“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't 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 McTeague's 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 recovered 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 pronounced 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 undesired and had gone unregretted. It had not even a name; a strange, hybrid little being, come and gone within a fortnight's time, yet combining in its puny little body the blood of the Hebrew, the Pole, and the Spaniard.
But the birth 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 Maria, frowning at him as she drank her whiskey. “What gold plate? I don' know what you're talking about, Zerkow.”
Zerkow sat back in his chair, staring at her.
“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, reaching 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, prehensile 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 readjusted her disordered ideas upon this point. Her mania had come to a crisis, which in subsiding had cleared her brain of its one illusion. 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, that saw that wonderful service in the eye of his perverted mind. It was he who could now describe it in a language almost eloquent. Maria had been content merely to remember it; but Zerkow's avarice goaded him to a belief that it was 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, perhaps, 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—I 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 punchbowl 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' 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 “Parlors” 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 whirr and trundle of a passing cable car and the persistent calling of ducks and geese in the deserted 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, between his teeth, “and you won't go.” He began to swear horribly, 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 dishevelled 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 clenched, 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 dirty Jew,” shouted Marcus, unbolting the door and running out into the hall.
“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,” exclaimed 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. I see it; you needn't try an' hide it behind your leg. Give it to me, 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 himself, '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 somewhere. 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.”
“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; I'LL hear you. I 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 goodnaturedly. “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 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 expected 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 husband that day as he came out of his “Parlors” and sat down 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 McTeague. “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? I manage all right. No, no, I can't possibly afford to send her fifty.”
“Oh, pshaw! What WILL you do, then?” grumbled her husband.
“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 altogether. 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.
One Sunday evening Trina and her husband were in their sitting-room together. It was dark, but the lamp had not been lit. 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 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 they 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 exclamation.
“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 affability.
“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 to become reconciled to his enemy? “I 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.”
“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 McTeague 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 Marcus. “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 before—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 upwards 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 patients 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 remember 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 can 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.
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.