Reifsnyder's assistant had gone to his supper, and the owner of the
shop was trying to placate four men who wished to be shaved at once.
Reifsnyder was very garrulous--a fact which made him rather remarkable
among barbers, who, as a class, are austerely speechless, having been
taught silence by the hammering reiteration of a tradition. It is the
customers who talk in the ordinary event.
As Reifsnyder waved his razor down the cheek of a man in the chair, he
turned often to cool the impatience of the others with pleasant talk,
which they did not particularly heed.
"Oh, he should have let him die," said Bainbridge, a railway engineer,
finally replying to one of the barber's orations. "Shut up, Reif, and
go on with your business!"
Instead, Reifsnyder paused shaving entirely, and turned to front the
speaker. "Let him die?" he demanded. "How vas that? How can you let a
man die?"
"By letting him die, you chump," said the engineer. The others laughed
a little, and Reifsnyder turned at once to his work, sullenly, as a
man overwhelmed by the derision of numbers.
"How vas that?" he grumbled later. "How can you let a man die when he
vas done so much for you?"
"'When he vas done so much for you?'" repeated Bainbridge. "You better
shave some people. How vas that? Maybe this ain't a barber shop?"
A man hitherto silent now said, "If I had been the doctor, I would
have done the same thing."
"Of course," said Reifsnyder. "Any man vould do it. Any man that vas
not like you, you--old--flint-hearted--fish." He had sought the final
words with painful care, and he delivered the collection triumphantly
at Bainbridge. The engineer laughed.
The man in the chair now lifted himself higher, while Reifsnyder began
an elaborate ceremony of anointing and combing his hair. Now free to
join comfortably in the talk, the man said: "They say he is the most
terrible thing in the world. Young Johnnie Bernard--that drives the
grocery wagon--saw him up at Alek Williams's shanty, and he says he
couldn't eat anything for two days."
"Chee!" said Reifsnyder.
"Well, what makes him so terrible?" asked another.
"Because he hasn't got any face," replied the barber and the engineer
in duct.
"Hasn't got any face!" repeated the man. "How can he do without any
face?"
"He has no face in the front of his head.
In the place where his face ought to grow."
Bainbridge sang these lines pathetically as he arose and hung his hat
on a hook. The man in the chair was about to abdicate in his favor.
"Get a gait on you now," he said to Reifsnyder. "I go out at 7.31."
As the barber foamed the lather on the cheeks of the engineer he
seemed to be thinking heavily. Then suddenly he burst out. "How would
you like to be with no face?" he cried to the assemblage.
"Oh, if I had to have a face like yours--" answered one customer.
Bainbridge's voice came from a sea of lather. "You're kicking because
if losing faces became popular, you'd have to go out of business."
"I don't think it will become so much popular," said Reifsnyder.
"Not if it's got to be taken off in the way his was taken off," said
another man. "I'd rather keep mine, if you don't mind."
"I guess so!" cried the barber. "Just think!"
The shaving of Bainbridge had arrived at a time of comparative liberty
for him. "I wonder what the doctor says to himself?" he observed. "He
may be sorry he made him live."
"It was the only thing he could do," replied a man. The others seemed
to agree with him.
"Supposing you were in his place," said one, "and Johnson had saved
your kid. What would you do?"
"Certainly!"
"Of course! You would do anything on earth for him. You'd take all the
trouble in the world for him. And spend your last dollar on him. Well,
then?"
"I wonder how it feels to be without any face?" said Reifsnyder,
musingly.
The man who had previously spoken, feeling that he had expressed
himself well, repeated the whole thing. "You would do anything on
earth for him. You'd take all the trouble in the world for him. And
spend your last dollar on him. Well, then?"
"No, but look," said Reifsnyder; "supposing you don't got a face!"