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.
CHAPTER 14
'Well, what do you think?' said Trina.
She and McTeague stood in a tiny room at the back of the flat and on its very top floor. The room was whitewashed. It contained a bed, three cane-seated chairs, and a wooden washstand with its washbowl and pitcher. From its single uncurtained window one looked down into the flat's dirty back yard and upon the roofs of the hovels that bordered the alley in the rear. There was a rag carpet on the floor. In place of a closet some dozen wooden pegs were affixed to the wall over the washstand. There was a smell of cheap soap and of ancient hair-oil in the air.
'That's a single bed,' said Trina, 'but the landlady says she'll put in a double one for us. You see—'
'I ain't going to live here,' growled McTeague.
'Well, you've got to live somewhere,' said Trina, impatiently. 'We've looked Polk Street over, and this is the only thing we can afford.'
'Afford, afford,' muttered the dentist. 'You with your five thousand dollars, and the two or three hundred you got saved up, talking about 'afford.' You make me sick.'
'Now, Mac,' exclaimed Trina, deliberately, sitting down in one of the cane-seated chairs; 'now, Mac, let's have this thing—'
'Well, I don't figure on living in one room,' growled the dentist, sullenly. 'Let's live decently until we can get a fresh start. We've got the money.'
'Who's got the money?'
'WE'VE got it.'
'We!'
'Well, it's all in the family. What's yours is mine, and what's mine is yours, ain't it?'
'No, it's not; no, it's not,' cried Trina, vehemently. 'It's all mine, mine. There's not a penny of it belongs to anybody else. I don't like to have to talk this way to you, but you just make me. We're not going to touch a penny of my five thousand nor a penny of that little money I managed to save — that seventy-five.'
'That TWO hundred, you mean.'
'That SEVENTY-FIVE. We're just going to live on the interest of that and on what I earn from Uncle Oelbermann — on just that thirty-one or two dollars.'
'Huh! Think I'm going to do that, an' live in such a room as this?'
Trina folded her arms and looked him squarely in the face.
'Well, what ARE you going to do, then?'
'Huh?'
'I say, what ARE you going to do? You can go on and find something to do and earn some more money, and THEN we'll talk.'
'Well, I ain't going to live here.'
'Oh, very well, suit yourself. I'M going to live here.'
'You'll live where I TELL you,' the dentist suddenly cried, exasperated at the mincing tone she affected.
'Then YOU'LL pay the rent,' exclaimed Trina, quite as angry as he.
'Are you my boss, I'd like to know? Who's the boss, you or I?'
'Who's got the MONEY, I'd like to know?' cried Trina, flushing to her pale lips. 'Answer me that, McTeague, who's got the money?'
'You make me sick, you and your money. Why, you're a miser. I never saw anything like it. When I was practising, I never thought of my fees as my own; we lumped everything in together.'
'Exactly; and I'M doing the working now. I'm working for Uncle Oelbermann, and you're not lumping in ANYTHING now. I'm doing it all. Do you know what I'm doing, McTeague? I'm supporting you.'
'Ah, shut up; you make me sick.'
'You got no RIGHT to talk to me that way. I won't let you. I–I won't have it.' She caught her breath. Tears were in her eyes.
'Oh, live where you like, then,' said McTeague, sullenly.
'Well, shall we take this room then?'
'All right, we'll take it. But why can't you take a little of your money an'—an'—sort of fix it up?'
'Not a penny, not a single penny.'
'Oh, I don't care WHAT you do.' And for the rest of the day the dentist and his wife did not speak.
This was not the only quarrel they had during these days when they were occupied in moving from their suite and in looking for new quarters. Every hour the question of money came up. Trina had become more niggardly than ever since the loss of McTeague's practice. It was not mere economy with her now. It was a panic terror lest a fraction of a cent of her little savings should be touched; a passionate eagerness to continue to save in spite of all that had happened. Trina could have easily afforded better quarters than the single whitewashed room at the top of the flat, but she made McTeague believe that it was impossible.
'I can still save a little,' she said to herself, after the room had been engaged; 'perhaps almost as much as ever. I'll have three hundred dollars pretty soon, and Mac thinks it's only two hundred. It's almost two hundred and
