Читать книгу The Debtor - Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman - Страница 5

History often repeats itself where one would least expect it, and the world-old tide of human nature has a way of finding world-old channels. Therefore it happened in Banbridge, as in ancient times, that there was a learned barber, or perhaps, to be more strictly accurate, a barber who thought that he was learned. He would have been entirely ready, had his customers coincided with his views, to have given his striped pole its old signification of the ribbon bandage which bound the arm of a patient after bleeding, and added surgery to his hair-cutting and his beard-shaving. John Flynn had the courage of utter conviction as to his own ability to master all undertakings at which he chose to tilt. An aspiration once conceived, he never parted with, but held to it as a part of his life. Non-realization made not the slightest difference. His sense of time as a portion of eternity never left him, and therefore his patience under tardy fulfilment of his desires never faltered. Some ten years before, he decided that he would at some earlier or later date become mayor of Banbridge, and his decision was still impregnable. After every new election of another candidate, he begged his patrons for their votes another time, and was not in the least disturbed nor daunted that they had failed in their former promises. Flynn's good-nature was as unfaltering as his self-esteem, perhaps because of his self-esteem. He only smiled with fatuous superiority when from time to time, after the elections, his patrons would chaff him about his failure to secure the mayoralty. They did so with more effect since there were always among the horse-players on such occasions a few who would cast votes for the barber, esteeming it as a choice and perennial joke, and his reading his name among the unsuccessful candidates served to foster his delusion and keep Flynn's ambition alive.

One Sunday, shortly after the Carrolls had moved to Banbridge, John Flynn was shaving Jacob Rosenstein, who kept the principal dry-goods store of the village, and a number of men were sitting and lounging about, waiting their turns. Flynn's shop was on the main street in the centre of the business district—his shop, or his “Tonsorial Parlor,” as his sign had it. It was quite an ornate establishment. There was a lace lambrequin in the show-window, a palm in each corner, between which stood a tank of gold-fish, and below the lace lambrequin swung a gilt cage containing an incessantly hopping, though silent, yellow canary.

Flynn was intensely proud and fond of the establishment, and was insulted if it was alluded to as a barber-shop. He himself never even thought of it, much less spoke of it, as such. “Well, I must be going to the ‘Parlor,’ ” he would say when setting out to business. He was unmarried, and lived in a boarding-house.

As Flynn shaved Rosenstein, who was naturally speechless, his landlady's husband, Billy Amidon, was talking a good deal. Amidon was always shaved for nothing, in consideration of the fact that his wife supported him with board money, and the barber had an undefined conviction that it was mean to take it back after he had just paid it. Amidon was a notorious talker, and was called a very “dry sort of man,” which, in the village vernacular, signified that he was esteemed a wit.

“Well,” he said to another man, who was leaning with a relaxation of all his muscles against the little strip of counter, which contained a modest assortment of hair-oils and shaving-brushes and soaps which nobody was ever seen to buy—“well, John has lost ten pounds since the election, Tappan.”

Tappan ran a milk-route between Banbridge and Ardmoor, a little farming-place six miles out. Tappan was an Ardmoor man. His milk-wagon stood in front of the “Tonsorial Parlor.” He had a drink of beer at Frank Steinbach's saloon next door, and now was waiting for his Sunday shave before going home. His milk-peddling was over for the day. He was a hard-working-man, and had been on the road since four o'clock. He had a heavy look about his eyes, and he greeted Amidon's facetiousness with a weary and surly hitch.

“Has he?” he replied, indifferently.

But a very young, very small man, sitting in one of the “Parlor” arm-chairs, laughed like a child, with intense enjoyment. “Yep,” he said, “I've noticed that. As much as ten pounds has went since election, sure.”

“Shet up,” replied Flynn, carefully scraping his patron's face. He said “Shet up” with an expression of foolish pride. The postmaster of Banbridge, who was sitting somewhat aloof and held himself with a constraint of exclusiveness (he was new to his office and had not yet lost the taste of its dignity), laughed.