“Come into the kitchen,—monsieur, there is nobody in there. 'Brr! Il fait un froid etonnant'.”
“What sort of customers have you just now?” asked Shelton, as they passed into the kitchen.
“Always the same clientele,” replied the little man; “not so numerous, of course, it being summer.”
“Could n't you find anything better than this to do?”
The barber's crow's-feet radiated irony.
“When I first came to London,” said he, “I secured an engagement at one of your public institutions. I thought my fortune made. Imagine, monsieur, in that sacred place I was obliged to shave at the rate of ten a penny! Here, it's true, they don't pay me half the time; but when I'm paid, I 'm paid. In this, climate, and being 'poitrinaire', one doesn't make experiments. I shall finish my days here. Have you seen that young man who interested you? There 's another! He has spirit, as I had once—'il fait de la philosophie', as I do—and you will see, monsieur, it will finish him. In this world what you want is to have no spirit. Spirit ruins you.”
Shelton looked sideways at the little man with his sardonic, yellow, half-dead face, and the incongruity of the word “spirit” in his mouth struck him so sharply that he smiled a smile with more pity in it than any burst of tears.
“Shall we 'sit down?” he said, offering a cigarette.
“Merci, monsieur, it is always a pleasure to smoke a good cigarette. You remember, that old actor who gave you a Jeremiad? Well, he's dead. I was the only one at his bedside; 'un vrai drole'. He was another who had spirit. And you will see, monsieur, that young man in whom you take an interest, he'll die in a hospital, or in some hole or other, or even on the highroad; having closed his eyes once too often some cold night; and all because he has something in him which will not accept things as they are, believing always that they should be better. 'Il n'y a riens de plus tragique'.”
“According to you, then,” said Shelton—and the conversation seemed to him of a sudden to have taken too personal a turn—“rebellion of any sort is fatal.”