One morning about a week after Marcus had left for the southern 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 superscribed.
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 envelopes 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 laboriously. “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 breakfast dishes. “I guess I'll ask Trina about it,” he
muttered.
He went through the suite, by the sitting-room, where the sun 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 lithographs of round-cheeked
English babies and alert fox terriers, and came 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 of silver 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 occasional 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 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 practise 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, I don' know,” answered her husband.
“You can't practise any longer,” continued Trina,--“'is herewith
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. I 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 practise 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 practising ten years. More--nearly twelve.”
“But it's the law.”
“What's the law?”
“That you can't practise, 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 doctor? Look
at my sign, and the gold tooth you gave me. Why, I've been practising
nearly twelve years.”
Trina shut her lips tightly, cleared her throat, and pretended to
resettle a hair-pin 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--oh, 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 good? 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 McTeague 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 Sutter 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 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 moment 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 in both her
fists, read it yet another time. Suddenly the conviction 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 anything 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, refusing 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 practising or not?”
“I got a mould to make to-morrow,” McTeague said, “and Vanovitch, that
plumber round on Sutter Street, he's coming again at three.”
“Well, you go right ahead,” Trina told him, decisively; “you go right
ahead and make the mould, and pull every tooth in Vanovitch'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 practise 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 learnt 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 exclaimed.
“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 another word
about it.”
“Suppose I go round to the City Hall and see them,” hazarded 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 questions, 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 behind his thick
mustache: “I ain't going to quit for just a piece of 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 practice was suddenly taken from them. Then they would
have to fall back on the interest of her lottery money and the pittance
she derived 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 allowed
herself to say. “It looks as though we were all right. How are they
going to tell whether you're practising 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 college? Why didn't you
find out that you had to have a college degree? 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, bewildered. “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. “We've 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?
Little by little Trina made the dentist understand the calamity that had
befallen them, and McTeague at last began cancelling 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 moulds. Now he would
sharpen a “hoe” excavator, now he would busy himself for a whole hour
making “mats” and “cylinders.” 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 moving 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 rectangular 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
nickelled trimmings of the operating chair had been furbished till they
shone, while on the movable rack in the bay window McTeague had arranged
his instruments with the greatest neatness and regularity. “Hoe”
excavators, 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' waiting, an'--an'--an' nobody comes, an'
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 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 appointments.
“Look at them. There's Vanovitch at two on Wednesday, 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 and 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 raised over his head. His massive jaw
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 of
his eyes growing suddenly pink.
“Oh, if ever you DO,” exclaimed Trina, catching her breath.