But what misery Zerkow endured as he listened to her
tale! For 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
someone who had possessed this wealth. He saw
someone who had seen this pile of gold. He seemed
near it; it was there, somewhere close by, under his
eyes, under his fingers; 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 hopelessness of it, the rage, the fury of it.
“Go on, go on,” he whispered; “let’s
have it all over again. Polished 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
service worth a million dollars; a punchbowl worth
a fortune; red gold plates, heaps and piles.
God!”
CHAPTER 4
The days passed. McTeague had finished the operation
on Trina’s teeth. She did not come any
more to the “Parlors.” Matters 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 constraint and embarrassment
that had followed upon McTeague’s blundering
declaration broke up little by little. In spite
of themselves 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 someone 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 grey-hounds.
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.
