The Dwelling Place of Light | Page 9

and
sometimes they would be lifted to smile at her as she passed. The
Pappas Brothers were evidently as happy in this drab environment as
they had ever been on the sunny mountain slopes of Hellas, and Janet
sometimes wondered at this, for she had gathered from her education in
the Charming public school that Greece was beautiful.
She was one of the unfortunate who love beauty, who are condemned
to dwell in exile, unacquainted with what they love. Desire was
incandescent within her breast. Desire for what? It would have been
some relief to know. She could not, like Lise, find joy and forgetfulness
at dance halls, at the "movies," at Slattery's Riverside Park in summer,

in "joy rides" with the Max Wylies of Hampton. And beside, the Max
Wylies were afraid of her. If at times she wished for wealth, it was
because wealth held the magic of emancipation from surroundings
against which her soul revolted. Vividly idealized but unconfided was
the memory of a seaside village, the scene of one of the brief sojourns
of her childhood, where the air was fragrant with the breath of salt
marshes, where she recalled, through the vines of a porch, a shining
glimpse of the sea at the end of a little street....
Next to Pappas Brothers was the grey wooden building of Mule
Spinners' Hall, that elite organization of skilled labour, and underneath
it the store of Johnny Tiernan, its windows piled up with stoves and
stovepipes, sheet iron and cooking utensils. Mr. Tiernan, like the
Greeks, was happy, too: unlike the Greeks, he never appeared to be
busy, and yet he throve. He was very proud of the business in which he
had invested his savings, but he seemed to have other affairs lying
blithely on his mind, affairs of moment to the community, as the
frequent presence of the huge policemen, aldermen, and other
important looking persons bore witness. He hailed by name Italians,
Greeks, Belgians, Syrians, and "French"; he hailed Janet, too, with
respectful cheerfulness, taking off his hat. He possessed the rare, warm
vitality that is irresistible. A native of Hampton, still in his thirties, his
sharp little nose and twinkling blue eyes proclaimed the wisdom that is
born and not made; his stiff hair had a twist like the bristles in the
cleaning rod of a gun.
He gave Janet the odd impression that he understood her. And she did
not understand herself!
By the time she reached the Common the winter sun, as though red
from exertion, had begun to dispel the smoke and heavy morning mists.
She disliked winter, the lumpy brown turf mildewed by the frost, but
one day she was moved by a quality, hitherto unsuspected, in the
delicate tracery against the sky made by the slender branches of the
great elms and maples. She halted on the pavement, her eyes raised,
heedless of passers-by, feeling within her a throb of the longing that
could be so oddly and unexpectedly aroused.

Her way lay along Faber Street, the main artery of Hampton, a wide
strip of asphalt threaded with car tracks, lined on both sides with
incongruous edifices indicative of a rapid, undiscriminating, and artless
prosperity. There were long stretches of "ten foot" buildings, so called
on account of the single story, their height deceptively enhanced by the
superimposition of huge and gaudy signs, one on top of another,
announcing the merits of "Stewart's Amberine Ale," of "Cooley's Oats,
the Digestible Breakfast Food," of graphophones and "spring heeled"
shoes, tobacco, and naphtha soaps. "No, We don't give Trading Stamps,
Our Products are Worth all You Pay." These "ten foot" stores were the
repositories of pianos, automobiles, hardware, and millinery, and
interspersed amongst them were buildings of various heights; The
Bagatelle, where Lise worked, the Wilmot Hotel, office buildings, and
an occasional relic of old Hampton, like that housing the Banner. Here,
during those months when the sun made the asphalt soft, on a
scaffolding spanning the window of the store, might be seen a
perspiring young man in his shirt sleeves chalking up baseball scores
for the benefit of a crowd below. Then came the funereal,
liver-coloured, long-windowed Hinckley Block (1872), and on the
corner a modern, glorified drugstore thrusting forth plate glass
bays--two on Faber Street and three on Stanley--filled with cameras
and candy, hot water bags, throat sprays, catarrh and kidney cures,
calendars, fountain pens, stationery, and handy alcohol lamps. Flanking
the sidewalks, symbolizing and completing the heterogeneous and
bewildering effect of the street were long rows of heavy hemlock
trunks, unpainted and stripped of bark, with crosstrees bearing webs of
wires. Trolley cars rattled along, banging their gongs, trucks rumbled
across the tracks, automobiles uttered frenzied screeches behind startled
pedestrians. Janet was always galvanized into alertness here, Faber
Street