O.S.

* * * * *

ANOTHER PENDING INDEMNITY.

It has been said that the man who for his daily shave resorts habitually to a barber has already become a subject for a drastic moral operation.  That may or may not be so, but having chambers in Ryder Street and Alphonse residing within the precincts of St. James’s, I would rather have been carved morally into mincemeat than have robbed such an artist of his self-expression.

That is how I felt about it in 1914 and in many preceding years, during which, under the magic spell of Alphonse, the razor fell upon my cheek like thistledown.  Even to be lathered by him was an alluring form of hypnosis.  Alphonse was a Hokusai of barbers, but he was also a true son of France; and there were Alsace and Lorraine and the arrogance of 1870 still to be accounted for.  So Alphonse went, and in his place reigned Ferdinand.

Ferdinand, what there was of him, was a good fellow.  He was an old fire-eater.  He had lost a leg in Algeria and an eye somewhere else, and he could not comprehend why such trivial matters should disqualify a man for killing pigs.  He was, as I have said, a good fellow, but his methods of using a razor were mediaeval.  However we were not long for one another, and, as the R.N.V.R. tolerate such things, I grew a beard, an equable, regulation torpedo beard.

Omitting several super-emotional lifetimes, let us speak of a certain day not very remote when I stood, bereft of all sea power, at the top of St. James’s Street, considering what was the very best worst thing to do to a body which was bored with the reaction that follows four years’ strife upon the narrow seas.  I fingered my beard meditatively.  Yes, after all there was Alphonse.  I had almost forgotten him.  I turned my steps towards his exclusive retreat.  I entered in, and behold! there as of yore, clothed in his samite raiment, stood the incomparable Alphonse.  He had returned.  Yet in appearance he was not quite the Alphonse of old.  There was something less resilient about him, something more enduring had crept into his personality; his elasticity had somehow turned to bronze.  He was slightly grey.  Nevertheless he greeted me with a Gallic warmth that gave refreshment to my jaded spirit.

“But M’sieu would be shaved....  Yes, a beard was permissible in time of War, but in Peace—­pouf! it was barbaric.”

I allowed myself to be robed and tucked comfortably into the chair.  Alphonse busied himself with the instruments of his profession.

“Five years ago it was another world, M’sieu,” he said, churning a wooden bowl to mountains of lather.  “It is never again the same.  The Marne ...  Verdun ...  Soissons.  If M’sieu permits I would like to tell him of those years.”

I nodded and he advanced upon me with the brush.  He spoke of the retreat to Paris and the strategy of JOFFRE which so nearly overthrew three Prussian armies.  He brandished his razor and swept the Boches back over the Marne, he swept them through Senlis, he swept them across the Aisne.  His intensity was inspiring.  The smouldering fires of bygone battles leapt into his eyes.  But it was not the mesmeric shave of 1914.  He apologised humbly and applied small pieces of plaster.