Above the Dark Circus

CHAPTER I. THE BARBER-2

In my own excited state this did not seem at all unnatural. Because the day had not quite departed the centre of the Circus was sinking into a dusk that resembled to my heated gaze the gray waters of a pool, and I had the fancy that the omnibuses charging up the hill from the Mall, circling round from Piccadilly, were uncouth and barbarous monsters plunging to the pool for a savage drink.

'Well for us all,' something said, 'that we cling to this pavement. There's danger at every step.'

So the monsters panted to the pool and, under the twinkling and derisive lights that flashed so meaninglessly now against empty space as the evening darkened, drank their fill.

Then, looking about me, I noticed people. I noticed first the fat shapeless beggar of the especially blind eyes who, with his shiny tin cup and the board across his chest, had just this moment arrived and stationed himself quite close to me against the wall. He, too, seemed to have a peculiar meaning for me. (What an empty stomach can do to your imagination if you only give it rope enough!)

I had seen him arrive, led by a little shabby woman in a black hat and with black cotton gloves on her hands. The moment she had stationed him against the wall she gave his board a twitch and without a word left him, shuffling off into the crowd. There he stood, gazing with piercing blind intentness at the twinkling stars of red and green.

A thin clergyman, with an eager countenance, hesitated beside me, looked as though he would speak, and moved away. Two women, very gay and hustling, ranged at my side. 'Well,' said one over my head to the other, 'cheerio.'

'Cheerio,' said the other. The first one waited a moment, then said again:

'Cheerio, dear.'

'Cheerio,' said the other. The first one vanished, the second one looked right through me as though I were not there. I felt suddenly dead, dead and buried. No, I was not dead. I was conscious of my beastly hair, hot and uncomfortable against my neck.

'It shall be a hair-cut,' I decided. Then my belly called out, 'Steak and kidney.' The golden bottle c****d itself up against the dark, scorned me, and ejected its liquid. Something inside me said: 'See what the book says!' So I took Quixoteout from under my coat and opened it.

I read:

'The knight was yet asleep, when the curate came attended by the barber, and desired his niece to let him have the key of the room where her uncle kept his books, the author of his woes. . . .'

The barber! There was an omen for you! The fates had decided. I moved forward to my destiny.

These details must seem to you of excessive unimportance, and I can well understand your disbelief in my memory of them, but it is precisely these things that one does remember forever and ever amen, even to the rather worn, semi-shiny buttons on the eager clergyman's coat.

After a moment's hesitation I pushed forward across the waters of the Circus, escaped narrowly two charging monsters that seemed to snort fire and smoke at me as they passed, and arrived on dry land on the spot where Eros once was. Here I drew breath. My legs were trembling under me. I felt faint with a gripping pain like a harsh-taloned hand laid at my entrails. Once more (and, as it happened, for the last time) I hesitated. Did I yield to the temptation of the hair-cut I must, afterwards, either finish things once and for all or commit crime for a meal. I faced, I think, in that bitter instant the ultimate degradation. I was ready to do anything for a meal, sell my soul, my body (one often enough involving the other) to anybody for anything. A moral world? It had ceased to exist for me, and in its room there was this strangely beautiful evil place, shot with coloured lights that broke and flashed and trembled across the sky above my head, while at my feet there were these strange sluggish waters, iridescent, cleft by monsters, bordered by walls of grim gray stone. Out of them there stepped to my side a slim horrible creature in a shining top-hat, a black overcoat, with a white camellia in its buttonhole.

'Good-evening,' it said.

'Good-evening,' I replied.

'There's more snow coming,' it continued.

'Probably,' I answered.

'Going my way?' it asked. I nearly answered that I was if it would provide me with a meal. Its face was very white under its shiny hat. It had long hands in white gloves. I hesitated and was saved, for, looking up, I saw the golden goblet raise itself and illuminate with its light the neighbouring windows. On these were inscribed in big black letters, 'Gentlemen's and Ladies' Hairdressers--Manicure--Massage.'

'Coming my way?' it said again. It had dead eyes and wide hungry nostrils to its nose.

'I think not,' I answered, and pushed out into the stream again.

And even now the guiding finger had not finished with me. I had landed, panting a little, as though I had run a long way, at the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue. There was now but a short step across to the other side of the street; facing me was the corner of the Trafalgar Theatre, and above it on the second floor the high windows of the big hairdresser's establishment. I was about to take that step when someone jogged my elbow. I heard a thick, rather drunken voice say: 'A fat lot of use God would be in this place,' and, turning, saw above me, swinging over the heads of the crowd, a long pole and on the end of it a placard with the words: 'Thou God seest Me.'

This pole was carried by an old gaunt man with a long straggling gray beard and a shabby coat that fell to his heels. He was shuffling along bearing his banner on high, and as he jostled me I noticed that he was feeling with his spare hand in his pocket for food.

There were some crumbs on his beard. So above the crowd the message floated. Very few gazed up to it, but it passed on serenely, confidently secure in its terrible truth. Its effect upon me was that, looking up to it, I saw above my head and over the sweetshop behind me a small window with 'Hairdresser--Shaving--Massage' upon it. The window was surrounded with fantasy. Not far away from it were three timepieces which, with bland naked faces, warned the crowd beneath them of its swift passage towards remorseless eternity, and all around the timepieces and the barber's window were the dancing stars of red and green that I had seen from the farther bank of the pool.

Why should I cross the road when there was a barber's shop here at my elbow? Moreover, there was something in the window of the sweetshop that tore at my guts with a frightful agony.

It was not sugar that my hunger really needed, but nevertheless the sight of those piledup heaps, the marzipan, the crystallized fruit, the huge cake with a pagoda in pink and red icing, the chocolates, the slabs of cocoanut cream. . . . One clutch of the hand, one sweep of the arm, down those heaps would come, I would tear the pagoda. . . . I had sense enough left me to pass swiftly by the shop and climb the few dark twisting stairs to the glass door with 'W. Jacoby, Hairdresser' inscribed upon it. A little more temptation, a very little more. . . . I pushed that door back as though I were fleeing from the devil.

So dark and grubby a little room was it that, after a glance at it, I almost retired. After all, if this hair-cut were to be the last grand and independent action of my life I might as well have a good one. But the sense that if I passed by that sweet-shop again I might yield, at this second time, to my craving temptations held me. No, I dared not risk it. So I walked forward.

It was a bizarre enough room. The blinds were not down, and I was still pursued by the golden goblet, which was now, from the opposite side of the street, almost on a level with me, and as the flash of its shining liquid came and went the lights struck the room where I was, vanished, and struck again as though they were fingers of some illuminated hand hunting on this dusty floor for some treasure. For dusty it was. I have seldom seen a more neglected place, and the scrubby little barber was as neglected as his den. There were three basins with their mirrors stuck against the wall. On the other side of the room were some chairs, and here two men were waiting.

The barber himself was misshapen, his dusty head sunk between his shoulders, and on his countenance as surly an expression as I had ever seen on any human face. He had a large walrus moustache, and the ends of this he was frequently snapping at.

He said nothing to me when I came in, and I sat down on one of two empty chairs.

I was now quite light-headed with hunger, weariness and a sense of rebellion against all human beings. What had I ever done that I should have been brought to this pass? I was no worse than my fellows, better indeed than a great many of them. I turned round on the little amiable apple-faced man who was sitting next to me and chuckling over the innocuous pages of Punch. For twopence I could have caught him by the neck and swung him to and fro, demanding of him why he and his fellows had treated me so unjustly. But he took my gaze for amiability.

'That's a good one,' he said, grinning and handing me the Punch. It was at this point, I think, that my past began to mingle inextricably with my present--as though, if you like, my past knew that in another quarter of an hour it was going to concern me very actively and that it might as well prepare me for that. Never mind the scenes that I saw-a door half opened, a mirror framing a face of rage and vengeance, a mean, spindleshanked little man stealing down a garden path, eyes, the most beautiful in the world to me, telling me of a trust and affection for which I had never dared to hope . . . sad, wasted, ironical pictures, crowding into the room on the recurring, reflected impulses of that golden flashing light.

The door opened, and a sailor came in. He was a big, red-faced fellow in sailor's kit, a somewhat rare sight in the West End, and he carried a sailor's bundle. It was at once evident that he was pleasantly drunk. He rolled a little in his walk and greeted us all with the most cheerful of smiles. He lumbered to the chair next to mine and sat down heavily upon it.

The barber glanced at him with exceeding disfavour. He looked about him with beaming interest, whistled loudly, snapped his fingers, smacked his bulging thighs.

At last, looking at the three of us who were waiting, he said huskily:

'Wonder if you gents would mind. I know you're first . . . don't want to presume, but it's only a shave I want and I'm going to Newcastle. First time 'ome for three years, 'aven't seen the kids for three years, gentlemen, and if I miss the six-thirty . . . 'E can give me a quick shave and if 'e don't I'll wring 'is bleeding neck.'

The barber turned and gave him a look of saturnine murder but said no word. We all at once meekly agreed that the sailor should have the next turn. This elated him greatly. He walked about the room whistling and lumbering from article to article, examining everything, the almanac, with a pink-cheeked girl holding a bunch of roses, the advertisements of hair restorer and shaving soap. He stopped before the pink-cheeked girl and said, lurching:

'She's my fancy!'

The young man upon whom the barber had been operating, his job concluded, rose and went for his hat and coat. The sailor immediately plopped into his place and stared very gravely into the mirror, feeling his cheek for pimples. Then, suddenly remembering, rose heavily, crossed the floor, and with the greatest care and reverence placed his bundle on the chair where he had been waiting, then returned to the seat of ceremony.

The barber approached him with looks of surly disgust. I thought he would refuse to shave him, but he said nothing, only stropped his razor furiously. Then he lathered half the sailor's face, paused, and, shaving-brush in one hand, with the other took the sailor's bundle from the chair and dropped it on the floor. The sailor said nothing to this but, when his face was completely lathered, gave the barber a wave of the hand as though to say 'Just wait a moment,' got up, crossed the floor and lifted his bundle on to the seat again. No one uttered a word, but we three spectators sat in our seats watching this drama with absorbed attention.

The barber shaved with great care half the sailor's face, then gently moved back and placed the bundle on the floor, the sailor watching his action with grave intensity in the mirror. When the razor had passed once completely over his countenance he again motioned politely to the barber with his hand, rose and replaced his bundle on the chair. The barber lathered his face again, then once more crossed to the bundle, but on this occasion threw it violently onto the floor. Still no word was spoken. Yet again the sailor replaced it. Yet again the barber threw it down.

The air was now breathless with suspense. The sailor rose, seeming now to be twice his former bulk.

''Ow much?' he asked gravely, feeling in his deep, wide pocket.

'Threepence,' said the barber. The sailor, after some fumbling, found his pennies and delivered them, then, with a husky, 'Take that for your bloody cheek,' drove his fist full into the barber's face. The barber crumpled and fell.

Instantly there was pandemonium. The little apple-faced man who had been reading his Punch so amiably was changed into a demon of fury and rage. He flung himself onto the sailor. The other observer, a long thin fellow, rushed shouting to the door. The barber, surprisingly alive, raised himself onto his knees and bit the sailor's thigh. The sailor himself rolled about, shouting and waving his arms; chairs tumbled over, bottles fell with a crash, two men came in and joined the fray.

The door was open; my eyes were upon it. Someone peered in, looked about him, and cautiously stepped into the room.

One glance was enough for me. My heart thundered in my ears, the room swam before me. The sight of that mean-faced, spindle-shanked, narrow-eyed little man was the ghost of all my past, the link with everything that should have been my future, the link that, for more than fourteen years, I had been seeking.

Mr. Leroy Pattison Pengelly.