On the pavement near the entrance of the hotel, beside the huge marquee which offered shelter from the wind, the largest group of them, neat in their liveried uniforms, had gathered in debate. They were discussing politics and theories of international economy, and the chief disputants were a plump Frenchman with a waxed moustache, whose sentiments were decidedly revolutionary, and an American, a little man with corky legs, a tough, seamed face, the beady eyes of a bird, and the quick, impatient movements of the city. As George Webber came abreast of them, brought thither by the simple chance of his nightly wanderings, the argument had reached its furious climax, and he stopped a while to listen.
The scene, the situation, and the contrast between the two principal debaters made the whole affair seem utterly grotesque. The plump Frenchman, his cheeks glowing with the cold and his own excitement, was dancing about in a frenzy, talking and gesticulating volubly. He would lean forward with thumb and forefinger uplifted and closed daintily in a descriptive circle—a gesture that eloquently expressed the man’s conviction that the case he had been presenting for immediate and bloody world revolution was complete, logical, unshakable, and beyond appeal. When any of the others interposed an objection, he would only grow more violent and inflamed.
At last his little English began to break down under the strain imposed upon it. The air about him fairly rang with objurgations, expletives, impassioned cries of “Mais oui!...Absolument!...C’est la vérité!“—and with laughs of maddened exasperation, as if the knowledge that anyone could be so obtuse as not to see it as he saw it was more than he could endure.
“Mais non! Mais non!” he would shout. “Vous avez tort!...Mais c’est stupide!” he would cry, throwing his plump arms up in a gesture of defeat, and turning away as if he could stand it no longer and was departing—only to return immediately and begin all over again.
Meanwhile, the chief target of this deluge, the little American with the corky legs and the birdy eyes, let him go on. He just leaned up against the building, took an occasional puff at his cigarette, and gave the Frenchman a steady look of cynical impassivity. At last he broke in to say:
“O.K…O.K., Frenchy…When you get through spoutin’, maybe I’ll have somethin’ to say.”
“Seulement un mot!” replied the Frenchman, out of breath. “One vord!” he cried impressively, drawing himself up to his full five feet three and holding one finger in the air as if he were about to deliver Holy Writ—“I ‘ave to say one vord more!”
“O.K.! O.K.!” said the corky little American with cynical weariness. “Only don’t take more than an hour and a half to say it!”
Just then another chauffeur, obviously a German, with bright blue eyes and a nut-cracker face, rejoined the group with an air of elated discovery.
“Noos! I got noos for you!” he said. “I haf been mit a drifer who hass in Rooshia liffed, and he says that conditions there far worser are----”
“Non! Non!” the Frenchman shouted, red in the face with anger and protest. “Pas vrai!...Ce n’est par possible!”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” the American said, tossing his cigarette away with a gesture of impatience and disgust. “Why don’t you guys wake up? This ain’t Russia! You’re in America! The trouble with you guys,” he went on, “is that you’ve been over there all your life where you ain’t been used to nothin’—and just as soon as you get over here where you can live like a human bein’ you want to tear it all down.”
At this, others broke in, and the heated and confused dialogue became more furious than ever. But the talk just went round and round in circles.
George walked away into the night.
The lives of men who have to live in our great cities are often tragically lonely. In many more ways than one, these dwellers in the hive are modern counterparts of Tantalus. They are starving to death in the midst of abundance. The crystal stream flows near the lips but always falls away when they try to drink of it. The vine, rich-weighted with its golden fruit, bends down, comes near, but springs back when they reach to touch it.
Melville, at the beginning of his great fable, Moby Dick, tells how the city people of his time would, on every occasion that was afforded them, go down to the dock, to the very edges of the wharf, and stand there looking out to sea. In the great city of to-day, however, there is no sea to look out to, or, if there is, it is so far away, so inaccessible, walled in behind such infinite ramifications of stone and steel, that the effort to get to it is disheartening. So now, when the city man looks out, he looks out on nothing but crowded vacancy.