still trembling, still vibrating 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 opportunity. 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 sooner or later it faces every child of man; but its significance was not for him. To reason with it was beyond him. He could only oppose to it an instinctive stubborn resistance, blind, inert.
McTeague went on with his work. As he was rapping in the 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 beneath 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 him, 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, suddenly seized with a fear of him, the intuitive feminine fear of the male. McTeague could only repeat the same thing over and over 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 shrinking 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 graduated glass and held it to her lips.
«Here, swallow this,» he said.
CHAPTER 3
Once every two months Maria Macapa set the entire flat in commotion. She roamed the building from garret to cellar, searching each corner, ferreting through every old box and trunk and barrel, groping about on the top shelves of closets, peering into rag-bags, exasperating the lodgers with her persistence and importunity. She was collecting junks, bits of iron, stone jugs, glass bottles, old sacks, and cast-off garments. It was one of her perquisites. She sold the junk to Zerkow, the rags-bottles-sacks man, who lived in a filthy den in the alley just back of the flat, and who sometimes paid her as much as three cents a pound. The stone jugs, however, were worth a nickel. 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. They were in the world, they were elegant, they were debonair, they had their «young men.»
On this occasion she presented herself at the door of Old Grannis'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 pillowcase 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 unkind. «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 fingers 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 diversion, 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; positively, Maria was becoming unbearable.
'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 gold fish. That day Miss Baker had been doing a bit of washing; two pocket handkerchiefs, still moist, adhered 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 herself. 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
