_ CHAPTER 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!"
"But I can't," said I. "And I wouldn't if I could--because that's _me_!"
One Saturday he brought a dancing master down to my country place--Dawn Hill, which I bought of the Dumont estate and completely remodeled. I saw what the man's business was the instant I looked at him. I left him in the hall and took Monson into my den.
"Not for me!" I protested. "There's where I draw the line."
"You don't understand," he urged. "This fellow, this Alphonse Lynch, out in the hall there, isn't going to teach you dancing so that you may dance, but so that you shall be less awkward in strange company."
"My walk suits me," said I. "And I don't fall over furniture or trip people up."
"True enough," he answered. "But you haven't the complete control of your body that'll make you unconscious of it when you're suddenly shot by a butler into a room full of people you suspect of being unfriendly and critical."
Not until he used his authority as trainer-in-full-charge, did I yield. It may seem absurd to some for a serious man like me solemnly to caper about in imitation of a scraping, grimacing French-Irishman; but Monson was right, and I haven't in the least minded the ridicule he has brought on me by tattling this and the other things everywhere, since he turned against me. It's nothing new under the sun for the crowds of chuckleheads to laugh where they ought to applaud; their habit is to laugh and to applaud in the wrong places. There's no part of my career that I'm prouder of than the whole of this thorough course of education in the trifles that are yet not trifles. To have been ignorant is no disgrace; the disgrace comes when one persists in ignorance and glories in it.
Yet those who make the most pretensions in this topsy-turvy of a world regard it as a disgrace to have been obscure and ignorant, and pride themselves upon their persistence in their own kind of obscurity and ignorance! No wonder the few strong men do about as they please with such a race of nincompoopery. If they didn't grow old and tired, what would they not do?
All this time I was giving myself--or thought I was giving myself--chiefly to my business, as usual. I know now that the new interests had in fact crowded the things down town far into the background, had impaired my judgment, had suspended my common sense; but I had no inkling of this then, The most important matter that was occupying me down town was pushing Textile up toward par. Langdon's doubts, little though they influenced me, still made enough of an impression to cause me to test the market. I sold for him at ninety, as he had directed; I sold in quantity every day. But no matter how much I unloaded, the price showed no tendency to break.
"This," said I to myself, "is a testimonial to the skill with which I prepared for my bull campaign." And that seemed to me--all unsuspicious as I then was--a sufficient explanation of the steadiness of the stock which I had worked to establish in the public confidence.
I felt that, if my matrimonial plans should turn out as I confidently expected, I should need a much larger fortune than I had--for I was determined that my wife should have an establishment second to none. Accordingly, I enlarged my original plan. I had intended to keep close to Langdon in that plunge; I believed I controlled the market, but I hadn't been in Wall Street twenty years without learning that the worst thunderbolts fall from cloudless skies. Without being in the least suspicious of Langdon, and simply acting on the general principle that surprise and treachery are part of the code of high finance, I had prepared to guard, first, against being taken in the rear by a secret change of plan on Langdon's part, and second, against being involved and overwhelmed by a sudden secret attack on him from some associate of his who might think he had laid himself open to successful raiding.
The market is especially dangerous toward Christmas and in the spring--toward Christmas the big fellows often juggle the stocks to get the money for their big Christmas gifts and alms; toward spring the motive is, of course, the extra summer expenses of their families and the commencement gifts to colleges. It was now late in the spring.
I say, I had intended to be cautious. I abandoned caution and rushed in boldly, feeling that the market was, in general, safe and that Textile was under my control--and that I was one of the kings of high finance, with my lucky star in the zenith. I decided to continue my bull campaign on my own account for two weeks after I had unloaded for Langdon, to continue it until the stock was at par. I had no difficulty in pushing it to ninety-seven, and I was not alarmed when I found myself loaded up with it, quoted at ninety-eight for the preferred and thirty for the common. I assumed that I was practically its only supporter and that it would slowly settle back as I slowly withdrew my support.
To my surprise, the stock did not yield immediately under my efforts to depress it. I sold more heavily; Textile continued to show a tendency to rise. I sold still more heavily; it broke a point or two, then steadied and rose again. Instead of sending out along my secret lines for inside information, as I should have done, and would have done had I not been in a state of hypnotized judgment--I went to Langdon! I who had been studying those scoundrels for twenty-odd years, and dealing directly with and for them for ten years!
He wasn't at his office; they told me there that they didn't know whether he was at his town house or at his place in the country--"probably in the country," said his down-town secretary, with elaborate carelessness. "He wouldn't be likely to stay away from the office or not to send for me, if he were in town, would he?"
It takes an uncommon good liar to lie to me when I'm on the alert. As I was determined to see Langdon, I was in so far on the alert. And I felt the fellow was lying. "That's reasonable," said I. "Call me up, if you hear from him. I want to see him--important, but not immediate." And I went away, having left the impression that I would make no further effort.
Incredible though it may seem, especially to those who know how careful I am to guard every point and to see in every friend a possible foe, I still did not suspect that smooth, that profound scoundrel. I do not use these epithets with heat. I flatter myself I am a connoisseur of finesse and can look even at my own affairs with judicial impartiality. And Langdon was, and is now, such a past master of finesse that he compels the admiration even of his victims. He's like one of those fabled Damascus blades. When he takes a leg off, the victim forgets to suffer in his amazement at the cleanness of the wound, in his incredulity that the leg is no longer part of him. "Langdon," said I to myself, "is a sly dog. No doubt he's busy about some woman, and has covered his tracks." Yet I ought, in the circumstances, instantly to have suspected that I was the person he was dodging.
I went up to his house. You, no doubt, have often seen and often admired its beautiful facade, so simple that it hides its own magnificence from all but experienced eyes, so perfect in its proportions that it hides the vastness of the palace of which it is the face. I have heard men say: "I'd like to have a house--a moderate-sized house--one about the size of Mowbray Langdon's--though perhaps a little more elegant, not so plain."
That's typical of the man. You have to look closely at him, to study him, before you appreciate how he has combined a thousand details of manner and dress into an appearance which, while it can not but impress the ordinary man with its distinction, suggests to all but the very observant the most modest plainness and simplicity. How few realize that simplicity must be profound, complex, studied, not to be and to appear crude and coarse. In those days that truth had just begun to dawn on me.
"Mr. Langdon isn't at home," said the servant.
I had been at his house once before; I knew he occupied the left side--the whole of the second floor, so shut off that it not only had a separate entrance, but also could not be reached by those in the right side of the house without descending to the entrance hall and ascending the left stairway.
"Just take my card to his private secretary, to Mr. Rathburn," said I. "Mr. Langdon has doubtless left a message for me."
The butler hesitated, yielded, showed me into the reception-room off the entrance hall. I waited a few seconds, then adventured the stairway to the left, up which he had disappeared. I entered the small salon in which Langdon had received me on my other visit. From the direction of an open door, I heard his voice--he was saying: "I am not at home. There's no message."
And still I did not realize that it was I he was avoiding!
"It's no use now, Langdon," I called cheerfully. "Beg pardon for seeming to intrude. I misunderstood--or didn't hear where the servant said I was to wait. However, no harm done. So long! I'm off." But I made no move toward the door by which I had entered; instead, I advanced a few feet nearer the door from which his voice had come.
After a brief--a very brief--pause, there came in Langdon's voice--laughing, not a trace of annoyance: "I might have known! Come in, Matt!" _