McTeague by Frank Norris (leveled readers TXT) 📕

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.

XIV

“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