“Well,” he remarked with forced philosophy, “it’s come.”
Just what had come, he did not for the moment specify. Perhaps he could not have done so. It was something very upsetting, though, even if it were ridiculous; and philosophy didn’t seem to help it any better than persiflage. And the more he considered it the nastier it grew. It gradually filled him with a curious cold pang. It filled the room. He could not bear it.
“All right,” he growled sardonically, looking for his hat. “If it won’t ‘out’ by itself, we’ll have to take it out. It’s too damned stuffy in here.”
He realised the importance of the occasion, as being his first public appearance in the character of a bald-headed man. It made him self-conscious and apologetic. It likewise made him welcome the opportunity of wearing a hat. For he felt that within-doors, hereafter, the eyes of men would mockingly follow him wherever he moved. At the very moment, however, of stepping into the air his attempted assurance failed him. An old gentleman happened to be passing—an old gentleman below the rear of whose hat brim projected into the light of day a ludicrous pink half moon. Jerry instinctively, albeit unobtrusively, sought the corresponding region of his own person.
“Huh!” he grunted in relief. “I guess we’re not quite so bad as that—yet a while.”
He resumed his progress a trifle more at ease. But fatalities beset him. Boys were playing ball in the street, under horses’ hoofs and in defiance of the police. Most of them were bare-headed. He believed they did it on purpose to show off their little polls, how absurdly uniform they were in colour. A sudden resentment boiled in him against them, as if he had been the Prophet Elisha; and he yearned to set bears on them. He would throw in the barber as the pièce de résistance. That barber! Jerry had half a mind to go back and—But he dismissed these low themes from his mind. As he turned the corner, though, the first thing he beheld was the portrait, on a bill-board, of a splendid gentleman with Jove-like locks, waving a majestic hand toward the name of the preparation which had performed so enviable a miracle.
“Really,” muttered Jerry to himself, “I must look those people up. I’m not so far gone, after all. And at my age—You never can tell.”
Then a motor car went by. There were four persons in it—two young men and two girls, hatless all. Jerry’s eyes followed them hopefully. If only they would justify him! But no Spot was there. The young people whirled gaily up the Avenue as if the world belonged to them. And Jerry knew it did. His heart sank again. The smartness of the car, the prettiness of the girls, the hilarity and unconcern of the whole business, smote him like a blow.
“Yes,” he thought, “it’s come. And why should it come to me rather than to them? Are they more virtuous than I? Are they more learned? Do they know Gothic architecture from Renaissance? Or a cosine from an ensign? No. But they have more hair. Therefore—Q. E. D.!”
This cryptic conclusion, with its somewhat mixed references, apparently had the effect of guiding Jerry’s thoughts into more definite channels. “They,” as he walked, became the burden of his meditations. They made for him a composite of eyes grey, blue, black, brown—even the modern hues of yellow and green; of auburn, chestnut, bronze, golden, raven, and every other shade of hair celebrated by poets; of aspects rosy or pale, grave or smiling, ingenuous or subtle. They were Venuses, Madonnas, Medeas, Giocondas—the whole gallery of types most provocative to man. He had always vaguely expected that one of them—perhaps all of them: such things were not unknown!—would some day appear, and—Well, he had never quite settled what was to happen next. It wouldn’t exactly do for them to fall on his neck at that stage of the game. That would cut out too many of the preliminary thrills incident to these adventures. Neither would he fall on their neck. It would be too public. They might not like it. They would probably run away if he tried. At all events, something very breathless was to take place. He was to pursue them over land and sea. He was to endure fire and sword for their sake. And in the end they were, so to speak, to fall into his mouth like ripe plums. Or perhaps it wouldn’t come to anything in the end. Things didn’t, nowadays. But at least it was going to be very ravaging for somebody. If it didn’t turn out a Browning business it might turn out a Tristan and Isolde affair. And Tristan and Isolde, as a domestic tableau, were almost more telling than the Brownings. Or the denouement was to be a noble renunciation, with moving scenes of parting; and he was to finish up grandly with an exploded volcano for a heart.