of the interior, the tailor shops, the tobacco shops with their selected grades of fine tobacco stored in ancient crocks, the little bell that tinkled thinly as you went in from the street, the decorous, courteous, yet suavely good-natured proprietor behind the counter, who had the ruddy cheeks, the flowing brown moustache and the wing-collar of the shopkeeper of solid substance, and who would hold the crock below your nose to let you smell the moist fragrance of a rare tobacco before you bought, and would offer you one of his best cigarettes before you left—all of this gave somehow to the simplest acts of life and business a ritualistic warmth and sanctity, and made you feel wealthy and secure.
And everywhere around Eugene in the morning there was the feeling of an imminent recovery, a recapture of a life that had always been his own. The buildings seemed to come from some essence of reality he had always known, but had never seen, and could scarcely believe in now, even when he put his hand upon the weathered surface of the stone.
And this look kept shining at him through the faces of the people. Sometimes it was in the faces of the college boys, but more often he saw it in the people of the town. It was in the faces of tradesmen—people in butcher shops, wine shops, clothing stores—and sometimes it was in the faces of women, at once common, fine, familiar, curiously delicate and serene, going to the markets, in the foggy old-bronze light of morning, and of men who passed by wearing derby hats and with wing collars. It was in the faces of a man and his son, good-humoured little red-faced bullocks, packed with life, who ran a pub in the Cowley Road near the house where, later, he went to live.
It was a look round, full, ruddy, and serene in its good nature and had more openness and mellow humour in it than Eugene had found in the faces of the people in New England. It was more like the look of country people and small-town people in the South. Sometimes it had the open tranquil ruddiness, the bovine and self-satisfied good humour of his uncle, Crockett Pentland, and sometimes it was like Mr. Bailey, the policeman, whom the negro killed one winter’s night, when snow was on the ground and all the bells began to ring. And then it was full and hearty like the face of Mr. Ernest Pegram, who was the City Plumber and lived next door to Eugene’s father, or it was plump, common, kindly, invincibly provincial, ignorant and domestic, like the face of Mrs. Higginson, who lived across the street, and had herself been born in England, who had a family of eight children and three baking days a
