H. RIDGE & CO., IMPORTERSTEAS AND COFFEES
H. RIDGE & CO., IMPORTERSTEAS AND COFFEES
Horatio broke into an excited grin, as Milly grasped his arm.
"Oh, papa—is ityou?"
"It'smeall right!" And he flung out a leg with a strut of proprietorship. "Opened last week. Want to see the inside?"
"And Hoppers'?" Milly inquired as they crossed the muddy street, dodging the procession of drays.
"Hoppers'—I just chucked it," Horatio swaggered. "Guess I'm old enough to work for myself if I'm ever going to—no money in working for the other feller."
When they had climbed the narrow, dark stairway to the second floor, Horatio flung open the door to the low, unpartitioned room that ran clear to the rear of the building. A man rose from behind the solitary desk near the front window.
"Let me introduce you to the Company," Horatio announced with gravity. "Mr. Snowden, my daughter!"
They laughed, and Milly detected an air of embarrassment as the man came forward. In the clear light of the window his hair and mustache seemed blacker than she remembered; she suspected that they had been dyed. As Milly shook hands with the "Company," she had her first moment of doubt about the enterprise.
"My daughter, Miss Simpson," and Milly was shaking hands with a quiet, homely little woman in spectacles, who might have been twenty-five or fifty, and who gave Milly a keen, suspicious, commercial look. She was evidently all that was left of the "company,"—bookkeeper, stenographer, clerk.
Beside the desk there was a large round table with some unwashed cups and saucers, a coffee boiler, and in the rear sample cases and bundles,—presumably the results of importations. Milly admired everything generously. She was bothered by discovering Snowden as "the company" and considered whether she ought to confide to her father what she knew of the man. "He's no gentleman," she thought. "But that would not be any reason for his being a bad business man," she reflected shrewdly. And in spite of her woman's misgivings of any person who was errant "that way," she decided to be silent. "He may have regretted it,—poor old thing."
Snowden left the place with them. Drawn up in front of the building was a small delivery wagon, with a spindly horse and a boy. Freshly painted on the dull black cover was the legend: "H. Ridge & Co. TEAS AND COFFEES."
"City deliveries," Horatio explained. Snowden smiled wanly. Somehow the spindly horse did not inspire Milly with confidence, nor the small boy. But the outfit might answer very well for "city deliveries." Milly was determined to see nothing but a rosy future for the venture. She listened smilingly to Horatio, who bobbed along by her side, talking all the time.
Evidently things had been moving with the Ridges since her departure. Milly's insistent ambitions had borne fruit. She had roused the quiescent Horatio. Hoppers' mail-order house offered a secure berth for a middle-aged man, who had rattled half over the American continent in search of stability. But, he told himself, the fire was not all out of his veins yet, and Milly supplied the incentive this time "to better himself." After some persuasion he had hired his friend Snowden, who had not yet been invited to become a partner at Hoppers', and who agreed to put ten thousand dollars into the new business, which Horatio was to manage. And Grandma Ridge had been persuaded to invest five thousand dollars, half of what the judge had left her, in her son's new venture. Then a chance of buying out the China American Tea Company had come. Horatio, of course, knew nothing about tea, and less about coffee; his experience had been wholly in drugs. But he argued optimistically that tea and coffee in a way were drugs, and if a man could sell one sort of drugs why not another? He saw himself in his own office, signing the firm's name,—his own name!
"Father!" Milly exclaimed that evening, throwing her arms boisterously about the little man, in the hoydenish manner so much deplored by her grandmother,—"Isn't it great! Your own business—and you'll make lots of money, lots—I'm perfectly sure."
Her ambitions began to flower. There was a delicious sense of venture to the whole thing: it offered that expansible horizon so necessary to the happiness of youth, though it might be hard to see just why Horatio Ridge's entering upon the wholesale tea and coffee business at the mature age of fifty should light the path to a gorgeous future.
Mrs. Ridge was a rather wet blanket, to be sure, but Grandma was a timid old lady who did not like travelling in the dark.
"I hope it will come out right—I hope so," she repeated lugubriously.
For a few fleeting moments Milly recalled the spindly horse and the scrubby boy of the delivery wagon, but for only a few moments. Then her natural buoyancy overcame any doubts.
"I'm sure father will make a great success of the business!" and she gave him another hug. Was he not doing this for her? Horatio, twisting his cigar rapidly between his teeth, strode back and forth in the little room and nodded optimistically. He was a merchant....
One pleasant Sunday in May, father and daughter took the street-car to the city and strolled north towards the river past "the store." Horatio glanced proudly at the sign, which was already properly tarnished by the smoke. Milly turned to gaze at a smart new brougham that was climbing the ascent to the bridge. There were two men on the box.
"That's the Danners' carriage," she said knowingly to her father, "and Mrs. George Danner."
There were few carriages with two men on the box in the city those days, and they were well worth a young woman's attention. The Danners had come to Chicago hardly a generation before, "as poor as poverty," as Milly knew. Now their mammoth dry goods establishment occupied almost a city block, and young Mrs. Danner had two men on the box—all out of dry goods. Why should not coffee and tea produce the same results? Father and daughter crossed the bridge, musingly, arm in arm.
From the grimy fringe of commerce about the river they penetrated the residence quarter beside the Lake. Milly made her father observe the freshness of the air coming from the water, and how clean and quiet the streets were. Indeed this quarter of the noisy new city had something of the settled air of older communities "back east" that Horatio remembered happily. Milly led him easily around the corner of Acacia Street to the block where the Nortons lived.
"Aren't they homey looking, father? And just right for us.... Now that one at the end of the block—it's empty.... You can see the lake from the front windows. Just think, to be able toseesomething!"
They went up the steps of the vacant house, and to be sure a little slice of blue water closed the vista at the end of the street. Horatio swung his cane hopefully. The pleasant day, the sense of "being his own man" exhilarated him: he dealt lightly with the "future."
"It's a tony neighborhood, all right," he agreed. "What did you say these houses rent for?"
"Eighty dollars a month—that's what the Nortons pay."
"Eighty a month—that's not bad, considering what you get!" Horatio observed largely.
It was a bargain, of course, as father and daughter tried to convince Mrs. Ridge. But the old lady, accustomed to Euston, Pa., rents, thought that the forty dollars a month they had to pay for the West Laurence box was regal, and when it was a question of subletting it at a sacrifice and taking another for twice the sum she quaked—visibly.
"Don't you think, Horatio, you'd better wait and see how the new business goes?"
But the voice of prudence was not to the taste of the younger generations.
"It'll be so near the store," Milly suggested. "Papa can come home for his lunch."
"You've got to live up to your prospects, mother," Horatio pronounced robustly.
The old lady saw that she was beaten and said no more. With compressed lips she contemplated the future. Father and daughter had no doubts: they both possessed the gambling American spirit that reckons the harvest ere the seed is put in the ground.
That evening after Milly had departed Horatio explained himself further,—
"You see, mother, we must start Milly the best we can. She's made a lot of real good friends for herself, and she'll marry one of these days. It's our duty to give her every chance."
It never occurred to Horatio that a healthy young woman of twenty with no prospect of inheritance might find something better worth doing in life than amusing herself while waiting for a husband. Such strenuous ideas were not in the air then.
"She'll always have a home so long as I'm alive and can make one for her," he said sentimentally. "But she'll get one for herself, you see!"
He was vastly proud of "his girl,"—of her good looks, her social power, her clever talk. And the old lady was forced to agree—they must give Milly her chance.
So that autumn the Ridges trekked again from West Laurence Avenue to the snug little house on Acacia Street, "just around the corner from the Drive." At last Milly had won her point and translated herself from the despised West Side to the heart of the "nicest" neighborhood in the city. After the turmoil of moving she went to her bed in the third floor front room, listening to the splash of the lake on the breakwater, dreaming of new conquests.
What next?
All this time, while Milly Ridge was busily spinning her little cocoon in the big city, other and more serious life had been going on there, it is needless to say. Out of the human stream Milly was gathering to her attractive individualities, and Horatio was faithfully performing his minor function in the dingy brick establishment of the Hoppers'. Many hundreds of thousands, men and women, were weaving similar webs. For there was hardly a more stirring corner of the earth's broad platter than this same sprawling prairie city at the end of the great lake. All this time it had been swelling, much to the gratification of its boastful citizens,—getting busier, getting richer, getting dirtier. There had been many a civic throb and groan,—rosy successes and dreary failures.
But of all this surrounding life Milly was not faintly conscious. She could tell you just when the custom of giving afternoon teas first reached Chicago, when "two men on the box" became the rule, when the first Charity Ball was held and who led the grand march and why, and when women wore those absurd puffed sleeves and when they first appeared with long tails to their coats. But of the daily doings of men folk when they disappeared of a morning into the smoky haze of the city, and of all the mighty human forces around her, she had not the slightest conception, as indeed few of her sisters had at that time. To all intents and purposes she might as well have lived in the eighteenth century or in the Colorado desert, as in Chicago in the eighties and early nineties of this marvellous nineteenth century.
Horatio often referred to Chicago as a "real live town," and congratulated himself for being part of it. It was the one place in all the world to do business in. It grew over night, so the papers said each morning, and was manifestly destined to be the metropolis of the western hemisphere, etc., etc. All that was in the opulent future, for which every one lived. Even Horatio, who spent all his waking hours among men, did not in the least comprehend what it might be to live in this centre of expanding race energy. Yet he would point out to Milly appreciatively on their Sunday walks the acres of new building growing mushroomlike from the sandy soil, with the miles of tangled railroad tracks, the forest of smoking chimneys, and the ever widening canopy of black smoke. It was all ugly and dirty, the girl thought. She preferred the drive along the lake shore, and the Bowman's new palace with its machicolated cornice.
It was all business, intensely business: business affected even social moments. Later, when Milly became sophisticated enough to generalize, she complained that the men were "all one kind"; they could "talk of nothing but business to a woman." Even their physique, heavy and flabby, showed the office habit, in contrast with the bony and ruddy Englishmen, who drifted through the city from time to time. That Chicago was a huge pool into which all races and peoples drained,—that was a fact of which Milly was only dimly conscious. "You see so many queer, foreign-looking people on the street," she might observe. "Polacks and Dagoes!... Ugh.... Wish they'd stay at home!" Horatio would growl in response. Milly supposed they came from the "Yards," where hordes of these savage-looking foreigners were employed in the disagreeable task of slaughtering cattle. Their activity was only too evident certain days when the wind veered to the southwest and filled the city with an awful stench.
Of what it all meant, this huddling together of strange peoples from the four quarters of the globe, Milly never took the time to think. She never had the least conception of what it was,—the many miles of bricks and mortar, the tangled railroads, the ceaseless roar of the great city like the din of a huge factory. Here was the mill and the market—here was LIFE in its raw material. When she crossed the murky, slimy river, as she had occasion to do almost daily, after the removal to the North Side, she thought merely how dingy and dirty the place was, and what a pity it was one had to go through such a mess to reach the best shops and the other quarters of the city where "nice" people lived. She saw neither the beauty nor the significance of those grimy warehouses thrusting up along the muddy river amid the steam and the smoke—caverns that concealed hardware, tools, groceries, lumber,—all the raw protoplasm of life. An artist remarked once to Milly, "It's like Hell—and like Paradise, all in one,—this river!" She thought him rather silly.
One evening, however, out of this roaring hive of men and women striving to feed and clothe and house themselves came a flash of vivid lightning in the murky sky,—the bomb of the anarchist. That was enough to startle even the Milly Ridges,—spitting forth its vicious message only a mile or two from where the very "nicest" people had their homes! The sodden consciousness of the city awoke in a hideous nightmare of fear. The newspapers were filled with the ravings of excited ignorance. Nobody talked of anything else. Horatio declaimed against the ungrateful dogs,—those "Polack beasts,"—who weren't fit to enjoy all that America gave them. At dinner parties grave and serious men debated in low tones the awful deed and its meaning. Even women spoke of the bomb instead of discussing whether "you could get this at Field's" or "should try Mandel's." A fearful vision of Anarchy stalked the commonplace streets and peered into comfortable houses. Milly imagined that somehow those evil-looking barbarians had got loose from the stockyards and might descend at any moment upon the defenceless city in a howling mob, as she had read of their doing in her history books. For the first few days it was an excitement to venture into the streets at night, even with a strong male escort. Horatio spoke solemnly, with an aroused consciousness of citizenship, of "teaching the mob lessons and a wholesome respect for the law." Then there were the rumors fresh every hour of plots against leading men and wholesale slaughter by these same bloodthirsty anarchists, and the theatrical discoveries of the police—it was a breathless time, when even Milly seized upon the newspaper of a morning. Then gradually, as the police gathered in the little band of scapegoats, the tension relaxed: people went to the celebrated Haymarket to gape at the spot where the crime against society had taken place....
The excitement flamed up once more when the anarchists were brought to trial. Women fought for the chance to sit in the noisome little court-room, to see the eight men caught like rats in the nets of Justice. When life emerges dramatically in the court-room, it interests the Milly Ridges.... One morning Sally Norton came flying into the Ridge house.
"Get your things on, Mil!" she rippled breathlessly. "We're going to the anarchist trial."
"But the papers say you can't get near the door."
"Father's given me a card to the judge—he knows him. Come on—Vivie's waiting at the corner."
In such heady excitement the three girls raced to the criminal court building and were smuggled by a fat bailiff through the judge's private chambers into the crowded scene. There was not six inches of standing room to be had in the place except beside the judge, and there the bailiff installed the young women in comfortable chairs, much to the envy of the perspiring throng beneath.
There, behold, beside the grave judge, facing the court-room, above the counsel, the reporters, the prisoners, sat Milly Ridge and Sally and Vivie Norton, in their best clothes, with the sweeping plumed hats that had just come into fashion then.... Milly beamed with pleasure and excitement, casting alluring glances from beneath her great hat at the severe judge. It was like a play, and she had a very good seat.
It was a play that went on day after day for weeks, sometimes dull with legal formalities, sometimes tense with "human" interest. And, day after day, the three girls occupied their favored seats beside the judge, listening to the evidence of the great conspiracy against Society, watching the prisoners—a sorry lot of men generally—and staring haughtily down at the jammed court-room. Their presence, of course, was noted by the reporters and mentioned as at a social event "among our society leaders in daily attendance at the trial." Their names and dresses were duly recorded, along with pen pictures of the anarchists. It quite fluttered Milly, this prominence,—"the Misses Norton and Miss Mildred Ridge, etc."
The three girls became deeply interested in the prisoners and picked their favorites among them. Sally was for a German because he looked to be "such an interesting devil," and Vivie was intrigued by the newspaper stories about another. Milly was drawn to the youngest of all,—a mere lad, blue-eyed and earnest, who had evidently "got into bad company" and been led astray. Vivie sent her man flowers,—a bunch of deep red roses,—and the next day he appeared wearing one conspicuously pinned to his coat. Sally coaxed the obliging bailiff to smuggle them all into the jail so that they might see the prisoners and talk to them through the bars. But the great event was when Spies made his celebrated speech of defiance, breathing scorn and hatred of his captors. Sally Norton rose in her seat and threw him kisses with both hands. A bailiff came, put his hand on her shoulder, and forced her to be quiet. It made something of a scene in court. The judge looked annoyed. Then Sally had a fit of the giggles and finally had to leave the room.
But when the turn of Milly's hero came to speak in his own defence, Milly had a choking sensation in her throat and felt the warm tears run over her cheeks. He, too, was brave. He talked of the wrongs of society, and Milly realized somehow that she was part of the society he was condemning,—one of the more privileged at the feast of life, who made it impossible for the many others to get what they wanted. Of course his views were wrong,—all the men she knew said so,—but the pity of it all in his case, so young and handsome and brave he appeared!
While counsel wrangled and pleaded, while this little group of men rounded up by the police to stand sponsors for Anarchy and expiate its horrid creed, so that good citizens might sleep peacefully nights, faced death, the three girls sat and stared at the spectacle. It passed slowly, and the prisoners were condemned by a jury of their peers quite promptly, and the grave judge sentenced them "to hang by their necks until dead." At the dreadful words Milly gasped, then sobbed outright.
No matter what they had done, at least whathehad done, how wronghisideas about society were,hewas too young and too handsome for such an awful fate. If he had only had about him from the beginning the right influences, if some woman had loved him and guided him aright,—Milly hoped that he might yet be spared, pardoned if possible. Mopping the tears from her eyes she left the court-room for the last time, with a vague sense of the wretchedness of life—sometimes.
That very night, however, she was as gay and bright as ever at the Kemps' dinner. A fascinating young lawyer was of the party, a newcomer to the city, who dared to raise his voice in that citadel of respectability, the Kemps' Gothic dining-room, and declare that the whole affair was a miserable travesty of justice,—a conspiracy framed up by the police. "They have the city scared," he said, "and nobody dares say what he thinks. The newspapers know the truth, but the big men make the papers keep quiet." It was all quite thrilling, Milly thought. Perhaps, after all, her young man was not a villain. The table of sober diners sat very still, but afterwards the banker pronounced what the young lawyer said to be "loose talk" and "wicked nonsense." And Milly knew one young man who would never be asked again to the Granger Avenue house.
After the verdict came all sorts of legal delays, and Milly largely lost interest in the anarchists. The drama had evaporated, and though she continued to read what the papers printed about the prisoners, more personal affairs crowded in to blot out from her mind that sense of a large, suffering humanity which she had had for a few moments. When the governor was finally induced to intervene and commute some of the sentences, she had a muddled notion that he had deprived Society of its just vengeance, that the well-to-do, well-meaning people had failed to get full punishment for the shocking deeds of the anarchists.
And that was all.
About a year later the young blue-eyed anarchist, in whom Milly had been interested, blew off the top of his head with a bomb. But Milly was very busy just at that time with other matters.
Of much more importance to Milly than the fatal bomb was her first real party. She had long desired to entertain.
What magic the word has for women of Milly's disposition! It conjures the scene of their real triumphs, for woman displays herself when she "entertains" as man does when he fights. She patronizes her friends, worsts her enemies,—then, when she "entertains"....
Milly's party came off that first spring after the Ridges had moved into the Acacia Street house,—in 1890 to be exact. Milly had had it in mind, of course, even before the family moved. She had long been conscious of her social indebtedness, which of late years had accumulated rapidly. Her party should be also an announcement, as well as a review of progress. She had consulted with the Nortons and Eleanor Kemp, who advised giving a "tea,"—a cheap form of wholesale entertainment then in more repute than now. Milly would have preferred to "entertain at dinner," as the papers put it. But that was obviously out of the question. The Ridge household with its shabby appointments and one colored maid was not yet on a dinner-giving basis. Moreover, it would have cost far too much to feed suitably the host that Milly aspired to gather together. The moving and necessary replenishment of the household goods had quite exhausted Horatio's purse, and the increase in the monthly bills more than consumed all the present profits of the tea and coffee business. Grandma Ridge was more vinegary than ever these days over the household bills. Milly called her "mean," and meanness in her eyes was the most detestable of human vices.
The famous "tea" marked another advance in Milly's career. It proved beyond question her gift for the life she had elected. Simple as this affair was—"from four until seven"—it had to be created out of whole cloth and involved a marvellous display of energy and tact on Milly's part. First her father and grandmother had to be accustomed to the idea. "I ain't much on Sassiety myself," Horatio protested, when the subject was first broached. (He had an exasperating habit of becoming needlessly ungrammatical when he wished to "take Milly down.") Mrs. Ridge observed coldly,—"It would be a great extravagance."
That tiresome word, "Extravagance!" Milly came to loathe it most of all the words in the language.
"Oh, grandma!" she exclaimed. "Just tea and cakes!"
Her conception grew before the event. Just "tea and cakes" developed into ices and sherbets and bonbons. Horatio would not permit punch or any form of alcoholic refreshment. After a convivial youth he had become rigidly temperance. "Tea and coffee's enough," he said. "You might tell your friends where they come from—help on the business." (It was one of Horatio's rude jokes.)
Eleanor Kemp, from her conservatories at Como, supplied the flowers and plants that did much to disguise the shabbiness of the little house. The Norton girls collected the silver and china from a radius of eight blocks. There was a man at the door with white gloves, another at the curb for carriage company, and a strip of dusty red carpet across the walk. Milly financed all this extra expense, and that and her new gown made such a deep hole in her budget that she never again caught up with her bills, although Horatio was induced to increase her allowance the next Christmas.
Milly and all her friends worked for weeks in preparation. They wrote the cards, addressed the envelopes, arranged the furniture, and distributed the flowers. She felt "dead" the day before with fatigue and anxiety, and shed tears over one of Grandma Ridge's little speeches.
But it was a triumph! Guests began coming shortly after four,—a few women from the West side,—and by five-thirty the little Acacia Street house was jammed to the bursting point, so that the young men who arrived towards six had to exercise their athletic skill in order to insert themselves into the crush. Afternoon teas still had some allurement, even for young men, in those primitive days, and Milly had an army of loyal friends, who would have come to anything out of devotion to her. And the affair had got abroad, as all Milly's affairs did, had become the talk of the quarter; a good many families were interested through personal contributions of tableware. There was a line of waiting cabs and carriages for three blocks in from the Lake. The stream of smartly dressed people flowed in and out of the house until after eight, when the last boisterous young men were literally shooed out of the front door by Milly and her aides,—the two Norton girls. It was, as the French put it, furiously successful.
Through the heat of the fray Mrs. Kemp and Mrs. Gilbert stood beside Milly under the grille that divided the hall from the drawing-room. Grandma Ridge in her best black gown, with her stereotyped cat-smile, sat near by in a corner. Milly had carefully planted the old lady where she would be conspicuous and harmless and had impressed upon her the danger of moving from her eminent position. For once the little old lady was stirred to genuine emotion as the babble of tongues surged over her. A becoming pink in her white cheeks betrayed the excitement within her withered breast over the girl's triumph. For even Grandma Ridge possessed traces of a feminine nature.... And Horatio! He came in late from his business, scorning to pay attention to the "women's doings," sneaked up the back stairs and donned his Sunday broadcloth coat, then wormed his way cautiously into the press to see the fun. One of the more exquisite moments of the day, preserved by Sally Norton and widely circulated among Milly's friends, was the picture of the little man facing the majestic Mrs. Bernhard Bowman—she of the palace on the shore—and teetering nervously on his heels, with hands thrust nonchalantly into his trousers' pockets, bragging to that distinguished person of "Daughter."
"She's a wonder—mighty smart girl," he said confidingly. "Done all this herself you know—her own idee. I'm not much myself for entertaining and all that society business. Give me a friend or two and a quiet game of cards, etc., etc."
The majestic "leader of our most exclusive circle," as theStarhad it the next Sunday morning, eyed the nervous little man over her broad bosom and across her plate of salad and pronounced gravely her judgment,—
"Your daughter, Mr. Ridge, must have a remarkable social talent."
"They all say it—must be so. Guess she got it from her mother's folks—not fromme." He laughed confidentially. "Well, I tell her grandmother we must give her some rope—she'll marry one of these days."
"Of course."
"Young folks will be young."
(Afterwards Horatio puffed considerably when he told of his encounter with the great Mrs. Bowman. "I wasn't the least might 'fraid of her,—talked to her like anybody else. Who was she, anyway, when old Joe Bowman married her? Saleslady in a State Street store. I've seen her myself sliding the change across the counter and handing out socks." In this the little man must have exaggerated, for it was long before the Ridge advent in Chicago that the lady destined to become its social leader had withdrawn from the retail trade, if indeed there were any truth in the tale. "And she married a butcher," Horatio added. "Oh, papa!" from Milly. "Yes, hewasa butcher, too—wholesale, maybe, but he had the West Side Market out beyond Division Street—I've seen the sign." That might well have been. But long before this the honorable Joseph Bernhard Bowman had died,—God rest his soul in the granite mausoleum in Oakwoods,—and left a pleasant number of millions to finance his widow's aspirations. In Chicago, in those days, one never laid the start up against any assured achievement.)
At any rate Mrs. Bowman's presence at Milly's party was the last touch of success. Milly, though she had met the great lady, had not dared to send her a card. But Mrs. Gilbert, who realized what it would mean to Milly, had fetched her in her carriage, coaxingly,—"It will please the girl so, you know, to have you there for a few minutes!" And when the leader towered above Milly, whose flushed face was upturned with glistening, childlike eyes, and said in her ear, "My dear, it's all delightful, your party, and you are charming, really charming!" Milly felt that she had received the red ribbon.
"She has a very magnetic personality, your young friend," the great lady confided afterwards to Mrs. Gilbert, and repeated impressively several times, "A magnetic personality—it's all in that."
The phrase had not become meaningless then, and it aptly described Milly's peculiar power. Somehow she reached out unconsciously in every direction and drew to her all these perspiring, pushing, eating, talking people. She had drawn them all into her shabby little home. "Magnetic," as the great lady said. It is a power much desired in democratic societies where all must be done by the individual of his own initiative—a power independent of birth, education, money,—with a touch of the mystery of genius in it, of course.
Milly drew all kinds, indiscriminately,—even men, who didn't count for much in this woman's game of entertaining, except for the fact that they came. Yes, Mrs. Bernhard Bowman, who knew that people came to her chilly halls merely to have it known that theycouldcome, might well envy poor little Milly Ridge her one magnet gift.
"And so sweet," Mrs. Gilbert cooed fondly, watching her protégé.
At the moment Milly was listening to an elderly lady of the species frump, with two homely daughters of the species bore,—obviously West Side relics,—and she gave them the same whole-hearted interest she had given the majestic one herself. The two older, experienced women gazed at the scene half enviously. This was another magic quality that the girl possessed,—especially feminine, a tricksy gift of the Gods, quite outside the moral categories and therefore desired by all—charm. Charm made all that mob so happy to be there in the stuffy quarters, struggling to appease their thirst with the dregs of tepid sherbet; charm compelled the warm, enthusiastic speeches to the girl. As Eleanor Kemp whispered, pinching Milly's plump arm, "My dear, you are a wonder, just a perfect wonder,—I always said so.... I'll run in to-morrow to talk it over...."
All the women, richer, better placed in the game than Milly, easily detecting the shabbiness of her home beneath the attempts to furbish up, envied the girl these two gifts. Why? Because they most help a woman to be what civilization has forced her to be—a successful adventuress.
"Milly is such a sweet creature," Mrs. Gilbert purred to her companion, as she sank back into the silky softness of the brougham that Roy Gilbert had provided for her. "I do hope she'll marry well!"
"Of course she must marry properly,—some man who will give her the opportunity of exercising her remarkable social gift," Mrs. Bowman pronounced sagely.
Nettie Gilbert smiled. She felt that she had done a kind act that day.
"The girl has a career before her, if she makes no mistakes," the great lady added.
And that was the universal verdict of all the experienced women who came to bid their young hostess farewell and make their pretty speeches. One and all they recognized a woman's triumph. In this first attempt she had shown what she could do "with nothing, positively nothing—that house!" Hers was a talent like any other, not to be denied. The woman's talent. Obviously Horatio could not finance this career on coffee and tea. Some stronger man, better equipped in fortune, must be found and pressed into service. Who of all the young and middle-aged men that had come that afternoon to take the girl's hand and say the proper things would undertake this responsibility? From the way they hung about Milly, it might be seen that she would not have to wait long for her "working partner."
"Next, Milly's engagement!" Vivie Norton suggested daringly.
"And then!" Sally shouted, waving her arms in abandon at the vision she conjured.
"Did you ever see so many men?... And they never go to afternoon things if they can help it...."
Yes, it was an indubitable triumph! Even Horatio and Grandma Ridge admitted it, as they sat down in the disorder of the cluttered dining-room with the drooping flowers to munch sandwiches and drink cold chocolate for supper. They were plainly excited and somewhat awed by the vistas of the new social horizon that was opening through Milly's little party.
Milly was roused the next morning from a deep sleep to answer a knock at her door.
"What is it?" she said peevishly. "I think you might let me sleep to-day."
"Your father thought you would want to see the papers," her grandmother said, holding out an armful of Sunday literature. "Shall I bring you up a cup of tea?"
"Thanks, Granny." And Milly sank back into her pillows, while her hand skilfully extracted the sheet that contained "Madame Alpha's" social column. Ah, here it was!
"One of the most charming affairs of the post-lenten season.... A quiet five o'clock.... Many of our notable fashionables, etc.... Radiant young hostess, etc. The charm of the young hostess, etc."
Milly's thick braids circled her soft neck and fell on the large sheet while she devoured the words, as a young actress might swallow her first notices, or a young author scan his first reviews. The subtle intoxication of a successful first appearance quickened her pulses. "Quite the smartest bunch of snobs in the village," wrote "Suzette" in theMirror, with a too obvious sneer. (Suzette's pose was a breezy disdain for the "highlights" of Society, an affectation of frontier simplicity and democracy. But Milly, like every woman, knew well enough that there is always a better and a worse socially, and the important thing is to belong to the best wherever you are, democracy or no democracy.)
At last Milly pushed from her the mass of newspapers and lay with upturned face, hands crossed beneath her head, staring out of her blue eyes at the dusty ceiling, dreaming of triumphs to be, social heights to surmount, a flutter of engagement cards winging their way like a flight of geese to the little Acacia Street house; dreaming of men and women—and somewhere at the end of the long vista she saw a very gorgeous procession, herself at the head, with a long veil and an enormous bunch of white roses clasped to her breast, moving in stately fashion up the church aisle. At the extreme end of the vista stood an erect black figure beside a white-robed clergyman. (For Milly now went to the Episcopal Church, finding the service more satisfying.) The face of this erect figure was blurred in the dream. It was full of qualities, but lacked defining shape: it was "manly," "generous," "high-spirited," "rich," "successful," etc., etc. But the nearer she approached in her vision to the altar amid the crash of organ music, the more indefinite became the face. She tried on the figure various faces she knew, but none seemed to fit exactly. No one possessed all the qualities.
Grandma with a cup of lukewarm tea shattered the vision.
"Milly," Nettie Gilbert said impressively, "I've something serious to say to you."
It was a Sunday evening before the fire in the Gilberts' pleasant drawing-room. The other supper guests had taken themselves off, and Roy Gilbert had disappeared to his den, where he smoked many cigars and was supposed to read serious books upon history and political economy.
Milly glanced apprehensively at the pretty, plump lady beside her. The tone in which the words had been pronounced reminded her oddly of that time so far away—so very far back—when Eleanor Kemp had talked to her seriously about completing her education.
"Yes, dear?" she answered, caressing a dimpled hand at her side.
"Milly,"—Mrs. Gilbert leaned forward and frowned slightly. Milly thought, "Nettie's getting fat, like her mother." The Gilberts had awfully good food and a great deal of it, even if they did go in for missions. "Milly, I have you on my mind a great deal these days."
"That's so good of you, dear."
Milly thought it must be religion once more, and prepared herself.
"You ought to settle yourself.... All your friends think you should marry, dear."
"Why?" Milly demanded with some asperity.
"Why, a girl in your position—"
"Yes, I know all that," Milly interrupted quickly.
She knew far better than Nettie Gilbert how necessary it was for her to settle herself somehow. The bills had grown more rather than less the last two years, and the tea and coffee importing business did not seem to be doing what had been expected of it. There were signs of an increasing financial stringency about Horatio. Then there were other signs, more personal, that were not pleasant to recall. That social career which had opened so brilliantly rather more than two years before had been full of pleasures and excitements. For nearly a season Milly Ridge had been the most talked of and invited girl in her special circle. The next season she had still been "popular," but latterly at the opening of the new season there had been a distinct falling off. The fringe of cards about her long mirror, where she kept her invitations tucked into the margins and pinned in pendants, had grown less fresh—not to say stale—and less distinguished. Mrs. Bowman had forgotten altogether to invite her to dinner this fall. There were other stings and mortifications that need not be described.... Yes, Milly had been pondering the matter more or less consciously for some months.
"Well," she said to Mrs. Gilbert, with a brave little smile, "what shall I do about it?"
She recognized Nettie Gilbert's right to broach the subject. Nettie had been her best friend, and thanks to her own experience had a fellow-feeling for her and wished to see her launched upon a similar successful career matrimonial.
"With all your charm, you could have married a dozen times," she said with gentle reproach.
"But I haven't!" Milly retorted despairingly. She did not like to admit that her opportunities had not been as numerous as it was popularly supposed they had been. They never were, as Nettie must know from her own experience. Yet she had had her "chances," and why hadn't she pulled it off before this? Why had all the little flirtations with promising young men come to nothing? Were they afraid of her lavish hand? Or had she been waiting for something else,—"the real, right thing?" She did not know.
Her grandmother said that a penniless girl had no right to be so "particular"—which always maddened Milly.
"I'm afraid you're not serious enough, my dear," Mrs. Gilbert remarked in gentle reproof. She had always felt that was a flaw in Milly's character,—a lack of deep interest in the missionary side of life.
"But men don't like serious women," Milly said flippantly, dangling her slipper on the end of her toes.
"I think the best ones do," Mrs. Gilbert retorted severely. "You were making fun of Mr. Parker at supper to-night, and I'm afraid he understood."
"I know," Milly admitted penitently. "But he has such a funny voice." She imitated amusingly the shrill falsetto of the said Clarence Parker. "And he's so solemn about everything he says."
Mrs. Gilbert laughed in spite of her stern mood, then controlled herself.
"But, Milly, Clarence Parker's very nice. He's related to the best people where he comes from, and he is doing remarkably well in his business, Roy says."
"What is it?" Milly demanded more practically.
"Stocks and bonds, I think,—banking, you know."
"Oh," said Milly, somewhat impressed.
"What is Clarence Parker's business, Roy?" Mrs. Gilbert appealed to her husband, who at that moment happened to enter the room.
"He represents several large estates in the East—invests the money," Gilbert replied, and turning to Milly with a smile asked:—
"Going out for him, Milly? He's all right, solid as a rock."
"Lighthouse," Milly corrected sulkily.
"And he's got plenty of his own money—has sense about investments."
"I haven't any to make!"
"Oh, come—you've got one...."
Nevertheless, when the two friends said their good-bys, kissing each other affectionately on the cheek and saying, "Will you go with me to the Drummonds Tuesday?" and "How about the meeting for the Old Man's Mission?" Milly added, "Your financial rock asked if he might call. I told him he could."
Milly squeaked the words in imitation of Mr. Parker's thin voice. They both laughed.
But Milly trotted home around the corner to the little house in Acacia Street in anything but a gay mood. The angular, white face of Mr. Clarence Albert Parker was far from fulfilling the idea she had visioned to herself in her Sunday morning dream. She knew well enough why Nettie Gilbert had arranged this particular Sunday supper with the intimacy of only four guests—Milly was very much awake now socially—and she had taken pains to examine the new young man with critical care. He was little, scarcely taller than Horatio, and Milly disliked men whose heads she could look across. But with a silk hat it might not be too bad. And he was slightly bald, as well as pale,—on the whole not robust,—but he had keen little gray eyes that seemed to watch one from the side and take in a great deal. He was a precise, neat, colorless man, the sort turned out by a conservative New England family that invests its savings with scrupulous care at four and three-quarters per cent. No, he was not inspiring, this grandson of the Plymouth Rock, with the thin voice. But he seemed substantial. Mr. Gilbert said so, and Roy Gilbert knew.
There were other sombre reflections in Milly's revery that night. The sense of family stringency was urging her to "make good" in some way. She was aware that she was slipping back in the social sands, might become commonplace and neglected, if she did not do something to revive the waning interest in herself. She realized, as she had not definitely realized before, that outside of the social game her life held little or nothing. To be sure, she helped Mrs. Gilbert with her missionary business and charities: she read to a few old men once a week, and she carried flowers over to St. Joseph's Hospital. But she could not pretend to herself that charities occupied her whole being.... No, the only way out was Matrimony. A marriage, suitable and successful, would start her career once more. With something like a desperate resolve Milly put her latch-key into the hole, and let herself into the paternal home, where a familiar family odor greeted her sensitive nostrils. With a grimace of disgust she swept upstairs. Decidedly it was time for her to settle herself, as Nettie phrased it.
This time Milly arrived, in spite of homely paw or lukewarm inclination for the man. The young financier called at the Ridge home once, twice, and there met Horatio and Grandma Ridge, who both thought very highly of him. "A man with such principles, my dear," Grandma observed. The two young people "attended divine service together," showed up afterwards on the Drive, where Milly noted with satisfaction that Mr. Parker plus a silk hat overtopped her gaze. She also noted that the friends she met smiled and bowed with just an added touch of interest.... They talked—chiefly Milly—on a variety of colorless topics. It appeared that Mr. Parker had positive views only on financial matters. For all the rest,—art, literature, religion, and life,—he began with a cautious,—"Well, now, I don't know," and never got much farther. However, Milly wisely reflected, one didn't marry for the sake of exciting conversation.
The affair progressed quite smoothly; by the middle of winter Milly's friends smiled when they spoke of "Milly's young man" and were ready with their felicitations. On the whole they thought that Milly had "done quite well...."
It happened naturally, in the course of an expedition which the two made to the scene of the great new Exposition. They drove out in a smart carriage with a pair of lively horses which Mr. Parker managed very well, but which took all his attention. They first visited the tumultuous fair grounds, where an army of workmen were making desperate efforts to get the impromptu city in some shape for visitors. They talked of the beauty of the buildings, the grandeur of the whole design, the greatness of Chicago. Then they drove to a vast new hotel in which Mr. Parker had taken a conservative interest, and they still talked of the marvellous growth of the city, its Ultimate Destiny,—terms which had a lugubrious sound in the New Englander's piping voice. As they turned northwards around the great oval of Washington Park, the sun was sinking into a golden haze of dust and smoke. The horses dropped to a peaceful walk, and Milly knew that it was coming and braced herself for it. It came, slowly.
First, by way of preliminary flourish, Mr. Parker declared all over again his faith in the future of the city. He had come to stay, he repeated with emphasis; had thrown in his fate with that of Chicago.
"I'm going to stay," he trilled, "and grow up with the city." (At this point Milly almost upset the boat by laughing: the idea of the little man's growing up with Chicago seemed funny.)
Having struck the personal note, the young man spoke of his own "prospects," and outlined the dignified position he intended to occupy in the forefront of the elect. This implied, of course, an establishment and a suitable wife. Milly made the proper responses in the pauses. At last the fateful words reached her ear, "Will you marry me, Miss Ridge?" As Milly mimicked later his slow, solemn utterance, it sounded more like, "Will you bury me, Miss Ridge?"
And Milly, with commendable directness, looked him straight in the eye and said without a quiver,—"Yes, I will, Mr. Parker."
Afterwards, as if this effort had exhausted both, there was silence on the way back. When they reached the house, he said impressively, "I will call to-morrow and see your father."
"He'll be delighted to see you, I'm sure," Milly rejoined somewhat flatly. Then she fled up the steps, as if she were afraid he might try to kiss her or hold her hand. She escapedthat, for the present....
So it was done at last.
If Milly had any misgivings or inner revolt that first night, it would have been dispelled by the unfeigned joy of her father and her grandmother the next morning when she told them the news. Little Horatio said robustly as he kissed her:—
"Fine! Daughter! Fine!... He's a smart young man, I know that—the best one of all your beaus.... Andhe'slucky, too," he added apologetically.
Grandma Ridge remarked with a certain malice, "You ought to be happy with him, Milly; he will be able to give you all the things you want."
"I hope so," Milly responded briskly.
A few telephone messages to intimate friends and the news was spread broadcast over the area of Milly's little world. For the rest of the day and for several days afterwards she was kept busy receiving congratulations by telephone and in person,—flowers, letters, invitations,—all the little demonstrations of interest that give importance and excitement to a woman's life.
She had "made good," at last—that was the pleasant sensation she was bathed in from morning to night. She had done the right thing. The congratulations sounded quite sincere. If not much was said of the young man's personal charms, a great deal was made of his substantial qualities, which were indubitable.
Nettie Gilbert was one of the first to arrive and took Milly to her arms affectionately. "My dear," she murmured between kisses, "I'msoglad for you."
"You see I did it," Milly replied complacently, marvelling to herself how easy it had been to do, once she had determined upon this way out.
"You must let me give you a party.... Thursday?" Mrs. Gilbert purred, ignoring delicate analysis.
That was the beginning of a joyous whirl of engagements,—luncheons, dinners, suppers, and theatre parties. It seemed as if Milly's little world had been waiting for this occasion to renew its enthusiasm. Milly had the happy self-importance that an engaged girl should have, and to cap her triumphs, Mrs. Bowman gave one of her tremendous dinners, with twenty-four covers, her second-best gold service, and a dance afterward in the picture gallery. All in honor of obscure little Milly Ridge! She had arrived.
She might look down the long, heavily laden table with the men-servants inserting the courses between the guests, and scan the faces of prominent citizens and their wives together with a few minor diplomats—for this was the great summer of '93—and feel a pardonable elation in her position. On her right sat that Mr. George Danner, the wealthy merchant whose equipage with two men on the box she had once admired, and on her left was the kindly, homely face of old Christian Becker, the owner ofThe Daily Star. (You may be sure that theStarhad a full account of this function. But Milly's name appeared so frequently in Madame Alpha's social column that it had almost lost interest for her.)... At the other end of the table next to the hostess's expansive person sat the Instrument of Accomplishment, like a very refined little white mouse, his keen eyes taking in every gold fork on the table. His mouth was often open, and Milly imagined she could hear the familiar, "Well now, I don't know about that." However, his hostess seemed to treat him with consideration.
It should be said to Milly's credit that she took rather less satisfaction in all this social flattery than in the happiness her engagement brought into the little Acacia Street house. Horatio began to chirp once more, after the interview with his prospective son-in-law. The inspissated gloom of the days of stringency had passed. The golden beams of prosperity seemed to radiate from the white-faced financier.
"I tell you Clarence is a smart one," Horatio announced after the first interview. "He gave me some good pointers." For after the embarrassing formalities of sentiment had been disposed of, the two men had naturally dropped into business, and Parker had suggested a method of inserting the tea and coffee business into the Exposition by getting concessions for "Coffee Kiosks," which should advertise the Ridge brands of harmless stimulants. The scheme had fired Horatio, who began once more to dream dreams of wealth.
So when the ring came, which like everything else about Clarence Albert was plain, costly, correct—and unlovely—Milly put the large diamond on her stubby finger and reflected that even if its giver was not the Idol of her Dreams, he was very good to her, and she ought to be happy. She meant to make him a good wife as she understood that vague term, and thus repay him for all his bounties. As a matter of fact the little Parker man was getting repaid already in social matters for his generous act in selecting a poor girl to share his affluence. The world knew him to be sharp, and was glad to think him kind....
"It's a very handsome one, Clarence," Milly said of the ring, turning it critically to the light. And she sweetly held up her face to be kissed.
That, to be frank, was the part she liked least of the whole affair, "demonstrations," and she dealt out her favors to her lover sparingly. However, her fiancé was not demonstrative by nature: if he had amorous passions, he kept them carefully concealed, so that Milly could manage that side quite easily. It usually came merely to a pressure of hands, a cold kiss on the brow, or a flutter along the bronze tendrils about the neck. Sometimes Milly speculated what it might be like later in the obscure intimacy of marriage, but she dismissed the subject easily, confident that she could "manage" as she did now. And she had the sweet sense of self-sacrifice in doing something personally disagreeable. "If it hadn't been for poor old Dad," she would say to herself and sigh. Which was not wholly sincere. At this period of their lives few mortals can be square with themselves.
All such refinements of thought and feeling were rare because there was no time for revery. Milly was determined to get the most out of her triumph, and drove the peaceable Clarence Albert rather hard. All women, he had supposed in his ignorance, were more or less fragile. But it was astonishing what an amount of nerve-racking gayety Milly could get through in a day and come up smiling the next morning for another sixteen-hour bout with pleasure. Sometimes Clarence protested that he was a working man and must be at his office by nine. But Milly had slight mercy; she let him see plainly the social duty of the American husband. He too reflected, it might be, that things would be different after the wedding and yawned away the hours as best he could at dance or dinner or late supper in Old Vienna on the famous Midway.
It was Chicago's wonderful festal year, the summer of the great Fair. Responsible men of large affairs, who knew what was going on financially behind the scenes, might look grave and whisper their apprehensions among themselves. But the people were resolved to be gay. They were mad with doing, especially the women. All the world was entertained in the lavish western spirit of hospitality. Thus in addition to her own private excitement, Milly shared the general festival spirit, and thanks to her social charm and her young man's reputation for solid achievement the two were part of many an important festivity. They helped to entertain the European notables, dined and did the shows from morning until morning in the best of company. Milly wished it might go on like this forever.
"Chicago will not be large enough for you after this experience," her old friend, Eleanor Kemp, observed, crossing her path at the ball for the French ambassador. "You will have to move on to New York."
"Well, now, I don't know about that," Parker demurred, but Milly cut in with,—
"We're going abroad first, you know."
She smiled graciously on her old friend, divining exactly that kind lady's mixed feelings. "Come on, Clarence!" and she sailed off into the press, bowing and smiling to her right and her left.
In the midst of all this feverish activity there was little time for mutual examination and discovery for the engaged couple,—all the better, Milly thought,—and yet she had already resolved upon certain changes in her husband-to-be, like a competent wife. For one thing she discovered quite early that Clarence Albert was inclined to be close in money matters. He always counted his change carefully, like a good puritan, and gave small tips. He ordered the less expensive dishes and wines, and inquired whether a single portion might do for two when they were lunching out together. He did not like to take cabs when the street-cars were running. Milly had suffered all her life at the hands of Grandma Ridge from such petty economies, and she did not intend that it should continue. It was not so much any intentional meanness—if Milly had but known—as the resultant habit of generations of enforced thrift. Milly's fingers all turned outwards, and money ran through them like sand. She was a born Spender and scattered Cash, her own or other people's, with regal indifference. All her life she had suffered from cramped means, and now that she was about to marry a rich man she meant to get the good of it. What am I doing it for? she would ask herself in her more cynical moments.... As soon as she was Mrs. Parker she would come to an understanding with her husband on this cardinal point and show him what was decent for a man in his position. Meanwhile she gave him a few hints of what he might expect.
"I'm afraid," he remarked in his falsetto voice, not unkindly, "you like to spend money."
"Of course I do! What woman doesn't?" Milly retorted brightly, as she chucked the bunch of violets she had been wearing out of the cab window because they were somewhat wilted, and she added warningly, "I hate mean people!"
He laughed good naturedly.
Their first misunderstanding came over the question where they were to live after their return from the European trip. It seems that Parker had already bought land far out on the north shore of the Lake in a new and promising neighborhood and proposed building a house there. Milly was ready enough to build: she had large plans for her new home. But she had set her mind on a lot on the Drive, a block from the Bowman place and two from the Gilberts—"the most desirable site in the city, every one says," she explained, "and so near all our friends."
Parker tried to make her understand that fifty thousand dollars was altogether too much money to put into an "unproductive investment" like that.
"You've got the money?" Milly demanded succinctly.
He admitted it reluctantly.
"Then I can't see why we shouldn't have the best."
Milly, who had secret plans of running the great Bowman a social race, was thoroughly irritated at his obstinacy. They turned from the vacant lot, which they had been examining for the second time, and walked down the Drive at odds.
"My property at Lakehurst has twice the frontage and only cost me ten thousand," the little man of means observed complacently.
"I don't care if it cost only ten dollars," Milly pouted. "It's in the suburbs."
"The city's growing that way fast."
"It'll reach us when I'm an old woman!"
"Before that I guess...."
She dashed upstairs to her room, leaving her lover to the attentions of Mrs. Ridge. The old lady approved of Clarence Albert. They discussed religion together. They had the same Victorian standards and principles about life. This afternoon he confided to her the real estate trouble Milly and he had had.
"I'm sure, Clarence, you are quite right, and Milly must learn to be more reasonable. The air will be so much cleaner out there."
"And the cars come within a block now."
"I'll speak to Milly about it."
She did.
"If you aren't careful, Milly," she warned her granddaughter, "you'll frighten him. You aren't married yet," she added meaningly.
"He oughtn't to buy land without consulting me," Milly flared, forgetting that this transaction had taken place before her determination to become Mrs. Clarence Parker.
"I think you are a very ungrateful girl," Mrs. Ridge observed, with pressed lips.
"Oh, you always take the men's side, grandma!... Clarence isn't the only man in the world."
"Better take care before it's too late," the old lady repeated warningly. "You don't treat Clarence as a girl should who is going to marry. He's an admirable young man."
Mrs. Ridge ever croaked thus, foretelling disaster.
"If you say anything more, I'll never marry him!" Milly flamed in final exasperation. "You don't understand. Women don't behave as they did when you were a girl. They don't lie down before their husbands and let them walk all over them."
"Perhaps not," grandma laughed icily in reply. "But I guess men aren't so different from what they were in my time."
Grandma had her own understanding of male character.