of the smooth flat pieces the length 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 heart beating thickly, her eyes rolling wildly in the direction of her trunk. The tap was repeated. Trina rose and went fearfully to the window. The little court below was bright with moonlight, and standing just on the edge of the shadow thrown by one of the cherry trees was McTeague. A bunch of half-ripe cherries was in his hand. He was eating them and throwing the pits at the window. As he caught sight of her, he made an eager sign for her to raise the sash. Reluctant 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 woollen 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 at 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 moonlight made deep black shadows in the shrunken cheeks.
'Huh?' asked the dentist, puzzled. 'What did you say?'
'I won't give you any money — 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 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 uttered a low exclamation, and then checked himself.
'Well, look here, for the last time. I'm starving. I've got nowhere 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 husband'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 disappeared.
Miser though she was, Trina was only human, and the echo of the dentist's heavy feet had not died away before she began to be sorry for what she had done. She stood by the open window in her nightgown, her finger upon her lips.
'He did looked 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 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 sailor's 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 rowelled 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 fingers; neither had she told him of her husband's robbery. So when the dentist had asked where Trina could be found, Uncle Oelbermann, 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 clenched 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 whistling between his teeth.
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 towards 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. Something 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 enormous strength, useless all his life, stood him in good stead at last.
