Essential Novelists - Frank Norris. Frank Norris
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sleep at the thought of her past happiness and her present wretchedness. However, she was not alone in her unhappiness.
“Anyhow, I'm going to keep the steel engraving an' the stone pug dog,” declared the dentist, his fist clenching. When it had come to the sale of his office effects McTeague had rebelled with the instinctive obstinacy of a boy, shutting his eyes and ears. Only little by little did Trina induce him to part with his office furniture. He fought over every article, over the little iron stove, the bed-lounge, the marble-topped centre table, the whatnot in the corner, the bound volumes of “Allen's Practical Dentist,” the rifle manufacturer's calendar, and the prim, military chairs. A veritable scene took place between him and his wife before he could bring himself to part with the steel engraving of “Lorenzo de' Medici and His Court” and the stone pug dog with its goggle eyes.
“Why,” he would cry, “I've had 'em ever since—ever since I BEGAN; long before I knew you, Trina. That steel engraving I bought in Sacramento one day when it was raining. I saw it in the window of a second-hand store, and a fellow GAVE me that stone pug dog. He was a druggist. It was in Sacramento too. We traded. I gave him a shaving-mug and a razor, and he gave me the pug dog.”
There were, however, two of his belongings that even Trina could not induce him to part with.
“And your concertina, Mac,” she prompted, as they were making out the list for the second-hand dealer. “The concertina, and—oh, yes, the canary and the bird cage.”
“No.”
“Mac, you MUST be reasonable. The concertina would bring quite a sum, and the bird cage is as good as new. I'll sell the canary to the bird-store man on Kearney Street.”
“No.”
“If you're going to make objections to every single thing, we might as well quit. Come, now, Mac, the concertina and the bird cage. We'll put them in Lot D.”
“No.”
“You'll have to come to it sooner or later. I'M giving up everything. I'm going to put them down, see.”
“No.”
And she could get no further than that. The dentist did not lose his temper, as in the case of the steel engraving or the stone pug dog; he simply opposed her entreaties and persuasions with a passive, inert obstinacy that nothing could move. In the end Trina was obliged to submit. McTeague kept his concertina and his canary, even going so far as to put them both away in the bedroom, attaching to them tags on which he had scrawled in immense round letters, “Not for Sale.”
One evening during that same week the dentist and his wife were in the dismantled sitting-room. The room presented the appearance of a wreck. The Nottingham lace curtains were down. The extension table was heaped high with dishes, with tea and coffee pots, and with baskets of spoons and knives and forks. The melodeon was hauled out into the middle of the floor, and covered with a sheet marked “Lot A,” the pictures were in a pile in a corner, the chenille portieres were folded on top of the black walnut table. The room was desolate, lamentable. Trina was going over the inventory; McTeague, in his shirt sleeves, was smoking his pipe, looking stupidly out of the window. All at once there was a brisk rapping at the door.
“Come in,” called Trina, apprehensively. Now-a-days at every unexpected visit she anticipated a fresh calamity. The door opened to let in a young man wearing a checked suit, a gay cravat, and a marvellously figured waistcoat. Trina and McTeague recognized him at once. It was the Other Dentist, the debonair fellow whose clients were the barbers and the young women of the candy stores and soda-water fountains, the poser, the wearer of waistcoats, who bet money on greyhound races.
“How'do?” said this one, bowing gracefully to the McTeagues as they stared at him distrustfully.
“How'do? They tell me, Doctor, that you are going out of the profession.”
McTeague muttered indistinctly behind his mustache and glowered at him.
“Well, say,” continued the other, cheerily, “I'd like to talk business with you. That sign of yours, that big golden tooth that you got outside of your window, I don't suppose you'll have any further use for it. Maybe I'd buy it if we could agree on terms.”
Trina shot a glance at her husband. McTeague began to glower again.
“What do you say?” said the Other Dentist.
“I guess not,” growled McTeague
“What do you say to ten dollars?”
“Ten dollars!” cried Trina, her chin in the air.
“Well, what figure DO you put on it?”
Trina was about to answer when she was interrupted by McTeague.
“You go out of here.”
“Hey? What?”
“You go out of here.”
The other retreated toward the door.
“You can't make small of me. Go out of here.”
McTeague came forward a step, his great red fist clenching. The young man fled. But half way down the stairs he paused long enough to call back:
“You don't want to trade anything for a diploma, do you?”
McTeague and his wife exchanged looks.
“How did he know?” exclaimed Trina, sharply. They had invented and spread the fiction that McTeague was merely retiring from business, without assigning any reason. But evidently every one knew the real cause. The humiliation was complete now. Old Miss Baker confirmed their suspicions on this point the next day. The little retired dressmaker came down and wept with Trina over her misfortune, and did what she could to encourage her. But she too knew that McTeague had been forbidden by the authorities from practising. Marcus had evidently left them no loophole of escape.
“It's just like cutting off your husband's hands, my dear,” said Miss Baker. “And you two were so happy. When I first saw you together I said, 'What a pair!'”
Old Grannis also called during this period of the breaking up of the McTeague household.
“Dreadful, dreadful,” murmured the old Englishman, his hand going tremulously to his chin. “It seems unjust; it does. But Mr. Schouler could not have set them on to do it. I can't quite believe it of him.”
“Of Marcus!” cried Trina. “Hoh! Why, he threw his knife at Mac one time, and another time he bit him, actually bit him with his teeth, while they were wrestling just for fun. Marcus would do anything to injure Mac.”
“Dear, dear,” returned Old Grannis, genuinely pained. “I had always believed Schouler to be such a good fellow.”
“That's because you're so good yourself, Mr. Grannis,” responded Trina.
“I tell you what, Doc,” declared Heise the harness-maker, shaking his finger impressively at the dentist, “you must fight it; you must appeal to the courts; you've been practising too long to be debarred now. The statute of limitations, you know.”
“No, no,” Trina had exclaimed, when the dentist had repeated this advice to her. “No, no, don't go near the law courts. I know them. The lawyers take all your money, and you lose your case. We're bad off as it is, without lawing about it.”
Then at last came the sale. McTeague and Trina, whom Miss Baker had invited to her room for that day, sat there side by side, holding each other's hands, listening nervously to the turmoil that rose to them from the direction of their suite. From nine o'clock till dark the crowds came and went. All Polk Street seemed to have invaded the suite, lured on by the red flag that waved from the front windows. It was a fete, a veritable holiday, for the whole neighborhood. People with no thought of buying presented themselves. Young women—the candy-store girls and florist's apprentices—came to see the fun, walking arm in arm from room to room, making jokes about the pretty lithographs and mimicking the