Little Mr Bouncer and His Friend Verdant Green/Chapter 26
CHAPTER XXVI.
LITTLE MR. BOUNCER IS TAKEN CAPTIVE BY THE FRENCH.
ab No. 7542, a four-wheeler, rattled through the London streets, and passing Covent Garden Market, set down Mr. Bouncer and Huz and Buz at the Old Hummums. The little gentleman always patronised this hotel when he visited town unaccompanied by his mother and sister; but, when they were with him, they all stayed at Morley's—the Old Hummums, for some reason, declining to lodge ladies within its comfortable walls, and, therefore, necessitating the taking of Mr. Bouncer's women-kind to other quarters. Huz and Buz were far more trouble some fellow-travellers than were Mrs. and Miss Bouncer, for they demanded a great deal of thought and attention as to their board and lodging; and, when in strange quarters, they howled so pertinaciously and dismally, that they constituted themselves into a gigantic nuisance that could not be tolerated over a second night's stay, without a demand being made from the sufferers for the intervention of the police. Mr. Bouncer, however, was enabled to make such arrangements for the lodgment of his dogs that there seemed a reasonable hope that the sleep of the sojourners in the Old Hummums would not, on that night, be disturbed by the discordant howlings of Huz and Buz.
After luncheon, Mr. Bouncer thought that he would make a call upon Messrs. Stump and Rowdy. They were the individuals who, according to the little gentleman's own language, had got all his tin or property until he came of age, and only let him have money at certain times, because it was tied up, as they facetiously termed it; though, why they had tied it up, and where they had tied it up, Mr. Bouncer had .no more idea than had the two dogs that he had left tied up in the little yard at the rear of the Old Hummums. But, he now desired to extract some "tin" from these gentlemen—his purse, at the end of the Oxford summer term, having shrunk to the smallest dimensions; a circumstance by no means peculiar to Mr. Bouncer. It, therefore, became necessary for him to work the tin-mine, and to extract the highest possible sum from his purse-bearers.
When he had started on his way to Stump and Rowdy's, it occurred to him that his half-cropped head of hair might present an appearance that would be, to say the least, peculiar. In fact, he wondered what effect it had already produced upon the waiters at the Old Hummums, and upon the stately old lady who presided over the bar. He, therefore, decided to turn into the nearest hairdresser's shop, and there to obtain the completion of that tonsorial process that had been commenced by Mr. Quickfall at Barham. When he came to this resolution, he was in the near neighbourhood of Leicester Square; and, if he had troubled himself to think twice on the subject, he might have concluded that he should infallibly enter the shop of a foreigner. Such was the case. Passing into a hairdresser's shop, bright with gilding and mirrors—neat, clean, and polished, tasteful and elegant in all its appointments, and, in a word, an utter contrast to the poky and dirty "spacious hair-cutting saloon" of the Barham barber, Mr. Bouncer found himself in the presence of the proprietor of the establishment, who was so decidedly French, that, as was soon apparent, he had not picked up sufficient English to enable him to converse with such a true-born Briton as was Mr. Bouncer.
It was that little gentleman's misfortune, rather than his fault, that, although he had been taught Greek and Latin, both at school and college, he had never been instructed in the tongue spoken on the other side of the Channel. Perhaps, the knowledge of French was expected to be developed spontaneously, and to come in the course of nature, like the growth of whiskers; but, as yet, Nature had neither favoured Mr. Bouncer with whiskers nor the capacity to speak French. Therefore, he was only able to make signs to this second of the brace of barbers who chanced to be his tonsors on that day, and to take a seat and point to his hair, and say, in pigeon-English that he fancied would be intelligible to the Frenchman—"De hair—cut—sivoo play?" Little Mr. Bouncer was rather pleased at being able to produce this genuine fragment of French.
Probably (very probably!) he did not give it the genuine Parisian accent, and the proprietor of the establishment may have at once discerned that he was an insular personage who was not conversant with the language of grace and civilisation; for, he replied, in the very best English that he could produce for the occasion, "De har? var goot!" Then he tucked him up in a wrapper, and, as he briskly combed out his hair, said, "From de contree? ha, ha! jusso!" Mr. Bouncer felt inclined to further air his little stock of French by answering, "We, Mossoo!" but he timely reflected that this display of knowledge might plunge him into colloquial difficulties out of which the mossoo would alone rise triumphant; and, therefore, as he felt that he would be unable to frame a reply to further remarks, he thought it best to grunt out a monosyllabic "Yes!" and to wonder within himself—whatever will the Mossoo think of Mr. Quickfall's haircutting?
Mossoo had relapsed into silence, and, perhaps as a token that he had no desire to force his customer into an unwished-for conversation, had politely placed in his hands a newspaper, wherewith he might beguile himself during the tedium of the haircutting. It was a copy of the "Journal des Débats" and, to Mr. Bouncer, it might as well have been a page of Chinese, or a sheet of cuneiform inscriptions.
If, before entering the shop, he could but have glanced at a book of French and English conversation, he might, by its aid, have been able to say to the hairdresser, with an approximate imitation of his own language—
"I wish my hair cut. I wish it cut short. I wish it cut not too short. I wish it left long behind. I wish it left short behind. I wish the curls over the ears to be preserved. I wish it to be parted on the left side. I wish it to be parted on the right side. I wish it to be parted at the back. I wish it not to be parted at the back. I wish the whiskers to be trimmed. I wish the whiskers not to be touched. I wish you to shampoo me. I do not wish you to shampoo me. You may put some grease to my hair. I desire that you do not put any wash to my head. I hope your brushes are clean. Have you a clean comb? Can you supply me with cosmetics, fancy-soaps, tooth-brushes, bandoline, pomades, hair-oil, combs, hair-pins, curling-tongs, hair-brushes, shaving-cream, razors, scent, and articles for the toilette?"
But, Mr. Bouncer was not provided with a copy of such a work as this—which, it may be presumed, would be published by the Society for the Confusion of Useless Knowledge, and, therefore, he was cut off from the possibility of chattering to the hairdresser in his native French—as pronounced at Stratford-at-Bowe—which, perhaps, was not of much consequence; for, unless the hairdresser had replied in the words, and with the accent, set down for him in the Guide, Mr. Bouncer would have been left all abroad in the conversation.
As it was, both he and Mossoo kept silence; and, as he held the "Journal" of an unknown tongue in his hands, he could not but reflect how very unlike this Parisian hairdresser of "the little village" was to the barber of Barham.
French taste reigned around him, and French sights and sounds met his ears and eyes.
A few hours since he was in Mr. Quickfall's unmistakably English shop at Barham, and now he might have been in the heart of Paris for all that he could see or hear to the contrary.
A young and fashionably dressed woman was standing on the other side of the brightly polished counter, who was evidently Mossoo's wife; at any rate, he called her "Thérèse," and she addressed him as "Auguste."
To this elegant lady there entered a sprucely attired gentleman, who, with much gesticulation and shoulder-shrugging, engaged her, over the counter, in a lively conversation in French, the while he purchased something "pour la toilette."
To all this "jabber"—as he was disposed linguistically to pronounce it—Mr. Bouncer listened as in a dream, and as though he were in a foreign land, and not in the midst of the great roaring Babel that he had figuratively termed "the little village."
He sat, tucked up in his wrapper, with the French unreadable newspaper spread out over his knees, while the silent perruquier worked vigorously at his hair, with a couple of brushes, almost dancing round him, in a rapid movement, very different to the slow, ponderous motion and tedious loquacity of Mr. Quickfall, of Barham.
"Of the brace of barbers that I have bagged to-day," thought Mr. Bouncer, "give me Mossoo."
Then he heard Madame calling "Alphonse! Alphonse!" and Mr. Bouncer thought to himself, "this Alphonse is, doubtless, an assistant, who will enter all grimace and smirk."
But a patter of little feet upon the floor soon showed him that "Alphonse" was a small, white, quaintly cropped poodle, who at once trotted up to Mr. Bouncer, and looked knowingly in his face, apparently seeing, with an intelligent glance, that his master's customer was a friend to dogs.