Now it's all very well to say that truth is strange--stranger than
fiction; but the saying won't wash, it isn't fast colours, but partakes
of the nature of those carried by certain Austrian regiments--it runs;
for there is no rule without an exception, and no person in the full
enjoyment of his mental faculties will pretend to say that truth was
stranger than fiction in the case of Mr Smith's wig, for the fiction--
the wig--was, to all intents and purposes, stranger than the truth--the
genuine head of hair.
Mr Smith--Mr Artaxerxes Smith--in his younger days had often visited
the hairdresser's, to sit in state with a flowing print robe tucked in
all round his neck, but not so close but the tiny snips and chips from
his Hyperion curls would get down within his shirt-collar, and tickle
and tease for hours after; he had listened while the oily-tongued--
scented oily-tongued--hairdresser had snipped away and told him that his
hair was turning a little grey, or that it was growing thin at the
crown, or very dry, or full of dandriff, or coming off, or suffering
from one of those inevitable failings which are never discoverable save
when having one's hair cut. "Our Philo-homo-coma Brushitinibus would
remove the symptoms in a few days, sir," the hairdresser would say;
"remove the dandriff, clarify the scalp, soften the hair, and bring up a
fine soft down that would soon strengthen into flowing locks." But
though in the glass before him Mr Smith could see the noble hair and
brilliant whiskers of his operator, he would not listen, he only growled
out, "Make haste," or "Never mind," or something else very rude, and the
consequence was that he suffered for his neglect of the good
hairdressers advice, so that at last Mr Smith couldn't have given any
one a lock of his hair to save his life. He was bald--completely bald--
his head looked like vegetable ivory, and in despair he consulted a
Saville-row physician.
"Nature, sir, nature," said the great man; "a peculiarity of
constitution, a failing in the absorbents and dessicating, wasting in
the structural development of the cuticle and sub-cuticle--the hair
being a small filament issuing from the surface of the scalp from a
bulbous radix, and forming a capillary covering; which covering, in your
case, has failed, sir, failed."
Mr Smith knew that before he made up his mind to invest a guinea, but
he only said--
"And what course should you pursue in my case?"
"Well, yes--er--er--um, ah! I should--er--that is to say, I should wear
a wig."
That was just what Mr Smith's hairdresser had told him for nothing,
though, certainly, with sundry ideas _in petto_ that it might fall to
his task to make this wig; but Mr Smith had expected something else
from a man who put MD at the end of his name.
"Too big for his profession," said Mr Smith, and he bought a pot of the
Count de Caput Medusae's Golden Balm, prepared from the original recipe
given by that inventive Count to the aunt's cousin's uncle of the
proprietor.
"Try another pot, sir," said the vendor, examining the bare head with a
powerful magnifying glass. "Perfect down on the surface, sir, though
not plain to the naked eye. I should advise the large twenty-two
shilling pots, sir, and the vigorous rubbing in, to be continued night
and morning."
But if there had been any down it knew better than to stop and suffer
the scrubbing inflicted by Mr Smith upon his bare poll, and a month
only found him with the scalp turned from waxy-white to pinky-red, while
his head was sore to a degree.
"Jackal's formula produces hair, beard, or whiskers upon the smoothest
skin."
But, perhaps, Mr Smith's was not the smoothest skin, but not for want
of rubbing and polishing, and the formula did not produce anything but a
great many naughty words, while "Brimstone Degenerator," "The Capillary
Attraction," and a score of other things, only made holes in several
five-pound notes, while Mr Smith, unable to discover any more filaments
issuing from the surface of his scalp from bulbous radices, came to the
conclusion that he really must have a wig.
He had it; and found it light and warm, and tried to make himself
believe that it could not be told from the real thing. He would brush
it before the glass, or run his hands through the curls when any one was
looking, and pretend to scratch his head, but the brute of a thing would
slip on one side, or get down over his forehead, or go back, or do
something stupid, as if of impish tendencies and exclaiming to the world
at large, "I'm a wig, I am!"
Brushed up carefully was that wig every now and then by the maker, who
would send it back glossed and pomatumed to a wonderful degree of
perfection; when again Mr Smith would try and persuade himself that
with such a skin parting no one could fail to be deceived, but the
people found him out when he lost his hat from a puff of wind, which
jumped it off and sent it rolling along the pavement.
We have most of us chased our hats upon a windy day, now getting close
up, now being left behind, and have tried, as is the correct thing, to
smile; but who could smile if the pomatum had adhered to the lining of
the hat, and he was scudding under a bare pole in chase of hat and wig.
After that episode in his life, Mr Smith brushed up his wig himself,
and always used oil; while he found his wig decidedly economical, for it
never wanted cutting.
Being a bachelor with plenty of time on his hands, Mr Smith used to
spend it as seemed good in his own eyes, and a very favourite pursuit of
his was visit-paying to the various cathedral towns, for the purpose of
studying what he termed the "architectural points." The consequence
was, that after spending an afternoon examining nave and chancel;
chapel, window, pillar, arch, and groin; frowning at corbels, and
grinning at the grotesque gutter-bearers; Mr Smith found himself seated
at dinner in that far-famed hostelry known as the "Golden Bull," in the
cathedral town of Surridge.
The dinner was good, the wine might have been worse, the linen and plate
were clean, and at length, seated in front of the comfortable fire,
sipping his port, Mr Smith mused upon the visit he had paid to the
cathedral. After a while, from habit, he scratched his head and drew
the wig aside, which necessitated his rising to adjust the covering by
the glass, after which Mr Smith sighed and filled his glass again.
At length the bell brought the waiter, and the waiter brought the boots,
and the boots brought the boot-jack and the slippers, and then the
chambermaid brought the hand candlestick, and the maiden ushered the
visitor up to Number 25 in the great balcony which surrounded the large
yard, where even now a broken-winded old stagecoach drew up once a week,
as if determined to go till it dropped, in spite of all the railways in
the kingdom.
But Mr Smith had not been five minutes in his bedroom, and divested
himself of only one or two articles of his dress, when he remembered
that he had given no orders for an early breakfast, so as to meet the
first up-train.
The bell soon brought the chambermaid, who looked rather open-mouthed as
Mr Smith gave his orders. He then prepared himself for bed, wherein,
with a comfortable cotton nightcap pulled over his head, he soon
wandered into the land of dreams.
About an hour had passed, and Mr Smith was mentally busy making a
drawing of a grim old corbel--a most grotesque head in the cathedral
close, when he was terribly bothered because the moss-covered,
time-eaten old stony face would not keep still: now it winked, now it
screwed up its face, now it thrust its tongue first into one cheek and
then into the other, making wrinkles here, there, and everywhere, till
he put down his pencil, and asked what it meant. But instead of
answering, the face nodded and came down nearer and nearer, backing him
further and further away, till he was shut up in one of the cloisters,
and hammering at the door to get out.
"Open the door!" he roared again and again; till he woke to find that it
was somebody outside knocking at his door and thundering to get in.
"Here, open the door now, or it'll be the wuss for yer!" growled a
hoarse voice, whereupon tearing off his cap, Mr Smith leaped out of
bed, and into some garments, and then stood shivering and wondering
whether the place was on fire.
"What's all the noise?" cried some one in the gallery.
"Madman, sir, outer the 'sylum, and keepers want to ketch him."
"Poor fellow," was the response; and then came the demand for
admittance, and the thundering again.
"Go away!" cried Mr Smith, in an agitated and very cracked voice. "Go
away, there's no one here!"
"Ho! ain't there," said the gruff voice; and then there was a suppressed
titter. "You're sure it's him?" said another voice.
"Oh, yes," said some one in a high treble; "he's got his head shaved."
"Right you are," said the same gruff voice, and then Mr Smith turned
all of a cold perspiration.
"But my good man," he gasped out at last through the keyhole, as he
shivered in the dark, "it's all a mistake: I'm not the man."
"Now, are you a-going to stash that ere gammon, or am I to come through
the door?--that's what I wants to know," growled the voice.
"Good heavens! what a position," gasped Mr Smith. "My good man," he
cried again, "I'm not mad at all."
"Oh, no, of course not; nobody never said you was," said the voice.
"It's all right; open the door; it's only me, Grouser, yer know."
But Mr Smith _didn't_ know Grouser; neither did he wish to; for he
wanted a quiet night's rest, and to go off by the first train; but he
resolved to try another appeal.
"M-m-m-m-my good man, will you go away, please?"
Bump! came a heavy body against the door, making the lock chatter, and
the inner partition vibrate.
"Go away, please," gasped Mr Smith; "or I'll call the landlord."
Bump! came the noise, and then the gruff voice, "Now, you'd best open,
my tulip."
"Landlord!" screamed Mr Smith.
"Yes, sir, I'm here!" cried a fresh voice. "Now, why don't you come
quietly, sir; the gentleman only means it for your good, and if you have
any money, I hope you'll pay your bill."
"He ain't got a blessed halfpenny, bless you," growled the voice of the
man Mr Smith took to be the keeper, but he was so confused by waking up
from a heavy sleep, that he began to pass his hand over his head, and to
wonder whether he really was sane.
Bump! came the noise again, and then there was a whispering, and the
gruff voice cried, "Don't you go away!" And then, to his great horror,
through the thin wood partition, Mr Smith heard people moving in the
next room, and a clattering noise as if a washstand was being moved from
before the door that he had tried that night and found fast, but piled
the chairs up against for safety sake. Directly after came the rattling
of a key, and the cracking of the paint-stuck door, as if it were years
since it had been opened; but Mr Smith could stop to hear no more.
Hurriedly turning his key, he dashed open his door, gave a yell of
terror, and charging out, scattered half a score of the inn-tenants
standing in the gallery, candle in hand. There was a wild shrieking,
the overturning of candlesticks, and women fainting, and then, as two or
three made very doubtful efforts to stop the bald-headed figure, it
leaped over a prostrate chambermaid, and dashed along the balcony.
"Hie! stop him, hie!" was the shout that rang behind; but Mr Smith ran
on, then along the other side, closely followed by him of the gruff
voice, while two more went the other way.
"Look out," roared the keeper, "or he'll do you a mischief!" and so, as
Mr Smith came along the fourth side of the yard balcony, the landlord
and helper allowed themselves to be dashed aside, and this time with
force; while with shrieking women in front of him, Mr Smith rushed on.
Screams and yells, and cries, as the fugitive panted on reaching the
second turn of the gallery, when hearing the gruff-voiced one close
behind, he stole a look over his shoulder, and shuddered at the faint
glimpse he obtained of a huge, burly figure, whose aspect made him tear
on more frightened than ever, as the gruff voice roared to him to stop.
But there was no stop in Mr Smith, for as the moonbeams shone through
the glass at his side, he could just make out that some one was holding
a door in front ajar and peeping out, when, without thinking of anything
else but getting somewhere to parley with his pursuer, Mr Smith dashed
at the door, sent some one staggering backwards, while he had the door
banged to and locked in an instant.
"For Heaven's sake, save me," gasped Mr Smith; "and excuse this
intrusion, Sir."
"Oh, to be sure," said a voice from the corner, where it was quite dark;
"but you need not have knocked at the door so loud. You are from the
moon, of course, and how did you leave Plutina and the Bluegobs?"
"Wh, wh-wh-wh-what?" gasped Mr Smith.
"Come to the window, Sir, and we'll enlighten the present generation;
I'm the grand Porkendillo, Sir, and--"
"Now, then, open this here door," growled a savage voice in the gallery.
"Begone, slave," cried the voice from out of the dark, and then to Mr
Smith's horror, a short figure crossed to the window, and he could see
the outline of a smooth bald head upon the blind, which was directly
afterwards dragged down and wrapped round the person into whose room the
fugitive had run.
A light now broke upon Mr Smith; here was the real Simon Pure; but what
a position to be in, locked in the same room with a madman--a
shaven-headed lunatic, escaped from some private asylum.
"My Lord; Most Grand one, open the door and admit your slave," came in a
hoarse whisper through the keyhole.
"Is the banquet prepared?" said the madman.
"Yes, my lord," croaked the keeper.
"Is Bootes there? Have Arcturus, Aldebaran, Orion, and Beta Pi
assembled?"
"Yes, my lord, and it's done to a touch," growled the keeper.
"Prostrate thyselves, then, slaves, and let the winds all blow and boom.
I come. Ha! a spy," cried the madman, rushing at Mr Smith, who in his
great horror leaped upon the bed, and buried himself beneath the clothes
in which he enveloped himself so closely, that his adversary could not
drag him forth.
"Come forth, thou traitor," shrieked the madman, tearing at the clothes
so fiercely, that a huge bundle rolled off the bed on to the floor,
wherein, half-smothered, lay poor Mr Smith, in a most profuse state of
perspiration.
All at once there was a cessation of the kicks and thumps, but a
threatening of an increased state of suffocation, for there seemed to
the covered man to be a struggle going on, and two or three people fell
upon him. Then there came the buzz of voices, and he found himself
gently unrolled from the mass of clothing, to sit up, staring around
with white head and flushed face at the room full of people, while in
one corner closely guarded by his keeper stood the Grand Porkendillo,
sucking his thumb, and leering at every one in turn. For this gentleman
having made his escape from the neighbouring establishment of a famous
doctor, had taken refuge in the Golden Bull, whose landlord was most
profuse in his apologies to Mr Smith, for the mistake that had been
made.