CHAPTER LXXI

DOLEFUL PREPARED FOR THE SIEGE

Having returned to his quarters at the “George and Blue Boar,” High Holborn, Captain Doleful reconnoitred his wardrobe, for the purpose of seeing how killing he could make himself on the following day. He had on the suit of black he had turned for Miss Crabstick’s funeral; a patent tubular tie, a finely flowered front with two rows of little frills, and a pair of cheap, open-work black silk socks, with French polish on his old pumps, would make him a very respectable candle-light swell.

Passing down Holborn, he was struck with the display in Mr. Frizwig the advertising hairdresser’s window—such wax-busts, such wigs and ringlets! “Hair cut for Sixpence.” The captain thought he would have a clip.

The obsequious “perruquier” ushered him into the cutting-room through the shop, and Captain Doleful, divesting himself of his coat and seedy Joinville, got his person enveloped in a buff cotton wrapper.

Taking a hard brush out of his apron-pocket, Mr. Frizwig proceeded to brush the captain’s lank locks over his flat head. He then produced a comb and scissors.

“’Air getting rayther thin on the crown, I’m sorry to perceive,” observed Mr. Frizwig, as though he were a partner in the concern.

“That’s no news,” growled the captain, eyeing his unbecoming appearance in the unflattering mirror against the wall.

“Your ’air requires a good deal of moisture,” observed Mr. Frizwig, nothing daunted by his customer’s gruffness.

“Does it?” growled the captain.

“Thin in parts—strong in parts,” continued the perruquier, snipping, and clipping, and combing. “The grand Scandinavian extract of Patagonian cream would restore it all;” adding, half to himself and half to his foreman, “Must have had a fine ’ead formerly.”

The captain grinned. “What is it a bottle?” inquired he.

“All prices,” replied the hairdresser, wondering the extent of his customer’s gullibility—“all prices, from two-and-six up to ten shillings. The largest pots cheapest in the end.”

“How long is it in acting?” inquired the captain.

“Depends upon how you use it: well rubbed in twice a day, it would begin immediately. Renovates what’s gone, and imparts a beautiful healthy gloss to what remains.”

“A leetle off the whiskers?” inquired he.

“A little,” replied the captain, with an emphasis, thinking there was not much to spare.

“Just the p’ints off,” observed the hairdresser, pretending to be very exact.

“If I might take the liberty, sir, I would recommend one of my patent, self-ventilating, porous zephyr scalps, with invisible spring d’Orsay whiskers—the most surprising deception ever witnessed!—Impossible to detect!”

Captain Doleful was silent, for he thought they would be dear.

“Sell an immense number of them,” continued Mr. Frizwig, still trimming the whiskers. “Perhaps you know Captain Orlando Smith, the gentleman who stood for Taunton at the last election?”

The captain said “No.”

“Indeed! s’cuse the liberty, but you are so like, I thought you might be brothers. Well, his ’air was just like yours—thin at the top, strong be’ind, and I rigged him out with a scalp and whiskers, so neat and so natural that he won all the gals’ ’earts in the borough. If they’d had votes he’d have been returned. Gals like whiskers. You never see a newly married man but his whiskers have always increased.”

“And what is the price of them?” inquired the captain, recollecting how Miss Jelly had admired him in his fancy-dress moustache.

“All prices, sir! all prices!—Twenty shillings upwards. Allow me to show you some. Enoch!” calling to his foreman, “bring half-a-dozen patent zephyr scalps, dark, with invisible spring d’Orsay whiskers.”

While the apprentice was looking them out, Mr. Frizwig took a pair of large scissors and cut a great patch off the captain’s thin-haired crown.

“What are you after now, man?” exclaimed he, jumping off the chair.

“Only preparing a place for the spring to act upon,” replied Mr. Frizwig, coolly. “You are exactly like Captain Orlando Smith, the gentleman who stood for Taunton at the last election. He would have that I had spoiled him when I did so, but, my word! when he saw himself in his new ornaments, I heard no more of that.—Allow me now, sir,” continued he, bowing most obsequiously, and pointing to the chair, “to have the honour of rigging you out the same way.”

Captain Doleful, somewhat testy, but hoping for the best, then resumed his seat, and Mr. Frizwig, with the aid of Enoch, proceeded to exhibit sundry scalps and whiskers. “Too light,” said Mr. Frizwig, rejecting three or four in succession. “Too dark,” continued he, holding one to Captain Doleful’s head. “Haven’t you one with a shade of grey in it?”

“There is a slight tinge of grey in your ’air,” whispered Mr. Frizwig confidentially, as Enoch returned to the shop, “which, I have little doubt, the grand Scandinavian extract of Patagonian cream will entirely remove; but as you only intend wearing the scalp until your own ’air gets strong, it will be better to match it now, than to get a scalp of the colour your ’air will be ’ereafter.”

“But I haven’t made up my mind to have one at all yet,” observed the captain snappishly.

“Ah, you’re exactly like Captain Orlando Smith, the gentleman who stood for Taunton at the last election,” repeated the audacious perruquier. “Nothing could persuade him that I was not cheating him, and, indeed, he threatened to call the police; but, when he saw himself, he was so delighted that, in his ’urry to show himself, he left his new alpaca umbrella and cotton gloves on the counter. Ah, now this’ll be the ticket!” added he, taking an iron-grey scalp out of Enoch’s hand—“Allow me, sir,” to the captain, putting the scalp on his head and expanding it over the crown.

“Delightful!” exclaimed he, getting in front and looking the captain full in the face.—“A leetle farther back. Enoch. That’ll do. Now fasten the clasp. Charming match! Don’t think I ever saw a better.”

“Now down with the d’Orsays,” continued he, proceeding to lower his side of the bushy whiskers under the captain’s chin; adding, as they fell by the sides of his cadaverous countenance, “beautiful indeed! the very man himself.—D’Orsay, sir, was the greatest swell, sir, the world ever saw, sir. Yes, sir, the greatest swell, sir, the world ever saw, sir; and you are amazingly like ’im, sir; yes, sir, amazingly like ’im, sir.”

“But I don’t look a bit like myself,” exclaimed the captain, tartly, eyeing his hirsute appearance in the glass.

“Paradoxical as it may appear, sir, my motto is ‘art before nature,”’ replied Mr. Frizwig. “This scalp and whiskers possess an elegance and gracefulness of contour almost unattainable. Stop till you’re used to them a little,” added he, giving the horse-hair-looking beard an inward twitch. “There may be a leetle fulness round the chin, but that is easily remedied,” added Mr. Frizwig, taking the large scissors and cutting about half-an-inch off. “Now,” said he, “how do you like it?”

“Why, it’s more like the thing,” replied Captain Doleful, grinning through the great collar of horse-hair; “but I should say it is still much too full.”

“You must have it full, you know, or where would be the use of having a porous zephyr scalp and d’Orsay whiskers at all? I should say you look now as you ought to do, and as you did before your ’air got so thin. Wouldn’t you, Enoch?” Enoch thought it a charming match and fit, too.

“The hair matches well enough, perhaps,” observed the captain; “but it is the whiskers I object to. They are too large—too bushy, and look altogether too much like what one sees on a barber’s block.”

“That’s the perfection of the thing! They look like art naturalized. Nobody would even suspect that they were not your own whiskers. They’re too large to be false. As you walk up street now, you’ll hear the ladies exclaim, ‘What beautiful whiskers!’ Just as they did to Captain Orlando Smith, when he stood for Taunton.”

The captain twitched and pulled the whiskers and beard, and scanned himself minutely.

“If you would allow me to cut off the remnants of your own whiskers,” observed Mr. Frizwig, “these new ones would sit much closer, and have a more natural air;” saying which he gently lifted a whisker, and with his large scissors laid one cheek bare before the captain had time to say nay.

“Confound it, I wish you wouldn’t be quite so handy with your scissors,” observed the captain with a frown.

“Beg pardon,” bowed the obsequious barber, “but I think you’ll agree with me that that’s a decided improvement—Isn’t it, Enoch?”

“Looks uncommon well now,” replied Enoch, grinning. “Doesn’t the gen’leman think so himself?”

Doleful did not deign a reply. He sat twisting and turning and examining himself first in the mirror, then in the hand-glass, then in the hand-glass and mirror conjointly, trying if he could make himself believe he looked as he did when he came in. The whiskers certainly were tremendous—strong, coarse, black hair, with a uniform inward curl. Still we do not mean to say that we have not seen as big a pair, though certainly not on so unhealthy a soil as the captain’s cheeks.

“What’s to pay?” at length inquired he, adjusting his embroidered collars over his mohair stock, and putting on his coat: “you’ll not charge for cutting, of course?”

“Let me see,” replied Mr. Frizwig, rubbing his hands—“any ’air-brushes, tooth-brushes, sponges, soap wanted?”

“No,” said Captain Doleful, dryly.

“Just a ten-shilling pot of Scandinavian extract.—No curling fluid, tooth-powder, lavender water? Got some uncommonly genuine Eau de Cologne.”

“No! No!” interrupted the captain; “I only want a half-crown pot of extract. that, and a shilling discount off the sovereign, will be a guinea and sixpence—say a guinea.”

“Beg pardon, scalp, six-and-twenty.”

“How’s that? you said a sovereign.”

“From a sovereign.”

“I understood you to say that a sovereign was the price, or I wouldn’t have had one.”

“Beg pardon, sir, you quite misunderstood me. No doubt you could have one for a sovereign, but it would be a thing like a door-mat, without the invisible spring d’Orsay whiskers.”

“Invisible spring d’Orsay fiddle-sticks!” growled the captain. “I wanted nothing of the sort.”

“Beg ten thousand pardons, sir,—shall be happy to take it back, I’m sure.”

“And what am I do without my own whisker that you cut off?” inquired the captain angrily.

“The Scandinavian extract ’ill soon restore it!”

“Scandinavian devil!—Well, come, six-and-twenty,” repeated the captain, producing his old leather purse.

“Scalp, six-and-twenty; invisible spring-whiskers, ten—one pound sixteen.”

“Hold!” cried the captain, “I won’t be imposed upon!”

“Sir!” exclaimed Mr. Frizwig, in a tone of dignified astonishment, drawing himself up. “We are not accustomed to such language here.”

“I tell you, sir,” said the captain, “that you gave me to understand the scalp and whiskers were a pound.”

“I don’t know what your comprehension may be equal to,” replied Mr. Frizwig, rubbing his hands, “but I assure you, one pound sixteen shillings is my price, and one pound sixteen shillings I mean to have, or you may doff your head-dress as soon as you like. Enoch, mind the door!” giving his foreman a wink.

“Take it then!” screamed the captain, dashing the money on the counter; “and if ever I set foot in your——shop again, I hope I may be—”

“Shut up shop, Enoch!—shut up shop!” exclaimed Mr. Frizwig to his apprentice. “It’s all over with us; this venerable ourang-outang says he won’t come back;” saying which master and man burst into a loud guffaw, in the midst of which Captain Doleful hurried away.