean 
 ness, the miserable ridiculousness of the imposture, she assumed a 
 brisk, determined gait, as though she knew just where she were 
 going, and, turning out of the square down a by-street, walked 
 around the block, even stopping once or twice before a store, pre 
 tending an interest in the display. It seemed to her that by now 
 everybody in the streets must have noted that there was something 
 wrong with her. Twice as a passer-by brushed past her she looked 
 back to see if he was watching her. How to live through the next 
 ten minutes? If she were only in her room, bolted in, locked and 
 
jg 2 A Man s Woman 
 
 double-locked in. Why was there not some back way through 
 which she could creep to that seclusion ? 
 
 And so it was that Lloyd came back to the house she had built, 
 to the little community she had so proudly organized, to the agency 
 she had founded, and with her own money endowed and supported. 
 
 At last she found herself at the bottom of the steps, her foot 
 upon the lowest one, her hand clasped the heavy bronze rail. There 
 was no going back now. She went up and pushed the button of 
 the electric bell, and then, the step once taken, the irrevocable once 
 dared, something like the calmness of resignation came to her. 
 There was no help for it. Now for the ordeal. Rownie opened 
 the door for her with a cheery welcome. Lloyd was dimly con 
 scious that the girl said something about her mail, and that she was 
 just in time for supper. But the hall and stairway were deserted 
 and empty, while from the dining-room came a subdued murmur of 
 conversation and the clink of dishes. The nurses were at supper, 
 as Lloyd had hoped. The moment favored her, and she brushed 
 by Rownie, and almost ran, panic-stricken and trembling, up the 
 stairs. 
 
 She gained the hall of the second floor. There was the door of 
 her room standing ajar. With a little gasp of infinite relief, she 
 hurried to it, entered, shut and locked and bolted it behind her, 
 and, casting her satchel and handbag from her, flung herself down 
 upon the great couch, and buried her head deep among the cushions. 
 
 At Lloyd s abrupt entrance Miss Douglass turned about from 
 the book-shelves in an angle of the room and stared a moment in 
 no little surprise. Then she exclaimed: 
 
 "Why, Lloyd, why, what is it what is the matter?" 
 
 Lloyd sprang up sharply at the sound of her voice, and then 
 ^ank down to a sitting posture upon the edge of the couch. Quietly 
 enough she said: 
 
 "Oh, is it you ? I didn t know expect to find any one " 
 
 "You don t mind, do you? I just ran in to get a book some 
 thing to read. I ve had a headache all day, and didn t go down to 
 supper." 
 
 Lloyd nodded. "Of course I don t mind," she said, a little 
 wearily. ^ 
 
 "But tell me," continued the fever nurse, "whatever is the mat 
 ter? When you came in just now I never saw you so oh, I 
 understand, your case at Medford " 
 
 Lloyd s hands closed tight upon the edge of the couch. 
 
A Man s Woman 383 
 
 "No one could have got a patient through when the fever had 
 got as far as that," continued the other. "This must have been 
 the fifth or sixth week. The second telegram came just in time to 
 prevent my going. I was just going out of the door when the boy 
 came with it." 
 
 "You? What telegram?" inquired Lloyd. 
 
 "Yes, I was on call. The first despatch asking for another extra 
 nurse came about two o clock. The four-twenty was the first train 
 I could have taken the two-forty-five express is a through train 
 and don t stop at Medford and, as I say, I was just going out 
 of the door when Dr. Pitts s second despatch came, countermand 
 ing the first, and telling us that the patient had died. It seems that 
 it was one of the officers of the "Freja" expedition. We didn t 
 know " 
 
 "Died ?" interrupted Lloyd, looking fixedly at her. 
 
 "But, Lloyd, you mustn t take it so to heart. You couldn t have 
 got him through. No one could at that time. He was probably 
 dying when you were sent for. We must all lose a case now and 
 then." 
 
 "Died?" repeated Lloyd; "Dr. Pitts wired that Mr. Ferriss died?" 
 
 "Yes; it was to prevent my coming out there uselessly. He 
 must have sent the wire quite an hour before you left. It was very 
 thoughtful of him." 
 
 "He s dead," said Lloyd in a low, expressionless voice, look 
 ing vacantly about the room. "Mr. Ferriss is dead." Then sud 
 denly she put a fist to either temple, horror-struck and for the mo 
 ment shaken with hysteria from head to foot, her eyes widening 
 with an expression almost of terror. "Dead !" she cried. "Oh, it s 
 horrible ! Why didn t I why couldn t I" 
 
 "I know just how you feel," answered Miss Douglass soothingly. 
 "1 am that way myself sometimes. It s not professional, I know, 
 but when you have been successful in two or three bad cases you 
 think you can always win; and then when you lose the next case 
 you believe that somehow it must have been your fault that if you 
 had been a little more careful at just that moment, or done a little 
 different in that particular point, you might have saved your pa 
 tient. But you, of all people, ought not to feel like that. If you 
 could not have saved your case nobody could." 
 
 "It was just because I had the case that it was lost." 
 
 "Nonsense, Lloyd ; don t talk like that. You ve not had enough 
 sleep; your nerves have been overstrained. You re worn out and a 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 little hysterical and morbid. Now lie down and keep quiet, and I ll 
 bring you your supper. You need a good night s sleep and bromide 
 of potassium." 
 
 When she had gone Lloyd rose to her feet and drew her hand 
 wearily across her eyes. The situation adjusted itself in her mind. 
 After the first recoil of horror at Ferriss s death she was able to 
 see the false position in which she stood. She had been so certain 
 already that Ferriss would die, leaving him as she did at so critical 
 a moment, that now the sharpness of Miss Douglass s news was 
 blunted a little. She had only been unprepared for the suddenness 
 of the shock. But now she understood clearly how Miss Douglass 
 had been deceived by circumstances. The fever nurse had heard of 
 Ferriss s death early in the afternoon, and supposed, of course, that 
 Lloyd had left the case after, and not before, it had occurred. This 
 was the story the other nurses would believe. Instantly, in the flood 
 of grief and remorse and humiliation that had overwhelmed her, 
 Lloyd caught at this straw of hope. Only Dr. Pitts and Bennett 
 knew the real facts. Bennett, of course, would not speak, and Lloyd 
 knew that the physician would understand the cruelty and injustice 
 of her situation, and because of that would also keep silence. To 
 make sure of this she could write him a letter, or, better still, see 
 him personally. It would be hard to tell him the truth. But 
 that was nothing when compared with the world s denunciation 
 of her. 
 
 If she had really been false to her charge, if she had actually 
 flinched and faltered at the crucial moment, had truly been the cow 
 ard, this return to the house, this part which it was so easy to play, 
 would have been hideous and unspeakable hypocrisy. But Lloyd 
 had not faltered, had not been false. In her heart of hearts she had 
 been true to herself and to her trust. How would she deceive her 
 companions then by allowing them to continue in the belief of her 
 constancy, fidelity, and courage? What she hid from them, or 
 rather what they could not see, was a state of things that it was 
 impossible for any one but herself to understand. She could not 
 no woman could bring herself to confess to another woman what 
 had happened that day at Medford. It would be believed that she 
 could have stayed at her patient s -bedside if she had so desired. No 
 one who did not know Bennett could understand the terrible, vast 
 force of the man. 
 
 Try as she would, Lloyd could not but think first of herself at 
 this moment. Bennett was ignored, forgotten. Once she had loved 
 
A Man s Woman 385 
 
 him, but that was all over now. The thought of Ferriss s death, for 
 which in a manner she had been forced to be responsible, came 
 rushing to her mind from time to time, and filled her with a horror 
 and, at times, even a perverse sense of remorse, almost beyond 
 words. But Lloyd s pride, her self-confidence, her strength of char 
 acter and independence had been dearer to her than almost anything 
 in life. So she told herself, and, at that moment, honestly believed. 
 And though she knew that her pride had been humbled, it was not 
 gone, and enough of it remained to make her desire and strive 
 to keep the fact a secret from the world. It seemed very easy. 
 She would only have to remain passive. Circumstances acted 
 for her. 
 
 Miss Douglass returned, followed by Rownie carrying a 
 tray. When the mulatto had gone, after arranging Lloyd s 
 supper on a little table near the couch, the fever nurse drew 
 up a chair. 
 
 "Now we can talk," she said, "unless you are too tired. I ve 
 been so interested in this case at Medford. Tell me what was the 
 immediate cause of death ; was it perforation or just gradual col 
 lapse?" 
 
 "It was neither," said Lloyd quickly. "It was a hemorrhage." 
 
 She had uttered the words with as little consciousness as a 
 phonograph, and the lie had escaped her before she was aware. 
 How did she know what had been the immediate cause of death? 
 What right had she to speak? Why was it that all at once a false 
 hood had come so easy to her, to her whose whole life until then % 
 had been so sincere, so genuine? 
 
 "A hemorrhage?" repeated the other. "Had there been many 
 before then? Was there coma vigil when the end came? I 
 
 "Oh," cried Lloyd with a quick gesture of impatience, "don t, 
 don t ask me any more. I am tired nervous ; I am worn out." 
 
 "Yes, of course you must be," answered the fever nurse. "We 
 won t talk any more about it." 
 
 That night and the following day were terrible. Lloyd neither 
 ate nor slept. Not once did she set foot out of her room, giving 
 out that she was ill, which was not far from the truth, and keep 
 ing to herself and to the companionship of the thoughts and terrors 
 that crowded her mind. Until that day at Medford her life had run 
 easily and happily and in well-ordered channels. She was success 
 ful in her chosen profession and work. She imagined herself to 
 be stronger and of finer fibre than most other women, and her love 
 
 Q III NORRIS 
 
3 86 A Man s Woman 
 
 for Bennett had lent a happiness and a sweetness to her life dear 
 to her beyond all words. Suddenly, and within an hour s time, she 
 had lost everything. Her will had been broken, her spirit crushed ; 
 she had been forced to become fearfully instrumental in causing the 
 death of her patient a man who loved and trusted her while her 
 love for Bennett, which for years had been her deep and abiding 
 joy, the one great influence of her life, was cold and dead, and 
 could never be revived. 
 
 This in the end came to be Lloyd s greatest grief. She could 
 forget that she herself had been humbled and broken. Horrible, 
 unspeakably horrible, as Ferriss s death seemed to her, it was upon 
 Bennett, and not upon her, that its responsibility must be laid. She 
 had done what she could. Of that she was assured. Rut, first 
 and above all things, Lloyd was a woman, and her love for Bennett 
 was a very different matter. 
 
 When, during that never-to-be-forgotten scene in the break 
 fast-room of the doctor s house, she had warned Bennett that if 
 he persisted in his insane resolution he would stamp out her affec 
 tion for him, Lloyd had only half believed what she said. But 
 when at last it dawned upon her that she had spoken wiser than 
 she knew, that this was actually true, and that now, no matter how 
 , she might desire it, she could not love him any longer, it seemed 
 as though her heart must break. It was precisely as though Ben 
 nett himself, the Bennett she had known, had been blotted out of 
 existence. It was much worse than if Bennett had merely died. 
 Even then he would have still existed for her, somewhere. As it 
 was, the man she had known simply ceased to be, irrevocably, 
 finally, and the warmth of her love dwindled and grew cold, be 
 cause now there was nothing left for it to feed upon. 
 
 Never until then had Lloyd realized how much he had been to 
 her; how he had not only played so large a part in her life, but 
 how he had become a very part of her life itself. Her love for 
 him had been like the air, like the sunlight; was delicately knitted 
 and intertwined into all the innumerable intricacies of her life and 
 character. Literally, not an hour had ever passed that, directly or 
 indirectly, he had not occupied her thoughts. He had been her in 
 spiration ; he had made her want. to be brave and strong and deter 
 mined, and it was because of him that the greater things of the 
 world interested her. She had chosen a work to be done because 
 he had set her an example. So only that she preserved her woman 
 liness, she, too, wanted to count, to help on, to have her place in the 
 
A Man s Woman 387 
 
 world s progress. In reality all her ambitions and hopes had been 
 looking toward one end only, that she might be his equal ; that he 
 might find in her a companion and a confidante ; one who could share 
 his enthusiasms and understand his vast projects and great aims. 
 
 And how had he treated her when at last opportunity had been 
 given her to play her part, to be courageous and strong, to prevail 
 against great odds, while he stood by to see? He had ignored and 
 misunderstood, and tossed aside as childish and absurd that which 
 she had been building up for years. Instead of appreciating her 
 heroism he had forced her to become a coward in the eyes of the 
 world. She had hoped to be his equal, and he had treated her as a 
 school-girl. It had all been a mistake. She was not and could not 
 be the woman she had hoped. He was not and never had been the 
 man she imagined. They had nothing in common. 
 
 But it was not easy to give Bennett up, to let him pass out of her 
 life. She wanted to love him yet. With all her heart and strength, 
 in spite of everything woman that she was, she had come to that 
 in spite of everything she wanted to love him. Though he had 
 broken her will, thwarted her ambitions, ignored her cherished 
 hopes, misunderstood and mistaken her, yet if she could, Lloyd 
 would yet have loved him, loved him even for the very fact that 
 he had been stronger than she. 
 
 Again and again she tried to awaken this dead affection, to call 
 back this vanished love. She tried to remember the Bennett she 
 had known; she told herself that he loved her; that he had said 
 that the great things he had done had been done only with an eye 
 to her approval; that she had been his inspiration no less than he 
 had been hers ; that he had fought his way back, not only to life, but 
 to her. She thought of all he had suffered, of the hardships and 
 privations beyond her imagination to conceive, that he had under 
 gone. She tried to recall the infinite joy of that night when the 
 news of his safe return had come to her; she thought of him at 
 his very best how he had always seemed to her the type of the 
 perfect man, masterful, aggressive, accomplishing great projects 
 with an energy and determination almost superhuman, one of the 
 world s great men, whose name the world still shouted. She called 
 to mind how the very ruggedness of his face, with its massive 
 lines and harsh angles, had attracted her ; how she had been proud 
 of his giant s strength, the vast span of his shoulders, the bull-like 
 depth of his chest, the sense of enormous physical power suggested 
 by his every movement. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 But it was all of no effect. That Bennett was worse than dead 
 to her. The Bennett that now came to her mind and imagination 
 was the brutal, perverse man of the breakfast-room at Medford, 
 coarse, insolent, intractable, stamping out all that was finest in her, 
 breaking and flinging away the very gifts he had inspired her to 
 offer him. It was nothing to him that she should stand degraded in 
 the eyes of the world. He did not want her to be brave and strong. 
 She had been wrong ; it was not that kind of woman he desired. He 
 had not acknowledged that she, too, as well as he a woman as well 
 as a man might have her principles, her standards of honor, her 
 ideas of duty. It was not her character, then, that he prized; the 
 nobility of her nature was nothing to him ; he took no thought of 
 the fine-wrought texture of her mind. How, then, did she appeal 
 to him ? It was not her mind ; it was not her soul. What, then, was 
 left? Nothing but the physical. The shame of it; the degradation 
 of it ! To be so cruelly mistaken in the man she loved, to be able to 
 appeal to him only on his lower side ! Lloyd clasped her hands over 
 her eyes, shutting her teeth hard against a cry of grief and pain 
 and impotent anger. No, no, now it was irrevocable; now her eyes 
 were opened. The Bennett she had known and loved had been 
 merely a creature of her own imagining ; the real man had suddenly 
 discovered himself; and this man, in spite of herself, she hated as a 
 victim hates its tyrant. 
 
 But her grief for her vanished happiness the happiness that this 
 love, however mistaken, had brought into her life was pitiful. 
 Lloyd could not think of it without the choke coming to her throat 
 and the tears brimming her dull-blue eyes, while at times a veritable 
 paroxysm of sorrow seized upon her and flung her at full length 
 upon her couch, her face buried and her whole body shaken with 
 stifled sobs. It was gone, it was gone, and could never be called back. 
 What was there now left to her to live for? Why continue her 
 profession? Why go on with the work? What pleasure now in 
 striving and overcoming? Where now was the exhilaration of battle 
 with the Enemy, even supposing she yet had the strength to con 
 tinue the fight? Who was there now to please, to approve, to 
 encourage? To what end the days of grave responsibilities, the 
 long, still nights of vigil? 
 
 She began to doubt herself. Bennett, the man, had loved his 
 Work for its own sake. But how about herself, the woman? In 
 what spirit had she gone about her work? Had she been genuine, 
 after all? Had she not undertaken it rather as a means than as an 
 
A Man s Woman 389 
 
 end not because she cared for it, but because she thought he would 
 approve, because she had hoped by means of the work she would 
 come into closer companionship with him? She wondered if this 
 must always be so the man loving the work for the work s sake; 
 the woman, more complex, weaker, and more dependent, doing the 
 work only in reference to the man. 
 
 But often she distrusted her own conclusions, and, no doubt, 
 rightly so. Her mind was yet too confused to reason calmly, soberly, 
 und accurately. Her distress was yet too keen, too poignant to per 
 mit her to be logical. At one time she was almost ready to admit 
 rhat she had misjudged Bennett; that, though he had acted cruelly 
 and unjustly, he had done what he thought was best. His sacrifice 
 of Ferriss was sufficient guarantee of his sincerity. But this mis 
 trust of herself did not affect her feeling toward him. There were 
 moments when she condoned his offence ; there was never an instant 
 she did not hate him. 
 
 And this sentiment of hatred itself, independent of and apart 
 from its object, was distasteful and foreign to her. Never in her 
 life had Lloyd hated any one before. To be kind, to be gentle, to 
 be womanly was her second nature, and kindness, gentleness, and 
 womanliness were qualities that her profession only intensified and 
 deepened. This newcomer in her heart, this fierce, evil visitor, 
 that goaded her and pricked and harried her from day to day and 
 throughout so many waking nights, that roused the unwonted flash 
 in her eye and drove the hot, angry blood to her smooth, white fore 
 head and knotted her leveled brows to a dark and lowering frown, 
 had entered her life and being, unsought for and undesired. It did 
 not belong to her world. Yet there it sat on its usurped throne de 
 formed and hideous, driving out all tenderness and compunction, 
 ruling her with a rod of iron, hardening her, imbittering her, and 
 belittling her, making a mockery of all sweetness, fleering at nobility 
 and magnanimity, lowering the queen to the level of the fishwife. 
 
 When the first shock of the catastrophe had spent its strength . 
 and Lloyd perforce must turn again to the life she had to live, 
 groping for its scattered, tangled ends, piecing together again as 
 best she might its broken fragments, she set herself honestly to drive 
 this hatred from her heart. If she could not love Bennett, at least 
 she need not hate him. She was moved to this by no feeling of 
 concern for Bennett. It was not a consideration that she owed to 
 him, but something rather that was due to herself. Yet, try as she 
 would, the hatred still remained. She could not put it from her. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 Hurt her and contaminate her as it did, in spite of all her best 
 efforts, in spite of her very prayers, the evil thing abode with her, 
 deep-rooted, strong, malignant. She saw that in the end she would 
 continue in her profession, but she believed that she could not go 
 on with it consistently, based as it was upon sympathy and love 
 and kindness, while a firm-seated, active hatred dwelt with her, 
 harassing her at every moment, and perverting each good impulse 
 and each unselfish desire. It was an ally of the very Enemy she 
 would be called upon to fight, a traitor that at any moment might 
 open the gates to his triumphant entry. 
 
 But was this his only ally; was this the only false and ugly 
 inrader that had taken advantage of her shattered defence? Had 
 the unwelcome visitor entered her heart alone? Was there not a 
 companion still more wicked, more perverted, more insidious, more 
 dangerous ? For the first time Lloyd knew what it meant to deceive. 
 
 It was supposed by her companions, and accepted by them as 
 a matter of course, that she had not left the bedside of her patient 
 until after his death. At first she had joyfully welcomed this mis 
 take as her salvation, the one happy coincidence that was to make 
 her life possible, and for a time had ceased to think about it. That 
 phase of the incident was closed. Matters would readjust them 
 selves. In a few days time the incident would be forgotten. But 
 she found that she herself could not forget it, and that as days 
 went on the idea of this passive, silent deception she was obliged to 
 maintain occurred to her oftener and oftener. She remembered 
 again how glibly and easily she had lied to her friend upon the even 
 ing of her return. How was it that the lie had flowed so smoothly 
 from her lips? To her knowledge she had never deliberately lied 
 before. She would have supposed that, because of this fact, false 
 hood would come difficult to her, that she would have bungled, 
 hesitated, stammered. But it was the reverse that had been the 
 case. The facility with which she had uttered the lie was what now 
 began to disturb and to alarm her. It argued some hidden collapse 
 of her whole system of morals, some fundamental disarrangement 
 of the entire machine. 
 
 Abruptly she recoiled. Whither was she tending? If she su 
 pinely resig-ned herself to the current of circumstance, where would 
 she be carried? Yet how was she to free herself from the current, 
 how to face this new situation that suddenly presented itself at a 
 time when she had fancied the real shock of battle and contention 
 was spent and -past? 
 
A Man s Woman 391 
 
 How was she to go back now? How could she retrace her 
 steps? There was but one way correct the false impression. It 
 would not be necessary to acknowledge that she had been forced to 
 leave her post; the essential was that her companions should know 
 that she had deceived them that she had left the bedside before 
 her patient s death. But at the thought of making such confession, 
 public as it must be, everything that was left of her wounded pride 
 revolted. She who had been so firm,, she who had held so tenaciously 
 to her principles, she who had posed before them as an example of 
 devotion and courage she could not bring herself to that. 
 
 "No, no," she exclaimed as this alternative presented itself to 
 her mind. "No, I can not. It is beyond me. I simply can not do it." 
 
 But she could. Yes, she could do it if she would. Deep down 
 in her mind that little thought arose. She could if she wanted to. 
 Hide it though she might, cover it and bury it with what false rea 
 soning she could invent, the little thought would not be smothered, 
 would not be crushed out. Well, then, she would not. Was it not 
 her chance ; was not this deception which others and not herself 
 had created, her opportunity to recover herself, to live down what 
 had been done what she had been forced to do, rather? Absolute 
 right was never to be attained; was not life to be considered rather 
 in the light of a compromise between good and evil? To do what 
 one could under the circumstances, was not that the golden mean? 
 
 But she ought. And, quick, another little thought sprang up in 
 the deeper recesses of her mind and took its place beside the other. 
 It was right that she should be true. She ought to do the right. 
 Argument, the pleas of weakness, the demands of expediency, the 
 plausibility of compromise were all of no avail. The idea "I ought" 
 persisted and persisted and persisted. She could and she ought. 
 There was no excuse for her, and no sooner had she thrust aside the 
 shifty mass of sophistries under which she had striven to conceal 
 them, no sooner had she let in the light, than these two conceptions 
 of Duty and Will began suddenly to grow. 
 
 But what was she to gain? What would be the result of such a 
 course as her conscience demanded she should adopt? It was in 
 evitable that she would be misunderstood, cruelly misjudged. What 
 action would her confession entail? She could not say. But re 
 sults did not matter; what she was to gain or lose did not matter. 
 Around her and before her all was dark and vague and terrible. 
 If she was to escape there was but one thing to do. Suddenly her 
 own words came back to her : 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 "All we can do is to hold to what we know is right, and trust 
 that everything will come well in the end." 
 
 She knew what was right, and she had the strength to hold to 
 it. Then all at once there came to Lloyd a grand, breathless sense 
 of uplifting, almost a transfiguration. She felt herself carried high 
 above the sphere of little things, the region of petty considerations. 
 What did she care for consequences, what mattered to her the un 
 just condemnation of her world, if only she remained true to her 
 self, if only she did right? What did she care for what she gained? 
 It was no longer a question of gain or loss it was a question of 
 being true and strong and brave. The conflict of that day at Med- 
 ford between the man s power and the woman s resistance had been 
 cruel, the crisis had been intense, and though she had been con 
 quered then, had it, after all, been beyond recall? No, she was not 
 conquered. No, she was not subdued. Her will had not been 
 broken, her courage had not been daunted, her strength had not 
 been weakened. Here was the greater fight, here was the higher 
 test. Here was the ultimate, supreme crisis of all, and here, at 
 last, come what might, she would not, would not, would not fail. 
 
 As soon as Lloyd reached this conclusion she set about carrying 
 her resolution into effect. 
 
 "If I don t do it now while I m strong," she told herself, "if I 
 wait, I never will do it." 
 
 Perhaps there was yet a touch of the hysterical in her actions 
 even then. The jangled feminine nerves were yet vibrating far 
 above their normal pitch; she was overwrought and oversensitive, 
 for just as a fanatic rushes eagerly upon the fire and the steel, pre 
 ferring the more exquisite torture, so Lloyd sought out the more 
 painful situation, the more trying ordeal, the line of action that 
 called for the greatest fortitude, the most unflinching courage. 
 
 She chose to make known her real position, to correct the false 
 impression at a time when all the nurses of the house should be 
 together. This would be at supper-time. Since her return from 
 Medford, Lloyd had shut herself away from the other inmates of 
 the house, and had taken her meals in her room. With the ex 
 ception of Miss Douglass and the superintendent nurse no one had 
 seen her. She had passed her time lying at full length upon her 
 couch, her hands clasped behind her head, or pacing the floor, or 
 gazing listlessly out of her windows, while her thoughts raced at a 
 gallop through her mind. 
 
 Now, however, she bestirred herself. She had arrived at her 
 
A Man s Woman 393 
 
 final decision early in the afternoon of the third day after her re 
 turn, and at once she resolved that she would endure the ordeal that 
 very evening. 
 
 She passed the intervening time, singularly enough, in very care 
 fully setting her room to rights, adjusting and readjusting the few 
 ornaments on the mantel-shelf and walls, winding the clock that 
 struck ship s bells instead of the hours, and minutely sorting the 
 letters and papers in her desk. It was the same as if she were going 
 upon a long journey or were preparing for a great sickness. Toward 
 four o clock Miss Douglass, looking in to ask how she did, found her 
 before her mirror carefully combing and arranging her great bands 
 and braids of dark-red hair. The fever nurse declared that she was 
 immensely improved in appearance, and asked at once if she was 
 not feeling better. 
 
 "Yes," answered Lloyd, "very much better," adding: "I shall 
 be down to supper to-night." 
 
 For some reason that she could not explain Lloyd took unusual 
 pains with her toilet, debating long over each detail of dress and 
 ornament. At length, toward five o clock, she was ready, and sat 
 down by her window, a book in her lap, to await the announcement 
 of supper as the condemned await the summons to execution. 
 
 Her plan was to delay her appearance in the dining-room until 
 she was sure that everybody was present; then she would go down, 
 and, standing there before them all, say what she had to say, state the 
 few bald facts of the case, without excuse or palliation, and leave 
 them to draw the one inevitable conclusion. 
 
 But this final hour of waiting was a long agony for Lloyd. Her 
 moods changed with every moment ; the action she contemplated 
 presented itself to her mind in a multitude of varying lights. At 
 one time she quivered with the apprehension of it, as though at the 
 slow approach of hot irons. At another she could see no reason 
 for being greatly concerned over the matter. Did the whole affair 
 amount to so much, after all ? Her companions would, of their own 
 accord, make excuses for her. Risking one s life in the case of a 
 virulent, contagious disease was no small matter. No one could 
 be blamed for leaving such a case. At one moment Lloyd s idea of 
 public confession seemed to her little less than sublime; at another, 
 almost ridiculous. But she remembered the case of Harriet Freeze, 
 who had been unable to resist the quiet, unexpressed force of opin 
 ion of her fellow-workers. It would be strange if Lloyd should 
 find herself driven from the very house she had built. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 The hour before supper-time seemed interminable; the quarter 
 passed, then the half, then the three-quarters. Lloyd imagined she 
 began to detect a faint odor of the kitchen in the air. Suddenly the 
 remaining minutes of the hour began to be stricken from the dial of 
 her clock with bewildering rapidity. From the drawing-room im 
 mediately below came the sounds of the piano. That was Esther 
 Thielman, no doubt, playing one of her interminable Polish com 
 positions/ All at once the piano stopped, and, with a quick sinking 
 of the heart, Lloyd heard the sliding doors separating the drawing- 
 room from the dining-room roll back. Miss Douglass and another 
 one of the nurses, Miss Truslow, a young girl, a newcomer in the 
 house, came out of the former s room and went downstairs, dis 
 cussing the merits of burlap as preferable to wall-paper. Lloyd even 
 heard Miss Truslow remark: 
 
 "Yes, that s very true, but if it isn t sized it will wrinkle in 
 damp weather." 
 
 Rownie came to Lloyd s door and knocked, and, without waiting 
 for a reply, said : 
 
 "Dinneh s served, Miss Searight," and Lloyd heard her make the 
 same announcement at Miss Bergyn s room further down the hall. 
 One by one Lloyd heard the others go downstairs. The rooms and 
 hallways on the second floor fell quiet. A faint, subdued murmur 
 of talk came to her ears in the direction of the dining-room. Lloyd 
 waited for five, for ten, for fifteen minutes. Then she rose, drawing 
 in her breath, straightening herself to her full height. She went to 
 the door, then paused for a moment, looking back at all the familiar 
 objects the plain, rich furniture, the bookshelves, the great, com 
 fortable couch, the old-fashioned round mirror that hung between 
 the windows, and her writing desk of blackened mahogany. It 
 seemed to her that in some way she was never to see these things 
 again, as if she were saying good-by to them and to the life she had 
 led in that room and in their surroundings. She would be a differ 
 ent woman when she came back to that room. Slowly she de 
 scended the stairs and halted for a moment in the hall below. It 
 was not too late to turn back even now. She could hear her com 
 panions at their supper very plainly, and could distinguish Esther 
 Thielman s laugh as she exclaimed : 
 
 "Why, of course, that s the very thing I mean." 
 
 It was a strange surprise that Lloyd had in store for them all. 
 Her heart began to beat heavy and thick. Could she even find her 
 voice to speak when the time came? Would it not be better to put 
 
A Man s Woman 395 
 
 it off, to think over the whole matter again between now and to 
 morrow morning? But she moved her head impatiently. No, she 
 would not turn back. She found that the sliding doors in the draw 
 ing-room had been closed, and so went to the door that opened into 
 the dining-room from the hall itself. It stood ajar. Lloyd pushed 
 it open, entered, and, closing the door behind her, stood there leaning 
 against it. 
 
 The table was almost full; only two or three places besides her 
 own were unoccupied. There was Miss Bergyn at the head ; the 
 fever nurse, Miss Douglass, at her right, and, lower down, Lloyd 
 saw Esther Thielman ; Delia Craig, just back from a surgical case 
 of Dr. Street s ; Miss Page, the oldest and most experienced nurse 
 of them all ; Gilbertson, whom every one called by her last name ; 
 Miss Ives and Eleanor Bogart, who had both taken doctor s de 
 grees, and could have practiced if they had desired; Miss Went- 
 worth, who had served an apprenticeship in a missionary hospital in 
 Armenia, and had known Clara Barton, and, last of all, the new 
 comer, Miss Truslow, very young and very pretty, who had never 
 yet had a case, and upon whose diploma the ink was hardly dry. 
 
 At first, so quietly had she entered, no one took any notice of 
 
 Lloyd, and she stood a moment, her back to the door, wondering 
 
 how she should begin. Everybody seemed to be in the best of 
 
 humor; a babel of talk was in the air; conversations were going 
 
 forward, carried on across the table, or over intervening shoulders^ 
 
 "Why, of course, don t you see, that s the very thing I meant " 
 
 "I think you can get that already sized, though, and with a 
 
 stencil figure if you want it " 
 
 " Really, it s very interesting; the first part is stupid, but she 
 has some very good ideas." 
 
 " Yes, at Vanoni s. But we get a reduction, you know 
 " and, oh, listen ; this is too funny ; she turned around and said, 
 very prim and stiff, No, indeed ; I m too old a woman. Funny ! If 
 I think of that on my deathbed I shall laugh 
 
 " and so that settled it. How could I go on after that ?" 
 " Must you tack it on? The walls are so hard 
 "Let Rownie do it ; she knows. Oh, here s the invalid !" 
 "Oh, why, it s Lloyd ! We re so glad you re able to come down !" 
 But when they had done exclaiming over her reappearance among 
 them Lloyd still remained as she was, her back against the door, 
 standing very straight, her hands at her side. She did not im 
 mediately reply. Heads were turned in her direction. The talk 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 fell away by rapid degrees as they began to notice the paleness of her 
 face and the strange, firm set of her mouth. 
 
 "Sit down, Lloyd," said Miss Bergyn; "don t stand. You are 
 not very well yet; Til have Rownie bring you a glass of sherry." 
 
 There was a silence. Then at length : 
 
 "No," said Lloyd quietly. "I don t want any sherry. I don t 
 want any supper. I came down to tell you that you. are all wrong in 
 thinking I did what I could with my typhoid case at Medford. You 
 think I left only after the patient had died. I did not ; I left before. 
 There was a crisis of some kind. I don t know what it was, because 
 I was not in the sick-room at the time, and I did not go when I was 
 called. The doctor was not there either; he had gone out and left 
 the case in my charge. There was nobody with the patient but a 
 servant. The servant called me, but I did not go. Instead I came 
 away and left the house. The patient died that same day. It is 
 that that I wanted to tell you. Do you all understand perfectly? I 
 left my patient at the moment of a crisis, and with no one with him 
 but a servant. And he died that same afternoon." 
 
 Then she went out, and the closing of the door jarred sharply 
 upon the great silence that had spread- throughout the room. 
 
 Lloyd went back to her room, closed and locked the door, and, 
 sinking down upon the floor by the couch, bowed her head upon 
 her folded arms. But she was in no mood for weeping, and her 
 eyes were dry. She was conscious chiefly that she had taken an 
 irrevocable step, that her head had begun to ache. There was no 
 exhilaration in her mind now; she did not feel any of the satisfac 
 tion of attainment after struggle, of triumph after victory. More 
 than once she even questioned herself if, after all, her confession 
 had been necessary. But now she was weary unto death of the 
 whole wretched business. Now she only knew that her head was 
 aching fiercely ; she did not care either to look into the past or for 
 ward into the future. The present occupied her; for the present 
 her head was aching. 
 
 But before Lloyd went to bed that night Miss Bergyn knew the 
 whole truth as to what had happened at Dr. Pitts s house. The 
 superintendent nurse had followed Lloyd to her room almost im 
 mediately, and would not be denied. She knew very well that Lloyd 
 Searight had never left a dying patient of her own volition. In 
 tuitively she guessed at something hidden. 
 
 "Lloyd," she said decisively, "don t ask me to believe that you 
 went of your own free will. Tell me just what happened. Why 
 
A Man s Woman 397 
 
 did you go? Ask me to believe anything but that you no, I won t 
 say the word. There was some very good reason, wasn t there?" 
 
 "I I can not explain," Lloyd answered. "You must think 
 what you choose. You wouldn t understand." 
 
 But, happily, when Lloyd s reticence finally broke Miss Bergyn 
 did understand. The superintendent nurse knew Bennett only by 
 report. But Lloyd she had known for years, and realized that if 
 she had yielded, it had only been after the last hope had been tried. 
 In the end Lloyd told her everything that had occurred. But, 
 though she even admitted Bennett s affection for her, she said 
 nothing about herself, and Miss Bergyn did not ask. 
 
 "I know, of course," said the superintendent nurse at length, 
 "you hate to think that you were made to go ; but men are stronger 
 than women, Lloyd, and such a man as that must be stronger than 
 most men. You were not to blame because you left the case, and 
 you are certainly not to blame for Mr. Ferriss s death. Now I 
 shall give it out here in the house that you had a very good reason 
 for leaving your case, and that while we can t explain it any more 
 particularly, I have had a talk with you and know all about it, and 
 am perfectly satisfied. Then I shall go out to Medford and see Dr. 
 Pitts. It would be best," she added, for Lloyd had made a gesture 
 of feeble dissent. "He must understand perfectly, and we need not 
 be afraid of any talk about the matter at all. What has happened 
 has happened in the profession, and I don t believe it will go any 
 further." 
 
 Lloyd returned to Bannister toward the end of the week. How 
 long she would remain she did not know, but for the present the 
 association of the other nurses was more than she was able to bear. 
 
 Later, when the affair had become something- of an old story, she 
 would return, resuming her work as though nothing had happened. 
 
 Hattie met her at the railway station with the phaeton and the 
 ponies. She was radiant with delight at the prospect of having 
 Lloyd all to herself for an indefinite period of time. 
 
 "And you didn t get sick, after all?" she exclaimed, clasping 
 her hands. "Was your patient as sick as I was? Weren t his 
 parents glad that you made him well again ?" 
 
 Lloyd put her hand over the little girl s mouth. 
 
 "Let us not talk any shop/ Hattie," she said, trying to smile. 
 
 But on the morning after her arrival Lloyd woke in her own 
 white room of the old farmhouse, abruptly conscious of some subtle 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 change that had occurred to her overnight. For the first time 
 since the scene in the breakfast-room at Medford she was aware of 
 a certain calmness that had come to her. Perhaps she had at last 
 begun to feel the good effects of the trial by fire which she had 
 voluntarily undergone to know a certain happiness that now there 
 was no longer any deceit in her heart. This she had uprooted and 
 driven out by force of her own will. It was gone. But now, on 
 this morning, she seemed to feel that this was not all. 
 
 Something else had left her something that of late had 
 harassed her and goaded her and imbittered her life, and mocked 
 at her gentleness and kindness, was gone. That fierce, truculent 
 hatred that she had so striven to put from her, now behold! of its 
 own accord, it had seemed to leave her. How had it happened? 
 Before she had dared the ordeal of confession this feeling of hatred, 
 this perverse and ugly changeling that had brooded in her heart, had 
 seemed too strong, too deeply seated to be moved. Now, suddenly, 
 it had departed, unbidden, without effort on her part. 
 
 Vaguely Lloyd wondered at this thing. In driving deceit from 
 her it would appear that she had also driven out hatred, that the 
 one could not stay so soon as the other had departed. Could the 
 one exist apart from the other? Was there, then, some strange 
 affinity in all evil, as, perhaps, in all good, so that a victory over 
 one bad impulse meant a victory over many? Without thought of 
 gain or of reward, she had held to what was right through the con 
 fusion and storm and darkness. Was this to be, after all, her re 
 ward, her gain ? Possibly ; but she could not tell, she could not see. 
 The confusion was subsiding, the storm had passed, but much of 
 the darkness yet remained. Deceit she had fought from out her 
 heart; silently Hatred had stolen after it. Love had not returned 
 to his old place, and never, never would, but the changeling was 
 gone, and the house was swept and garnished. 
 
 VIII 
 
 THE day after the funeral Bennett returned alone to Dr. Pitts s 
 house at Medford, and the same -evening his trunks and baggage, 
 containing his papers the records, observations, journals, and log 
 books of the expedition followed him. 
 
 As Bennett entered the gate of the place that he had chosen to 
 be his home for the next year, he was aware that the windows of 
 
A Man s Woman 399 
 
 one of the front rooms upon the second floor were wide open, the 
 curtains tied up into loose knots ; inside a servant came and went, 
 putting the room to rights again, airing it and changing the furni 
 ture. In the road before the house he had seen the marks of the 
 wheels of the undertaker s wagon where it had been backed up to 
 the horse-block. As he closed the front door behind him and stood for 
 a moment in the hallway, his valise in his hand, he saw hanging upon 
 one of the pegs of the hat-rack, the hat Ferriss had last worn. Ben 
 nett put down his valise quickly, and, steadying himself against the 
 wall, leaned heavily against it, drawing a deep breath, his eyes closing. 
 
 The house was empty and, but for the occasional subdued 
 noises that came from the front room at the end of the hall, silent. 
 Bennett picked up his valise again and went upstairs to the rooms 
 that had been set apart for him. He did not hang his hat upon the 
 hat-rack, but carried it with him. 
 
 The housekeeper, who met him at the head of the stairs and 
 showed him the way to his apartments, inquired of him as to the 
 hours he wished to have his meals served. Bennett told her, and 
 then added: 
 
 "I will have all my meals in the breakfast-room, the one you 
 call the glass-room, I believe. And as soon as the front room is 
 ready I shall sleep there. That will be my room after this." 
 
 The housekeeper stared. "It won t be quite safe, sir, for some 
 time. The doctor gave very strict orders about ventilating it and 
 changing the furniture." 
 
 Bennett merely nodded as if to say he understood, and the 
 housekeeper soon after left him to himself. The afternoon passed, 
 then the evening. Such supper as Bennett could eat was served 
 according to his orders in the breakfast-room. Afterward he called 
 Kamiska, and went for a long walk over the country roads in a 
 direction away from the town, proceeding slowly, his hands clasped 
 behind his back. Later, toward ten o clock, he returned. He went 
 upstairs toward his room with the half-formed idea of looking over 
 and arranging his papers before going to bed. Sleep he could not ; 
 he foresaw that clearly. 
 
 But Bennett was not yet familiar with the arrangement of the 
 house. His mind was busy with other things; he was thoughtful, 
 abstracted, and upon reaching the stair landing on the second floor, 
 turned toward the front of the house when he should have turned 
 toward the rear. He entered what he supposed to be his room, 
 lighted the gas, then stared about him in some perplexity. 
 
400 A Man s Woman 
 
 The room he was in was almost bare of furniture. Even part 
 of the carpet had been taken up. The windows were wide open ; 
 a stale odor of drugs pervaded the air, while upon the bed nothing 
 remained but the mattress and bolster. For a moment Bennett 
 looked about him bewildered, then he started sharply. This was 
 had been the sick-room. Here, upon that bed, Ferriss had died ; 
 here had been enacted one scene in the terrible drama wherein he, 
 Bennett, had played so conspicuous a part. 
 
 As Bennett stood there looking about him, one hand upon the 
 footboard of the bed, a strange, formless oppression of the spirit 
 weighed heavily upon him. He seemed to see upon that naked 
 bed the wasted, fever-stricken body of the dearest friend he had 
 ever known. It was as though Ferriss were lying in state there, 
 with black draperies hung about the bier and candles burning at 
 the head and foot. Death had been in that room. Empty though it 
 was, a certain religious solemnity, almost a certain awe, seemed to 
 bear down upon the senses. Before he knew it Bennett found him 
 self kneeling at the denuded bed, his face buried, his arms flung 
 wide across the place where Ferriss had last reposed. 
 
 He could not say how long he remained thus perhaps ten min 
 utes, perhaps an hour. He seemed to come to himself once more 
 when he stepped out into the hall again, closing and locking the 
 door of the death-room behind him. But now all thought of work 
 had left him. In the morning he would arrange his papers. It 
 was out of the question to think of sleep. He descended once more 
 to the lower floor of the silent house, and stepped out again into 
 the open air. 
 
 On the veranda, close beside him, was a deep-seated wicker 
 arm-chair. Bennett sank down into it, drawing his hands wearily 
 across his forehead. The stillness of a summer night had settled 
 broadly over the vast, dim landscape. There was no moon; all 
 the stars were out. Very far off a whippoorwill was calling in 
 cessantly. Once or twice from the little orchard close at hand an 
 apple dropped with a faint rustle of leaves and a muffled, velvety 
 impact upon the turf. Kamiska, wide awake, sat motionless upon 
 her haunches on the steps, looking off into the night, cocking an 
 ear to every faintest sound. 
 
 Well, Ferriss was dead, and he, Bennett, was responsible. His 
 friend, the man whom most he loved, was dead. The splendid fight 
 he had made for his life during that ferocious struggle with the Ice 
 had been all of no effect. Without a murmur, without one com- 
 
A Man s Woman 401 
 
 plaint he had borne starvation, the bitter arctic cold, privation be 
 yond words, the torture of the frost that had gnawed away his 
 hands, the blinding fury of the snow and wind, the unceasing and 
 incredible toil with sledge and pack all the terrible hardships of 
 an unsuccessful attempt to reach the Pole, only to die miserably 
 in his bed, alone, abandoned by the man and woman whom, of all 
 people of the world, he had most loved and trusted. And he, Ben 
 nett, had been to blame. 
 
 Was Ferriss conscious during that last moment ? Did he know ; 
 would he, sometime, somewhere, know? It could not be said. 
 Forever that must remain a mystery. And, after all, had Bennett 
 done right in keeping Lloyd from the sick-room? Now that all 
 was over, now that the whole fearful tragedy could be judged some 
 what calmly and in the light of reason, the little stealthy doubt be 
 gan to insinuate itself. 
 
 At first he had turned from it, raging and furious, stamping 
 upon it as upon an intruding reptile. The rough-hewn, simple- 
 natured man, with his arrogant and vast self-confidence, his blind, 
 unshaken belief in the wisdom of his own decisions, had never in 
 his life before been willing to admit that he could be mistaken, 
 that it was possible for him to resolve upon a false line of action. 
 He had always been right. But now a change had come. A woman 
 had entangled herself in the workings of his world, the world that 
 hitherto had been only a world of men for him and now he faltered, 
 now he scrutinized his motives, now the simple became complicated, 
 the straight crooked, right mingled with wrong, bitter with sweet, 
 falseness w r ith truth. 
 
 He who had faith in himself to remove mountains, he who could 
 drive his fellow-men as a herder drives his sheep, he who had 
 forced the vast grip of the Ice, had, with a battering ram s force, 
 crushed his way through those terrible walls, shattered and breached 
 and broken down the barriers, now in this situation involving a 
 woman had he failed ? Had he weakened ? And bigger, stronger, 
 and more persistently doubt intruded itself into his mind. 
 
 Hitherto Bennett s only salvation from absolute despair had 
 been the firm consciousness of his own rectitude. In that lay his 
 only comfort, his only hope, his one, strong-built fabric of defence. 
 If that was undermined, if that was eaten away, what was there 
 left for him? Carefully, painfully, and with such minuteness as 
 he could command, he went over the whole affair from beginning 
 to end, forcing his unwilling mind so unaccustomed to such work 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 to weigh each chance, to gauge each opportunity. If this were 
 so, if that had been done, then would such results have followed? 
 Suppose he had not interfered, suppose he had stood aside, would 
 Lloyd have run such danger, after all, and would Ferriss at this 
 time have been alive, and perhaps recovering? Had he, Bennett, 
 been absolutely mad; had he been blind and deaf to reason; had 
 he acted the part of a brute a purblind, stupid, and unutterably 
 selfish brute thinking chiefly of himself, after all, crushing the 
 woman who was so dear to him, sacrificing the life of the man he 
 loved, blundering in there, besotted and ignorant, acting the bully s 
 part, unnecessarily frightened, cowardly where he imagined him 
 self brave ; weak, contemptibly weak, where he imagined himself 
 strong? Might it not have been avoided if he had been even merely 
 reasonable, as, in like case, an ordinary man would have been? 
 He, who prided himself upon the promptness and soundness of his 
 judgment in great crises, had lost his head and all power of self- 
 control in this greatest crisis of all. 
 
 The doubt came back to him again and again. Trample it, 
 stifle it, dash it from him as he would, each time it returned a little 
 stronger, a little larger, a little more insistent. Perhaps, after all, 
 he had made a mistake; perhaps, after all, Lloyd ran no great 
 clanger; perhaps, after all, Ferriss might now have been alive. All 
 at once Bennett seemed to be sure of this. 
 
 Then it became terrible. Alone there, in the darkness and in 
 the night, Bennett went down into the pit. Abruptly he seemed to 
 come to himself to realize what he had done, as if rousing from a 
 nightmare. Remorse, horror, self-reproach, the anguish of bereave 
 ment, the infinite regret of things that never were to be again, 
 the bitterness of a vanished love, self-contempt too abject for ex 
 pression, the heart-breaking grief of the dreadful might-have-been, 
 one by one, he knew them all. One by one, like the slow accumu 
 lation of gigantic burdens, the consequences of his folly descended 
 upon him, heavier, more intolerably, more inexorably fixed with 
 every succeeding moment, while the light of truth and reason 
 searched every corner of his mind, and his doubt grew and hard 
 ened into certainty. 
 
 If only Bennett could have believed that, in spite of what had 
 happened, Lloyd yet loved him, he could have found some ray of 
 light in the darkness wherein he groped, some saving strength to 
 bear the weight of his remorse and sorrow. But now, just in pro 
 portion as he saw clearer and truer he saw that he must look for no 
 
A Man s Woman 403 
 
 help in that direction. Being what Lloyd was, it was impossible 
 for her, even though she wished it, to love him now love the man 
 who had broken her ! The thought was preposterous. He remem 
 bered clearly that she had warned him of just this. No, that, too, 
 the one sweetness of his rugged life, he must put from him as well 
 had already, and of his own accord, put from him. 
 
 How go on? Of what use now were ambition, endeavor, and 
 the striving to attain great ends? The thread of his life was 
 snapped ; his friend was dead, and the love of the one woman of his 
 world. For both he was to blame. Of what avail was it now to 
 continue his work? 
 
 Ferriss was dead. Who now would stand at his side when the 
 darkness thickened on ahead and obstacles drew across the path 
 and Death overhead hung poised and menacing? 
 
 Lloyd s love for him was dead. Who now to bid him godspeed as 
 his vessel s prow swung northward and the water whitened in her 
 wake? Who now to wait behind when the great fight was dared 
 again, to wait behind and watch for his home-coming; and when 
 the mighty hope had been achieved, the goal of all the centuries 
 attained, who now to send that first and dearest welcome out to 
 him when the returning ship showed over the horizon s rim, flagged 
 from her decks to her crosstrees in all the royal blazonry of an 
 immortal triumph? 
 
 Now, that triumph never was to be for him. Ambition, too, was 
 dead ; some other was to win where now he could but lose, to gain 
 where now he could but fail; some other stronger than he, more 
 resolute, more determined. At last Bennett had come to this, he 
 who once had been so imperial in the consciousness of his power, 
 so arrogant, so uncompromising. Beaten, beaten at last; defeated, 
 daunted, driven from his highest hopes, abandoning his dearest am 
 bitions. And how, and why? Not by the Enemy he had so often 
 faced and dared, not by any power external to himself; but by his 
 very self s self, crushed by the engine he himself had set in motion, 
 shattered by the recoil of the very force that for so long had dwelt 
 within himself. Nothing in all the world could have broken him but 
 that. Danger, however great, could not have cowed him ; circum 
 stances, however hopeless, could not have made him despair ; ob 
 stacles, however vast, could not have turned him back. Himself 
 was the only Enemy that could have conquered ; his own power the 
 only one to which he would have yielded. And fate had so ordered 
 it that this one Enemy of all others, this one power of all others, had 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 turned upon and rent him. The mystery of it! The terror of it! 
 Why had he never known? How was it he had never guessed? 
 What was this ruthless monster, this other self, that for so long had 
 slept within his flesh, strong with his better strength, feeding and 
 growing big with that he fancied was the best in him, that tricked 
 him with his noblest emotion the love of a good woman lured him 
 to a moment of weakness, then suddenly, and without warning, 
 leaped at his throat and struck him to the ground? 
 
 He had committed one of those offences which the law does not 
 reach, but whose punishment is greater than any law can inflict. 
 Retribution had been fearfully swift. His career, Ferriss, and 
 Lloyd ambition, friendship, and the love of a woman had been 
 a trinity of dominant impulses in his life. Abruptly, almost in a 
 single instant, he had lost them all, had thrown them away. He 
 could never get them back. Bennett started sharply. What was this 
 on his cheek; what was this that suddenly dimmed his eyes? Had 
 it actually come to this ? And this was he Bennett the same man 
 who had commanded the "Freja" expedition. No, it was not the 
 same man. That man was dead. He ground his teeth, shaken with the 
 violence of emotions that seemed to be tearing his heart to pieces. 
 Lost, lost to him forever ! Bennett bowed his head upon his folded 
 arms. Through his clinched teeth his words seemed almost 
 wrenched from him, each word an agony. 
 
 "Dick Dick, old man, you re gone, gone from me, and it was 
 I who did it; and Lloyd, she too she God help me!" 
 
 Then the tension snapped. The great, massive frame shook with 
 grief from head to heel, and the harsh, angular face, with its salient 
 jaw and hard, uncouth lines, was wet with the first tears he had 
 ever known. 
 
 He was roused at length by a sudden movement on the part 
 of the dog. Kamiska had risen to her feet with a low growl, then, 
 as the gate-latch clinked, she threw up her head and gave tongue 
 to the night with all the force of her lungs. Bennett straightened 
 up, thanking fortune that the night was dark, and looked about him. 
 A figure was coming up the front walk, the gravel crunching under 
 foot. It was the figure of a man. At the foot of the steps of the 
 veranda he paused, and as Bennett made a movement turned in his 
 direction and said : 
 
 "Is this Dr. Pitts s house?" 
 
 Bennett s reply was drowned in the clamor of the dog, but the 
 other seemed to understand, for he answered: 
 
A Man s Woman 405 
 
 "I m looking for Mr. Ferriss Richard Ferriss, of the Freja ; 
 they told me he was brought here." 
 
 Kamiska stopped her barking, sniffed once or twice at the man s 
 tronser legs ; then, in brusque frenzy of delight, leaped against him, 
 licking his hands, dancing about him on two legs, whining and 
 yelping. 
 
 Bennett came forward, and the man changed his position so 
 that the light from the half-open front door shone upon his face. 
 
 "Why, Adler!" exclaimed Bennett; "well, where did you come 
 from?" 
 
 "Mr. Bennett!" almost shouted the other, snatching off his cap. 
 "It ain t really you, sir!" His face beamed and radiated a joy little 
 short of beatitude. The man was actually trembling with happi 
 ness. Words failed him, and as with a certain clumsy tenderness 
 he clasped Bennett s hand in both his own his old-time chief saw 
 the tears in his eyes. 
 
 "Oh! Maybe I ain t glad to see you, sir I thought you had 
 gone away I didn t know where I I didn t know as I was ever 
 going to see you again." 
 
 Kamiska herself had been no less tremulously glad to see Adler 
 than was Adler to see Bennett. He stammered, he confused him 
 self, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his eyes 
 danced, he laughed and choked, he dropped his cap. His joy was 
 that of a child, unrestrained, unaffected, as genuine as gold. When 
 they turned back to the veranda he eagerly drew up Bennett s chair 
 for him, his eyes never leaving his face. It was the quivering, in 
 articulate affection of a dog for its master, faithful, submissive, un 
 questioning, happy for hours over a chance look, a kind word, a 
 touch of the hand. To Adler s mind it would have been a privilege 
 and an honor to have died for Bennett. Why, he was his chief, his 
 king, his god, his master, who could do no wrong. Bennett could have 
 slain him where he stood and Adler would still have trusted him. 
 
 Adler would not sit down until Bennett had twice ordered him 
 to do so, and then he deposited himself in a nearby chair, in as 
 uncomfortable a position as he could devise, allowing only the 
 smallest fraction of his body to be supported as a mark of deference. 
 He remained uncovered, and from time to time nervously saluted. 
 But suddenly he remembered the object of his visit 
 
 "Oh, but I forgot seeing you" like this, unexpected, sir, clean 
 drove Mr. Ferriss out of my mind. How is he getting on ? I saw 
 in the papers he was main sick." 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 "He s dead," said Bennett quietly. 
 
 Adler was for the moment stricken speechless. His jaw 
 dropped; he stared, and caught his breath. 
 
 "Mr. Ferriss dead!" he exclaimed at length. "I I can t be 
 lieve it." He crossed himself rapidly. Bennett made no reply, and 
 for upward of five minutes the two men sat motionless in the chairs, 
 looking off into the night. After a while Adler broke silence and 
 asked a few questions as to Ferriss s sickness and the nature and 
 time of his death questions which Bennett answered as best he 
 might. But it was evident that Bennett, alive and present there in 
 the flesh, was more to Adler than Ferriss dead. 
 
 "But you re all right, sir, ain t you ?" he asked at length. "There 
 ain t anything the matter with you ?" 
 
 "No," said Bennett, looking at him steadily; then suddenly he 
 added : 
 
 "Adler, I was to blame for Mr. Ferriss s death. If it hadn t been 
 for me he would probably have been alive to-night. It was my 
 fault. I did what I thought was right, when I knew all the time, 
 just as I know now, that I was wrong. So, when any one asks you 
 about Mr. Ferriss s death you are to tell him just what you know 
 about it understand. Through a mistake I was responsible for his 
 death. I shall not tell you more than that, but that much you ought 
 to know." 
 
 Adler looked at Bennett curiously and with infinite amazement. 
 The order of his universe was breaking up about his ears. Bennett, 
 the inscrutable, who performed his wonders in a mystery, impene 
 trable to common eyes, who moved with his head in the clouds, be 
 hold ! he was rendering account to him, Adler, the meanest of his 
 subjects the king was condescending to the vassal, was admitting 
 him to his confidence. And what was this thing he was saying, that 
 he was responsible for Ferriss s death ? Adler did not understand ; 
 his wits could not adjust themselves to such information. Ferriss 
 was dead, but how was Bennett to blame? The king could do no 
 wrong. Adler did not understand. No doubt Bennett was referring 
 to something that had happened during the retreat over the ice 
 something that had to be done, and that in the end, and after all 
 this lapse of time, had brought about Mr. Ferriss s death. In any case 
 Bennett had done what was right. For that matter he had been re 
 sponsible for McPherson s death ; but what else had there been to do ? 
 
 Bennett had spoken as he did after a moment s rapid thinking. 
 To Adler s questions as to the manner of the chief engineer s death 
 
A Man s Woman 407 
 
 Bennett had at first given evasive replies. But a sudden sense of 
 shame at being compelled to dissemble before a subordinate had 
 lashed him across the face. True, he had made a mistake a fear 
 ful, unspeakable mistake but at least let him be man enough to 
 face and to accept its consequences. It might not be necessary or 
 even expedient to make acknowledgment of his folly in all quar 
 ters, but at that moment it seemed to him that his men at least 
 one of them who had been under the command of himself and his 
 friend, had a right to be told the truth. It had been only one degree 
 less distasteful to undeceive Adler than it had been to deceive him 
 in the first place. Bennett was not the general to explain his 
 actions to his men. But he had not hesitated a moment. 
 
 However, Adler was full of another subject, and soon broke out 
 with: 
 
 "You know, sir, there s another expedition forming; I suppose 
 you have heard an English one. They call it the Duane-Parsons 
 expedition. They are to try the old route by Smith Sound. They 
 are going to winter at Tasiusak, and try to get through the sound 
 as soon as the ice breaks up in the spring. But Duane s ideas are 
 all wrong. He ll make no very high northing, not above eighty- 
 five, I ll bet a hat. When we go up again, sir, will you will you 
 let me will you take me along? Did I give satisfaction this last " 
 
 "I m never going up again, Adler," answered Bennett. 
 
 "Sho!" said Adler a little blankly. "I thought sure I never 
 thought that you why, there ain t no one else but you can do it, 
 captain." 
 
 "Oh, yes, there is," said Bennett listlessly. "Duane can if he 
 has luck. I know him. He s a good man. No, I m out of it, Adler ; 
 I had my chance. It is somebody else s turn now. Do you want to 
 go with Duane? I can give you letters to him. He d be glad to 
 have you, I know." 
 
 Adler started from his place. 
 
 "Why do you think " he exclaimed vehemently "do you think 
 I d go with anybody else but you, sir ? Oh, you will be going some 
 of these days, I m sure of it. We we ll have another try at it, sir, 
 before we die. We ain t beaten yet." 
 
 "Yes, we are, Adler," returned Bennett, smiling calmly; "we ll 
 stay at home now and write our book. But we ll let some one else 
 reach the Pole. That s not for us never will be, Adler." 
 
 At the end of their talk some half-hour later Adler stood up, 
 remarking : 
 
4 o8 A Man s Woman 
 
 "Guess I d better be standing by if I m to get the last train back 
 to the city to-night. They told me at the station that she d clear 
 about midnight." Suddenly he began to show signs of uneasiness, 
 turning his cap about between his fingers, changing his weight from 
 foot to foot. Then at length : 
 
 "You wouldn t be wanting a man about the place? would you, 
 sir?" And before Bennett could reply he continued eagerly, "I ve 
 been a bit of most trades in my time, and I know how to take care 
 of a garden like as you have here; I m a main good hand with 
 plants and flower things, and I could help around generally." Then, 
 earnestly, "Let me stay, sir it won t cost I wouldn t think of tak 
 ing a cent from you, captain. Just let me act as your orderly for a 
 spell, sir. I d sure give satisfaction; will you, sir will you?" 
 
 "Nonsense, Adler," returned Bennett; "stay, if you like. I pre 
 sume I can find use for you. But you must be paid, of course." 
 
 "Not a soumarquee," protested the other almost indignantly. 
 
 The next day Adler brought his chest down from the city and 
 took up his quarters with Bennett at Medford. Though Dr. Pitts 
 had long since ceased to keep horses, the stable still adjoined the 
 house, and Adler swung his hammock in the coachman s old room. 
 Bennett could not induce him to room in the house itself. Adler 
 prided himself that he knew his place. After their first evening s 
 conversation he never spoke to Bennett until spoken to first, and 
 the resumed relationship of commander and subordinate was inex 
 pressibly dear to him. It was something to see Adler waiting on the 
 table in the "glass-room" in his blue jersey, standing at attention 
 at the door, happy in the mere sight of Bennett at his meals. In the 
 mornings, as soon as breakfast was ready, it was Adler s privilege 
 to announce the fact to Bennett, whom he usually found already at 
 work upon his writing. Returning thence to the dining-room, Adler 
 waited for his lord to appear. As soon as he heard Bennett s step 
 in the hall a little tremor of excitement possessed him. He ran 
 to Bennett s chair, drawing it back for him, and as soon as Bennett 
 had seated himself circled about him with all the pride and solici 
 tude of a motherly hen. He opened his napkin for him, delivered 
 him his paper, and pushed his cup of coffee a half-inch nearer his 
 hand. Throughout the duration , of the meal he hardly took his 
 eyes from Bennett s face, watching his every movement with a 
 glow of pride, his hands gently stroking one another in an excess of 
 satisfaction and silent enjoyment. 
 
 The days passed; soon a fortnight was gone by. Drearily, me- 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 409 
 
 chanically, Bennett had begun work upon his book, the narrative 
 of the expedition. It was repugnant to him. Long since he had lost 
 all interest in polar exploration. As he had said to Adler, he was 
 out of it, finally and irrevocably. His bolt was shot ; his role upon 
 the stage of the world was ended. He only desired now to be for 
 gotten as quickly as possible, to lapse into mediocrity as easily and 
 quietly as he could. Fame was nothing to him now. The thunder 
 ing applause of an entire world that had once been his was mere 
 noise, empty and meaningless. He did not care to reawaken it. 
 The appearance of his book he knew was expected and waited for 
 in every civilized nation of the globe. It would be printed in lan 
 guages whereof he was ignorant, but it was all one with him now. 
 
 The task of writing was hateful to him beyond expression, but 
 with such determination as he could yet summon to his aid Bennett 
 stuck to it, eight, ten, and sometimes fourteen hours each day. In 
 a way his narrative was an atonement. Ferriss was its hero. Al 
 most instinctively Bennett kept the figure of himself, his own 
 achievements, his own plans and ideas, in the background. On more 
 than one page he deliberately ascribed to Ferriss triumphs which 
 no one but himself had attained. It was Ferriss who was the leader, 
 the victor to whom all laurels were due. It was Ferriss whose ex 
 ample had stimulated the expedition to its best efforts in the dark 
 est hours; it was, practically, Ferriss wHo had saved the party 
 after the destruction of the ship; whose determination, unbroken 
 courage, endurance, and intelligence had pervaded all minds and 
 hearts during the retreat to Kolyuchin Bay. 
 
 "Though nominally in command," wrote Bennett, "I continually 
 gave place to him. Without his leadership we should all, unques 
 tionably, have perished before even reaching land. His resolution 
 to conquer, at whatever cost, was an inspiration to us all. Where 
 he showed the way we had to follow ; his courage was never daunted, 
 his hope was never dimmed, his foresight, his intelligence, his in 
 genuity in meeting and dealing with apparently unsolvable prob 
 lems were nothing short of marvelous. His was the genius of lead 
 ership. He was the explorer, born to his work." 
 
 One day, just after luncheon, as Bennett, according to his cus 
 tom, v/as walking in the garden by the house, smoking a cigar 
 before returning to his work, he was surprised to find himself bleed 
 ing at the nose. It was but a trifling matter, and passed off in a 
 few moments, but the fact of its occurrence directed his attention to 
 the state of his health, and he told himself that for the last few 
 
 R III NORRIS 
 
4IO A Man s Woman 
 
 days he had not been at all his accustomed self. There had been 
 dull pains in his back and legs ; more than once his head had pained 
 him, and of late the continuance of his work had been growing 
 steadily more obnoxious to him, the very physical effort of driving 
 the pen from line to line was a burden. 
 
 "Hum!" he said to himself later on in the day, when the bleed 
 ing at the nose returned upon him, "I think we need a little quinine." 
 
 But the next day he found he could not eat, and all the afternoon, 
 though he held doggedly to his work, he was troubled with nausea. 
 At times a great weakness, a relaxing of all the muscles, came over 
 him. In the evening he sent a note to Dr. Pitts s address in the 
 city, asking him to come down to Medford the next day. 
 
 On the Monday morning of the following week, some two hours 
 after breakfast, Lloyd met Miss Douglass on the stairs, dressed for 
 the street and carrying her nurse s bag. 
 
 "Are you going out?" she asked of the fever nurse in some as 
 tonishment. "Where are you going?" for Lloyd had returned to 
 duty, and it was her name that now stood at the top of the list; 
 "I thought it was my turn to go out," she added. 
 
 Miss Douglass was evidently much confused. Her meeting with 
 Lloyd had apparently been unexpected. She halted upon the stairs 
 in great embarrassment, stammering: 
 
 "No no, I m on call. I I was called out of my turn spe 
 cially called that was it." 
 
 "Were you?" demanded Lloyd sharply, for the other nurse 
 was disturbed to an extraordinary degree. 
 
 "Well, then ; no, I wasn t, but the superintendent Miss Bergyn 
 she thought she advised you had better see her." 
 
 "I will see her," declared Lloyd, "but don t you go till I find out 
 why I was skipped." 
 
 Lloyd hurried at once to Miss Bergyn s room, indignant at this 
 slight. Surely, after what had happened, she was entitled to more 
 consideration than this. Of all the staff in the house she should 
 have been the one to be preferred. 
 
 Miss Bergyn rose at Lloyd s sudden entrance into her room, and 
 to her question responded : 
 
 "It was only because I wanted to spare you further trouble and 
 and embarrassment, Lloyd, that I told Miss Douglass to take 
 your place. This call is from Medford. Dr. Pitts was here himself 
 this morning, and he thought as I did." 
 
A Man s Woman 411 
 
 "Thought what? I don t understand." 
 
 "It seemed to me," answered the superintendent nurse, "that this 
 one case of all others would be the hardest, the most disagreeable 
 for you to take. It seems that Mr. Bennett has leased Dr. Pitts s 
 house from him. He is there now. At the time when Mr. Ferriss 
 was beginning to be ill Mr. Bennett was with him a great deal and 
 undertook to nurse him till Dr. Pitts interfered and put a profes 
 sional nurse on the case. Since then, too, the doctor has found out 
 that Mr. Bennett has exposed himself imprudently. At any rate, 
 in some way he has contracted the same disease and is rather seri- 
 iously ill with it. Dr. Pitts wants us to send him a nurse at once. 
 It just happened that it was your turn, and I thought I had better 
 skip your name and send Louise Douglass." 
 
 Lloyd sank into a chair, her hands falling limply in her lap. A 
 frown of perplexity gathered on her forehead. But suddenly she 
 exclaimed : 
 
 "I know that s all as it may be, but all the staff know that it is 
 my turn to go ; everybody in the house knows who is on call. How 
 will it be what will be thought when it is known that I haven t 
 gone and after after my failing once after this this other af 
 fair? No, I must go. I, of all people, must go and just because 
 it 5s a typhoid case, like the other." 
 
 "But, Lloyd, how can you?" 
 
 True, how could she? Her patient would be the same man who 
 had humiliated her and broken her, had so cruelly misunderstood 
 and wronged her, for whom all her love was dead. How could she 
 face him again? Yet how refuse to take the case? How explain 
 a second failure to her companions? Lloyd made a little move 
 ment of distress, clasping her hands together. How the compli 
 cations followed fast upon each other ! No sooner was one difficult 
 .situation met and disposed of than another presented itself. Ben 
 nett was nothing to her now, yet, for all that, she recoiled instinc 
 tively from meeting him again. Not only must she meet him, but 
 she must be with him day after day, hour after hour, at his very 
 side, in all the intimacy that the sick-room involved. On the other 
 hand, how could she decline this case? The staff might condone 
 one apparent and inexplicable defection; another would certainly 
 not be overlooked. But was not this new situation a happy and 
 unlooked-for opportunity to vindicate her impaired prestige in the 
 eyes of her companions ? Lloyd made up her mind upon the instant. 
 She rose. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 "I shall take the case," she said. 
 
 She was not a little surprised at herself. Hardly an instant had 
 she hesitated. On that other occasion when she had believed it 
 right to make confession to her associates it had been hard at 
 times almost impossible for her to do her duty as she saw and 
 understood it. This new complication was scarcely less difficult, 
 but once having attained the fine, moral rigor that had carried her 
 through her former ordeal, it became easy now to do right under 
 all or any circumstances, however adverse. If she had failed then, 
 she certainly would have failed now. That she had succeeded then 
 made it all the easier to succeed now. Dimly Lloyd commenced to 
 understand that the mastery of self, the steady, firm control of 
 natural, intuitive impulses, selfish because natural, was a progres 
 sion. Each victory not only gained the immediate end in view, but 
 braced the mind and increased the force of will for the next shock, 
 the next struggle. She had imagined and had told herself that Ben 
 nett had broken her strength for good. But was it really so? Had 
 not defeat in that case been only temporary? Was she not slowly 
 getting back her strength by an unflinching adherence to the simple, 
 fundamental principles of right, and duty, and truth ? Was not the 
 struggle with one s self the greatest fight of all, greater, far greater 
 than had been the conflict between Bennett s will and her own ? 
 
 Within the hour she found herself once again on her way to 
 Medford. How much had happened, through what changes had 
 she passed since the occasion of her first journey ; and Bennett, how 
 he, too, changed; how different he had come to stand in her esti 
 mation! Once the thought that he was in danger had been a con 
 stant terror to her, and haunted her days and lurked at her side 
 through many a waking night. Was it possible that now his life 
 or death was no more to her than that of any of her former pa 
 tients? She could not say; she avoided answering the question. 
 Certainly her heart beat no faster at this moment to know that he 
 was in the grip of a perilous disease. She told herself that her Ben 
 nett was dead already ; that she was coming back to Medford not to 
 care for and watch over the individual, but to combat the disease. 
 
 When she arrived at the doctor s house in Medford, a strange- 
 looking man opened the door for her, and asked immediately if she 
 was the nurse. 
 
 "Yes," said Lloyd, "I am. Is Dr. Pitts here?" 
 
 "Upstairs in his room," answered the other in a whisper, clos- 
 ; ing the front door with infinite softness. "He won t let me go in, 
 
A Man s Woman 413 
 
 the doctor won t; I I ain t seen him in four days. Ask the doctor if 
 I can t just have a blink at him just a little blink through the crack 
 of the door. Just think, Miss, I ain t seen him in four days ! Just 
 think of that ! And look here, they ain t giving him enough to eat 
 nothing but milk and chicken soup with rice in it. He never did 
 like rice ; that s no kind of rations for a sick man. I fixed him up a 
 bit of duff yesterday, what he used to like so much aboard ship, and 
 Pitts wouldn t let him have it. He regularly laughed in my face." 
 
 Lloyd sent word to the doctor by the housekeeper that she had 
 arrived, and on going up found Pitts waiting for her at the door 
 of the sick-room, not that which had been occupied by Ferriss, but 
 another the guest-chamber of the house, situated toward the rear 
 of the building. 
 
 "Why, I expected Miss Douglass!" exclaimed the doctor in a 
 low voice as soon as his eye fell upon Lloyd. "Any one of them 
 but you!" 
 
 "I had to come," Lloyd answered quietly, flushing hotly for all 
 that. "It was my turn, and it was not right for me to stay away." 
 
 The doctor hesitated an instant, and then dismissed the subject, 
 putting his chin in the air as if to say that, after all, it was not his 
 affair. 
 
 "Well," he said, "it s queer to see how things will tangle them 
 selves sometimes. I don t know whether he took this thing from 
 Ferriss or not. Both of them were exposed to the same conditions 
 when their expedition went to pieces and they were taken off by 
 the whaling ships bad water, weakened constitution, not much 
 power of resistance; in prime condition for the bacillus, and the 
 same cause might have produced the same effect; at any rate, he s 
 in a bad way." 
 
 "Is he very bad?" asked Lloyd. 
 
 "Well, he s not the hang-on sort that Mr. Ferriss was ; nothing 
 undecided about Captain Ward Bennett; when he s sick, he s sick; 
 rushes right at it like a blind bull. He s as bad now as Mr. Ferriss 
 was in his third week." 
 
 "Do you think he will recognize me?" 
 
 The doctor shook his head. "No ; delirious most of the time 
 of course regulation thing. If we don t keep the fever down he ll 
 go out sure. That s the danger in his case. Look at him yourself ; 
 here he is. The devil ! The animal is sitting up again." 
 
 As Lloyd entered the room she saw Bennett sitting bolt upright 
 in his bed, staring straight before him, his small eyes, with their 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 deforming cast, open to their fullest extent, the fingers of his 
 shrunken, bony hands dancing nervously on the coverlet. A week s 
 growth of stubble blackened the lower part of his face. Without 
 a moment s pause he mumbled and muttered with astonishing 
 rapidity, but for the most part the words were indistinguishable. 
 It was, indeed, not the same Bennett, Lloyd had last seen. The 
 great body was collapsed upon itself; the skin of the face was like 
 dry, brown parchment, and behind it the big, massive bones stood 
 out in great knobs and ridges. It needed but a glance to know 
 that here was a man dangerously near to his death. While Lloyd 
 was removing her hat and preparing herself for her work the doc 
 tor got Bennett upon his back again and replenished the ice-pack 
 about his head. 
 
 "Not much strength left in our friend now," he murmured. 
 
 "How long has he been like this ?" asked Lloyd as she arranged 
 the contents of her nurse s bag on the table near the window. 
 
 "Pretty close to eight hours now. He was conscious yesterday 
 morning, however, for a little while, and wanted to know Avhat his 
 chances were." 
 
 They were neither good nor many; the strength once so formi 
 dable was ebbing away like a refluent tide, and that with ominous 
 swiftness. Stimulate the life as the doctor would, strive against 
 the enemy s advance as Lloyd might, Bennett continued to sink. 
 
 "The devil of it is," muttered the doctor, "that he don t seem 
 to care. He had as soon give up as not. It s hard to save a patient 
 that don t want to save himself. If he d fight for his life as he did 
 in the Arctic, we could pull him through yet. Otherwise he 
 shrugged his shoulders almost helplessly. 
 
 The next night toward nine o clock Lloyd took the doctor s 
 place at their patient s bedside, and Pitts, without taking off his 
 clothes, stretched himself out upon the sofa in one of the rooms on 
 the lower floor of the house, with the understanding that the nurse 
 was to call him in case of any change. 
 
 But as the doctor was groping his way down the darkened 
 stairway he stumbled against Adler and Kamiska. Adler was sit 
 ting on one of the steps, and the dog was on her haunches close at 
 his side; the two were huddled together there in the dark, broad 
 awake, shoulder to shoulder, waiting, watching, and listening for 
 the faint sounds that came at long intervals from the direction of 
 the room where Bennett lay. 
 
 As the physician passed him Adler stood up and saluted. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 415 
 
 "Is he doing any better now, sir?" he whispered. 
 
 "Nothing new," returned the other brusquely. "He may get 
 well in three weeks time or he may die before midnight; so 
 there you are. You know as much about it as I do. Damn 
 that dog!" 
 
 He trod upon Kamiska, who forbore heroically to yelp, and 
 went on his way. Adler resumed his place on the stairs, sitting 
 down gingerly, so that the boards should not creak under his 
 weight. He took Kamiska s head between his hands and rocked 
 himself gently to and fro. 
 
 "What are we going to do, little dog?" he whispered. "What 
 are we going to do if if our captain should if he shouldn t " he 
 had no words to finish. Kamiska took her place again by his side, 
 and the two resumed their vigil. 
 
 Meanwhile, not fifty feet away, a low voice, monotonous and 
 rapid, was keeping up a continuous, murmuring flow of words. 
 
 "That s well, your number two sledge. All hands on the Mc- 
 Clintock now. You ve got to do it, men. Forward, get forward, 
 get forward ; get on to the south, always to the south south, south, 
 south! . . . There, there s the ice again. That s the biggest 
 ridge yet. At it now! Smash through; I ll break you yet, believe 
 me, I will ! There, we broke it ! I knew you could, men. I ll pull 
 you through. Now, then, h up your other sledge. Forward! 
 There will be double rations to-night all round no half-rations, 
 quarter-rations . . . No, three-fifths of an ounce of dog-meat 
 and a spoonful of alcohol that s all; that s all, men. Pretty cold 
 night, this minus thirty-eight. Only a quarter of a mile covered 
 to-day. Everybody suffering in their feet, and so weak and starv 
 ing an d freezing." All at once the voice became a wail. "My 
 God! is it never going to end? . . . Sh h, steady, what was 
 that? Who whimpered? Was that Ward Bennett? No whim 
 pering, whatever comes. Stick it out like men, anyway. Fight it 
 out till we drop, but no whimpering. . . . Who said there 
 were steam whalers off the floe? That s a lie. Forward, forward, 
 get forward to the south no, not the south; to the north, to the 
 north! We ll reach it, we ll succeed; we re most there, men; come 
 on, come on! I tell you this time we ll reach it; one more effort, 
 menl We re most there! What s the latitude? Eighty-five-twen 
 ty eighty-six." The voice began to grow louder : "Come on, men ; 
 i we re most there! Eighty-seven eighty-eight eighty-nine-twen- 
 1 ty-five!" He rose to a sitting position. "Eighty-nine-thirty 
 
4I 6 A Man s Woman 
 
 eighty-nine-forty-five." Suddenly the voice rose to a shout. 
 Ninety degrees! By God, it s the Pole!" 
 
 The voice died away to indistinct mutterings. 
 
 Lloyd was at the bedside by now, and quietly pressed Bennett 
 down upon his back. But as she did so a thrill of infinite pity and 
 compassion quivered through her. She had forced him down so 
 easily. He was so pitifully weak. Woman though she was, she 
 could, with one small hand upon his breast, control this man who at 
 one time had been of such colossal strength such vast physical force. 
 
 Suddenly Bennett began again. "Where s Ferriss? Where s 
 Richard Ferriss? Where s the chief engineer of the Freja Arctic 
 Exploring Expedition ?" 
 
 He fell silent again, and but for the twitching, dancing hands, 
 lay quiet. Then he cried: 
 
 "Attention to the roll-call !" 
 
 Rapidly and in a low voice he began calling off the muster of 
 the "Freja s" men and officers, giving the answers himself. 
 
 "Adler here; Blair here; Dahl here; Fishbaugh here; 
 Hawes here; McPherson here; Muck Tu here; Woodward 
 here; Captain Ward Bennett here; Dr. Sheridan Dennison here; 
 Chief Engineer Richard Ferriss " No answer. Bennett waited for 
 a moment, then repeated the name, "Chief Engineer Richard Fer 
 riss " Again he was silent; but after a few seconds he called 
 aloud in agony of anxiety, "Chief Engineer Richard Ferriss, answer 
 to the roll-call !" 
 
 Then once more he began ; his disordered wits calling to mind 
 a different order of things : 
 
 "Adler here; Blair died from exhaustion at Point Kane; 
 Dahl here; Fishbaugh starved to death on the march to Kolyu- 
 chin Bay; Hawes died of arctic fever at Cape Kammeni; Mc 
 Pherson unable to keep up, and abandoned at ninth camp ; Muck 
 Tu here; Woodwarddied from starvation at twelfth camp; Dr. 
 Sheridan Dennison frozen to death at Kolyuchin Bay; Chief En 
 gineer Richard Ferriss died by the act of his best friend, Captain 
 Ward Bennett!" Again and again Bennett repeated this phrase, 
 calling: "Richard Ferriss! Richard Ferriss!" and immediately 
 adding in a broken voice : "Died by. the act of his best friend, Cap 
 tain Ward Bennett." Or at times it was only the absence of Ferriss 
 that seemed to torture him. He would call the roll, answering 
 "here" to each name until he reached Ferriss ; then he would not 
 respond, but instead would cry aloud over and over again, in ac- 
 
A Man s Woman 417 
 
 cents of the bitterest grief, Richard Ferriss, answer to the roll- 
 call ; Richard Ferriss, answer to the roll-call " Then suddenly, 
 with a feeble, quavering cry, "For God s sake, Dick, answer to 
 the roll-call !" 
 
 The hours passed. Ten o clock struck, then eleven. At mid 
 night Lloyd took the temperature (which had decreased consider 
 ably) and the pulse, and refilled the ice-pack about the head. Ben 
 nett was still muttering in the throes of delirium, still calling for 
 Ferriss, imploring him to answer to the roll-call ; or repeating the 
 words : "Dick Ferriss, chief engineer died at the hands of his best 
 friend, Ward Bennett," in tones so pitiful, so heartbroken that 
 more than once Lloyd felt the tears running down her cheeks. 
 
 "Richard Ferriss, Richard Ferriss, answer to the roll-call ; 
 Dick, old man, won t you answer, won t you answer, old chap, when 
 I call you? Won t you come back and say It s all right? Ferriss, 
 Ferriss, answer to my roll-call. . . . Died at the hands of his 
 best friend. ... At Kolyuchin Bay. . . . Killed, and I 
 did it. ... Forward, men; you ve got to do it; snowing to 
 day and all the ice in motion. . . . H up y r other sledge. Come 
 on with y r number four ; more pressure-ridges, I ll break you yet ! 
 Come on with y r number four. . . . Lloyd Searight, what 
 are you doing in this room?" 
 
 On the instant the voice had changed from confused mutterings 
 to distinct, clear-cut words. The transition was so sudden that 
 Lloyd, at the moment busy at her nurse s bag, her back to the bed, 
 wheeled sharply about to find Bennett sitting bolt upright, looking 
 straight at her with intelligent, wide-open eyes. Lloyd s heart for 
 an instant stood still, almost in terror. This sudden leap back from 
 the darkness of delirium into the daylight of consciousness was 
 almost like a rising from the dead, ghostlike, appalling. She caught 
 her breath, trembling in spite of her best efforts, and for an instant 
 leaned a hand upon the table behind her. 
 
 But on Bennett s face, ghastly, ravaged by disease, with its vast, 
 protruding jaw, its narrow, contracted forehead and unkempt growth 
 of beard, the dawning of intelligence and surprise swiftly gave 
 place to an expression of terrible anxiety and apprehension. 
 
 "What are you doing here, Lloyd?" he cried. 
 
 "Hush !" she answered quickly, as she came forward ; "above all 
 things, you must not sit up ; lie down again and don t talk. You are 
 very sick." 
 
 "I know, I know," he answered feebly. "I know what it is. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 But you must leave here. It s a terrible risk every moment you stay 
 in this room. I want you to go. You understand at once ! Call 
 the doctor. Don t come near the bed," he went on excitedly, strug 
 gling to keep himself from sinking back upon the pillows. His breath 
 was coming quick; his eyes were flashing. All the poor, shattered 
 senses were aroused and quivering with excitement and dread. 
 
 "It will kill you to stay here," he continued, almost breathless. 
 " Out of this room!" he commanded. "Out of this house! It is 
 mine now; I m the master here do you understand? Don t!" he 
 exclaimed as Lloyd put her hands upon his shoulders to force him 
 to lie down again. 
 
 "Don t touch me ! Stand away from me !" 
 
 He tried to draw back from her in the bed. Then suddenly he 
 made a great effort to rise, resisting her efforts. 
 
 "I shall put you out, then," he declared, struggling against 
 Lloyd s clasp upon his shoulders, catching at her wrists. His ex 
 citement was so intense, his fervor so great that it could almost be 
 said he touched the edge of his delirium again. 
 
 "Do you hear, do you hear? Out of this room!" 
 
 "No," said Lloyd calmly ; "you must be quiet ; you must try to go 
 to sleep. This time you can not make me leave." 
 
 He caught her by one arm, and, bracing himself with the other 
 against the headboard of the bed, thrust her back from him with all 
 his might. 
 
 "Keep away from me, I tell you; keep back! You shall do as 
 I say! I have always carried my point, and I shall not fail now. 
 Believe me, I shall not. You you " he panted as he struggled 
 with her, ashamed of his weakness, humiliated beyond words that 
 she should know it. "I you shall you will compel me to use 
 force. Don t let it come to that." 
 
 Calmly Lloyd took both his wrists in the strong, quiet clasp of 
 one palm, and while she supported his shoulders with her other 
 arm, laid him down among the pillows again as though he had 
 been a child. 
 
 "I m I m a bit weak and trembly just now," he admitted, pant 
 ing with his exertion; "but, Lloyd, listen. I know how you must 
 dislike me now, but will you please, go go, go at once!" 
 
 "No." 
 
 What a strange spinning of the wheel of fate was here ! In so 
 short a time had their mutual positions been reversed. Now it was 
 she who was strong and he who was weak. It was she who con- 
 
A Man s Woman 419 
 
 quered and he who was subdued. It was she who triumphed and 
 he who was humiliated. It was he who implored and she who 
 denied. It was her will and no longer his that must issue victorious 
 from the struggle. 
 
 And how complete now was Bennett s defeat! The very con 
 tingency he had fought so desperately to avert and for which he 
 had sacrificed Ferriss Lloyd s care of so perilous a disease be 
 hold! the mysterious turn of the wheel had brought it about, and 
 now he was powerless to resist. 
 
 "Oh !" he cried, "have I not enough upon my mind already 
 Ferriss and his death? Are you going to make me imperil your 
 life, too, and after I have tried so hard? You must not stay here." 
 
 "I shall stay," she answered. 
 
 "I order you to go. This is my house. Send the doctor here. 
 Where s Adler?" Suddenly he fainted. 
 
 An hour or two later, in the gray of the morning, at a time 
 when Bennett was sleeping quietly under the influence of opiates, 
 Lloyd found herself sitting at the window in front of the small 
 table there, her head resting on her hand, thoughtful, absorbed, 
 and watching with but half-seeing eyes the dawn growing pink over 
 the tops of the apple-trees in the orchard near by. 
 
 The window was open just wide enough for the proper ven 
 tilation of the room. For a long time she sat thus without moving, 
 only from time to time smoothing back the heavy, bronze-red hair 
 from her temples and ears. By degrees the thinking faculties of 
 her brain, as it were, a myriad of delicate interlacing wheels, slowly 
 decreased in the rapidity and intensity of their functions. She 
 began to feel instead of to think. As the activity of her mind lapsed 
 to a certain pleasant numbness, a vague, formless, nameless emotion 
 seemed to be welling to the surface. It was no longer a question of 
 the brain. What then? Was it the heart? She gave no name to 
 this new emotion; it was too confused as yet, too undefinable. A 
 certain great sweetness seemed to be coming upon her, but she could 
 not say whether she was infinitely sad or supremely happy ; a smile 
 was on her lips, and yet the tears began to brim in her dull-blue eyes. 
 
 She felt as if some long, fierce struggle, or series of struggles, 
 were at last accomplished ; as if for a long period of time she had 
 been involved in the maze and tortuous passages of some gloomy 
 cavern, but at length, thence issuing, had again beheld the stars. 
 A great tenderness, a certain tremulous joy in all things that were 
 true and good and right, grew big and strong within her; the de- 
 
20 A Man s Woman 
 
 light in living returned to her. The dawn was brightening and 
 flushing over all the world, and color, light, and warmth were 
 coming back into her life. The night had been still and mild, but 
 now the first breath of the morning breeze stirred in the trees, in the 
 grass, in the flowers, and the thick, dew-drenched bushes along the 
 roadside, and a delicious aroma of fields and woods and gardens 
 came to her. The sweetness of life and the sweetness of those things 
 better than life and more enduring, the things that do not fail, nor 
 cease, nor vanish away, suddenly entered into that room and de 
 scended upon her almost in the sense of a benediction, a visitation, 
 something mystic and miraculous. It was a moment to hope all 
 things, to believe all things, to endure all things. 
 
 She caught her breath, listening for what she did not know. 
 Once again, just as it had been in that other dawn, in that other 
 room where the Enemy had been conquered, the sense of some great 
 happiness was in the air, was coming to her swiftly. But now the 
 greater Enemy had been outfought, the morning of a greater day 
 was breaking and spreading, and the greatest happiness in the world 
 was preparing for her. How it had happened she did not know. 
 Now was not the moment to think, to reason, to reflect. It seemed 
 as though the rushing of wings was all about her, as though a light 
 brighter than the day was just about to break upon her sight, as 
 though a music divinely beautiful was just about to burst upon her 
 ear. But the light was not for her eye ; the music was not for her 
 ear. The radiance and the harmony came from herself, from within 
 her. The intellect was numb. Only the heart was alive on this 
 wonderful midsummer s morning, and it was in her heart that the 
 radiance shone and the harmony vibrated. Back in his place once 
 more, high on his throne, the love that she believed had forever 
 departed from her sat exalted and triumphant, singing to the ca 
 dence of that unheard music, shining and magnificent in the glory of 
 that new-dawned light. 
 
 Would Bennett live? Suddenly that question leaped up in her 
 mind and stood in the eye of her imagination, terrible, menacing 
 a hideous, grim spectre, before which Lloyd quailed with failing 
 heart and breath. The light, the almost divine radiance that had 
 burst upon her, nevertheless threw a dreadful shadow before it. 
 Beneath the music she heard the growl of the thunder. Her new 
 found happiness was not without its accompanying dismay. Love 
 had not returned to her heart alone. With it had returned the old 
 Enemy she had once believed had left her forever. Now it had come 
 
A Man s Woman 421 
 
 ack. As before, it lurked and leered at her from dark corners. It 
 rept to her side, to her back, ready to leap, ready to strike, to 
 lutch at her throat with cold fingers and bear her to the earth, 
 ending her heart with a grief she told herself she could not endure 
 .nd live. She loved him now with all her mind and might; how 
 ould it ever have been otherwise? He belonged to her and she? 
 Nhy, she only lived with his life ; she seemed so bound to him as 
 o be part of his very self. Literally, she could not understand how 
 t would be possible for her to live if .he should die. It seemed to 
 ler that with his death some mysterious element of her life, some- 
 hing vital and fundamental, for which there was no name, would 
 lisintegrate upon the instant and leave her without the strength 
 tecessary for further existence. This would, however, be a 
 elief. The prospect of the years after his death, the fearful loneli- 
 less of life without him, was a horror before which she veritably 
 >elieved her reason itself must collapse. 
 
 "Lloyd." 
 
 Bennett was awake again and watching her with feverish anxiety 
 rom where he lay among the pillows. "Lloyd," he repeated, the 
 roice once so deep and powerful quavering pitifully. "I was wrong. 
 . don t want you to go. Don t leave me." 
 
 In an instant Lloyd was at his side, kneeling by the bed. She 
 :aught one of the great, gnarled hands, seamed and corded and 
 mrning with the fever. "Never, never, dearest; never so long as 
 : shall live." 
 
 IX 
 
 WHEN Adler heard Bennett s uncertain steps upon the stairs 
 ind the sound of Lloyd s voice speaking to him and urging that 
 :here was no hurry, and that he was to take but one step at a time, 
 ic wheeled swiftly about from the windows of the glass-room, where 
 le had been watching the October breeze stirring the crimson 
 md yellow leaves in the orchard, and drew back his master s chair 
 irom the breakfast table and stood behind it expectantly, his eyes 
 matching the door. 
 
 Lloyd held back the door, and Bennett came in, leaning heavily 
 )n Dr. Pitts s shoulder. Adler stiffened upon the instant as if in an- 
 >wer to some unheard bugle-call, and when Bennett had taken his 
 seat, pushed his chair gently to the table and unfolded his napkin 
 with a flourish as though giving a banner to the wind. Pitts almost 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 immediately left the room, but Lloyd remained supervising Ben 
 nett s breakfast, pouring his milk, buttering his toast, and opening 
 his eggs. 
 
 "Coffee?" suddenly inquired Bennett. Lloyd shook her head. 
 
 "Not for another week." 
 
 Bennett looked with grim disfavor upon the glass of milk that 
 Lloyd had placed at his elbow. 
 
 "Such slop!" he growled. "Why not a little sugar and warm 
 water, and be done with it? Lloyd, I can t drink this stuff any 
 more. Why, it s warm yet!" he exclaimed aggrievedly and with 
 deep disgust, abruptly setting down the glass. 
 
 "Why, of course it is," she answered ; "we brought the cow here 
 especially for you, and the boy has just done milking her and it s 
 not slop." 
 
 "Slop! slop!" declared Bennett. He picked up the glass again 
 and looked at her over the rim. 
 
 "I ll drink this stuff this one more time to please you," he said. 
 "But I promise you this will be the last time. You needn t ask me 
 again. I have drunk enough milk the past three weeks to support 
 a foundling hospital for a year." 
 
 Invariably, since the period of his convalescence began, Bennett 
 made this scene over his hourly glass of milk, and invariably it ended 
 by his gulping it down at nearly a single swallow. 
 
 Adler brought in the mail and the morning paper. Three letters 
 had come for Lloyd, and for Bennett a small volume on "Recent 
 Arctic Research and Exploration," sent by his publisher with a 
 note to the effect that, as the latest authority on the subject, Ben 
 nett was sure to find it of great interest. In an appendix, inserted 
 after the body of the book had been made up, the "Freja" expe 
 dition and his own work were briefly described. Lloyd put her 
 letters aside, and, unfolding the paper, said, "I ll read it while you 
 eat your breakfast. Have you everything you want? Did you 
 drink your milk all of it?" But out of the corner of her eye she 
 noted that Adler was chuckling behind the tray that he held to his 
 face, and with growing suspicion she leaned forward and peered 
 about among the breakfast things. Bennett had hidden his glass 
 behind the toast-rack. 
 
 "And it s only two-thirds empty," she declared. "Ward, why 
 will you be such a boy ?" 
 
 "Oh, well," he grumbled, and without more ado drank off the 
 balance. 
 
A Man s Woman 423 
 
 "Now, I ll read to you if you have everything you want. Adler, I 
 think you can open one of those windows ; it s so warm out of doors." 
 
 While he ate his breakfast of toast, milk, and eggs Lloyd skimmed 
 through the paper, reading aloud everything she thought would be 
 of interest to him. Then, after a moment, her eye was caught and 
 held by a half-column article expanded from an Associated Press 
 despatch. 
 
 "Oh!" she cried, "listen to this!" and continued: " Word has 
 been received at this place of the safe arrival of the Arctic steamship 
 "Curlew" at Tasiusak, on the Greenland coast, bearing eighteen 
 members of the Duane-Parsons expedition. Captain Duane reports 
 all well and an uneventful voyage. It is his intention to pass the 
 winter at Tasiusak, collecting dogs and also Eskimo sledges, 
 which he believes superior to European manufacture for work in 
 rubble-ice, and to push on with the "Curlew" in the spring as soon 
 as Smith Sound shall be navigable. This may be later than Cap 
 tain Duane supposes, as the whalers who have been working in the 
 sound during the past months bring back news of an unusually early 
 winter and extraordinary quantities of pack-ice both in the sound 
 itself and in Kane Basin. This means a proportionately late open 
 season next year, and the "Curlew s" departure from Tasiusak may 
 be considerably later than anticipated. It is considered by the best 
 Arctic experts an unfortunate circumstance that Captain Duane 
 elected to winter south of Cape Sabine, as the condition of the ice in 
 Smith Sound can never be relied upon nor foretold. Should the 
 entrance to the sound still be incumbered with ice as late as July, 
 which is by no means impossible, Captain Duane will be obliged to 
 spend another winter at Tasiusak or Upernvick, consuming alike 
 his store of provisions and the patience of his men/ : 
 
 There was a silence when Lloyd finished reading. Bennett 
 chipped at the end of his second egg. 
 
 "Well?" she said at length. 
 
 "Well," returned Bennett, "what s all that to me?" 
 
 "It s your work," she answered almost vehemently. 
 
 "No, indeed. It s Duane s work." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Let him try now." 
 
 "And you?" exclaimed Lloyd, looking intently at him. 
 
 "My dear girl, I had my chance and failed. Now" he raised 
 a shoulder indifferently "now, I don t care much about it. I ve 
 lost interest." 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 "I don t believe you," she cried energetically ; "yon of all men." 
 Behind Bennett s chair she had a momentary glimpse of Adler, who 
 had tucked his tray under his arm and was silently applauding in 
 elaborate pantomime. She saw his lips form the words "That s it; 
 that s right. Go right ahead." 
 
 "Besides, I have my book to do, and, besides that, I m an invalid 
 an invalid who drinks slop." 
 
 "And you intend to give it all up your career?" 
 
 "Well if I should, what then?" Suddenly he turned to her 
 abruptly. "I should not think you would want me to go again. Do 
 you urge me to go?" 
 
 Lloyd made a sudden little gasp, and her hand involuntarily 
 closed upon his as it rested near her on the table. 
 
 "Oh, no!" she cried. "Oh, no, I don t! You are right. It s 
 not your work now." 
 
 "Well, then," muttered Bennett as though the question were 
 forever settled. 
 
 Lloyd turned to her mail, and one after another slit the en 
 velopes, woman fashion, with a shell hairpin. But while she was 
 glancing over the contents of her letters Bennett began to stir 
 uneasily in his place. From time to time he stopped eating and 
 shot a glance at Lloyd from under his frown, noting the crisp, white 
 texture of her gown and waist, the white scarf with its high, tight 
 bands about the neck, the tiny, golden buttons in her cuffs, the 
 sombre, ruddy glow of her cheeks, her dull-blue eyes, and the piles 
 and coils of her bronze-red hair. Then, abruptly, he said : 
 
 "Adler, you can go." 
 
 Adler saluted and withdrew. 
 
 "Whom are your letters from?" Bennett demanded by way of a 
 beginning. 
 
 Lloyd replaced the hairpin in her hair, answering: 
 
 "From Dr. Street, from Louise Douglass, and from Mr. 
 Campbell." 
 
 "Hum! well, what do they say? Dr. Street and Louise 
 Douglass?" 
 
 "Dr. Street asks me to take a very important surgical case as 
 soon as I get through here, one of the most important and delicate, 
 as well as one of the most interesting, operations in his professional 
 experience/ Those are his words. Louise writes four pages, but 
 she says nothing; just chatters." 
 
 "And Campbell?" Bennett indicated with his chin the third 
 
A Man s Woman 425 
 
 rather voluminous letter at Lloyd s elbow. "He seems to have 
 written rather more than four pages. What does he say? Does he 
 chatter, too?" 
 
 Lloyd smoothed back her hair from one temple. 
 
 "H m no. He says something. But never mind what he says. 
 Ward, I must be going back to the city. You don t need a nurse 
 any more." 
 
 "What s that?" Bennett s frown gathered on the instant, and 
 with a sharp movement of the head that was habitual to him he 
 brought his one good eye to bear upon her. 
 
 Lloyd repeated her statement, answering his remonstrance and 
 expostulation with : 
 
 "You are almost perfectly well, and it would not be at all dis 
 creet for me to stay here an hour longer than absolutely necessary. 
 I shall go back to-morrow or next day." 
 
 "But I tell you, I am still very sick. I m a poor, miserable, 
 shattered wreck." 
 
 He made a great show of coughing in hollow, lamentable tones. 
 
 "Listen to that, and last night I had a high fever, and this morn 
 ing I had a queer sort of pain about here " he vaguely indicated 
 the region of his chest. "I think I am about to have a relapse." 
 
 "Nonsense! You can t frighten me at all." 
 
 "Oh, well," he answered easily, "I shall go with you that is 
 all. I suppose you want to see me venture out in such raw, bleak 
 weather as this with my weak lungs." 
 
 "Your weak lungs? How long since?" 
 
 "Well, I ve sometimes thought my lungs were not very strong." 
 
 "Why, dear me, you poor thing ; I suppose the climate at Kolyu- 
 chin Bay was a trifle too bracing " 
 
 "What does Campbell say?" 
 
 " and the diet too rich for your blood " 
 
 "What does Campbell say?" 
 
 " and perhaps you did overexert " 
 
 "Lloyd Searight, what does Mr. Campbell say in that " 
 
 "He asks me to marry him." 
 
 "To mum mar marry him? Well, damn his impudence!" 
 
 "Mr. Campbell is an eminently respectable, worthy gentleman." 
 
 "Oh, well, I don t care. Go! Go, marry Mr. Campbell. Be 
 happy. I forgive you both. Go, leave me to die alone." 
 
 "Sir, I will go. Forget that you ever knew an unhappy worn 
 female, whose only fault was that she loved you." 
 
426 A Man s Woman 
 
 "Go! and sometimes think of me far away on the billow and 
 drop a silent tear I say, how are you going to answer Campbell s 
 letter?" 
 
 "Just one word Come. 
 
 "Lloyd, be serious. This is no joke." 
 
 "Joke!" she repeated hollowly. "It is, indeed, a sorry joke. 
 Ah! had I but loved with a girlish love, it would have been better 
 for me." 
 
 Then suddenly she caught him about the neck with both her 
 arms, and kissed him on the cheek and on the lips, a little quiver 
 running through her to her finger-tips, her mood changing abruptly 
 to a deep, sweet earnestness. 
 
 "Oh, Ward, Ward !" she cried, "all our unhappiness and all our 
 sorrow and trials and anxiety and cruel suspense are over now, and 
 now we really have each other and love each other, dear, and all 
 the years to come are only going to bring happiness to us, and draw 
 us closer and nearer to each other." 
 
 "But here s a point, Lloyd," said Bennett after a few moments 
 and when they had returned to coherent speech; "how about your 
 work? You talk about my career; what about yours? We are to 
 be married, but I know just how you have loved your work. It 
 will be a hard wrench for you if you give that up. I am not sure 
 that I should ask it of you. This letter of Street s, now. I know 
 just how eager you must be to take charge of such operations 
 such important cases as he mentions. It would be very selfish of 
 me to ask you to give up your work. It s your life-work, your 
 profession, your career." 
 
 Lloyd took up Dr. Street s letter, and, holding it delicately at 
 arm s length, tore it in two and let the pieces flutter to the floor. 
 
 "That, for my life-work," said Lloyd Searight. 
 
 As she drew back from him an instant later Bennett all at 
 once and very earnestly demanded : 
 
 "Lloyd, do you love me?" 
 
 "With all my heart, Ward?" 
 
 "And you will be my wife." 
 
 "You know that I will." 
 
 "Then," Bennett picked up the little volume of "Arctic Re 
 search" which he had received that morning, and tossed it from him 
 upon the floor "that, for my career," he answered. 
 
 For a moment they were silent, looking gladly into each other s 
 eyes. Then Bennett drew her to him again and held her close to 
 
A Man s Woman 427 
 
 him, and once more she put her arms around his neck and nestled 
 her head down upon his shoulder with a little comfortable sigh of 
 contentment and relief and quiet joy, for that the long, fierce trial 
 was over; that there were no more fights to be fought, no more 
 grim, hard situations to face, no more relentless duties to be done. 
 She had endured and she had prevailed ; now her reward was 
 come. Now for the long, calm years of happiness. 
 
 Later in the day, about an hour after noon, Bennett took his 
 daily nap, carefully wrapped in shawls and stretched out in a 
 wicker steamer-chair in the glass-room. Lloyd, in the meantime, 
 was busy in the garden at the side of the house, gathering flowers 
 which she intended to put in a huge china bowl in Bennett s room. 
 While she was thus occupied Adler, followed by Kamiska, came up, 
 Adler pulled off his cap. 
 
 "I beg pardon, Miss," he began, turning his cap about between 
 his fingers. "I don t want to seem to intrude, and if I do I just guess 
 you d better tell me so first off. But what did he say or did he say 
 anything the captain, I mean this morning about going up 
 again? I heard you talking to him at breakfast. That s it, that s 
 the kind of talk he needs. I can t talk that talk to him. I m so 
 main scared of him. I wouldn t a believed the captain would ever 
 say he d give up, would ever say he was beaten. But, Miss, I m 
 thinking as there s something wrong, main wrong with the captain 
 these days besides fever. He s getting soft that s what he is. 
 If you d only know the man that he was before while we was 
 up there in the Ice! That s his work, that s what he s cut out for. 
 There ain t nobody can do it but him, and to see him quit, to see 
 him chuck up his chance to a third-rate ice-pilot like Duane a 
 coastwise college professor that don t know no more about Ice than 
 than you do it regularly makes me sick. Why, what will be 
 come of the captain now if he quits? He ll just settle down to an 
 ordinary stay-at-home, write-in-a-book professor, and write articles 
 for the papers and magazines, and by and by, maybe, he ll get down 
 to lecturing! Just fancy, Miss, him, the captain, lecturing! And 
 while he stays at home and writes, and oh, Lord ! lectures, some 
 body else, without a fifth of his ability, will do the work. It ll just 
 naturally break my heart, it will !" exclaimed Adler, "if the captain 
 chucks. I wouldn t be so main sorry that he won t reach the Pole 
 as that he quit trying as that a man like the captain or like what 
 I thought he was gave up and chucked when he could win." 
 
 "But, Adler/ returned Lloyd, "the captain Mr. Bennett, it 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 seems to me, has done his share. Think what he s been through. 
 You can t have forgotten the march to Kolyuchin Bay?" 
 
 But Adler made an impatient gesture with the hand that held 
 the cap. "The danger don t figure ; what he d have to go through 
 with don t figure ; the chances of life or death don t figure ; nothing 
 in the world don t figure. It s his work; God A mighty cut him out 
 for that, and he s got to do it. Ain t you got any influence with him, 
 Miss? Won t you talk good talk to him? Don t let him chuck; 
 don t let him get soft. Make him be a Man and not a professor." 
 
 When Adler had left her Lloyd sank into a little seat at the 
 edge of the garden walk, and let the flowers drop into her lap, 
 and leaned back in her place, wide-eyed and thoughtful, review 
 ing in her imagination the events of the past few months. What 
 a change that summer had brought to both of them ; how they had 
 been shaped anew in the mold of circumstance! 
 
 Suddenly and without warning, they two, high-spirited, strong, 
 determined, had clashed together, the man s force against the wo 
 man s strength; and the woman, inherently weaker, had been 
 crushed and humbled. For a time it seemed to her that she had 
 been broken beyond hope; so humbled that she could never rise 
 again; as though a great crisis had developed in her life, and that, 
 having failed once, she must fail again, and again, and again as 
 if her whole subsequent life must be one long failure. But a greater 
 crisis had followed hard upon the heels of the first the struggle 
 with self, the greatest struggle of all. Against the abstract prin 
 ciple of evil the woman who had failed in the material conflict with 
 a masculine, masterful will, had succeeded, had conquered self, 
 had been true when it was easy to be false, had dared the judgment 
 of her peers so only that she might not deceive. 
 
 Her momentary, perhaps fancied, hatred of Bennett, who had 
 so cruelly misunderstood and humiliated her, had apparently, of its 
 own accord, departed from her heart. Then had come the hour 
 when the strange hazard of fortune had reversed their former posi 
 tions, when she could be masterful while he was weak; when it 
 was the man s turn to be broken, to be prevailed against. Her own 
 discomfiture had been offset by his. She no longer need look to 
 him as her conqueror, her master. And when she had seen him so 
 weak, so pathetically unable to resist the lightest pressure of her 
 hand ; when it was given her not only to witness but to relieve his 
 suffering, the great love for him that could not die had returned. 
 \\ith the mastery of self had come the forgetfulness of self; and 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 429 
 
 her profession, her life-work, of which she had been so proud, had 
 seemed to her of small concern. Now she was his, and his life 
 was hers. She should so she told herself be henceforth happy 
 in his happiness, and her only pride would be the pride in his 
 achievements. 
 
 But now the unexpected had happened, and Bennett had given 
 up his career. During the period of Bennett s convalescence Lloyd 
 had often talked long and earnestly with him, and partly from what 
 he had told her and partly from much that she inferred she had 
 at last been able to trace out and follow the mental processes and 
 changes through which Bennett had passed. He, too, had been 
 proved by fire ; he, too, had had his ordeal, his trial. 
 
 By nature, by training, and by virtue of the life he lived Ben 
 nett had been a man, harsh, somewhat brutal, inordinately selfish, 
 and at ah times magnificently arrogant. He had neither patience 
 nor toleration for natural human weakness. While selfish, he was 
 not self-conscious, and it never occurred to him, it was impossible for 
 him to see that he was a giant among men. His heart was callous ; 
 his whole nature and character hard and flinty from the bufferings 
 he gave rather than received. 
 
 Then had come misfortune. Ferriss had died, and Bennett s 
 recognition and acknowledgment of the fact that he, Ward Bennett, 
 who never failed, who never blundered, had made at last the great 
 and terrible error of his life, had shaken his character to its very 
 foundations. This was only the beginning; the breach once made, 
 Humanity entered into the gloomy, waste places of his soul; re 
 morse crowded hard upon his wonted arrogance ; generosity and the 
 impulse to make amends took the place of selfishness; kindness 
 thrust out the native brutality; the old-time harshness and impe- 
 riousness gave away to a certain spirit of toleration. 
 
 It was the influence of these new emotions that had moved Ben 
 nett to make the statement to Adler that had so astonished and 
 perplexed his old-time subordinate. He, Bennett, too, like Lloyd, 
 was at that time endeavoring to free himself from a false position, 
 and through the medium of confession stand in his true colors in 
 the eyes of his associates. Unconsciously they were both working 
 out their salvation along the same lines. 
 
 Then had come Bennett s resolve to give Ferriss the conspicu 
 ous and prominent place in his book, the account of the expedition. 
 The more Bennett dwelt upon Ferriss s heroism, intelligence, and 
 ability the more his task became a labor of love, and the more the 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 idea of self dropped away from his thought and imagination. Then 
 
 . and perhaps this was not the least important factor in Bennett s 
 
 transformation sickness had befallen; the strong and self-reliant 
 man had been brought to the weakness of a child, whom the pressure 
 of a finger could control. He suddenly changed places with the 
 woman he believed he had, at such feaful cost, broken and sub 
 dued. His physical strength, once so enormous, was as a reed in 
 the woman s hand ; his will, so indomitable, was as powerless as an 
 infant s before the woman s calm resolve, rising up there before 
 him and overmastering him at a time he believed it to be forever 
 weakened. 
 
 Bennett had come forth from the ordeal chastened, softened, and 
 humbled. But he was shattered, broken, brought to the earth with 
 sorrow and the load of unavailing regret. Ambition was numb and 
 lifeless within him. Reaction from his former attitude of aggres 
 sion and defiance had carried him far beyond the normal. 
 
 Here widened the difference between the man and the woman. 
 Lloyd s discontinuance of her life-work had been in the nature of 
 heroic subjugation of self. Bennett s abandonment of his career 
 was hardly better than weakness. In the one it had been renuncia 
 tion ; in the other surrender. In the end, and after all was over, it 
 was the woman who remained the stronger. 
 
 But for her, the woman, was it true that all was over? Had the 
 last conflict been fought ? Was it not rather to be believed that life 
 was one long conflict ? Was it not for her, Lloyd, to rouse that slug 
 gard ambition ? Was not this her career, after all, to be his inspira 
 tion, his incentive, to urge him to the accomplishment of a great 
 work? Now, of the two, she was the stronger. In these new con 
 ditions what was her duty ? Adler s clumsy phrases persisted in her 
 mind. "That s his work," Adler had said. "God A mighty cut him 
 out for that, and he s got to do it. Don t let him chuck, don t let him 
 get soft; make him be a man and not a professor." 
 
 Had she so much influence over Bennett? Could she rouse the 
 restless, daring spirit again? Perhaps; but what would it mean 
 for her for her, who must be left behind to wait, and wait, and 
 wait for three years, for five years, for- ten years perhaps for 
 ever? And now, at this moment, when she believed that at last hap 
 piness had come to her; when the duty had been done, the grim 
 problems solved; when sickness had been overcome; when love 
 had come back, and the calm, untroubled days seemed lengthening 
 out ahead, there came to her recollection the hideous lapse of time 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 431 
 
 that had intervened between the departure of the "Freja" and the 
 expedition s return ; what sleepless nights, what days of unspeakable 
 ! suspense, what dreadful alternations between hope and despair, what 
 silent, repressed suffering, what haunting, ever-present dread of a 
 thing she dared not name! Was the Fear to come into her life 
 again; the Enemy that lurked and leered and forbore to strike, 
 that hung upon her heels at every hour of the day, that sat down 
 with her to her every occupation, that followed after when she 
 stirred abroad, that came close to her in the still watches of the night, 
 creeping, creeping to her bedside, looming over her in the darkness ; 
 the cold fingers reaching closer and closer, the awful face growing 
 ever more distinct, till the suspense of waiting for the blow to fall, 
 for the fingers to grip, became more than she could bear, and she 
 sprang from her bed with a stifled sob of anguish, driven from her 
 rest with quivering lips and streaming eyes ? 
 
 Abruptly Lloyd rose to her feet, the flowers falling unheeded 
 from her lap, her arms rigid at her side, her hands shut tight. 
 
 "No," she murmured, "I can not. This, at last, is more than I 
 can do." 
 
 Instantly Adler s halting words went ringing through her brain : 
 "The danger don t figure; nothing in the world don t figure. It s 
 his work." 
 
 Adler s words were the words of the world. She alone of the 
 thousands whose eyes were turned toward Bennett was blinded. 
 She was wrong. She belonged to him, but he did not belong to 
 her. The world demanded him ; the world called him from her side 
 to do the terrible work that God had made him for. Was she, be 
 cause she loved him, because of her own single anguish, to stand 
 between him and the clamor of the world, between him and his 
 work, between him and God? 
 
 A work there was for him to do. He must play the man s part. 
 The battle must be fought again. That horrible, grisly Enemy far 
 up there to the north, upon the high curve of the globe, the shoulder 
 of the world, huge, remorseless, terrible in its vast, Titanic 
 strength, guarding its secret through all the centuries in the inner 
 most of a thousand gleaming coils, must be defied again. The mon 
 ster that defended the great prize, the object of so many fruitless 
 quests, must be once more attacked. 
 
 His was the work, for him the shock of battle, the rigor of the 
 fight, the fierce assault, the ceaseless onset, the unfailing and un 
 flinching courage. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 Hers was the woman s part. Already she had assumed it ; stead 
 fast unselfishness, renunciation, patience, the heroism greater than 
 all others, that sits with folded hands, quiet, unshaken, and under 
 fearful stress, endures, and endures, and endures. To be the in 
 spiration of great deeds, high hopes, and firm resolves, and then, 
 while the fight was dared, to wait in calmness for its issue that 
 was her duty ; that, the woman s part in the world s great work. 
 
 Lloyd was dimly conscious of a certain sweet and subtle ele 
 ment in her love for Bennett that only of late she had begun to 
 recognize and be aware of. This was a certain vague protective, 
 almost maternal, instinct. Perhaps it was because of his present 
 weakness both of body and character, or perhaps it was an element 
 always to be found in the deep and earnest love of any noble- 
 hearted woman. She felt that she, not as herself individually, but 
 as a woman, was not only stronger than Bennett, but in a manner 
 older, more mature. She was conscious of depths in her nature 
 far greater than in his, and also that she was capable of attaining 
 heights of heroism, devotion, and sacrifice which he, for all his 
 masculine force, could not only never reach, but could not even 
 conceive of. It was this consciousness of her larger, better nature 
 that made her feel for Bennett somewhat as a mother feels for a 
 son, a sister for her younger brother. A great tenderness mingled 
 with her affection, a vast and almost divine magnanimity, a broad, 
 womanly pity for his shortcomings, his errors, his faults. It was 
 to her he must look for encouragement. It was for her to bind up 
 and reshape the great energy that had been so rudely checked, and 
 not only to call back his strength, but to guide it and direct it into its 
 appointed channels. 
 
 Lloyd returned toward the glass-inclosed veranda to find Ben 
 nett just arousing from his nap. She drew the shawls closer about 
 him and rearranged the pillows under his head, and then sat down 
 on the steps near at hand. 
 
 "Tell me about this Captain Duane," she began. "Where is he 
 now?" 
 
 Bennett yawned and passed his hand across his face, rubbing the 
 sleep from his eyes. 
 
 "What time is it? I must haye slept over an hour. Duane? 
 Why, you saw what the paper said. I presume he is at Tasiusak." 
 
 "Do you think he will succeed? Do you think he will reach 
 the ^Pole ? Adler thinks he won t." 
 
 "Oh, perhaps, if he has luck and an open season." 
 
A Man s Woman 433 
 
 "But tell me, why does he take so many men? Isn t that con 
 trary to the custom ? I know a great deal about Arctic work. While 
 you were away I read every book I could get upon the subject. The 
 best work has been done with small expeditions. If you should go 
 again when you go again will you take so many? I saw you 
 quoted somewhere as being in favor of only six or eight men." 
 
 "Ten should be the limit but some one else will make the at 
 tempt now. I m out of it. I tried and failed." 
 
 "Failed you ! The idea of you ever failing, of you ever giving 
 up ! Of course it was all very well to joke this morning about giv 
 ing up your career; but I know you will be up and away again 
 only too soon. I am trying to school myself to expect that." 
 
 "Lloyd, I tell you that I am out of it. I don t believe the Pole ever 
 can be reached, and I don t much care whether it is reached or not." 
 
 Suddenly Lloyd turned to him, the unwonted light flashing in 
 her eyes. "/ do, though," she cried vehemently. "It can be done, 
 and we America ought to do it." 
 
 Bennett stared at her, startled by her outburst. 
 
 "This English expedition," Lloyd continued, the color flushing 
 in her cheeks, "this Duane-Parsons expedition, they will have the 
 start of everybody next year. Nearly every attempt that is made 
 now establishes a new record for a high latitude. One nation after 
 another is creeping nearer and nearer almost every year, and each 
 expedition is profiting by the experiences and observations made 
 by the one that preceded it. Some day, and not very long now, 
 some nation is going to succeed and plant its flag there at last. 
 Why should it not be us? Why shouldn t our flag be first at the 
 Pole? We who have had so many heroes, such great sailors, such 
 splendid leaders, such explorers our Stanleys, our Farraguts, our 
 Decaturs, our De Longs, our Lockwoods how we would stand 
 ashamed before the world if some other nation should succeed 
 where we have all but succeeded Norway, or France, or Russia, 
 or England profiting by our experiences, following where we have 
 made the way!" 
 
 "That is very fine," admitted Bennett. "It would be a great 
 honor, the greatest perhaps; and once I well, I had my ambi 
 tions, too. But it s all different now. Something in me died when 
 Dick when I oh, let Duane try. Let him do his best. I 
 know it can t be done, and if he should win, I would be the first to 
 wire congratulations. Lloyd, I don t care. I ve lost interest. I 
 suppose it is my punishment. I m out of the race. I m a back 
 number. I m down." 
 
 S III NORRIS 
 
434 A Man s Woman 
 
 Lloyd shook her head. 
 
 "I don t I can t believe you." 
 
 "Do you want to see me go," demanded Bennett, "after this 
 last experience? Do you urge me to it?" 
 
 Lloyd turned her head away, leaning it against one of the 
 veranda pillars. A sudden dimness swam in her eyes, the choking 
 ache she knew so well came to her throat. Ah, life was hard for 
 her. The very greatness of her nature drove from her the hap 
 piness so constantly attained by little minds, by commonplace souls. 
 When was it to end, this continual sacrifice of inclination to duty, 
 this eternal abnegation, this yielding up of herself, her dearest, most 
 cherished wishes to the demands of duty and the great world? 
 
 "I don t know what I want," she said faintly. "It don t seem 
 as if one could be happy very long." 
 
 All at once she moved close to him and laid her cheek upon 
 the arm of his chair and clasped his hand in both her own, murmur 
 ing : "But I have you now, I have you now, no matter what is com 
 ing to us." 
 
 A sense of weakness overcame her. What did she care that 
 Bennett should fulfil his destiny, should round out his career, should 
 continue to be the Great Man ? It was he, Bennett, that she loved 
 not his greatness, not his career. Let it all go, let ambition die, let 
 others less worthy succeed in the mighty task. What were fame 
 and honor and glory and the sense of a divinely appointed duty 
 done at last to the clasp of his hand and the sound of his voice ? 
 
 In November of that year Lloyd and Bennett were married. 
 Two guests only assisted at the ceremony. These were Campbell 
 and his little daughter Hattie. 
 
 X 
 
 THE months passed ; Christmas came and went. Until then the 
 winter had been unusually mild, but January set in with a suc 
 cession of vicious cold snaps and great blustering winds out of the 
 northeast. Lloyd and Bennett had elected to remain quietly in their 
 new home at Medford. They had no desire to travel, and Ben 
 nett s forthcoming book demande d his attention. Adler stayed on 
 about the house. He and the dog Kamiska were companions in 
 separable. At long intervals visitors presented themselves Dr. 
 Street, or Pitts, or certain friends of Bennett s. But the great rush 
 of interviewers, editors, and projectors of marvelous schemes that 
 
A Man s Woman 435 
 
 had crowded Bennett s anterooms during the spring and early sum 
 mer was conspicuously dwindling. The press ceased to speak of 
 him ; even his mail had fallen away. Now, whenever the journals 
 of the day devoted space to Arctic exploration, it was invariably in 
 reference to the English expedition wintering on the Greenland 
 coast. That world that had clamored so loudly upon Bennett s 
 return, while, perhaps, not yet forgetting him, was already ignoring 
 him, was looking in other directions. Another man was in the 
 public eye. 
 
 But in every sense these two Lloyd and Bennett were out of 
 the world. They had freed themselves from the current of affairs. 
 They stood aside while the great tide went careering past swift and 
 turbulent, and one of them at least lacked even the interest to look 
 on and watch its progress. 
 
 For a time Lloyd was supremely happy. Their life was un 
 broken, uneventful. The calm, monotonous days of undisturbed 
 happiness to which she had looked forward were come at last. Thus 
 it was always to be. Isolated and apart, she could shut her ears to 
 the thunder of the world s great tide that somewhere, off beyond 
 the hills in the direction of the city, went swirling through its chan 
 nels. Hardly an hour went by that she and Bennett were not 
 together. Lloyd had transferred her stable to her new home; 
 Lewis was added to the number of their servants, and until Ben 
 nett s old-time vigor completely returned to him she drove out almost 
 daily with her husband, covering the country for miles around. 
 
 Much of their time, however, they spent in Bennett s study. 
 This was a great apartment in the rear of the house, scantily, almost 
 meanly, furnished. Papers littered the floor; bundles of manu 
 scripts, lists, charts, and observations, the worn and battered tin 
 box of records, note-books, journals, tables of logarithms were 
 piled upon Bennett s desk. A bookcase crammed with volumes of 
 reference, statistical pamphlets, and the like stood between the win 
 dows, while one of the walls was nearly entirely occupied by a vast 
 map of the Arctic circle, upon which the course of the "Freja," her 
 drift in the pack, and the route of the expedition s southerly march 
 were accurately plotted. 
 
 The room was bare of ornament; the desk and a couple of 
 chairs were its only furniture. Pictures there were none. Their 
 places were taken by photographs and a great blue print of the 
 shipbuilder s plans and specifications of the "Freja." 
 
 The photographs were some of those that Dennison had made 
 of the expedition the "Freja" nipped in the ice, a group of the 
 
436 A Man s Woman 
 
 officers and crew upon the forward deck, the coast of Wrangel 
 Island, Cape Kammeni, peculiar ice formations, views of the pack 
 under different conditions and temperatures, pressure ridges and 
 scenes of the expedition s daily life in the Arctic, bear-hunts, the 
 manufacture of sledges, dog-teams, Bennett taking soundings and 
 reading the wind-gauge, and one, the last view of the "Freja," 
 taken just as the ship her ice-sheathed dripping bows heaved high 
 in the air, the flag still at the peak sank from sight. 
 
 However, on the wall over the blue-print plans of the "Freja," 
 one of the boat s flags, that had been used by the expedition through 
 out all the time of its stay in the ice, hung suspended a faded, 
 tattered square of stars and bars. 
 
 As the new life settled quietly and evenly to its grooves a rou 
 tine began to develop. About an hour after breakfast Lloyd and 
 Bennett shut themselves in Bennett s "workroom," as he called it, 
 Lloyd taking her place at the desk. She had become his amanuen 
 sis, had insisted upon writing to his dictation. 
 
 "Look at that manuscript," she had exclaimed one day, turning 
 the sheets that Bennett had written ; "literally the very worst hand 
 writing I have ever seen. What do you suppose a printer would 
 make out of your thes and Bands ? It s hieroglyphics, you know," 
 she informed him gravely, nodding her head at him. 
 
 It was quite true. Bennett wrote with amazing rapidity and 
 with ragged, vigorous strokes of the pen, not unfrequently driving 
 the point through the paper itself ; his script was pothooks, clumsy, 
 , slanting in all directions, all but illegible. In the end Lloyd had 
 almost pushed him from his place at the desk, taking the pen from 
 between his fingers, exclaiming: 
 
 "Get up ! Give me that chair and that pen. Handwriting like 
 that is nothing else but a sin." 
 
 Bennett allowed her to bully him, protesting merely for the 
 enjoyment of squabbling with her. 
 
 "Come, I like this. What are you doing in my workroom, any 
 how, Mrs. Bennett? I think you had better go to your housework." 
 
 "Don t talk," she answered. "Here are your notes and journal. 
 Now tell me what to write." 
 
 In the end matters adjusted themselves. Daily Lloyd took her 
 place at the desk, pen in hand, the sleeve of her right arm rolled 
 back to the elbow (a habit of hers whenever writing, and whicFf 
 Bennett found to be charming beyond words), her pen traveling 
 steadily from line to line. He on his part pkced the floor, a cigar 
 between his teeth, his notes and note-books in his hand, dictating 
 
A Man s Woman 437 
 
 comments of his own, or quoting from the pages, stained, frayed, 
 and crumpled, written by the light of the auroras, the midnight suns, 
 or the unsteady flickering of train-oil lanterns and blubber-lamps. 
 
 What long, delicious hours they spent thus, as the winter drew 
 on, in the absolute quiet of that country house, ignored and lost in 
 the brown, bare fields and leafless orchards of the open country ! No 
 one troubled them. No one came near them. They asked nothing 
 better than that the world wherein they once had lived, whose hurt 
 ling activity and febrile unrest they both had known so well, should 
 leave them alone. 
 
 Only one jarring note, and that none too resonant, broke the long 
 harmony of Lloyd s happiness during these days. Bennett was 
 deaf to it; but for Lloyd it vibrated continuously and, as time 
 passed, with increasing insistence and distinctness. But for one 
 person in the world Lloyd could have told herself that her life was 
 without a single element of discontent. 
 
 This was Adler. It was not that his presence about the house 
 was a reproach to Bennett s wife, for the man was scrupulously un 
 obtrusive. He had the instinctive delicacy that one sometimes dis 
 covers in simple, undeveloped natures seafaring folk especially 
 and though he could not bring himself to leave his former chief, he 
 had withdrawn himself more than ever from notice since the time 
 of Bennett s marriage. He rarely even waited on the table these 
 days, for Lloyd and Bennett often chose to breakfast and dine quite 
 to themselves. 
 
 But, for all that, Lloyd saw Adler from time to time, Kamiska 
 invariably at his heels. She came upon him polishing the brasses 
 upon the door of the house, or binding strips of burlaps and sacking 
 about the rose-bushes in the garden, or returning from the village 
 post-office with the mail, invariably wearing the same woolen cap, 
 the old pea-jacket, and the jersey with the name "Freja" upon the 
 breast. He rarely spoke to her unless she first addressed him, and 
 then always with a precise salute, bringing his heels sharply to 
 gether, standing stiffly at attention. 
 
 But the man, though all unwittingly, radiated gloom. Lloyd 
 readily saw that Adler was laboring under a certain cloud of dis 
 appointment and deferred hope. Naturally she understood the 
 cause. Lloyd was too large-hearted to feel any irritation at the 
 sight of Adler. But she could not regard him with indifference. To 
 her mind he stood for all that Bennett had given up, for the great 
 career that had stopped half-way, for the work half done, the task 
 only half completed. In a way was not Adler now superior to Ben- 
 
438 A Man s Woman 
 
 nett? His one thought and aim and hope was to "try again." His 
 ambition was yet alive and alight ; the soldier was willing where the 
 chief lost heart. Never again had Adler addressed himself to 
 Lloyd on the subject of Bennett s inactivity. Now he seemed to 
 understand to realize that once married and to Lloyd he must 
 no longer expect Bennett to continue the work. All this Lloyd inter 
 preted from Adler s attitude, and again and again told herself that 
 she could read the man s thoughts aright. She even fancied she 
 caught a mute appeal in his eyes upon those rare occasions when 
 they met, as though he looked to her as the only hope, the only 
 means to wake Bennett from his lethargy. She imagined that she 
 heard him say: 
 
 "Ain t you got any influence with him, Miss? Won t you talk 
 good talk to him ? Don t let him chuck. Make him be a man, and 
 not a professor. Nothing else in the world don t figure. It s his 
 work. God A mighty cut him out for that, and he s got to do it." 
 His work, his work, God made him for that ; appointed the task, 
 made the man, and now she came between. God, Man, and the 
 W or k the three vast elements of an entire system, the whole uni 
 verse epitomized in the tremendous trinity. Again and again such 
 thoughts assailed her. Duty once more stirred and awoke. It 
 seemed to her as if some great engine ordained of Heaven to run 
 its appointed course had come to a standstill, was rusting to its 
 ruin, and that she alone of all the world had power to grasp its 
 lever, to send it on its way; whither, she did not know; why, she 
 could not tell. She knew only that it was right that she should act. 
 By degrees her resolution hardened. Bennett must try again. But 
 at first it seemed to her as though her heart would break, and more 
 than once she wavered. 
 
 As Bennett continued to dictate to her the story of the expe 
 dition he arrived at the account of the march toward Kolyuchin 
 Bay, and, finally, at the description of the last week, with its ter 
 rors, its sufferings, its starvation, its despair, when, one by one, the 
 men died in their sleeping-bags, to be buried under slabs of ice. 
 When this point in the narrative was reached Bennett inserted no 
 comment of his own ; but while Lloyd wrote, read simply and with 
 grim directness from the entries in his journal precisely as they 
 had been written. 
 
 Lloyd had known in a vague way that the expedition had suf 
 fered abominably, but hitherto Bennett had never consented to tell 
 her the story in detail. "It was a hard week," he informed her, "a 
 rather bad grind." 
 
A Man s Woman 439 
 
 Now, for the first time, she was to know just what had hap 
 pened, just what he had endured. 
 
 As usual, Bennett paced the floor from wall to wall, his cigar 
 in his teeth, his tattered, grimy ice- journal in his hand. At the desk 
 Lloyd s round, bare arm, the sleeve turned up to the elbow, moved 
 evenly back and forth as she wrote. In the intervals of Bennett s 
 dictation the scratching of Lloyd s pen made itself heard. A little 
 fire snapped and crackled on the hearth. The morning s sun came 
 flooding in at the windows. 
 
 ". . . Gale of wind from the northeast," prompted Lloyd, 
 raising her head from her writing. Bennett continued : 
 
 "Impossible to march against it in our weakened condition." 
 
 He paused for her to complete the sentence. 
 
 ". . . Must camp here till it abates. . . ." 
 
 "Have you got that?" Lloyd nodded. 
 
 "... Made soup of the last of the dog-meat this afternoon. . . . Our last 
 pemmican gone." 
 
 There was a pause ; then Bennett resumed : 
 
 "December ist, Wednesday Everybody getting weaker. . . . Metz 
 breaking down. . . . Sent Adler to the shore to gather shrimps; . . . 
 we had about a mouthful apiece at noon; . . . supper, a spoonful of 
 glycerine and hot water." 
 
 Lloyd put her hand to her temple, smoothing back her hair, her 
 face turned away. As before, in the park, on that warm and glow 
 ing summer afternoon, a swift, clear vision of the Ice was vouch 
 safed to her. She saw the coast of Kolyuchin Bay primordial 
 desolation, whirling dust-like snow, the unleashed wind yelling like 
 a sabbath of witches, leaping and somersaulting from rock to rock, 
 folly-stricken and insensate in its hideous dance of death. Bennett con 
 tinued. His voice insensibly lowered itself ; a certain gravity of man 
 ner came upon him. At times he looked at the written pages in his 
 hand with vague, unseeing eyes. No doubt he, too, was remembering. 
 
 He resumed: 
 
 "December 2d, Thursday Metz died during the night. . . . Hansen 
 dying. Still blowing a gale from the northeast. . . . A hard night." 
 
 Lloyd s pen moved slower and slower as she wrote. The lines 
 of the manuscript began to blur and swim before her eyes. 
 
 And it was to this that she must send him. To this inhuman, 
 
 > horrible region ; to this life of prolonged suffering, where death 
 
 came slowly through days of starvation, exhaustion, and agony 
 
 hourly renewed. He must dare it all again. She must force him 
 
440 A Man s Woman 
 
 to it. Her decision had been taken; her duty was plain to her. 
 Now it was irrevocable. 
 
 ". . . Hansen died during early morning. . . . Dennison breaking 
 down. . . ." 
 
 "... December 5th Sunday Dennison found dead this morning be 
 tween Adler and myself. . . ." 
 
 The vision became plainer, more distinct. She fancied she saw 
 the interior of the tent and the dwindling number of the "Freja s" 
 survivors moving about on their hands and knees in its gloomy half- 
 light. Their hair and beards were long, their faces black with dirt, 
 monstrously distended and fat with the bloated irony of starvation. 
 They were no longer men. After that unspeakable stress of mis 
 ery nothing but the animal remained. 
 
 ". . . Too weak to bury Jiim, or even carry him out of the tent. . . . 
 He must lie where he is. ... Last spoonful of glycerine and hot water. 
 . . . Divine service at 5:30 P.M. . . ." 
 
 Once more Lloyd faltered in her writing ; her hand moved slower. 
 Shut her teeth though she might, the sobs would come ; swiftly the 
 tears brimmed her eyes, but she tried to wink them back, lest Bennett 
 should see. Heroically she wrote to the end of the sentence. A 
 pause followed. 
 
 "Yes divine services at I I " 
 
 The pen dropped from her fingers and she sank down upon her 
 desk, her head bowed in the hollow of her bare arm, shaken from 
 head to foot with the violence of the crudest grief she had ever 
 known. Bennett threw his journal from him, and came to her, tak 
 ing her in his arms, putting her head upon his shoulder. 
 
 "Why, Lloyd, what is it why, old chap, what the devil! I 
 was a beast to read that to you. It wasn t really as bad as that, you 
 know, and besides, look here, look at me. It all happened three 
 years ago. It s all over with now." 
 
 Without raising her head, and clinging to him all the closer, 
 Lloyd answered brokenly : 
 
 "No, no; it s not all over. It never, never will be." 
 
 "Pshaw, nonsense!" Bennett blustered, "you must not take it 
 to heart like this. We re going to forget all about it now. Here, 
 damn the book, anyhow! We ve had enough of it to-day. Put 
 your hat on. We ll have the ponies out and drive somewhere. And 
 to-night we ll go into town and see a show at a theatre." 
 
 "No," protested Lloyd, pushing back from him, drying her eyes. 
 "You shall not think I m so weak. We will go on with what we 
 have to do with our work. I m all right now." 
 
A Man s Woman 441 
 
 Bennett marched her out of the room without more ado, and, 
 following her, closed and locked the door behind them. "We ll 
 not write another word of that stuff to-day. Get your hat and 
 things. I m going out to tell Lewis to put the ponies in." 
 
 But that day marked a beginning. From that time on Lloyd 
 never faltered, and if there were moments when the iron bit deeper 
 than usual into her heart, Bennett never knew her pain. By degrees 
 a course of action planned itself for her. A direct appeal to Ben 
 nett she believed would not only be useless, but beyond even her 
 heroic courage. She must influence him indirectly. The initiative 
 must appear to come from him. It must seem to him that he, of his 
 own accord, roused his dormant resolution. It was a situation that 
 called for all her feminine tact, delicacy, and instinctive diplomacy. 
 
 The round of their daily life was renewed, but now there was a 
 change. It was subtle, illusive, a vague, indefinite trouble in the 
 air. Lloyd had addressed herself to her task, and from day to day, 
 from hour to hour, she held to it, unseen, unnoticed. Now it was 
 a remark dropped as if by chance in the course of conversation; 
 now an extract cut from a newspaper or scientific journal and left 
 where Bennett would find it; now merely a look in her eyes, an in 
 stant s significant glance when her gaze met her husband s, or a 
 moment s enthusiasm over the news of some discovery. Insensibly 
 and with infinite caution she directed his attention to the world he 
 believed he had abjured ; she called into being his interest in his 
 own field of action, reading to him by the hour from the writings 
 of other men, or advancing and championing theories which she 
 knew to be false and ridiculous, but which she goaded him to refute. 
 
 One morning she even feigned an exclamation of unbounded 
 astonishment as she opened the newspaper while the two were at 
 breakfast, pretending to read from imaginary headlines. 
 
 "Ward, listen! The Pole at Last. A Norwegian Expedition 
 Solves the Mystery of the Arctic. The Goal Reached After 
 
 "What!" cried Bennett sharply, his frown lowering. 
 
 " After Centuries of Failure." Lloyd put down the paper 
 with a note of laughter. 
 
 "Suppose you should read it some day." 
 
 Bennett subsided with a good-humored growl. 
 
 "You did scare me for a moment. I thought I thought 
 
 "I did scare you ? Why were you scared ? What did you think?" 
 She leaned toward him eagerly. 
 
 "I thought well oh that some other chap, Duane, perhaps 
 
 "He s still at Tasiusak. But he will succeed, I do believe. I ve 
 
44 2 A Man s Woman 
 
 read a great deal about him. He has energy and determination. 
 If anybody succeeds it will be Duane." 
 
 "He? Never!" 
 
 "Somebody, then?" 
 
 "You said once that if your husband couldn t nobody could." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I know," she answered cheerfully. "But you you 
 are out of it now." 
 
 "Huh !" he grumbled. "It s not because I don t think I could if 
 I wanted to." 
 
 "No, you could not, Ward. Nobody can." 
 
 "But you just said you thought somebody would some day." 
 
 "Did I? Oh, suppose you really should one of these days!" 
 
 "And suppose I never came back?" 
 
 "Nonsense! Of course you would come back. They all do 
 nowadays." 
 
 "De Long didn t." 
 
 "But you are not De Long." 
 
 And for the rest of the day Lloyd noted with a sinking heart 
 that Bennett was unusually thoughtful and preoccupied. She said 
 nothing, and was studious to avoid breaking in upon his reflec 
 tions, whatever they might be. She kept out of his way as much as 
 possible, but left upon his desk, as if by accident, a copy of a pam 
 phlet issued by a geographical society, open at an article upon the 
 future of exploration within the Arctic Circle. At supper that night 
 Bennett suddenly broke in upon a rather prolonged silence with : 
 
 "It s all in the ship. Build a ship strong enough to withstand 
 lateral pressure of the ice and the whole thing becomes easy." 
 
 Lloyd yawned and stirred her tea indifferently as she answered: 
 
 "Yes, but you know that can t be done." 
 
 Bennett frowned thoughtfully, drumming upon the table. 
 
 "I ll wager / could build one." 
 
 "But it s not the ship alone. It s the man. Whom would you 
 get to command your ship ?" 
 
 Bennett stared. "Why, I would take her, of course." 
 
 "You? You have had your share your chance. Now you can 
 afford to stay home and finish your book and well, you might 
 deliver lectures." 
 
 "What rot, Lloyd ! Can you see me posing on a lecture platform ?" 
 
 "I would rather see you doing that than trying to beat Duane, 
 than getting into the ice again. I would rather see you doing that 
 than to know that you were away up there in the north, in the ice, 
 at your work again, fighting your way toward the Pole, leading your 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 443 
 
 men and overcoming every obstacle that stood in your way, never 
 giving up, never losing heart, trying to do the great, splendid, im 
 possible thing ; risking your life to reach merely a point on a chart. 
 Yes, I would rather see you on a lecture platform than on the deck 
 of an Arctic steamship. You know that, Ward. 
 
 He shot a glance at her. 
 
 "I would like to know what you mean/ he muttered. 
 
 The winter went by, then the spring, and by June all the country 
 around Medford was royal with summer. During the last days of 
 May, Bennett practically had completed the body of his book and 
 now occupied himself with its appendix. There was little variation in 
 their daily life. Adler became more and more of a fixture about 
 the place. In the first week of June, Lloyd and Bennett had a 
 visitor, a guest; this was Hattie Campbell. Mr. Campbell was 
 away upon a business trip, and Lloyd had arranged to have the 
 little girl spend the fortnight of his absence with her at Medford. 
 
 The summer was delightful. A vast, pervading warmth lay 
 close over all the world. The trees, the orchards, the rose-bushes in 
 the garden about the house, all the teeming life of trees and plants 
 hung motionless and poised in the still, tideless ocean of the air. It 
 was very quiet; all distant noises, the crowing of cocks, the per 
 sistent calling of robins and jays, the sound of wheels upon the 
 road, the rumble of the trains passing fhe station down in the town, 
 seemed muffled and subdued. The long, calm summer days suc 
 ceeded one another in an unbroken, glimmering procession. From 
 dawn to twilight one heard the faint, innumerable murmurs of the 
 summer, the dull bourdon of bees in the rose and lilac bushes, the 
 prolonged, strident buzzing of blue-bottle flies, the harsh, dry scrape 
 of grasshoppers, the stridulating of an occasional cricket. In the 
 twilight and all through the night itself the frogs shrilled from 
 the hedgerows and in the damp, north corners of the fields, while 
 from the direction of the hills toward the east the whippoorwills 
 called incessantly. During the day the air was full of odors, dis 
 tilled as it were by the heat of high noon the sweet smell of 
 ripening apples, the fragrance of warm sap and leaves and growing 
 grass, the smell of cows from the nearby pastures, the pungent, am- 
 moniacal suggestion of the stable back of the house, and the odor 
 of scorching paint blistering on the southern walls. 
 
 July was very hot. No breath of wind stirred the vast, invisible 
 sea of air, quivering and oily under the vertical sun. The land 
 scape was deserted of animated life ; there was little stirring abroad. 
 In the house one kept within the cool, darkened rooms with mat- 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 ting on the floors and comfortable, deep wicker chairs, the windows 
 wide to the least stirring of the breeze. Adler dozed in his canvas , 
 hammock slung between a hitching-post and a crab-apple tree in 
 the shade behind the stable. Kamiska sprawled at full length under 
 neath the water-trough, her tongue lolling, panting incessantly. An 
 immeasurable Sunday stillness seemed to hang suspended in the at 
 mospherea drowsy, numbing hush. There was no thought of the 
 passing of time. The day of the week was always a matter of 
 conjecture. It seemed as though this life of heat and quiet and 
 unbroken silence was to last forever. 
 
 Then suddenly there was an alerte. One morning, a day or 
 so after Hattie Campbell had returned to the city, just as Lloyd and 
 Bennett were finishing their breakfast in the now heavily awninged 
 glass-room, they were surprised to see Adler running down the road 
 toward the house, Kamiska racing on ahead, barking excitedly. 
 Adler had gone into the town for the mail and morning s paper. 
 This latter he held wide open in hishand, and as soon as he caught 
 sight of Lloyd and Bennett waved it about him, shouting as he ran. 
 
 Lloyd s heart began to beat. There was only one thing that 
 could excite Adler to this degree the English expedition ; Adler 
 had news of it; it was in the paper. Duane had succeeded; had 
 been working steadily northward during all these past months, while 
 Bennett 
 
 "Stuck in the ice! stuck in the ice!" shouted Adler as he swung 
 wide the front gate and came hastening toward the veranda across 
 the lawn. "What did we say ! Hooray ! He s stuck. I knew it ; 
 any galoot might a known it. Duane s stuck tighter n a wedge off 
 Bache Island, in Kane Basin. Here it all is; read it for yourself." 
 
 Bennett took the paper from him and read aloud to the effect 
 that the "Curlew," accompanied by her collier, which was to follow 
 her to the southerly limit of Kane Basin, had attempted the passage 
 of Smith Sound late in June. But the season, as had been feared, 
 was late. The enormous quantities of ice reported by the whalers 
 the previous year had not debouched from the narrow channel, and 
 on the last day of June the "Curlew" had found her further progress 
 effectually blocked. In essaying. to force her way into a lead the ice 
 had closed in behind her, and, while not as yet nipped, the vessel 
 was immobilized. There was no hope that she would advance north 
 ward until the following summer. The collier, which had not been 
 beset, had returned to Tasiusak with the news of the failure. 
 
 "What a galoot! What a a professor!" exclaimed Adler with 
 a vast disdain. "Him loafing at Tasiusak waiting for open water, 
 
A Man s Woman 445 
 
 when the "Alert" wintered in eighty-two-twenty-four! Well, he s 
 shelved for another year, anyhow." 
 
 Later on, after breakfast, Lloyd and Bennett shut themselves 
 in Bennett s workroom, and for upward of three hours addressed 
 themselves to the unfinished work of the previous day, compiling 
 from Bennett s notes a table of temperatures of the sea-water taken 
 at different soundings. Alternating with the scratching of Lloyd s 
 ! pen, Bennett s voice continued monotonously: 
 
 "August i5th--2,ooo meters or 1,093 fathoms minus .66 degrees centi 
 grade or 30.81 Fahrenheit." 
 
 "Fahrenheit," repeated Lloyd as she wrote the last word. 
 "August i6th i, 600 meters or 874 fathoms " 
 
 "Eight hundred and seventy-four fathoms," repeated Lloyd as 
 Bennett paused abstractedly. 
 
 "Or . . . he s in a bad way, you know." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "It s a bad bit of navigation along there. The "Proteus" was 
 nipped and crushed to kindling in about that same latitude . . . 
 h m" . . . Bennett tugged at his mustache. Then, suddenly, 
 as if coming to himself: "Well these temperatures now. Where 
 were we? Eight hundred and seventy-four fathoms, minus forty- 
 six hundredths degrees centigrade/ " 
 
 On the afternoon of the next day, just as they were finishing this 
 table, there was a knock at the door. It was Adler, and as Bennett 
 opened the door he saluted and handed him three calling-cards. 
 Bennett uttered an exclamation of surprise, and Lloyd turned about 
 from the desk, her pen poised in the air over the half-written sheet. 
 
 "They might have let me know they were coming," she heard 
 Bennett mutter. "What do they want?" 
 
 "Guess they came on that noon train, sir," hazarded Adler. 
 "They didn t say what they wanted, just inquired for you." 
 
 "Who is it?" asked Lloyd, coming forward. 
 
 Bennett read off the names on the cards. 
 
 "Well, it s Tremlidge that s the Tremlidge of the Times ; he s 
 the editor and proprietor and Hamilton Garlock has something 
 to do with that new geographical society president, I believe 
 and this one" he handed her the third card "is a friend of yours, 
 Craig V. Campbell of the Hercules Wrought Steel Company." 
 
 Lloyd stared. "What can they want?" she murmured, looking 
 up to him from the card in some perplexity. Bennett shook his head. 
 
 "Tell them to come up here," he said to Adler. 
 
44 6 A Man s Woman 
 
 Lloyd hastily drew down her sleeve over her bare arm. 
 
 "Why up here, Ward?" she inquired abruptly. 
 
 "Should we have seen them downstairs?" he demanded with a 
 frown. "I suppose so ; I didn t think. Don t go/ he added, putting 
 a hand on her arm as she started for the door. "You might as well 
 hear what they have to say." 
 
 The visitors entered, Adler holding open the door Campbell, 
 well groomed, clean-shaven, and gloved even in that warm weather ; 
 Tremlidge, the editor of one of the greater daily papers of the city 
 (and of the country for the matter of that), who wore a monocle 
 and carried a straw hat under his arm; and Garlock, the vice-presi 
 dent of an international geographical society, an old man, with 
 beautiful white hair curling about his ears, a great bow of black 
 silk knotted about his old-fashioned collar. The group presented, all 
 unconsciously, three great and highly developed phases of nine 
 teenth-century intelligence science, manufactures, and journalism 
 each man of them a master in his calling. 
 
 When the introductions and preliminaries were over, Bennett 
 took up his position again in front of the fireplace, leaning against 
 the mantle, his hands in his pockets. Lloyd sat opposite to him at the 
 desk, resting her elbow on the edge. Hanging against the wall 
 behind her was the vast chart of the Arctic Circle. Tremlidge, the 
 editor, sat on the bamboo sofa near the end of the room, his elbows 
 on his knees, gently tapping the floor with the ferrule of his slim 
 walking-stick; Garlock, the scientist, had dropped into the depths 
 of a huge leather chair and leaned back in it comfortably, his legs 
 crossed, one boot swinging gently ; Campbell stood behind this chair, 
 drumming on the back occasionally with the fingers of one hand, 
 speaking to Bennett over Garlock s shoulder, and from time to time 
 turning to Tremlidge for corroboration and support of what he was 
 saying. 
 
 Abruptly the conference began. 
 
 "Well, Mr. Bennett, you got our wire ?" Campbell said by way 
 of commencement. 
 
 Bennett shook his head. 
 
 No," he returned in some surprise; "no, I got no wire." 
 "That s strange," said Tremlidge. "I wired three days ago 
 asking for this interview. The address was right, I think. I wired : 
 Care of Dr. Pitts/ Isn t that right?" 
 
 "That probably accounts for it," answered Bennett. "This is 
 Pitts s house, but he does not live here now. Your despatch, no 
 doubt, went to his office in the city, and was forwarded to him. 
 
A Man s Woman 447 
 
 He s away just now, traveling, I believe. But you re here. That s 
 the essential." 
 
 "Yes," murmured Garlock, looking to Campbell. "We re here, 
 and we want to have a talk with you." 
 
 Campbell, who had evidently been chosen spokesman, cleared his 
 throat. 
 
 "Well, Mr. Bennett, I don t know just how to begin, so suppose 
 I begin at the beginning. Tremlidge and I belong to the same 
 club in the city, and in some way or other we have managed to see a 
 good deal of each other during the last half-dozen years. We find 
 that we have a good deal in common. I don t think his editorial 
 columns are for sale, and he doesn t believe there are blow-holes in 
 my steel plates. I really do believe we have certain convictions. 
 Tremlidge seems to have an idea that journalism can be clean and 
 yet enterprising, and tries to run his sheet accordingly, and I am 
 afraid that I would not make a bid for bridge girders below what it 
 would cost to manufacture them honestly. Tremlidge and I differ 
 in politics; we hold conflicting views as to municipal government; 
 we attend different churches; we are at variance in the matter of 
 public education, of the tariff, of emigration, and, heaven save the 
 mark ! of capital and labor, but we tell ourselves that we are public- 
 spirited and are a little proud that God allowed us to be born in the 
 United States ; also it appears that we have more money than Henry 
 George believes to be right. Now," continued Mr. Campbell, 
 straightening himself as though he were about to touch upon the real 
 subject of his talk, "when the news of your return, Mr. Bennett, 
 was received, it was, as of course you understand, the one topic of 
 conversation in the streets, the clubs, the newspaper offices every 
 where. Tremlidge and I met at our club at luncheon the next week, 
 and I remember perfectly well how long and how very earnestly we 
 talked of your work and of Arctic exploration in general. 
 
 "We found out all of a sudden that here at last was a subject we 
 were agreed upon, a subject in which we took an extraordinary 
 mutual interest. We discovered that we had read almost every ex 
 plorer s book from Sir John Franklin down. We knew all about the 
 different theories and plans of reaching the Pole. We knew how 
 and why they had all failed ; but, for all that, we were both of the 
 opinion" (Campbell leaned forward, speaking with considerable 
 energy) "that it can be done, and that America ought to do it. That 
 would be something better than even a World s Fair. 
 
 "We give out a good deal of money, Tremlidge and I, every year 
 to public works and one thing or another. We buy pictures by 
 
44 8 A Man s Woman 
 
 American artists pictures that we don t want ; we found a scholar 
 ship now and then ; we contribute money to build groups of statuary 
 in the park; we give checks to the finance committees of libraries 
 and museums and all the rest of it, but, for the lives of us, we can 
 feel only a mild interest in the pictures and statues, and museums 
 and colleges, though we go on buying the one and supporting the 
 other, because we think that somehow It is right for us to do it. I m 
 afraid we are men more of action than of art, literature, and the like. 
 Tremlidge is, I know. He wants facts, accomplished results. When 
 he gives out his money he wants to see the concrete, substantial re- 
 
 turn and I m not sure that I am not of the same way of thinking. 
 "Well, with this and with that, and after talking it all over a 
 
 ! dozen times twenty times we came to the conclusion that what we 
 would most like to aid financially would be a successful attempt by an 
 American-built ship, manned by American seamen, led by an Ameri 
 can commander, to reach the North Pole. We came to be very en 
 thusiastic about our idea; but we want it American from start to 
 finish. We will start the subscription, and want to head the list with 
 our checks ; but we want every bolt in that ship forged in American 
 foundries from metal dug out of American soil. We want every 
 plank in her hull shaped from American trees, every sail of her 
 woven by American looms, every man of her born of American 
 parents, and we want it this way because we believe in American 
 manufactures, because we believe in American shipbuilding, because 
 we believe in American sailmakers, and because we believe in the 
 intelligence and pluck and endurance and courage of the American 
 sailor. 
 
 "Well," Campbell continued, changing his position and speaking 
 in a quieter voice, "we did not say much to anybody, and, in fact, 
 we never really planned any expedition at all. We merely talked 
 about its practical nature and the desirability of having it dis 
 tinctively American. This was all last summer. What we wanted 
 to do was to make the scheme a popular one. It would not be hard 
 to raise a hundred thousand dollars from among a dozen or so men 
 whom we both know, and we found that we could count upon the 
 financial support of Mr. Garlock s society. That was all very well, 
 but we wanted the people to back this enterprise. We would rather 
 get a thousand five-dollar subscriptions than five of a thousand dol 
 lars each. When our ship went out we wanted her commander to 
 feel, not that there were merely a few millionaires, who had paid for 
 his equipment and his vessel, behind him but that he had seventy 
 millions of people, a whole nation, at his back. 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 "So Tremlidge went to work and telegraphed instructions to the 
 Washington correspondents of his paper to sound quietly the tem 
 per of as many Congressmen as possible in the matter of making 
 an appropriation toward such an expedition. It was not so much 
 the money we wanted as the sanction of the United States. Any 
 thing that has to do with the Navy is popular just at present. We 
 had got a Congressman to introduce and father an appropriation 
 bill, and we could count upon the support of enough members of 
 both houses to put it through. We wanted Congress to appro 
 priate twenty thousand dollars. We hoped to raise another ten 
 thousand dollars by popular subscription. /Mr. Garlock could 
 assure us two thousand dollars; Tremlidge would contribute 
 twenty thousand dollars in the name of the Times/ and I pledged 
 myself to ten thousand dollars, and promised to build the ship s 
 engines and fittings. We kept our intentions to ourselves, be 
 fore the Times printed it. But we continued to lay our wires 
 at Washington. Everything was going as smooth as oil; we 
 seemed sure of the success of our appropriation bill, and it was 
 even to be introduced next week, when the news came of the col 
 lapse of the English expedition the Duane-Parsons affair. 
 
 "You would have expected precisely an opposite effect, but it 
 has knocked our chances with Congress into a cocked hat. Our 
 member, who was to father the bill, declared to us that so sure as it 
 was brought up now it would be killed in committee. I went to 
 Washington at once; it was this, and not, as you supposed, private 
 business that has taken me away. I saw our member and Trem- 
 lidge s head correspondent. It was absolutely no use. These men 
 who have their finger upon the Congressional pulse were all of the 
 same opinion. It would be useless to try to put through our bill 
 at present. Our member said Wait ; all Tremlidge s men said 
 "Wait wait for another year, until this English expedition and its 
 failure are forgotten, and then try again/ But we don t want to 
 wait. Suppose Duane is blocked for the present. He has a tre 
 mendous start. He s on the ground. By next summer the chances 
 are the ice will have so broken up as to permit him to push ahead, 
 and by the time our bill gets through and our ship built and 
 launched he may be heaven knows where, right up to the Pole, 
 perhaps. No, we can t afford to give England such long odds. 
 We want to lay the keel of our ship as soon as we can next week, 
 if possible ; we ve got the balance of the summer and all the winter 
 to prepare in, and a year from this month we want our American 
 expedition to be inside the Polar Circle, to be up with Duane, and 
 
450 A Man s Woman 
 
 at least to break even with England. If we can do this we re not 
 afraid of the result, provided," continued Mr. Campbell, "provided 
 you, Mr. Bennett, are in command. If you consent to make the 
 attempt, only one point remains to be settled. Congress has failed 
 us. We will give up the idea of an appropriation. Now, then, and 
 this is particularly what we want to consult you about, how are 
 we going to raise the twenty thousand dollars?" 
 
 Lloyd rose to her feet. 
 
 "You may draw on me for the amount," she said quietly. 
 
 Garlock uncrossed his legs and sat up abruptly in the deep- 
 seated chair. Tremlidge screwed his monocle into his eye and 
 stared, while Campbell turned about sharply at the sound of Lloyd s 
 voice with a murmur of astonishment. Bennett alone did not move. 
 As before, he leaned heavily against the mantelpiece, his hands in 
 his pockets, his head and his huge shoulders a little bent. Only 
 from under his thick, knotted frown he shot a swift glance toward 
 his wife. Lloyd paid no attention to the others. After that one 
 quiet movement that had brought her to her feet she remained 
 motionless and erect, her hands hanging straight at her sides, the 
 color slowly mounting to her cheeks. She met Bennett s glance and 
 held it steadily, calmly, looking straight into his eyes. She said no 
 word, but all her love for him, all her hopes of him, all the fine, 
 strong resolve that, come what would, his career should not be 
 broken, his ambition should not faint through any weakness of hers, 
 all her eager sympathy for his great work, all her strong, womanly 
 encouragement for him to accomplish his destiny spoke to him, and 
 called to him in that long, earnest look of her dull-blue eyes. Now 
 she was no longer weak; now she could face the dreary conse 
 quences that, for her, must follow the rousing of his dormant 
 energy ; now was no longer the time for indirect appeal ; the screen 
 was down between them. More eloquent than any spoken words 
 was the calm, steady gaze in which she held his own. 
 
 There was a long silence while husband and wife stood looking 
 deep into each other s eyes. And then, as a certain slow kindling 
 took place in his look, Lloyd saw that at last Bennett understood. 
 
 After that the conference broke up rapidly. Campbell, as the 
 head and spokesman of the committee, noted the long, significant 
 glance that had passed between Bennett and Lloyd, and, perhaps, 
 vaguely divined that he had touched upon a matter of a particularly 
 delicate and intimate nature. Something was in the air, something 
 was passing between husband and wife in which the outside world 
 had no concern something not meant for him to see. He brought 
 
A Man s Woman 451 
 
 the interview to an end as quickly as possible. He begged of Ben 
 nett to consider this talk as a mere preliminary a breaking of the 
 ground. He would give Bennett time to think it over. Speaking 
 for himself and the others, he was deeply impressed with that gen 
 erous offer to meet the unexpected deficiency, but it had been made 
 upon the spur of the moment. No doubt Mr. Bennett and his wife 
 would wish to talk it over between themselves, to consider the whole 
 matter. The committee temporarily had its headquarters in his 
 (Campbell s) offices. He left Bennett the address. He would await 
 his decision and answer there. 
 
 When the conference ended Bennett accompanied the members 
 of the committee downstairs and to the front door of the house. 
 The three had, with thanks and excuses, declined, all invitations to 
 dine at Medford with Bennett and his wife. They could conven 
 iently catch the next train back to the city ; Campbell and Tremlidge 
 were in a hurry to return to their respective businesses. 
 
 The front gate closed. Bennett was left alone. He shut the 
 front door of the house, and for an instant stood leaning against it, 
 his small eyes twinkling under his frown, his glance straying aim 
 lessly about amid the familiar objects of the hallway and adjoining 
 rooms. He was thoughtful, perturbed, tugging slowly at the ends 
 of his mustache. Slowly he ascended the stairs, gaining the landing 
 on the second floor and going on toward the half-open door of the 
 workroom" he had just quitted. Lloyd was uppermost in his mind. 
 He wanted her, his wife, and that at once. He was conscious that 
 a great thing had suddenly transpired, that all the calm and infi 
 nitely happy life of the last year was ruthlessly broken up; but in 
 his mind there was nothing more definite, nothing stronger than the 
 thought of his wife and the desire for her companionship and advice. 
 
 He came into the "workroom," closing the door behind him 
 with his heel, his hands deep in his pockets. Lloyd was still there, 
 standing opposite him as he entered. She hardly seemed to have 
 moved while he had been gone. They did not immediately speak. 
 Once more their eyes met. Then at length: 
 
 "Well, Lloyd?" 
 
 "Well, my husband?" 
 
 Bennett was about to answer what he hardly knew ; but at that 
 moment there was a diversion. 
 
 The old boat s flag, the tattered little square of faded stars and 
 bars that had been used to mark the line of many a weary march, 
 had been hanging, as usual, over the blue-print plans of the "Freja" 
 on the wall opposite the window. Inadequately fixed in its place, 
 
A^2 A Man s Woman 
 
 the jar of the closing door as Bennett shut it behind him dislodged 
 it, and it fell to the floor close beside him. 
 
 He stooped and picked it up, and, holding it in his hand, turned 
 toward the spot whence it had fallen. He cast a glance at the wall 
 above the plans of the "Freja," about to replace it, willing for the 
 instant to defer the momentous words he felt must soon be spoken, 
 willing to put off the inevitable a few seconds longer. 
 
 "I don t know," he muttered, looking from the flag to the empty 
 wall spaces about the room; "I don t know just where to put this. 
 Do you" 
 
 "Don t you know?" interrupted Lloyd suddenly, her blue eyes 
 all alight. 
 
 "No," said Bennett; "I" 
 
 Lloyd caught the flag from his hands and, with one great sweep 
 of her arm, drove its steel shod shaft full into the centre of the 
 great chart of the polar region, into the innermost concentric circle 
 where the Pole was marked. 
 
 "Put that flag there !" she cried. 
 
 XI 
 
 THAT particular day in the last week in April was sombre and 
 somewhat chilly, but there was little wind. The water of the harbor 
 lay smooth as a sheet of tightly stretched gray silk. Overhead the 
 sea-fog drifted gradually landward, descending, as it drifted, till 
 the outlines of the city grew blurred and indistinct, resolving to a 
 dim, vast mass, rugged with high-shouldered office buildings and 
 bulging, balloon-like domes, confused and mysterious under the 
 cloak of the fog. In the nearer foreground, along the lines of the 
 wharves and docks, a wilderness of masts and spars of a tone just 
 darker than the gray of the mist stood away from the blur of the 
 background with the distinctness and delicacy of frost-work, 
 
 But amid all this grayness of sky and water and fog one distin 
 guished certain black and shifting masses. They outlined every 
 wharf, they banked every dock, every quay. Every small and in- 
 Consequent jetty had its fringe of black. Even the roofs of the 
 buildings along the water-front were crested with the same dull- 
 colored mass. 
 
 It was the People, the crowd, rank upon rank, close-packed, ex 
 pectant, thronging there upon the city s edge, swelling in size with 
 the lapse of every minute, vast, conglomerate, restless, and throw- 
 
A Man s Woman 
 
 ing off into the stillness of the quiet gray air a prolonged, indefinite 
 murmur, a monotonous minor note. 
 
 The surface of the bay was dotted over with all manner of craft 
 black with people. Rowboats, perilously overcrowded, were every 
 where. Ferryboats and excursion steamers, chartered for that 
 day, heeled over almost to the water s edge with the unsteady 
 weight of their passengers. Tugboats passed up and down sim- 
 ilarly crowded and displaying the flags of various journals and 
 news organizations the "News," the "Press," the "Times," and 
 the Associated Press. Private yachts, trim and very graceful and 
 gleaming with brass and varnish, slipped by with scarcely a ripple 
 to mark their progress, while full in the centre of the bay, gigantic, 
 solid, formidable, her grim, silent guns thrusting their snouts from 
 her turrets, a great, white battleship rode motionless to her anchor. 
 
 An hour passed ; noon came. At long intervals a faint seaward 
 breeze compressed the fog, and high, sad-colored clouds and a fine 
 and penetrating rain came drizzling down. The crowds along the 
 wharves grew denser and blacker. The numbers of yachts, boats, 
 and steamers increased ; even the yards and masts of the merchant 
 ships were dotted over with watchers. 
 
 Then, at length, from far up the bay there came a faint, a 
 barely perceptible, droning sound, the sound of distant shouting. 
 Instantly the crowds were alert, and a quick, surging movement rip 
 pled from end to end of the throng along the water-front. Its sub 
 dued murmur rose in pitch upon the second. Like a flock of agitated 
 gulls, the boats in the harbor stirred nimbly from place to place ; a 
 belated newspaper tug tore by, headed for the upper bay, smoking 
 fiercely, the water boiling from her bows. From the battleship 
 came the tap of a drum. The excursion steamers and chartered 
 ferryboats moved to points of vantage and took position, occa 
 sionally feeling the water with their paddles. 
 
 The distant, droning sound drew gradually nearer, swelling in 
 volume, and by degrees splitting into innumerable component parts. 
 One began to distinguish the various notes that contributed to its 
 volume a sharp, quick volley of inarticulate shouts or a cadenced 
 cheer or a hoarse salvo of steam whistles. Bells began to ring in 
 different quarters of the city. 
 
 Then all at once the advancing wave of sound swept down like 
 the rush of a great storm. A roar as of the unchained wind leaped 
 upward from those banked and crowding masses. It swelled louder 
 and louder, deafening, inarticulate. A vast bellow of exultation 
 split the gray, low-hanging heavens. Erect plumes of steam shot 
 
454 A Man s Woman 
 
 upward from the ferry and excursion boats, but the noise of their 
 whistles was lost and drowned in the reverberation of that mighty 
 and prolonged clamor. But suddenly the indeterminate thunder 
 was pierced and dominated by a sharp and deep-toned report, and a 
 jet of white smoke shot out from the flanks of the battleship. Her 
 guns had spoken. Instantly and from another quarter of her hull came 
 another jet of white smoke, stabbed through with its thin, yellow flash, 
 and another abrupt clap of thunder shook the windows of the city. 
 
 The boats that all the morning had been moving toward the 
 upper bay were returning. They came slowly, a veritable fleet, 
 steaming down the bay, headed for the open sea, beyond the en 
 trance of the harbor, each crowded and careening to the very gun 
 wales, each whistling with might and main. 
 
 And in their midst the storm-centre round which this tempest 
 of acclamation surged, the object on which so many eyes were 
 focused the hope of an entire nation one ship. 
 
 She was small and seemingly pitifully inadequate for the great 
 adventure on which she was bound; her lines were short and un 
 graceful. From her clumsy iron-shod bow to her high, round 
 stern, from her bulging sides to the summit of her short, powerful 
 masts there was scant beauty in her. She was broad, blunt, evi 
 dently slow in her movements, and in the smooth waters of the bay 
 seemed out of her element. But, for all that, she imparted an im 
 pression of compactness, the compactness of things dwarfed and 
 stunted. Vast, indeed, would be the force that would crush those 
 bulging flanks, so cunningly built, moreover, that the ship must slip 
 and rise to any too great lateral pressure. Far above her waist 
 rose her smokestack. Overhead upon the mainmast was affixed the 
 crow s nest. Whaleboats and cutters swung from her davits, while 
 all her decks were cumbered with barrels, with crates, with boxes, 
 and strangely shaped bales and cases. 
 
 She drew nearer, continuing that slow, proud progress down the 
 bay, honored as no visiting sovereign had ever been. The great 
 white man-of-war dressed ship as she passed, and the ensign at 
 her fighting-top dipped and rose again. At once there was a move 
 ment aboard the little outbound ship; one of her crew ran aft 
 and hauled sharply at the halyards, and then at her peak there was 
 broken out, not the brilliant tri-colored banner, gay and brave and 
 clean, but a little length of bunting, tattered and soiled, a faded 
 breadth of stars and bars, a veritable battle-flag, eloquent of strenu 
 ous endeavor, of fighting without quarter, and of hardship borne 
 without flinching and without complaining. 
 
A Man s Woman 455 
 
 The ship with her crowding escorts held onward. By degrees 
 the city was passed ; the bay narrowed oceanward little by little. 
 4 The throng of people, the boom of cannon, and the noise of snouting 
 dropped astern. One by one the boats of the escorting squadron 
 halted, drew off, and, turning with a parting blast of their whistles, 
 headed back to the city. Only the larger, heavier steamers and the 
 seagoing tugs still kept on their way. On either shore of the bay 
 the houses began to dwindle, giving place to open fields, brown and 
 sear under the scudding sea-fog, for now a wind was building up 
 from out the east, and the surface of the bay had begun to ruffle. 
 
 Half a mile further on the slow, huge, ground-swells began to 
 come in ; a lighthouse was passed. Full in view, on ahead, stretched 
 the open, empty waste of ocean. Another steamer turned back, 
 then another, then another, then the last of the newspaper tugs. 
 The fleet, reduced now to half a dozen craft, plowed on through and 
 over the ground-swells, the ship they were escorting leading the 
 way, her ragged little ensign straining stiff in the ocean wind. At 
 the entrance of the bay, where the inclosing shores drew together 
 and trailed off to surf-beaten sand-spits, three more of the escort 
 halted, and, unwilling to face the tumbling expanse of the ocean, 
 bleak and gray, turned homeward. Then just beyond the bar two 
 more of the remaining boats fell off and headed cityward ; a third 
 immediately did likewise. The outbound ship was left with only one 
 companion. 
 
 But that one, a sturdy little seagoing tug, held close, close to the 
 flank of the departing vessel, keeping even pace with her and lying 
 alongside as nearly as she dared, for the fog had begun to thicken, 
 and distant objects were shut from sight by occasional drifting 
 patches. 
 
 On board the tug there was but one passenger a woman. She 
 stood upon the forward deck, holding to a stanchion with one strong, 
 i white hand, the strands of her bronze-red hair whipping across her 
 face, the salt spray damp upon her cheeks. She was dressed in a 
 long, brown ulster, its cape flying from her shoulders as the wind 
 lifted it. Small as was the outgoing ship, the tug was still smaller, 
 and its single passenger had to raise her eyes above her to see the 
 figure of a man upon the bridge of the ship, a tall, heavily built 
 figure, buttoned from heel to chin in a greatcoat, who stood there 
 gripping the rail of the bridge with one hand, and from time to time 
 giving an order to his sailing-master, who stood in the centre of the 
 bridge before the compass and electric indicator. 
 
 Between the man upon the bridge and the woman on the for- 
 
4 5 6 A Man s Woman 
 
 ward deck of the tug there was from time to time a little conversa 
 tion. They called to one another above the throbbing of the en 
 gines and the wash of the sea alongside, and in the sound of their 
 voices there was a note of attempted cheerfulness. Practically they 
 were alone, with the exception of the sailing-master on the bridge. 
 The crew of the ship were nowhere in sight. On the tug no one 
 but the woman was to be seen. All around them stretched the fog- 
 ridden sea. 
 
 Then at last, in answer to a question from the man on the bridge, 
 the woman said: 
 
 "Yes I think I had better." 
 
 An order was given. The tug s bell rang in Her engine-room, 
 and the engine slowed and stopped. For some time the tug con 
 tinued her headway, ranging alongside the ship as before. Then 
 she began to fall behind, at first slowly, then with increasing swift 
 ness. The outbound ship continued on her way, and between the two 
 the water widened and widened. But the fog was thick ; in another 
 moment the two would be shut out from each other s sight. The 
 moment of separation was come. 
 
 Then Lloyd, standing alone on that heaving deck, drew herself 
 up to her full height, her head a little back, her blue eyes all alight, a 
 smile upon her lips. She spoke no word. She made no gesture, but 
 stood there, the smile yet upon her lips, erect, firm, motionless; 
 looking steadily, calmly, proudly into Bennett s eyes as his ship 
 carried him further and further away. 
 
 Suddenly the fog shut down. The two vessels were shut from 
 each other s sight. 
 
 As Bennett stood leaning upon the rail of the bridge behind him, 
 his hands deep in the pockets of his greatcoat, his eyes fixed on the 
 visible strip of water just ahead of his ship s prow, the sailing- 
 master, Adler, approached and saluted. 
 
 "Beg pardon, sir," he said, "we re just clear of the last buoy; 
 what s our course now, sir?" 
 
 Bennett glanced at the chart that Adler held and then at the 
 compass affixed to the rail of the bridge close at hand. Quietly he 
 answered : 
 
 "Due north." 
 
 THE END 
 
* ^7 T -7 
 
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GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY 
 
 BDDD^flObEM