"Is it supposed to be famous?" he asked.
"Very," she replied. "There was a lot in the newspapers about it. You see Winton--that"s my husband, you know--paid twenty-five thousand dollars to the man who created it; and that made a lot of foolish talk--people come from all over to look at it. I wanted to have it, because its shape is exactly like the coronet on my crest. Do you notice that?"
"Yes," said Montague. "It"s curious."
"I"m very proud of my crest," continued Mrs. Winnie. "Of course there are vulgar rich people who have them made to order, and make them ridiculous; but ours is a real one. It"s my own--not my husband"s; the Duvals are an old French family, but they"re not n.o.ble. I was a Morris, you know, and our line runs back to the old French ducal house of Montmorenci. And last summer, when we were motoring, I hunted up one of their chateaux; and see! I brought over this."
Mrs. Winnie pointed to a suit of armour, placed in a pa.s.sage leading to the billiard-room. "I have had the lights fixed," she added. And she pressed a b.u.t.ton, and all illumination vanished, save for a faint red glow just above the man in armour.
"Doesn"t he look real?" said she. (He had his visor down, and a battle-axe in his mailed hands.) "I like to imagine that he may have been my twentieth great-grandfather. I come and sit here, and gaze at him and shiver. Think what a terrible time it must have been to live in--when men wore things like that! It couldn"t be any worse to be a crab."
"You seem to be fond of strange emotions," said Montague, laughing.
"Maybe I am," said the other. "I like everything that"s old and romantic, and makes you forget this stupid society world."
She stood brooding for a moment or two, gazing at the figure. Then she asked, abruptly, "Which do you like best, pictures or swimming?"
"Why," replied the man, laughing and perplexed, "I like them both, at times."
"I wondered which you"d rather see first," explained his escort; "the art gallery or the natatorium. I"m afraid you"ll get tired before you"ve seen every thing."
"Suppose we begin with the art-gallery," said he. "There"s not much to see in a swimming-pool."
"Ah, but ours is a very special one," said the lady.--"And some day, if you"ll be very good, and promise not to tell anyone, I"ll let you see my own bath. Perhaps they"ve told you, I have one in my own apartments, cut out of a block of the most wonderful green marble."
Montague showed the expected amount of astonishment.
"Of course that gave the dreadful newspapers another chance to gossip,"
said Mrs. Winnie, plaintively. "People found out what I had paid for it. One can"t have anything beautiful without that question being asked."
And then followed a silence, while Mrs. Winnie waited for him to ask it. As he forebore to do so, she added, "It was fifty thousand dollars."
They were moving towards the elevator, where a small boy in the wonderful livery of plush and scarlet stood at attention. "Sometimes,"
she continued, "it seems to me that it is wicked to pay such prices for things. Have you ever thought about it?"
"Occasionally," Montague replied.
"Of course," said she, "it makes work for people; and I suppose they can"t be better employed than in making beautiful things. But sometimes, when I think of all the poverty there is, I get unhappy. We have a winter place down South--one of those huge country-houses that look like exposition buildings, and have rooms for a hundred guests; and sometimes I go driving by myself, down to the mill towns, and go through them and talk to the children. I came to know some of them quite well--poor little wretches."
They stepped out of the elevator, and moved toward the art-gallery. "It used to make me so unhappy," she went on. "I tried to talk to my husband about it, but he wouldn"t have it. "I don"t see why you can"t be like other people," he said--he"s always repeating that to me. And what could I say?"
"Why not suggest that other people might be like you?" said the man, laughing.
"I wasn"t clever enough," said she, regretfully.--"It"s very hard for a woman, you know--with no one to understand. Once I went down to a settlement, to see what that was like. Do you know anything about settlements?"
"Nothing at all," said Montague.
"Well, they are people who go to live among the poor, and try to reform them. It takes a terrible lot of courage, I think. I give them money now and then, but I am never sure if it does any good. The trouble with poor people, it seems to me, is that there are so many of them."
"There are, indeed," said Montague, thinking of the vision he had seen from Oliver"s racing-car.
Mrs. Winnie had seated herself upon a cushioned seat near the entrance to the darkened gallery. "I haven"t been there for some time," she continued. "I"ve discovered something that I think appeals more to my temperament. I have rather a leaning toward the occult and the mystical, I"m afraid. Did you ever hear of the Babists?"
"No," said Montague.
"Well, that"s a religious sect--from Persia, I think--and they are quite the rage. They are priests, you understand, and they give lectures, and teach you all about the immanence of the divine, and about reincarnation, and Karma, and all that. Do you believe any of those things?"
"I can"t say that I know about them," said he.
"It is very beautiful and strange," added the other. "It makes you realize what a perplexing thing life is. They teach you how the universe is all one, and the soul is the only reality, and so bodily things don"t matter. If I were a Babist, I believe that I could be happy, even if I had to work in a cotton-mill."
Then Mrs. Winnie rose up suddenly. "You"d rather look at the pictures, I know," she said; and she pressed a b.u.t.ton, and a soft radiance flooded the great vaulted gallery.
"This is our chief pride in life," she said. "My husband"s object has been to get one representative work of each of the great painters of the world. We got their masterpiece whenever we could. Over there in the corner are the old masters--don"t you love to look at them?"
Montague would have liked to look at them very much; but he felt that he would rather it were some time when he did not have Mrs. Winnie by his side. Mrs. Winnie must have had to show the gallery quite frequently; and now her mind was still upon the Persian transcendentalists.
"That picture of the saint is a Botticelli," she said. "And do you know, the orange-coloured robe always makes me think of the swami. That is my teacher, you know--Swami Babubanana. And he has the most beautiful delicate hands, and great big brown eyes, so soft and gentle--for all the world like those of the gazelles in our place down South!"
Thus Mrs. Winnie, as she roamed from picture to picture, while the souls of the grave old masters looked down upon her in silence.
CHAPTER VI
Montague had now been officially p.r.o.nounced 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 a.s.sured. 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.
They came to the old family mansion and rang the bell, and the solemn butler ushered them past the grand staircase and into the front reception-room to wait. Perhaps five minutes later he came in and rolled back the doors, and they stood up, and beheld a withered old lady, nearly eighty years of age, bedecked with diamonds and seated upon a sort of throne. They approached, and Oliver introduced them, and the old lady held out a lifeless hand; and then they sat down.
Mrs. Devon asked them a few questions as to how much of New York they had seen, and how they liked it, and whom they had met; but most of the time she simply looked them over, and left the making of conversation to Oliver. As for Montague, he sat, feeling perplexed and uncomfortable, and wondering, deep down in him, whether it could really be America in which this was happening.
"You see," Oliver explained to them, when they were seated in their carriage again, "her mind is failing, and it"s really quite difficult for her to receive."
"I"m glad I don"t have to call on her more than once," was Alice"s comment. "When do we know the verdict?"