The general—she wondered where he had got that title—led her mother in to dinner, Presbury gave her his arm. On the way he found opportunity to mutter:
"Lay it on thick! Flatter the fool. You can't offend him. Tell him he's divinely handsome—a Louis Fourteen, a Napoleon. Praise everything—napkins, tablecloth, dishes, food. Rave over the wine."
But Mildred could not adopt this obviously excellent advice. She sat silent and cold, while Presbury and her mother raved and drew out the general to talk of himself—the only subject in the whole world that seemed to him thoroughly worth while. As Mildred listened and furtively observed, it seemed to her that this tiny fool, so obviously pleased by these coarse and insulting flatteries, could not possibly have had the brains to amass the vast fortune he apparently possessed. But presently she noted that behind the personality that was pleased by this gross fawning and bootlicking there lay—lay in wait and on guard—another personality, one that despised these guests of his, estimating them at their true value and using them contemptuously for the gratification of his coarse appetites. In the glimpse she caught of that deeper and real personality, she liked it even less than she liked the one upon the surface.
It was evidence of superior acumen that she saw even vaguely the real Bill Siddall, the money-maker, beneath the General William Siddall, raw and ignorant and vulgar—more vulgar in his refinement than the most shocking bum at home and at ease in foul-smelling stew. Every man of achievement hides beneath his surface—personality this second and real man, who makes the fortune, discovers the secret of chemistry, fights the battle, carries the election, paints the picture, commits the frightful murder, evolves the divine sermon or poem or symphony. Thus, when we meet a man of achievement, we invariably have a sense of disappointment. "Why, that's not the man!" we exclaim. "There must be some mistake." And it is, indeed, not the man. Him we are incapable of seeing. We have only eyes for surfaces; and, not being doers of extraordinary deeds, but mere plodders in the routines of existence, we cannot believe that there is any more to another than there is to ourselves. The pleasant or unpleasant surface for the conventional relations of life is about all there is to us; therefore it is all there is to human nature. Well, there's no help for it. In measuring our fellow beings we can use only the measurements of our own selves; we have no others, and if others are given to us we are as foozled as one knowing only feet and inches who has a tape marked off in meters and centimeters.
It so happened that in her social excursions Mildred had never been in any of the numerous homes of the suddenly and vastly rich of humble origin. She was used to—and regarded as proper and elegant—the ordinary ostentations and crudities of the rich of conventional society. No more than you or I was she moved to ridicule or disdain by the silliness and the tawdry vulgarity of the life of palace and liveried lackey and empty ceremonial, by the tedious entertainments, by the displays of costly and poisonous food. But General Siddall's establishment presented a new phase to her—and she thought it unique in dreadfulness and absurdity.
The general had had a home life in his youth—in a coal-miner's cabin near Wilkes-Barre. Ever since, he had lived in boarding-houses or hotels. As his shrewd and rapacious mind had gathered in more and more wealth, he had lived more and more luxuriously—but always at hotels. He had seen little of the private life of the rich. Thus he had been compelled to get his ideas of luxury and of ceremonial altogether from the hotel-keepers and caterers who give the rich what the more intelligent and informed of the rich are usually shamed by people of taste from giving themselves at home.
She thought the tablecloth, napkins, and gaudy gold and flowery cut glass a little overdone, but on the whole not so bad. She had seen such almost as grand at a few New York houses. The lace in the cloth and in the napkins was merely a little too magnificent. It made the table lumpy, it made the napkins unfit for use. But the way the dinner was served! You would have said you were in a glorified palace-hotel restaurant. You looked about for the cashier's desk; you were certain a bill would be presented after the last course.
The general, tinier and more grotesque than ever in the great high-backed, richly carved armchair, surveyed the progress of the banquet with the air of a god performing miracles of creation and passing them in review and giving them his divine endorsement. He was well pleased with the enthusiastic praises Presbury and his wife lavished upon the food and drink. He would have been better pleased had they preceded and followed every mouthful with a eulogy. He supplemented their compliments with even more fulsome compliments, adding details as to the origin and the cost.
"Darcy"—this to the butler—"tell the chef that this fish is the best yet—really exquisite." To Presbury: "I had it brought over from France—alive, of course. We have many excellent fish, but I like a change now and then. So I have a standing order with Prunier—he's the big oyster- and fish-man of Paris—to send me over some things every two weeks by special express. That way, an oyster costs about fifty cents and a fish about five or six dollars."
To Mrs. Presbury: "I'll have Darcy make you and Miss Presbury—excuse me, Miss Gower—bouquets of the flowers afterward. Most of them come from New York—and very high really first-class flowers are. I pay two dollars apiece for my roses even at this season. And orchids—well, I feel really extravagant when I indulge in orchids as I have this evening. Ten dollars apiece for those. But they're worth it."