'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
