IX

It was a dinner party in one of the up-town houses—­palaces—­that begin to repeat in size, spaciousness of apartments, and decoration the splendor of the Medicean merchant princes.  It is the penalty that we pay for the freedom of republican opportunity that some must be very rich.  This is the logical outcome of the open chance for everybody to be rich —­and it is the surest way to distinction.  In a free country the course must be run, and it is by the accumulation of great wealth that one can get beyond anxiety, and be at liberty to indulge in republican simplicity.

Margaret and Miss Arbuser were ushered in through a double row of servants in livery—­shortclothes and stockings—­in decorous vacuity—­an array necessary to bring into relief the naturalness and simplicity of the entertainers.  Vulgarity, one can see, consists in making one’s self a part of the display of wealth:  the thing to be attained is personal simplicity on a background of the richest ostentation.  It is difficult to attain this, and theory says that it takes three generations for a man to separate himself thus from his display.  It was the tattle of the town that the first owner of the pictures in the gallery of the Stott mansion used to tell the prices to his visitors; the third owner is quite beyond remembering them.  He might mention, laughingly, that the ornamented shovel in the great fireplace in the library was decorated by Vavani—­it was his wife’s fancy.  But he did not say that the ceiling in the music-room was painted by Pontifex Lodge, or that six Italian artists had worked four years making the Corean room, every inch of it exquisite as an intaglio—­indeed, the reporters had made the town familiar with the costly facts.

The present occupants understood quite well the value of a background:  the house swarmed with servants—­retainers, one might say.  Margaret, who was fresh from her history class, recalled the days of Elizabeth, when a man’s importance was gauged by the retinue of servitors and men and women in waiting.  And this is, after all, a better test of wealth than a mere accumulation of things and cost of decoration; for though men and women do not cost so much originally as good pictures—­that is, good men and women—­everybody knows that it needs more revenue to maintain them.  Though the dinner party was not large, there was to be a dance afterwards, and for every guest was provided a special attendant.

The dinner was served in the state dining-room, to which Mr. Henderson had the honor of conducting Margaret.  Here prevailed also the same studied simplicity.  The seats were for sixteen.  The table went to the extremity of elegant plainness, no crowding, no confusion of colors under the soft lights; if there was ostentation anywhere, it was in the dazzling fineness of the expanse of table-linen, not in the few rare flowers, or the crystal, or the plate, which was of