第3章

He says it's badly built; perhaps it is; but it doesn't seem to me that it's ugly in itself.I don't know what its real self is, because it wears so many aspects.God keeps painting it all the time, and never shows me twice the same picture; not even two snowfalls are just alike, nor the days that follow them; no more than two misty sunsets are alike--for the color and even the form of the town you call ugly are a matter of the season of the year and of the time of day and of the light and air.The ugly town is like an endless gallery which you can walk through, from year-end to year-end, never seeing the same canvas twice, no matter how much you may want to--and there's the pathos of it.Isn't it the same with people with the characters of all of us, just as it is with our faces? No face remains the same for two successive days--""It don't?" Colonel Flitcroft interrupted, with an explosive and rueful incredulity."Well, I'd like to--" Second thoughts came to him almost immediately, and, as much out of gallantry as through discretion, fearing that he might be taken as thinking of one at home, he relapsed into silence.

Not so with the others.It was as if a firecracker had been dropped into a sleeping poultry-yard.Least of all could Mr.Arp contain himself.

At the top of his voice, necessarily, he agreed with Roger that faces changed, not only from day to day, and not only because of light and air and such things, but from hour to hour, and from minute to minute, through the hideous stimulus of hypocrisy.

The "argument" grew heated; half a dozen tidy quarrels arose; all the sages went at it fiercely, except Roger Tabor, who stole quietly away.

The aged men were enjoying themselves thoroughly, especially those who quarrelled.Naturally, the frail bark of the topic which had been launched was whirled about by too many side-currents to remain long in sight, and soon became derelict, while the intellectual dolphins dove and tumbled in the depths.At the end of twenty minutes Mr.Arp emerged upon the surface, and in his mouth was this:

"Tell me, why ain't the Church--why ain't the Church and the rest of the believers in a future life lookin' for immortality at the other end of life, too? If we're immortal, we always have been;then why don't they ever speculate on what we were before we were born? It's because they're too blame selfish--don't care a flapdoodle about what WAS, all they want is to go on livin' forever."Mr.Arp's voice had risen to an acrid triumphancy, when it suddenly faltered, relapsed to a murmur, and then to a stricken silence, as a tall, fat man of overpowering aspect threw open the outer door near by and crossed the lobby to the clerk's desk.An awe fell upon the sages with this advent.

They were hushed, and after a movement in their chairs, with a strange effect of huddling, sat disconcerted and attentive, like school-boys at the entrance of the master.

The personage had a big, fat, pink face and a heavily undershot jaw, what whitish beard he wore following his double chin somewhat after the manner displayed in the portraits of Henry the Eighth.

His eyes, very bright under puffed upper lids, were intolerant and insultingly penetrating despite their small size.Their irritability held a kind of hotness, and yet the personage exuded frost, not of the weather, all about him.You could not imagine man or angel daring to greet this being genially--sooner throw a kiss to Mount Pilatus!

"Mr.Brown," he said, with ponderous hostility, in a bull bass, to the clerk--the kind of voice which would have made an express train leave the track and go round the other way--"do you hear me?""Oh yes, Judge," the clerk replied, swiftly, in tones as unlike those which he used for strange transients as a collector's voice in his ladylove's ear is unlike that which he propels at delinquents.

"Do you see that snow?" asked the personage, threateningly.

"Yes, Judge." Mr.Brown essayed a placating smile."Yes, indeed, Judge Pike.""Has your employer, the manager of this hotel, seen that snow?" pursued the personage, with a gesture of unspeakable solemn menace.

"Yes, sir.I think so.Yes, sir."

"Do you think he fully understands that I am the proprietor of this building?""Certainly, Judge, cer--""You will inform him that I do not intend to be discommoded by his negligence as I pass to my offices.Tell him from me that unless he keeps the sidewalks in front of this hotel clear of snow Iwill cancel his lease.Their present condition is outrageous.Do you understand me? Outrageous!

Do you hear?"

"Yes, Judge, I do so," answered the clerk, hoarse with respect."I'll see to it this minute, Judge Pike.""You had better." The personage turned himself about and began a grim progress towards the door by which he had entered, his eyes fixing themselves angrily upon the conclave at the windows.

Colonel Flitcroft essayed a smile, a faltering one.

"Fine weather, Judge Pike," he said, hopefully.

There was no response of any kind; the undershot jaw became more intolerant.The personage made his opinion of the group disconcertingly plain, and the old boys understood that he knew them for a worthless lot of senile loafers, as great a nuisance in his building as was the snow without;and much too evident was his unspoken threat to see that the manager cleared them out of there before long.

He nodded curtly to the only man of substance among them, Jonas Tabor, and shut the door behind him with majestic insult.He was Canaan's millionaire.

He was one of those dynamic creatures who leave the haunting impression of their wills behind them, like the tails of Bo-Peep's sheep, like the evil dead men have done; he left his intolerant image in the ether for a long time after he had gone, to confront and confound the aged men and hold them in deferential and humiliated silence.

Each of them was mysteriously lowered in his own estimation, and knew that he had been made to seem futile and foolish in the eyes of his fellows.