UPON THE HEEL OF THE LAST SCENE THE COSMOPOLITAN ENTERS THE BARBER'S
SHOP, A BENEDICTION ON HIS LIPS.
"Bless you, barber!"
Now, owing to the lateness of the hour, the barber had been all alone
until within the ten minutes last passed; when, finding himself rather
dullish company to himself, he thought he would have a good time with
Souter John and Tam O'Shanter, otherwise called Somnus and Morpheus, two
very good fellows, though one was not very bright, and the other an
arrant rattlebrain, who, though much listened to by some, no wise man
would believe under oath.
In short, with back presented to the glare of his lamps, and so to the
door, the honest barber was taking what are called cat-naps, and
dreaming in his chair; so that, upon suddenly hearing the benediction
above, pronounced in tones not unangelic, starting up, half awake, he
stared before him, but saw nothing, for the stranger stood behind. What
with cat-naps, dreams, and bewilderments, therefore, the voice seemed a
sort of spiritual manifestation to him; so that, for the moment, he
stood all agape, eyes fixed, and one arm in the air.
"Why, barber, are you reaching up to catch birds there with salt?"
"Ah!" turning round disenchanted, "it is only a man, then."
"_Only_ a man? As if to be but a man were nothing. But don't be too sure
what I am. You call me _man_, just as the townsfolk called the angels
who, in man's form, came to Lot's house; just as the Jew rustics called
the devils who, in man's form, haunted the tombs. You can conclude
nothing absolute from the human form, barber."
"But I can conclude something from that sort of talk, with that sort of
dress," shrewdly thought the barber, eying him with regained
self-possession, and not without some latent touch of apprehension at
being alone with him. What was passing in his mind seemed divined by the
other, who now, more rationally and gravely, and as if he expected it
should be attended to, said: "Whatever else you may conclude upon, it is
my desire that you conclude to give me a good shave," at the same time
loosening his neck-cloth. "Are you competent to a good shave, barber?"
"No broker more so, sir," answered the barber, whom the business-like
proposition instinctively made confine to business-ends his views of the
visitor.
"Broker? What has a broker to do with lather? A broker I have always
understood to be a worthy dealer in certain papers and metals."
"He, he!" taking him now for some dry sort of joker, whose jokes, he
being a customer, it might be as well to appreciate, "he, he! You
understand well enough, sir. Take this seat, sir," laying his hand on a
great stuffed chair, high-backed and high-armed, crimson-covered, and
raised on a sort of dais, and which seemed but to lack a canopy and
quarterings, to make it in aspect quite a throne, "take this seat, sir."
"Thank you," sitting down; "and now, pray, explain that about the
broker. But look, look--what's this?" suddenly rising, and pointing,
with his long pipe, towards a gilt notification swinging among colored
fly-papers from the ceiling, like a tavern sign, "_No Trust?_" "No trust
means distrust; distrust means no confidence. Barber," turning upon him
excitedly, "what fell suspiciousness prompts this scandalous confession?
My life!" stamping his foot, "if but to tell a dog that you have no
confidence in him be matter for affront to the dog, what an insult to
take that way the whole haughty race of man by the beard! By my heart,
sir! but at least you are valiant; backing the spleen of Thersites with
the pluck of Agamemnon."
"Your sort of talk, sir, is not exactly in my line," said the barber,
rather ruefully, being now again hopeless of his customer, and not
without return of uneasiness; "not in my line, sir," he emphatically
repeated.
"But the taking of mankind by the nose is; a habit, barber, which I
sadly fear has insensibly bred in you a disrespect for man. For how,
indeed, may respectful conceptions of him coexist with the perpetual
habit of taking him by the nose? But, tell me, though I, too, clearly
see the import of your notification, I do not, as yet, perceive the
object. What is it?"
"Now you speak a little in my line, sir," said the barber, not
unrelieved at this return to plain talk; "that notification I find very
useful, sparing me much work which would not pay. Yes, I lost a good
deal, off and on, before putting that up," gratefully glancing towards
it.
"But what is its object? Surely, you don't mean to say, in so many
words, that you have no confidence? For instance, now," flinging aside
his neck-cloth, throwing back his blouse, and reseating himself on the
tonsorial throne, at sight of which proceeding the barber mechanically
filled a cup with hot water from a copper vessel over a spirit-lamp,
"for instance, now, suppose I say to you, 'Barber, my dear barber,
unhappily I have no small change by me to-night, but shave me, and
depend upon your money to-morrow'--suppose I should say that now, you
would put trust in me, wouldn't you? You would have confidence?"
"Seeing that it is you, sir," with complaisance replied the barber, now
mixing the lather, "seeing that it is _you_ sir, I won't answer that
question. No need to."
"Of course, of course--in that view. But, as a supposition--you would
have confidence in me, wouldn't you?"
"Why--yes, yes."
"Then why that sign?"
"Ah, sir, all people ain't like you," was the smooth reply, at the same
time, as if smoothly to close the debate, beginning smoothly to apply
the lather, which operation, however, was, by a motion, protested
against by the subject, but only out of a desire to rejoin, which was
done in these words:
"All people ain't like me. Then I must be either better or worse than
most people. Worse, you could not mean; no, barber, you could not mean
that; hardly that. It remains, then, that you think me better than most
people. But that I ain't vain enough to believe; though, from vanity, I
confess, I could never yet, by my best wrestlings, entirely free myself;
nor, indeed, to be frank, am I at bottom over anxious to--this same
vanity, barber, being so harmless, so useful, so comfortable, so
pleasingly preposterous a passion."
"Very true, sir; and upon my honor, sir, you talk very well. But the
lather is getting a little cold, sir."
"Better cold lather, barber, than a cold heart. Why that cold sign? Ah,
I don't wonder you try to shirk the confession. You feel in your soul
how ungenerous a hint is there. And yet, barber, now that I look into
your eyes--which somehow speak to me of the mother that must have so
often looked into them before me--I dare say, though you may not think
it, that the spirit of that notification is not one with your nature.
For look now, setting, business views aside, regarding the thing in an
abstract light; in short, supposing a case, barber; supposing, I say,
you see a stranger, his face accidentally averted, but his visible part
very respectable-looking; what now, barber--I put it to your conscience,
to your charity--what would be your impression of that man, in a moral
point of view? Being in a signal sense a stranger, would you, for that,
signally set him down for a knave?"
"Certainly not, sir; by no means," cried the barber, humanely resentful.
"You would upon the face of him----"
"Hold, sir," said the barber, "nothing about the face; you remember,
sir, that is out of sight."
"I forgot that. Well then, you would, upon the _back_ of him, conclude
him to be, not improbably, some worthy sort of person; in short, an
honest man: wouldn't you?"
"Not unlikely I should, sir."
"Well now--don't be so impatient with your brush, barber--suppose that
honest man meet you by night in some dark corner of the boat where his
face would still remain unseen, asking you to trust him for a shave--how
then?"
"Wouldn't trust him, sir."
"But is not an honest man to be trusted?"
"Why--why--yes, sir."
"There! don't you see, now?"
"See what?" asked the disconcerted barber, rather vexedly.
"Why, you stand self-contradicted, barber; don't you?"
"No," doggedly.
"Barber," gravely, and after a pause of concern, "the enemies of our
race have a saying that insincerity is the most universal and
inveterate vice of man--the lasting bar to real amelioration, whether of
individuals or of the world. Don't you now, barber, by your stubbornness
on this occasion, give color to such a calumny?"
"Hity-tity!" cried the barber, losing patience, and with it respect;
"stubbornness?" Then clattering round the brush in the cup, "Will you be
shaved, or won't you?"
"Barber, I will be shaved, and with pleasure; but, pray, don't raise
your voice that way. Why, now, if you go through life gritting your
teeth in that fashion, what a comfortless time you will have."
"I take as much comfort in this world as you or any other man," cried
the barber, whom the other's sweetness of temper seemed rather to
exasperate than soothe.
"To resent the imputation of anything like unhappiness I have often
observed to be peculiar to certain orders of men," said the other
pensively, and half to himself, "just as to be indifferent to that
imputation, from holding happiness but for a secondary good and inferior
grace, I have observed to be equally peculiar to other kinds of men.
Pray, barber," innocently looking up, "which think you is the superior
creature?"
"All this sort of talk," cried the barber, still unmollified, "is, as I
told you once before, not in my line. In a few minutes I shall shut up
this shop. Will you be shaved?"
"Shave away, barber. What hinders?" turning up his face like a flower.
The shaving began, and proceeded in silence, till at length it became
necessary to prepare to relather a little--affording an opportunity for
resuming the subject, which, on one side, was not let slip.
"Barber," with a kind of cautious kindliness, feeling his way, "barber,
now have a little patience with me; do; trust me, I wish not to offend.
I have been thinking over that supposed case of the man with the averted
face, and I cannot rid my mind of the impression that, by your opposite
replies to my questions at the time, you showed yourself much of a piece
with a good many other men--that is, you have confidence, and then
again, you have none. Now, what I would ask is, do you think it sensible
standing for a sensible man, one foot on confidence and the other on
suspicion? Don't you think, barber, that you ought to elect? Don't you
think consistency requires that you should either say 'I have confidence
in all men,' and take down your notification; or else say, 'I suspect
all men,' and keep it up."
This dispassionate, if not deferential, way of putting the case, did not
fail to impress the barber, and proportionately conciliate him.
Likewise, from its pointedness, it served to make him thoughtful; for,
instead of going to the copper vessel for more water, as he had
purposed, he halted half-way towards it, and, after a pause, cup in
hand, said: "Sir, I hope you would not do me injustice. I don't say, and
can't say, and wouldn't say, that I suspect all men; but I _do_ say that
strangers are not to be trusted, and so," pointing up to the sign, "no
trust."
"But look, now, I beg, barber," rejoined the other deprecatingly, not
presuming too much upon the barber's changed temper; "look, now; to say
that strangers are not to be trusted, does not that imply something like
saying that mankind is not to be trusted; for the mass of mankind, are
they not necessarily strangers to each individual man? Come, come, my
friend," winningly, "you are no Timon to hold the mass of mankind
untrustworthy. Take down your notification; it is misanthropical; much
the same sign that Timon traced with charcoal on the forehead of a skull
stuck over his cave. Take it down, barber; take it down to-night. Trust
men. Just try the experiment of trusting men for this one little trip.
Come now, I'm a philanthropist, and will insure you against losing a
cent."
The barber shook his head dryly, and answered, "Sir, you must excuse me.
I have a family."