On thinking them over, I determined to approach Mr. Julius C. Brentin first, an American gentleman whom I knew to be above prejudice, and to whom I could talk with perfect freedom and security.
He is a man of about fifty-five, a Californian, of medium height (which, like many Americans, he always pronounces heighth), with black hair, black eyebrows, and a small black mustache. He carries cigars loose in every pocket, and he will drink whiskey with you with great good-humor till the subject of the immortality of the soul crops up, when he suddenly becomes angry, suspicious, and, finally, totally silent. And that subject he always introduces himself, though for what reason I never can conceive, unless it be to quarrel and part. I had met him in the street a day or two before, when he told me he had recently married a New York young lady and was staying at the “Victoria”; he begged me to come and call, and on going there I found him chewing a green cigar in the smoking-room, his hat on the bridge of his pugnacious nose, and a glass of Bourbon whiskey beside him.
He reached me out a hand from the depths of his breeches pocket, as though he had just found it there and desired to make me a present of it, and pulled me down by his side. Then he gave me a long, black cigar out of his waistcoat pocket, worked his own round to the farther corner of his mouth, while with a solemn gesture he pointed to his trousers, carefully turned up over small patent-leather boots.
“Mr. Blacker,” he said, “observe my pants. I am endeavoring to please Mrs. Brentin; I am striving to be English. You English invariably turn up the bottom of your pants; it is economical and it is fashionable, don’t yer know.” And Mr. Brentin winked at me a glittering, beady black eye.
I hoped Mrs. Brentin was quite well, and he replied:
“Mrs. Brentin has gone way off to Holborn, sir; she has organized an expedition with Mrs. William Chivers, ay socially prominent Philadelphian, in search of the scene of the labors of your Mrs. Gamp. From there she goes to the Marshalsea, to discover traces of Little Dorrit. She knows your Charles Dickens by heart, sir, and she follows him ayround. This is her first visit to the old country, and I humor her tastes, which are literary and high-toned, by staying at home and practising the English accent. I have studied the English accent theoretically, and I trace it to the predominance among your people of the waist muscles. We as a nation are deficient in waist muscles. So I stay at home and exercise them in the refined society of any stranger who can be indooced to talk with me. It is a labor of some difficulty, Mr. Blacker, which is gradually driving me to drink; for the strangers in this hotel are shy, and apt to regard me in the unflattering light of ay bunco-steerer.”
Mr. Brentin sighed, drank, and worked his jaw and cigar with the solemnity of a cow masticating.
“At other times, sir,” he drawled, “I stroll a block or two, way down the Strand. I compose my features and endeavor to assoom the vacant expression of ay hayseed or countryman. I have long desired to be approached by one of your confidence-trick desperadoes, but my success so far has been mighty small. They keep away from me, sir, as though I had the grippe. I apprehend, Mr. Blacker, that in my well-meant efforts to look imbecyle, I only look cunning. If they would only try me with the green-goods swindle, I should feel my time was not being altogether misspent. It is plaguy disheartening, and I might as well be back in Noo York for all the splurge I am making over here. And how have you been putting in your time, sir, since last year, when we went down to the Durby—I should say, the Darby—together?” he asked, turning his head my way.
On any other day, I have no doubt, I should have given Mr. Brentin a spirited and somewhat lengthy sketch of my doings during the last year and a half; but my recent failures in Medworth Square had taught me the value of time, and I plunged at once into the real object of my visit.
Directly, in rapid, clear-cut outline, I began to make my scheme clear, Mr. Brentin turned and looked at me; from the rigid lines of my speaking countenance he saw at once I was in earnest, and transferred his gaze to his pants and boots. Once only he gave me another rapid look, an ocular upper-cut, apparently to satisfy himself of my sincerity, when my mask spoke so strongly of enthusiasm and determination I felt I had completely reassured him, and was, in fact, gradually overhauling his will. As I went on, he began to breathe gustily through his nose and give a series of small kicks with his varnished toe, indications of growing ardor for the enterprise and a desire to immediately set about it that simply enchanted me.