One Woman's Life Part 41

"She's who you might have been--Mrs. Clarence Parker!"

"Oh!" Milly murmured and looked again with more curiosity at the fluffy-haired little woman. "She dresses a good deal," she observed. "I wonder how Clarence likes to pay the bills."

"We saw them at Wiesbaden this spring. They seemed quite happy. He was taking the cure."

"Did it do him any good?" Milly inquired amiably....

Presently a short, bald-headed man took the place opposite their neighbor, and Milly examined him with much care. Clarence Albert was balder and whiter than ever, and his cold gray eyes were now concealed by gla.s.ses which gave him the look of an eminent financier. His wife coached him evidently about the menu. Milly thought she could hear his squeaky voice saying, "Well, now, I don't know about that." A queer little smile came around her lips as she considered that she might have occupied the seat the richly dressed, bejewelled little lady had, and be listening at that moment to Clarence Albert's observations on the luncheon menu. Just then Parker looked over, recognized Mrs. Kemp, and hurried across with outstretched hand. He did not see Milly until he reached the table, and then he stopped as if he did not know what to do next. Milly smiled and extended a hand.

"How do you do, Mr. Parker!" she said gayly. "Eleanor has just pointed out your wife to me--such a pretty woman! How are you?"

"Very well now Miss--Mrs.--"

"Bragdon," Milly supplied.

"Very well indeed, Mrs. Bragdon, and I see you are the same."

He retreated at once, and Milly glancing roguishly at Eleanor Kemp murmured,--

"I take it back.... No, I couldn't! Not even with all the clothes and jewels."

"Of course you couldn't!"

"It's fate--it's all fate!" Milly sighed. That was her way of saying that everything in this world depended upon the individual soul, and she couldn't manage her soul differently. She felt relieved.

The dessert arriving just then, Milly's attention was distracted from the Clarence Alberts and from her soul. She took much time and care in selecting a piece of _patisserie_. French pastry, which had become a common article in New York hotels by that time, always interested Milly.

She liked the sweet, seductive cakes, and they brought back to memory happy times in Paris and her visits to Gage's with Jack.

"I am afraid they aren't very good," her hostess remarked, observing that Milly after all her research into the dish merely tasted her cake and pushed it away. "They don't seem able to make the nice French ones over here--they're usually as heavy as lead."

"No, they're not a bit like those we used to get at Gage's. I wonder why they don't find somebody who can make real French pastry.... Now there's an idea!" she exclaimed with sudden illumination. "A cake shop like Gage's with real cakes and a real _Madame_ in black at the desk!"

She gave Eleanor a vivid description of the charms of Gage's. Her friend laughed indulgently.

"You funny child, to remember that all this time!"

"But why not?" Milly persisted. "Everybody likes French pastry. I believe you could make heaps of money from a good cake shop in America."

"Well, when you are ready to open your cake shop, come to Chicago!... And anyway you are coming to visit me next month."

Milly readily promised to make the visit when Virginia's school closed, and shortly afterwards the friends parted.

Milly strolled home in a revery of Eleanor Kemp, who always brought back her past, of Clarence Albert and Clarence Albert's expensive wife. "If I had--" she mused. If somehow she had done differently and instead of being a penniless widow she were happily married with ample means; if the world was this or that or the other!... But back of all her thoughts, beneath all her revery, simmered the idea of the Cake Shop. In telling Ernestine of her day's adventure, however, she made no reference to the New Idea. This time she would not expose her conception to the chilling blast of the Laundryman's criticism until she had perfected it.

She nursed it like an artist within her own breast.

III

CHICAGO AGAIN

A month later Milly and Virginia went to Chicago to visit the Kemps.

Milly's heart leaped as the miles westward were covered by the rapid train. Old friends, she thought, are nearest, warmest, dearest to us, and again and again during the joyous weeks of her visit to the bustling city by the Lake, Milly felt the truth of this plat.i.tude. Everybody seemed delighted to see "Milly Ridge," as half the people she met still called her. She could not go a block without some more or less familiar figure stopping, and throwing up hands exclaiming, "Why, Milly! not _you_--I'm _so_ glad." And they stopped to talk, obstructing traffic.

Milly was conscious of being at her very best. She had decided to discard her mourning altogether on going back to Chicago, and had some attractive new gowns to wear. Instead of a forlorn and weary widow, she presented herself to her Chicago public fresher and prettier than ever, beaming with delight over everything and very much alive. That is the way Chicago likes.

"Chicago _is_ different," she repeated a dozen times a day, meaning by that vague comment that Chicago was more generous, kindly, hospitable, warmer and bigger-hearted than New York. Which was perfectly true, and which Chicago liked to hear as often as possible. The purely human virtues still nourished there, it seemed to Milly, in their primal bloom, while they had become somewhat faded in the more hectic air of the Atlantic seaboard. There was a feeling of frank good-fellowship and an optimistic belief in everybody and in the world as well as in yourself that was spoken of as the Spirit of the West. "In New York,"

Milly said to Eleanor Kemp, "unless you make a great noise all the time, n.o.body knows you are there. And when you fail, it's like a stone dropped into the ocean: n.o.body knows that you have gone under! I want to live the rest of my life in Chicago," she concluded positively.

"Yes," all her friends a.s.sented with one voice, "you must come back to us--you belong here!" (With the future, the setting sun, and all the rest of it.)

And they laid their little plans to entrap her and hold her in their midst for good,--obvious plans in which men, of course, were designedly included. They said a great many nice things about her behind her back as well as to her face.

"Milly has shown such pluck.... Her marriage was unfortunate--he left her without a cent.... And treated her quite badly, I hear," etc., etc.

Her two weeks' visit to the Kemps stretched to a month; there were many little parties and engagements made for her, and then she went to several suburban places to visit. Unlike other American cities summer is almost the liveliest season in and around Chicago, for having its own refrigerating plant at its door Chicago prefers to stay at home during the hot weather and take its vacation in the raw spring. So Milly found life very full and gay. And she perceived after a time a new spirit in her old home,--the metropolitan spirit, which was funnily self-conscious and proud of itself. "We too," every one seemed to be saying, "are natives of no mean city." Milly heartily approved of this spirit. She liked to think and to say that after all, in spite of her husband's errancy, Chicago was also _her_ city.

So she had the best of times the ten weeks she spent in the strong young metropolis, and saw a great many people new and old, and was more popular than ever. She was well enough aware of those little plans kind friends were making for her, matrimonially, but her heart seemed dead to all men. She looked at them critically, and her heart gave no sign.

"I'm going to be a business woman," she announced to the Kemps one day.

"Milly in business! What do you think of that now?" the banker responded with a good-natured laugh that covered the jeer. "What next?"

But his wife, with jealous prompt.i.tude, added,--

"Milly, you are a wonder!"

"Yes," Milly affirmed stoutly. "Wait, and you will see."

For in spite of all the good times, the flattery, and the social pleasures, the great New Idea still simmered in her head. She would do something "unusual," and "in Chicago too," which was the place for originality and venture,--this big-hearted, hopeful city whose breath of life was business, always business, and where people believed in one another and looked favorably at "the new thing."

One day Milly stepped into the shop of the smart man-milliner, where in her opulent maiden days she had got her hats,--"just to see what Bamberg has this season." After chatting with the amiable proprietor, who, like every one who had dealings with Milly, was fond of her (even if she did not pay him promptly), Bamberg called to one of his young ladies to bring Mrs. Bragdon a certain hat he wished her to try on. "One of my last Paris things," he explained, "an absolutely new creation," and he whispered, "It was ordered for Mrs. Pelham--the young one, you know, but it didn't suit her." He whispered still more confidentially, "She was too old!"

After that how could Milly help "just trying it on"?

The girl who brought the hat exclaimed with a charming smile and a decided French accent, "It cannot be--but it is--it _is_ Madame Brag-donne!"

"Jeanne--Jeanine!" and they almost embraced, to the scandal of Bamberg.

It was one of the girls Milly had known at Gage's, the chief _demoiselle_ of the pastry shop. And how was Madame Catteau, the _patronne_, and when did Jeanne come to America? The hat was forgotten while the two chattered half in French and half in English about Gage's, Paris, and Chicago....

Of course Milly bought the hat in the end,--it was such a "jewel" and became her as if "it were made for Madame Brag-donne," who, Jeanne averred, was really more than half French. (Bamberg generously cut the price to "nothing,--$35," and Milly promised to "pay when I can, you know." Which perfectly contented the man-milliner. "We know _you_, Mrs.

Bragdon," he said, conducting her himself to the Kemps' motor in which she had come.)