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3.
God... The ?airfields awe everybody in town... She was so drunk it was
positively disgusting we stinko... 4he'll go with anybody, do anything,
there's nothing too low for her since she found out about her husband...
They say that oh' actually... Just imagine a man of his age with that
young 4oddard girl...
The country club ladies told stories, then, that would have made the
Italian women of Granite Street blush with shame.
Them were the young married set and the middle-aged married set. They
lived in elaborate homes on the terraces of Trow Bill. They wore expensive
clothes and drove expensive automobiles. They traveled together eternally,
and nobody outside the circle mattered or even existed. There was nothing
beyond the rounds they made weekend parties, cocktails, in the Cellar
Grill, Italian dinners at the Venetian, trips to Xew York and Ugntreal,
skiing in the winter and golfing in the summer.
In one way or another their money had come from granite.
There were granite manufacturers, quarry and shed owners, who had
inherited all that their fathers, rough strong men with steel -sharp minds
and stsel-sinewed hands, had sweated and died for. There were lawyers,
doctors, dentists, bankers, businessmen, who had been eduoated with the
money wrought from monumental stone. The beautiful cemeteries of Barre
were filled with the men, prematurely dead, who had drilled and chiseled
and carved the granite, that these people might live in ease and luxury.
The country club was a far cry from the clamor of the grim sheds on
the river flats. And if these people did not scorn the stonecutters, it
was simply because they ignored them altogether.
4.
Downstairs in the dim coolness of the locker room a poker game vas
in progress on a glass -ringed table. Men with soft hands and flabby
faces nonchalantly lost or wen the amount that a stonecutter might earn in
a full-time wok. A week in the ear -shattering chaos of the sheds, stand-
ing on a wet dirt floor, bending patiently over a block, guiding into
intricate patterns a pneumatic tool that shuddered with a hundred..pounds
pressure.
Upstairs the swing music vent on, but the young couples slouched
and sprawled about, glasses in languid brown hands. On the porch the
session continued, and most of the women mere showing their drinks.'
Laughter and voices were shriller and louder, jokes were coarser They
mentioned John Steinbeekta Grapes of Wrath, and the fat woman said she
found it unspeakably filthy and vile. A man proclaimed it nothing but
propoganda. Another man acsauneed feebly that he thought it a damn fine
book. The subject was dropped.
The girl had thick blonde hair, which the summer sun had bileathed to
several shades. She had a mild forehead, pale blue eyes set well apart,
and a wide generous raruth. Her face was rather square and plain, bright-
ened by the smile. She had s-mething of the attractive homeliness of
Diriam Ropkins. Her figure was fine and strong, full -breasted and sturdy,
with graceful legs and hands. She moved with the lithe ease of the trained
athlete. In thought she frowned and bowed her golden head, the broad
brow wrinkled.
"Lets of people have told me I look like '4ram aopkills," she said.
course L know I don't really... Did you kaaw that she went to school
pot
here? Yes, slut vent to Goddard, in the early 1920's, I think it was. And
5.
you remember Thelma Todd, the actress who was found dead in her oar a few
years gel She used to live up on the Rill, in Websterville. Some of her
live there.
"I was born here up on the Rill, Graniteville. I've lived here
most of my life, except for a few years we lived in northern New York State*
And a couple of years in New York City. I love New York. I used to spend
my summers in Detroit, that's where my father is now. I don't like Detroit
at all. I hate the place. NT mother my mother died when I was very
young. She was only twenty-six my age now. I can't remember her.
"by grandfather brought us up, my brother and IA U. had eight ehilda.
ren of his own, and then he had us besides* he was a wonderful man, one
of the finest. Re came over here from Sweden and settled in Oraaitoville.
He started with nothing and before he vans through he had raised and edueated
two families really and he left my grandmotherilluite a bit it money and
property. He was in the granite business, opened a quarry on the Rill after
awhile. U. worked his may up from the bottoms all right. he was my mother's
father and the grandest persoli I
generous, so gentle and strong.
have...
*The other side of the family my father's is Scotch* Qf curse
you can see that the Swedish strain predominates in met"
"In those days the Hill was quite a place. There were some fine old
families and some nice homes. It's different since the krenoh Game in.
Most of the old families are gone now. There's a different class of ,,./r10410
there, and it shows in their houses, the way they live. But I guess
always love it up on the Rill.
over know. he was so good, so kind and
I guess he was the best friend I'll ever
6,
"Sven after my grandfather owned a quarry he went on working with the
men. Reid do things himself that he vouldn't ask the man to do. ODOO be
climbed the east of a big boompuderrick that overhung a quarrybole hundreds
of feet deep. Something had to be fixed up there, and he vent up and did it.
nobody else would do it. His men worshipped him, the old.otiners still talk
about him. Swerybody liked my grandfather, except those who alvayv dislike
anyone who is good, honest, straightforward, and unafraid. I learned more
from him than I ever learned in sehool. Re vented me to o to college, but
I yes foolish enr,1 h not to
I yea young. I was havinr too good a time here, I suprese. 1 was a fool,
all right.
"I took a post -graduate year in high school because I couldn't make
up my mind. i was simply crazy about basketball. I captained my team and
made All...hew kmgland (ward one year. Aren't 1 the immodest hussy, though?
And now it's golf and skiing. 15ut one has to do something after sehool is
past. Then I vent to a private finishing school in hew York, and I took up
Lurses' Training for a time. After that I vent to Lallerine (linnet That
I could never make up my mind what I really' vented.
was *leave my trouble.
She zestured expressively. "All this...
"Now I have a cood..enough job working for the State. but it's madden-
ing work, all monotonous routine, pure stagnation. kost of the girls think
it's perfectly swell. ,00d jobs, good pay, the prestige of working for
the State, money for clothes and hairdressers. But it drives me crazy
sometimes.
"Meat of my rirl-friends are about ny age and work in the same sort of
offices. Some are college granuates and some are not. It doesn't seen to
make any difference. ‘tuite few of the girls have been married recently.
7.
The rest of us will no doubt drift on into the thirties, bachelor -girls
still. Unless s(!mme toohinvar looms suddenly and unexpectedly on the scene.
White-collar girls like Kitty Foyle,
"I nearly got married once, a few years ago. I was to meet him in
liew York and wir were to be married there. But I couldn't 2s, through with
it. Maybe I'll be sorry someday, but I don't think so. I know lots of
girls get married just for the sake of being married, the security. They're
afraid to face thirty still sin0c, afraid of being old maids. IT I marry
it will be a man I love. And if I never meet him I'll stay an old said,
and to hell with them all.
"Those people tier*, they talk &brut me the same way when I'm not
around. I know it. And they talk about each other exactly the same. I've
always been talked about, ever since I was in high school. Because I never
oared much what people thouL;ht or said. My grandfather always tole no that
that didn't matter. 14 said what mattered was inside yourself.
"They're wor4eriz now -Ac you are, where you come from, what college
you went to, hew much mrney you have, what you (A, for a living. They won't
be satisfied until they find out.
"I didn't realiv: until lately haw sick and tired I'm getting of them,
of all this. It's so damned small and smut:, so narrow and mean. And they're
so ocmfletely satisfied wi-511 it.
"Yes, it's quite true that this mcne5 they fling around all came from
granite, directly or indirectly. hverything that they have they owe to
the gratf.te. And you shouL. see their nostrils twitch when some stonecutters
come into the Venetian after work and take a table next to theirs.
8.
"One thing I do enjoy is this the steneoutters are as scornful of
them as they are of the etoneoutters And they don't mind showing it either.
"Of course sone of these country club people are very nice, very fins.
Some of the wealthiest ones are the best real aristocrats of blood and
money. Those kind are pretty regular and decent, broad-minded and undere
standing, wholly unpretentious. It's easy to tell them from the fakes.
"Tou want to get out of here? Well, I don't know that I blame you.
People can spoil the lovliest places, can't theyr
The session at the other end of the porch was getting louder and bawdier
all the time. Shouts of latOiter drowned the clink of be in glasses. A
tweet breeze from the woodlands passed unnoticed across flushed sheeks. A
strong reek of perfume lingered like nausea in the head. The clouds move
the western mountains were pink and lavender in the lawerin sun.
And down in the valley beside the river the terrific din of the granite
sheds was stilled; the silence of clocing time hunz heavy on the dusteladen
air. Out of the long gloomy sheds stragJed the werkers, dust -covered, grime
smeared, with weary eyes and faces, cramped hands, achin backs, and damp
stiff legs. The riot of noise still throbbed in their skulls, the vibration
of high-pressure tools still trembled threuAl their arms tnd bodies.
IAA as they walked away the voices started, scents from Italy, Scot-
land, Spain, Ireland, and Sweden. And rich laughter rang in the slant of
afternoen sunlight. The laughter of strong men cominz from a hard day's work.
The lauohter of the unconquered and the unconquerable.
It was true. ihey were as oblivious of the country club crowd as the
club was of them.
The girl stared out over *men treetops and smooth gelden fields to
the distant ramparts of the mountains, blue, gray and purple against the
9
transient colors ef the western sky.
*Well anyway," she said, it s a beautiful country Vorwont That's
one t hint we have always a"