“Will that do, sir?” the barber inquired at length, throwing off the swathing cloths of his victim. “I’ll show you how it looks.” He produced a hand-glass which he manipulated in such a way as to reveal to Jerry the back of his own head.
Jerry saw how it looked. He never had seen it look that way before. And what he saw disturbingly diminished his complacency. He therefore distributed more lavish gratuities than was his wont. Then he fled, conscious but of two purposes. The first was to put forever behind him the discoverer of his shame. The second was to ascertain as quickly as possible the true facts of his case.
He was not a man, Jerry, greatly given to the mirror. Not that he was above criticising the effect of a tie or the cut of a coat. But there were studies which he pursued more assiduously than that of Narcissus. When, however, he at last locked himself into his own room it was with feverish haste that he seized his shaving-glass and made for the bureau. He then held the glass on high, tipped it this way and that, finally caught the right angle.
Yes—he met the cruel confirmation with as bold a front as he could—it was only too true. There it was, the Spot, inexorable, vivid, glaring at him like a malignant eye. There were things in that eye. There were things—The sensation it gave him was too absurd.
He tried to laugh it away.
“‘Out, damnëd spot!’” he exclaimed. And he put the glass down. It was idiotic to be prinking there like a girl in her first ball-dress. As he walked across the room, however, he could not resist a temptation to feel of the place. He began to rummage gingerly in his hair. The barber was right—he felt a sudden flash of fury at the fellow!—it was not so thick as it had been. Yet it felt as it did yesterday, the day before, the day before that. Could he not be mistaken? He must take one more look.
He did so, this time adjusting the complicated reflections more easily. But his adjuration had been of no avail. Nay, his own touch had deceived him. The Spot was not out. It was in—very much in. It was in to stay. It looked at him, whichever way he turned, like a horrid leering eye. It stared him out of countenance.
He threw the glass down again and once more tried persiflage.
“‘Go up, bald-head!’” he jeered at himself, aloud.
It sounded distinctly foolish in the empty room. The late sunshine pouring in through the windows made him feel as if someone had caught him making an ass of himself. He flung himself on the lounge and proceeded in a detached manner to study the beauties of the ceiling. As he tilted his head to do so, he scraped the wall paper. The sudden chill of it against his scalp made him jump up as if he had been branded. But the iron did not stop at his skull. It went on down through him. He could almost hear it sizzle in his soul.