Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/486

The man had come in silently; he sat down silently, grimly, posing with slow care across his knees an immaculate hat, and a long, flexible whalebone which could be described as a walking-stick. He was not distressed by the isolated chair: he was too self-centred, self-contained, self-conscious for any such tricky distresses to reach him. He looked on the manager very calmly, very coldly, with a certain weight of regard as though his whole head was bent upon him and not his eyes alone, and at him the manager looked with no weight but with eagle directness.

If one may compare essentially different things, and small things to great, there was the difference between their gaze that there is between a block of granite and a flash of lightning. The one could topple smashingly, the other plunge as disastrously, and from both, in both, there were tranquillity and power. Two minds were made up, and they were immovable. Each mind, as they looked, felt the other, and each knew that here were strength and carelessness and determination.

The manager spoke:

"The condition of your department is not satisfactory."

The man nodded the large head which was directed as an eye upon the manager.

"And," the latter continued, "I have invited you here in order that you may tender me your resignation."

"I will not resign," said the man's immovable head.

"You will place me under an awkward, unpleasant necessity."

"It is neither awkward nor unpleasant," said the man.

He rose from his chair, a powerful bulk of movement, and strode to the door. There was a bolt inside the door and he shot-this. He returned to his chair and bent his head profoundly on the manager.

"Let us understand each other," said he.

The manager rose from his chair.

"Open that door!" he commanded.

"In a moment," said the immovable man, "when I have said what I came to say."

He lifted his chair out of isolation, placed it nearer to the manager's desk, and sat upon it: then he put on his hat; not impertinently, but to leave his hands free. The manager sank back into his own chair, and regarded his finger nails.

"Nothing that you can say," said he, "can alter my determination."