Mildred glanced nervously at Siddall.She feared that Presbury had taken the wrong tone.She saw in the unpleasant eyes a glance of gratified vanity.Said he:
``Not so bad, not so bad.I saw the house in Paris, when I was taking a walk one day.I went to the American ambassador and asked for the best architect in Paris.I went to him, told him about the house--and here it is.''
``Decorations, furniture, and all!'' exclaimed Presbury.
``No, just the house.I picked up the interiors in different parts of Europe--had everything reproduced where I couldn't buy outright.I want to enjoy my money while I'm still young.I didn't care what it cost to get the proper surroundings.As I said to my architect and to my staff of artists, I expected to be cheated, but I wanted the goods.And I got the goods.I'll show you through the house after dinner.It's on this same scale throughout.And they're putting me together a country place--same sort of thing.'' He threw back his little shoulders and protruded his little chest.``And the joke of it is that the whole business isn't costing me a cent.''
``Not a cent less than half a dozen or a dozen millions,'' said Presbury.
``Not so much as that--not quite,'' protested the delightedly sparkling little general.``But what Imeant was that, as fast as these fellows spend, I go down-town and make.Fact is, I'm a little better off than I was when I started in to build.''
``Well, you didn't get any of MY money,'' laughed Presbury.``But I suppose pretty much everybody else in the country must have contributed.''
General Siddall smiled.Mildred wondered whether the points of his mustache and imperial would crack and break of, if he should touch them.She noted that his hair was roached absurdly high above the middle of his forehead and that he was wearing the tallest heels she had ever seen.She calculated that, with his hair flat and his feet on the ground, he would hardly come to her shoulder--and she was barely of woman's medium height.She caught sight of his hands--the square, stubby hands of a working man; the fingers permanently slightly curved as by the handle of shovel and pick; the skin shriveled but white with a ghastly, sickening bleached white, the nails repulsively manicured into long white curves.``If he should touch me, I'd scream,'' she thought.And then she looked at Presbury--and around her at the evidences of enormous wealth.
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.
