CHAPTER VI

Montague had now been officially pronounced complete by his tailor; and Reval had sent home the first of Alice’s street gowns, elaborately plain, but fitting her conspicuously, and costing accordingly.  So the next morning they were ready to be taken to call upon Mrs. Devon.

Of course Montague had heard of the Devons, but he was not sufficiently initiated to comprehend just what it meant to be asked to call.  But when Oliver came in, a little before noon, and proceeded to examine his costume and to put him to rights, and insisted that Alice should have her hair done over, he began to realize that this was a special occasion.  Oliver was in quite a state of excitement; and after they had left the hotel, and were driving up the Avenue, he explained to them that their future in Society depended upon the outcome of this visit.  Calling upon Mrs. Devon, it seemed, was the American equivalent to being presented at court.  For twenty-five years this grand lady had been the undisputed mistress of the Society of the metropolis; and if she liked them, they would be invited to her annual ball, which took place in January, and then for ever after their position would be assured.  Mrs. Devon’s ball was the one great event of the social year; about one thousand people were asked, while ten thousand disappointed ones gnashed their teeth in outer darkness.

All of which threw Alice into a state of trepidation.

“Suppose we don’t suit her!” she said.

To that the other replied that their way had been made smooth by Reggie Mann, who was one of Mrs. Devon’s favourites.

A century and more ago the founder of the Devon line had come to America, and invested his savings in land on Manhattan Island.  Other people had toiled and built a city there, and generation after generation of the Devons had sat by and collected the rents, until now their fortune amounted to four or five hundred millions of dollars.  They were the richest old family in America, and the most famous; and in Mrs. Devon, the oldest member of the line, was centred all its social majesty and dominion.  She lived a stately and formal life, precisely like a queen; no one ever saw her save upon her raised chair of state, and she wore her jewels even at breakfast.  She was the arbiter of social destinies, and the breakwater against which the floods of new wealth beat in vain.  Reggie Mann told wonderful tales about the contents of her enormous mail—­about wives and daughters of mighty rich men who flung themselves at her feet and pleaded abjectly for her favour—­who laid siege to her house for months, and intrigued and pulled wires to get near her, and even bought the favour of her servants!  If Reggie might be believed, great financial wars had been fought, and the stock-markets of the world convulsed more than once, because of these social struggles; and women of wealth and beauty had offered to sell themselves for the privilege which was so freely granted to them.