Behind the Beyond and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge Part 11

"Yes," I said, "I was there."

He saw from this that I could still speak. So he laid another thick wet towel over my face before he spoke again.

"What did you think of the game," he asked.

But he had miscalculated. I could still make a faint sound through the wet towels. He laid three or four more very thick ones over my face and stood with his five finger tips pressed against my face for support. A thick steam rose about me. Through it I could hear the barber's voice and the flick-flack of the razor as he stropped it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I shall not try to be quite so extraordinarily clever.]

"Yes, sir," he went on in his quiet professional tone, punctuated with the noise of the razor, "I knowed from the start them boys was sure to win,"--flick-flack-flick-flack,--"as soon as I seen the ice that night and seen the get-away them boys made I knowed it,"--flick-flack,--"and just as soon as Jimmy got aholt of the puck----"

This was more than the barber at the next chair could stand.

"Him get de puck," he cried, giving an angry dash with a full brush of soap into the face of the man under him,--"him get ut-dat stiff--why, boys," he said, and he turned appealingly to the eight barbers, who all rested their elbows on the customers' faces while they listened to the rising altercation; even the manicure girl, thrilled to attention, clasped tight the lumpy hand of her client in her white digits and remained motionless,--"why boys, dat feller can't no more play hockey than----"

"See here," said the barber, suddenly and angrily, striking his fist emphatically on the towels that covered my face. "I'll bet you five dollars to one Jimmy can skate rings round any two men in the league."

"Him skate," sneered the other squirting a jet of blinding steam in the face of the client he was treating, "he ain't got no more go in him than dat rag,"--and he slapped a wet towel across his client's face.

All the barbers were excited now. There was a babel of talk from behind each of the eight chairs. "He can't skate;" "He can skate;" "I'll bet you ten."

Already they were losing their tempers, slapping their customers with wet towels and jabbing great brushfuls of soap into their mouths. My barber was leaning over my face with his whole body. In another minute one or the other of them would have been sufficiently provoked to have dealt his customer a blow behind the ear.

Then suddenly there was a hush.

"The boss," said one.

In another minute I could realize, though I couldn't see it, that a majestic figure in a white coat was moving down the line. All was still again except the quiet hum of the mechanical shampoo brush and the soft burble of running water.

The barber began removing the wet towels from my face one by one. He peeled them off with the professional neatness of an Egyptologist unwrapping a mummy. When he reached my face he looked searchingly at it.

There was suspicion in his eye.

"Been out of town?" he questioned.

"Yes," I admitted.

"Who's been doing your work?" he asked. This question, from a barber, has no reference to one's daily occupation. It means "who has been shaving you."

I knew it was best to own up. I'd been in the wrong, and I meant to acknowledge it with perfect frankness.

"I've been shaving myself," I said.

My barber stood back from me in contempt. There was a distinct sensation all down the line of barbers. One of them threw a wet rag in a corner with a thud, and another sent a sudden squirt from an atomizer into his customer's eyes as a mark of disgust.

My barber continued to look at me narrowly.

"What razor do you use?" he said.

"A safety razor," I answered.

The barber had begun to dash soap over my face; but he stopped--aghast at what I had said.

A safety razor to a barber is like a red rag to a bull.

"If it was me," he went on, beating lather into me as he spoke, "I wouldn't let one of them things near my face: No, sir: There ain't no safety in them. They tear the hide clean off you--just rake the hair right out by the follicles," as he said this he was ill.u.s.trating his meaning with jabs of his razor,--"them things just cut a man's face all to pieces," he jabbed a stick of alum against an open cut that he had made,--"And as for cleanliness, for sanitation, for this here hygiene and for germs, I wouldn't have them round me for a fortune."

I said nothing. I knew I had deserved it, and I kept quiet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: When he reached my face he looked searchingly at it.]

The barber gradually subsided. Under other circ.u.mstances he would have told me something of the spring training of the baseball clubs, or the last items from the Jacksonville track, or any of those things which a cultivated man loves to hear discussed between breakfast and business.

But I was not worth it. As he neared the end of the shaving he spoke again, this time in a confidential, almost yearning, tone.

"Ma.s.sage?" he said.

"No thank you."

"Shampoo the scalp?" he whispered.

"No thanks."

"Singe the hair?" he coaxed.

"No thanks."

The barber made one more effort.

"Say," he said in my ear, as a thing concerning himself and me alone, "your hair's pretty well all falling out. You'd better let me just shampoo up the scalp a bit and stop up them follicles or pretty soon you won't--"

"No, thank you," I said, "not to-day."

This was all the barber could stand. He saw that I was just one of those miserable dead-beats who come to a barber shop merely for a shave, and who carry away the scalp and the follicles and all the barber's perquisites as if they belonged to them.

In a second he had me thrown out of the chair.

"Next," he shouted.

As I pa.s.sed down the line of the barbers, I could see contempt in every eye while they turned on the full clatter of their revolving shampoo brushes and drowned the noise of my miserable exit in the roar of machinery.

_PARISIAN PASTIMES_

_I.--The Advantages of a Polite Education_