The general smiled genially.``I think I may say without conceit that you will like me as you know me better.I have no bad habits--I've too much regard for my health to over-indulge or run loose.In my boyhood days I may have put in rather a heavy sowing of wild oats''--the general laughed; Mildred conjured up the wintriest and faintest of echoing smiles--``but that's all past,'' he went on, ``and there's nothing that could rise up to interfere with our happiness.You are fond of children?''
A pause, then Mildred said quite evenly, ``Yes.''
``Excellent,'' said the general.``I'll expect you and your mother and father to dinner Sunday night.Is that satisfactory?''
``Yes,'' said Mildred.
A longish pause.Then the general: ``You seem to be a little--afraid of me.I don't know why it is that people are always that way with me.'' A halt, to give her the opportunity to say the obvious flattering thing.
Mildred said nothing, gave no sign.He went on: ``It will wear away as we know each other better.I am a simple, plain man--kind and generous in my instincts.
Of course I am dignified, and I do not like familiarity.
But I do not mean to inspire fear and awe.''
A still longer pause.``Well, everything is settled,''
said the general.``We understand each other clearly?
--not an engagement, nothing binding on either side --simply a--a--an option without forfeit.'' And he laughed--his laugh was a ghoulish sound, not loud but explosive and an instant check upon demonstration of mirth from anyone else.
``I understand,'' said Mildred with a glance toward the door through which Presbury and his wife had disappeared.
``Now, we'll join the others, and I'll show you the house''--again the laugh--``what may be your future home--one of them.''
The four were soon started upon what was for three of them a weariful journey despite the elevator that spared them the ascents of the stairways.The house was an exaggerated reproduction of all the establishments of the rich who confuse expenditure with luxury and comfort.Bill Siddall had bought ``the best of everything''; that is, the things into which the purveyors of costly furnishings have put the most excuses for charging.Of taste, of comfort, of discrimination, there were few traces and these obviously accidental.
``I picked out the men acknowledged to be the best in their different lines,'' said the general, ``and I gave them carte blanche.''
``I see that at a glance,'' said Presbury.``You've done the grand thing on the grandest possible scale.''
``I've looked into the finest of the famous places on the other side,'' said the general.``All I can say is, I've had no regrets.''
``I should say not,'' cried Mrs.Presbury.
With an affectation of modest hesitation--to show that he was a gentleman with a gentleman's fine appreciation of the due of maiden modesty--Siddall paused at the outer door of his own apartments.But at one sentence of urging from Mrs.Presbury he opened the door and ushered them in.And soon he was showing them everything--his Carrara marble bathroom and bathing-pool, his bed that had been used by several French kings, his dressing-room with its appliances of gold and platinum and precious stones, his clothing.
They had to inspect a room full of suits, huge chiffoniers crowded with shirts and ties and underclothes.
He exhibited silk dressing-robes and pajamas, pointed out the marks of the fashionable London and Paris makers, the monograms, the linings of ermine and sable.
``I'm very particular about everything that touches me,'' explained he.``It seems to me a gentleman can't be too particular.'' With a meaning glance at Mildred, ``And I'd feel the same way about my wife.''
``You hear that, Mildred?'' said Presbury, with a nasty little laugh.He had been relieving the tedium of this sight-seeing tour by observing--and from time to time aggravating--Mildred's sufferings.
The general released his mirth-strangling goat laugh;Mrs.Presbury echoed it with a gale of rather wild hysterics.So well pleased was the general with the excursion and so far did he feel advanced toward intimacy that on the way down the majestic marble stairway he ventured to give Mildred's arm a gentle, playful squeeze.And at the parting he kissed her hand.Presbury had changed his mind about returning to the country.On the way to the hotel he girded at Mildred, reviewing all that the little general had said and done, and sneering, jeering at it.Mildred made not a single retort until they were upstairs in the hotel.At the door to her room she said to Presbury--said it in a quiet, cold, terrible way:
``If you really want me to go through with this thing, you will stop insulting him and me.If you do it again, I'll give up--and go on the streets before I'll marry him.''
Presbury shrugged his shoulders and went on to the other room.But he did not begin again the next day, and from that time forth avoided reference to the general.In fact, there was an astonishing change in his whole demeanor.He ceased to bait his wife, became polite, even affable.If he had conducted himself thus from the outset, he would have got far less credit, would have made far less progress toward winning the liking of his wife, and of her daughter, than he did in a brief two weeks of change from petty and malignant tyrant to good-natured, interestingly talkative old gentleman.
