The Colour Line: The Golden Flaw

On the cheek of the stout man who reclined in the barberÕs chair there still lingered a small patch of unreclaimed jungle. Lancelot Purvis removed this with his gleaming razor, and, stepping back, surveyed his handiwork with silent satisfaction; for he was a conscientious barber and took a pleasure in making a good job of it. He now produced a steaming towel from nowhere, dumped it on the stout manÕs face, kneaded it awhile, whisked it off, applied witch-hazel, and finally dabbed the face once or twice with a second towel.

ÒFace massage, sir?Ó

ÒNo!Ó

ÒHair a little long at the ends. Trim it, sir?Ó

ÒNo!Ó

ÒAnything on the head, sir?Ó

ÒNo!Ó

ÒSinge the hair, sir?Ó

ÒNo!Ó

Lancelot had no more suggestions to make. The stout man heaved himself up from the chair, breathed a little stertorously, put on his collar, tipped Lancelot, and walked out. The episode was ended.

The advantage of being a really great writer, one of the big-browed lads who make every stroke tell and all that sort of thing, is that you save so much time. Take myself for instance. I donÕt want to boast about it, you understand: I quite realise that it is simply a gift, coming who shall say whence; I merely wish to point out as a matter of artistic interest that in this single short scene my wonderful skill in character-delineation has enabled you to visualize Lancelot Purvis as clearly as though you had known him for years. With a few subtle touches I have made you recognise his shrinking nature, his mildness, his sensitiveness, his diffidence. What? You didnÕt? You didnÕt gather the fact that Lancelot was a mild, diffident young man? Well then, all I can say is that something must have gone wrong with the works, and I suppose I shall have to approach the thing all over again from another angle. But, really, when I showed the customer snapping out ÔNo!Õ to everything Lancelot suggested and Lancelot taking it quite meekly and not even having the nerve to try to sell him a hair-wash, I did think I could leave the rest to the intelligence of the reader.

There are some men who in the battle of life seem consistently to get the loserÕs end, and this after a time tends to remove the steel from their character. Lancelot Purvis was one of these. All through his early boyhood he had had much to suffer from the juvenile population of his native town, on whose immature minds the name Lancelot had had the worst effects. When he was thirteen, he caught measles and shot up five or six inches, attaining a height which intimidated his peers into leaving him alone. But by that time the mischief was done, and Lancelot was a hopelessly mild boy. And, when he reached the early twenties and might shortly have become normal again, the War broke out and the Army got him. And that started the trouble all over again.

He never succeeded in getting to the Front. Chaperoned by a sergeant, he looked after horses in the rear of the lines; and several months of this undid Lancelot completely. There were, no doubt, in the American expeditionary force sergeants of the most winning amiability; but LancelotÕs was rather a violent and hasty sort of man, full of strange oaths and reluctant to make allowances. It was a physically tough but spiritually battered barber who, about a year later, returned to the Hotel Cosmopolis.

Safe back beside his chair in the Cosmopolis shaving-parlour, Lancelot was happy again. Barbering was in his blood. His father had been a barber. His earliest memories were of the clinging scent of hair-washes, and he had cut his teeth on an old shaving brush. There was, moreover, a marked artistic strain in him, which found expression in the exercise of his trade. After all, to the thoughtful man, being a barber is much the same as being a sculptor. The sculptor takes a shapeless block of marble and chips off all that is unnecessary and superfluous. What else does a barber do? There were times, after he had seen a customer come in with a scrub of beard and a mop of hair falling over his collar and, after chipping away all that was superfluous, had watched him walk out, dapper and trim and a pleasure to look at, when Lancelot felt the glow of the creator.