McTeague: A Story of San Francisco

e screen. His writing was immense, very clumsy, and very round, with huge, full-bellied l's and h's. He saw that he had made an appointment at one

they met on the stairway; he on his way to his little dog hospital, she returning from a bit of marketing in the street. At such times they passed each other with averted eyes, pretending a certain preoccupation, suddenly seized with a great embarrassment, the timidity of a second childhood. He went on a

annis-the face of some pale-haired girl, such as one sees in the old cathedral towns of England? Did Miss Baker still treasure up in a seldom op

e in her lap, doing nothing, listening, waiting. Old Grannis did the same, drawing his arm-chair near to the wall, knowing that Miss Baker was upon the other side, conscious, perhaps, that she was thinking of him; and there the two would sit through the hours of the afternoon, listening and waiting, they did not know exactly for what, but near to each other, separated only by the thin partition of their rooms. They had c

made some dozen of these "mats" from his tape of non-cohesive gold, cutting it transversely into small pieces that could be inserted edgewise between the teeth and consolidated by packing. After he had made his "mats" he continued with the other kind of gold fillings, such as he would have occasion to use during the week; "blocks" to be used in large proximal cavities, made by folding the tape on itself a number of times and then shaping it with the soldering pliers; "cylinders" for commencing fillings, which he formed by rolling the tape around a needl

o replace an old one that he had lost. It was time for his dinner then, and when he

ite unconscious of the gossip of the flat. McTeague found her all a-flutter with excitement. Something extraor

t into his-I declare, I believe at one time that was all one room. Think of it, do you suppose it was? It almost amounts to our occupying the same room. I don't know-why, really-do you think I should speak to the

d with Old Grannis. Miss Baker had chosen to invent the little fiction, had created th

gan the filling. There was a long silence. It was impo

d, jangling the bell which he had hung over it, and which was absolutely unnecessary. McTeague tu

ho came in, ushering a y

s; "busy? Brought my cousin r

dded his he

ute," he

ndar, the canary in its little gilt prison, and the tumbled blankets on the unmade bed-lounge against the wall. Marcus began telling her about McTeague. "We're pals," he explained, just above a whisper. "Ah, Mac's all right, you bet. Say, Trina,

un. It's the girl that takes care of the rooms. She's a greaser, and she's queer in the head. She ain't regularly crazy, but I don't know, she's queer. Y'ought to h

ask," she

ed Marcus. Trina shook her head ener

ed Marcus, nudging her; the

ed to him over her shoulder

rd nowaday

tty

by putting her chin in the air and shutting her eyes, as though to say she knew a long story about that if she had a mind

t her going," Marc

hough, when you ask

who had forgotten. "Say,

straightening up,

r name," rep

e, she added, as though she had but that moment th

e, but a question as to her name never failed to elicit the same strange answer, delivered in a rapid undertone:

hing further than that she was Spanish-American. Miss Baker was the oldest lodger in the flat, and Maria was a fixture there as maid of a

med in a prolonged monotone. The canary bird chittered occasionally. The room was warm, and the breathing of the five people in the nar

his cousin she stopped, and drew a bunch of blue tickets furtively from her pocket.

s, who had but thirty cents in his poc

toward Trina. "Try your luck. The butcher on the

icket for the sake of being r

He was much embarrassed and disturbed bec

vement. McTeague had just

w voice, "he always leaves the door a little ajar in the afterno

s were pale, a little suggestive of anaemia; while across the bridge of her nose ran an adorable little line of freckles. But it was to her hair that one's attention was most attracted. Heaps and heaps of blue-black coils and braids, a royal crown of swarthy bands, a veritable sable tiara, heavy, abundant, odorous. All the vitality that

nd plain. The effect of her pale face in al

ot to go. Must get back to work. Don't

herishing that intuitive suspicion of all things feminine-the perverse dislike of an overgrown boy. On the other hand, she was perfectly at her ease

squarely into his face. She had fallen out of a swing the afternoon of the precedi

e keenness of his dislike of her as a woman began to be blunted. He thought she was rather pretty, th

." She leaned back in her chair and opened her mouth, showing the rows of little round teeth, as

of her teeth with the handle of an excavator. By and by he straig

, "it's a dreadful disfigurement, isn't

l that other bicuspid. Let me look again. Yes," he went on in a moment, peering into her mouth with the mirror, "I guess that'll have to come out, too." The tooth was loose, discolored, and

e leaning against the window frame his hands in his pockets, his eyes wandering about on the floor. Trina did n

there was no vascular connection between the root and the gum. Trina was b

h a pretty mouth. He became interested; perhaps he could do something, something in the way of a crown or bridge. "Let's look at t

e man, to conquer the difficulty in spite of everything. He turned over in his mind the technicalities of the case. No, evidently the root was not strong enough to sustain a crown; besides that, it was placed a little irregularly in the arch. But, fortunately, there were cavities in th

f his clients he would have contented himself with the extraction of the loose tooth and the

with his bayonet forceps and prepared the roots of the broken one as if for filling, fitting into them a flattened piece of platinum wire to serve as a dowel

became good friends. McTeague even arrived at that point where he could work and

n greyhound coursing. Trina was McTeague's first experience. With her the feminine element suddenly entered his little world. It was not only her that he saw and felt, it was the woman, the whole sex, an entire new humanity, strange and alluring, that he seemed to have discovered. How had he ignored it so long? It was dazzling, delicious, charming beyond all words. His narrow poi

er the thick blankets of the bed-lounge, staring upward into the darkness, tormented with the idea of her, exasperated at the delicate, subtle mesh in which he found himself entangled. During the forenoons, while he went about his work, he thought of her. As he made his plaster-of-paris moulds at the washstand in the corner behind the screen he turned over in

ttle chin; her lips pressed against his fingers. She breathed warmly on his forehead and on his eyelids, while the odor of her hair, a charming feminine perfume, sweet, heavy, enervating, came to his nostrils, so penetrating, so delicious, tha

, vulgar, with his sham education and plebeian tastes, whose only relaxations were to eat, to drink steam beer, and to play upon his concertina, was living through his first romance, his first idyl. It was delightful. The long hours he passed alone with Trina in the "Dental Parlors," s

spot of white caries on the lateral surface of an incisor. McTeague filled it with gold, enlarging the cavity with hard-bits and hoe-excavators, and burring in afterward with half-cone burrs. The cavity was deep, and Trina began to wince and moan. To

inquired,

sprayed the tooth with glycerite of tannin, but without effect. Rather than hurt her he found himself forced to the use of anaest

osely. Her breathing became short and irregular; there was a slight twitching of the muscles. When her thumbs turned inwa

on Trina's face. For some time he stood watching her as she lay there, unconscious and h

the evil instincts that in him were so close to t

ue rose with the brute; both were strong, with the huge crude strength of the man himself. The two were at grapples. There in that cheap and shabby "Dental Parlor" a dreaded struggle began. It was the old battle, old as the world, wide as the world-the sudden panther lea

ter; his teeth ground themselves together with a little rasping sound; the blood sang in his ears; his face flushed scarlet; his hands twisted themselves together like

God! No,

t, so adorable; her charm for him would vanish in an instant. Across her forehead, her little pale forehead, under the shadow of her royal hair, he would surely

God! No,

her, grossly, full on the mouth. The thing was done before he knew it. Terrified at his weakness at the very moment he believed himself strong, he threw himself once more into his work with desperate energy. By the time he was fasten

resence continually; would feel it tugging at its chain, watching its opportunity. Ah, the pity of it! Why could he n

s and sins of his father and of his father's father, to the third and fourth and five hundredth generation, tain

faces every child of man; but its significance was not for him. To reason with it was

ence, broken only by the uneven tapping of the hardwood mallet. By and by she said, "I never felt a thing," and then she smiled at him very prettily beneath the rubber dam. McTeague turned to her suddenly, his mallet in one hand, his pl

kly, and then drew back from h

said McTeague. "Say,

" she cried, confusedly, her w

" repeated

nse square-cut head and his enormous brute strength, cried out: "No, no," behind the rubber dam, shaking her head violently, holding out her hands, and shrinking down before him in the operating chair. McTeague came nearer to her, repeating the same question. "No, no," she cried, terrif

llow this,