There was nothing pathetic about
him, no suggestion even of poetry, which gives a reverence to suffering,
whether mental or physical. As there was no expression on his face,
so also there was no expression in his eyes: no distant longing, no
far-off fixedness; nothing, indeed, to awaken sad sympathy.
The only positive thing about him was his rudeness. Was it natural or
cultivated? No one in Petershof could say. He had always been as he was;
and there was no reason to suppose that he would ever be different.
He was, in fact, like the glacier of which he had such a fine view from
his room; like the glacier, an unchanging feature of the neighbourhood.
No one loved it better than the Disagreeable Man did; he watched the
sunlight on it, now pale golden, now fiery red. He loved the sky, the
dull grey, or the bright blue. He loved the snow forests, and the
snow-girt streams, and the ice cathedrals, and the great firs patient
beneath their snow-burden. He loved the frozen waterfalls, and the
costly diamonds in the snow. He knew, too, where the flowers nestled
in their white nursery. He was, indeed, an authority on Alpine botany.
The same tender hands which plucked the flowers in the spring-time,
dissected them and laid them bare beneath the microscope.
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