VIII. ON THE TRAIL OF LANGDON
I had Monson with me twice each week-day—early in the morning and again after business hours until bed-time. Also he spent the whole of every Saturday and Sunday with me. He developed astonishing dexterity as a teacher, and as soon as he realized that I had no false pride and was thoroughly in earnest, he handled me without gloves—like a boxing teacher who finds that his pupil has the grit of a professional. It was easy enough for me to grasp the theory of my new business—it was nothing more than “Be natural.” But the rub came in making myself naturally of the right sort. I had—as I suppose every man of intelligence and decent instincts has—a disposition to be friendly and simple. But my manner was by nature what you might call abrupt. My not very easy task was to learn the subtle difference between the abrupt that injects a tonic into social intercourse, and the abrupt that makes the other person shut up with a feeling of having been insulted.
Then, there was the matter of good taste in conversation. Monson found, as I soon saw, that my everlasting self-assertiveness was beyond cure. As I said to him: “I'm afraid you might easier succeed in reducing my chest measure.” But we worked away at it, and perhaps my readers may discover even in this narrative, though it is necessarily egotistic, evidence of at least an honest effort not to be baldly boastful. Monson would have liked to make of me a self-deprecating sort of person—such as he was himself, with the result that the other fellow always got the prize and he got left. But I would have none of it.
“How are people to know about you, if you don't tell 'em?” I argued. “Don't you yourself admit that men take a man at his own valuation less a slight discount, and that women take him at his own valuation plus an allowance for his supposed modesty?”
“Cracking yourself up is vulgar, nevertheless,” declared the Englishman. “It's the chief reason why we on the other side look on you Americans as a lot of vulgarians—”
“And are in awe of our superior cleverness,” I put in.
He laughed.
“Well, do the best you can,” said he. “Only, you really must not brag and swagger, and you must get out of the habit of talking louder than any one else.”
In the matter of dress, our task was easy. I had a fancy for bright colors and for strong contrasts; but I know I never indulged in clashes and discords. It was simply that in clothes I had the same taste as in pictures—the taste that made me prefer Rubens to Rembrandt. We cast out of my wardrobe everything in the least doubtful; and I gave away my jeweled canes, my pins and links and buttons for shirts and waistcoats except plain gold and pearls. I even left off the magnificent diamond I had worn for years on my little finger—but I didn't give away that stone; I put it by for resetting into an engagement ring. However, when I was as quietly dressed as it was possible for a gentleman to be, he still studied me dubiously, when he thought I wasn't seeing him. And I recall that he said once: “It's your face, Blacklock. If you could only manage to look less like a Spanish bull dashing into the ring, gazing joyfully about for somebody to gore and toss!”