One Woman's Life Part 43

And Sam put it through for her. They had a good time over the transformation of the Chicago shop to something "elegant and spirituelle," as Sam called it. He entered into the spirit of the thing, as Milly knew he would, and turned out a creditable imitation of a Paris shop, with stucco marbles, black woodwork, and gla.s.s everywhere, even to red plush sofas along the walls and a row of little tables and chairs in front. It had a very gay appearance--"distinguished" in its sombre setting. "No one could help walking in to buy a cake, could they?" Sam appealed to Ernestine.

"Hope they'll have the price for more than one," the former Laundryman observed.

"Oh, you'll do a big business," Sam rejoined encouragingly. "Mostly on tick, if Milly runs the cash drawer."

"She won't!" Ernestine retorted.

The last touch was the sign,--a long, thin black board on which was traced in a delicate gilt script,--_The Cake Shop--Madame Millernine_.

The firm name was Sam's personal contribution to the business. "You must have a suitable name, and who ever heard of a Bragdon or a Geyer keeping a cake shop? There are proprieties in all these things."

But long before the sign was in place, Milly had sailed away from New York for Paris. It had been discovered that a good French pastry cook was not to be found in Chicago. A few were said to exist in America, chiefly in New York hotels, but their handiwork was not up to Milly's standard and their demands for wages were exorbitant. Also real _chic_ French _dames des comptoirs_ were exceedingly rare. Jeanne's Gren.o.ble sister-in-law proved to be, in Reddon's words,--"so infernally homely that she would scare the customers from the door." So it was agreed that while Ernestine attended to the numerous details of the preparations in Chicago, Milly should make a hurried trip abroad consult with her friend, Madame Catteau, and secure among other things a competent pastry-cook and a few good-looking girls for waitresses.

Milly enjoyed her trip immensely. She had an air of importance about her that Sam Reddon described as "diplomatic." She was a woman of affairs now--large affairs and getting larger all the time. She spent two rapturous weeks, so breathlessly absorbed in consulting with Madame Catteau (who was ravished by Milly's scheme and deplored almost tearfully her fate in having a husband and two children to keep her from returning with Madame Brag-donne) and in interviewing men cooks and young Frenchwomen, that she had no time for memories or sentimental griefs of any sort. Once, flitting through the rue Gallilee in a cab, she saw the hotel-pension where she and Jack had spent their first winter, and she conjured up a vivid picture of the chilly salon, the table of elderly English women, and the long, dull hours in her close, back room. How long ago all that was, and how young and stupid she had been then! She felt very much more alive now, an altogether new person, with her business on her hands,--but not old, oh, not that!...

An ideal man pastry-cook was finally engaged, one highly recommended by Madame Catteau as _vrai Parisien_, skilful in every sort of pastry, and also three young women were induced, for love of Madame Brag-donne, to try their fortune in the great city of Chicago. Also, Milly bought quant.i.ties of bonbons, liquors, sirops, and other specialities of the business, which she knew could not be had "really, truly French" in America. With a feeling of having accomplished much, Milly gathered her flock and set sail from Havre on the French steamer. M. Paul--the pastry-cook--insisted on having a first-cla.s.s pa.s.sage, and would converse with Milly whenever he found her on deck. The girls were sick in the second cabin. Milly was indulgent with them all by sympathy as well as by policy, but she was glad to see Sandy Hook. She decided that the French temperament needed occupation, and she hustled her conscripts across the city and into the Chicago train without an hour's delay.

Ernestine, Virginia, and Sam Reddon met the party at the Chicago station and escorted the exclamatory laborers to their new home on the upper floor of the old mansion. Then Milly and Sam went to see the Cake Shop, which was now ready for its sweet merchandise. Milly, though she was fresh from Paris, was much pleased with Sam's results, and praised him warmly.

"It's cost an awful sight of money," Ernestine observed lugubriously.

Milly waved one hand negligently. Ernestine was almost as bad as Grandma had been. Would she never rise to the conception of modern business? It was not the outgo that counted, but the receipts. Milly knew that already.

"I'll do you a better one next time," Sam promised, "when you open your first _succursale_, Milly."

"That will be next autumn--in New York," Milly announced.

"My stars!" said Ernestine.

V

MILLY'S SECOND TRIUMPH

They opened the Cake Shop just before the holidays, with a great party.

Milly was positive that was the right procedure, though Ernestine could see no point to giving away so much "trade." Nearly a thousand finely engraved cards were sent out to Milly's friends, the friends of Milly's friends, and their friends and acquaintances, to meet "Mrs. John Bragdon and Miss Ernestine Geyer at the Cake Shop on Sat.u.r.day, December the fifteenth, from two until eight o'clock." (Ernestine, to be sure, could not be "met," because she was in the cellar most of the time attending to many essential details of the occasion. But Milly was there in the shop above, prettily gowned in a costume she had managed to capture, incidentally, on her flying visit to the French capital.)

It was a tremendous, resounding, thrilling success! Nearly everybody out of the thousand must have come, they reckoned afterwards, and several more besides who knew they had not been intentionally omitted from the list of the invited. The guests began coming shortly after the doors were thrown open (by a small colored boy, habited in Turkish costume), and no sooner did any tear themselves away from the shop than twice as many squeezed their way in somehow. At first the pretty French girls in silk ap.r.o.ns and coquettish caps tried to execute the orders, but soon their trays were seized by enthusiastic young men and the waitresses took refuge behind the marble table beside the Madame and helped to hand out the tempting cakes and bonbons and sorbets and sirops and liqueurs.

Even Milly pulled off her long white gloves, got in line with her employees, and tried to appease her hungry guests. As a final touch a dainty, gold-printed souvenir menu, with the list of delicacies to be had at the Cake Shop, was handed to every comer, as long as they lasted.

There was one long glad chorus of praise for the Cake Shop and everything it contained, from the mirrors, the fetching decoration, the tables, the cakes (such as never had been dreamed of) to the pretty girls, who were surrounded always by a cl.u.s.ter of men, trying with their Chicago French to get attention.... And Milly, of course, was the heroine of the occasion. Her health was drunk, and she had to get on a chair to make a little speech of thanks and invitation to the Cake Shop as a new Chicago Inst.i.tution.

Many of the women who came knew their Paris better than New York, and "adored" "this _chic_ little place." It recalled to them all most delightful moments. And even in Paris they had never eaten anything so delicious as M. Paul's cakes. Henceforth they should buy all their desserts of "Madame Millernine," and there was a spatter of French phrases all over the place.

"It was a wonder!" they declared, "this idea of creating a little of Paris here in old Chicago. A touch of genius really--just like that astonishing Milly Ridge to have thought of the one thing--and the cakes were so good," etc., etc.

Milly's ears burned with the winged words, and she smiled all the time.

If Ernestine only could hear this, it would cure her of doubting. She should hear! Milly felt that at last she had demonstrated herself. It was like that other occasion so many, many years ago, when she had surmounted all the difficulties and entertained her friends at "tea."

Then her triumph had been indubitable. But this time it was more significant, for the affair was less childish: it meant money, Milly was sure,--much money. So every one said.

At eight Milly was rescued by a party of friends and borne to a hotel in triumph for a dinner which lasted long after midnight. Her health was drunk again in real champagne; speeches were made to impromptu toasts of "The New Woman in Business--G.o.d Bless Her." "The Poetry of the Palate,"

"The Creative Cake," etc.... At ten Ernestine and her aides, having succeeded in gathering the debris and straightening out the place for the public opening the next morning, went wearily home to bed. She was told that it had been a great success; she hoped that the enthusiasm would last; but all these people had eaten "a mighty sight of expensive stuff" without paying for it, which seemed to the prosaic Ernestine "bad business."

But Milly knew. She was right. Those cakes cast upon the waters of fashionable Chicago brought in a hundredfold return. The indulgent newspapers, always patriotically loud over local enterprise, noted the opening of the Cake Shop as a minor social event and so in the succeeding days all those who hadn't been invited and couldn't talk French with the waitresses crowded into the store. It was a Novelty,--the New Thing,--and became overnight a popular fad. M. Paul was hard pressed to turn off enough of his delectable tid-bits--they had to employ a.s.sistants for him almost at once, and one may suspect that the fairylike melt-in-the-mouth quality of his best work began to deteriorate from the second day. He had never baked cakes on this wholesale scale. Did these gluttonous barbarians devour them by the platterful?... Telephone orders were numerous, and Ernestine must organize an efficient delivery system, in which she was at home. Milly spent her days at the shop, where it became the fashion for men as well as women to drop in late in the afternoon, to eat a cake or six and chat with one's friends, to sip an anisette or grenadine, and maybe carry away a bagful of cakes for the little ones at home or to eke out Mary's thick-crusted New England pie.

So it was a Success! Milly and Ernestine worked like willing galley-slaves, getting things to run smoothly, fitting into all the corners that their excitable French a.s.sistants created daily. Milly was one broad beam these days, and went happily to bed so tired that she was asleep before she touched her pillow. Even Ernestine's heavy brows relaxed their tension, for the "queer" business seemed to be making good beyond her expectations. Milly had been right. They charged outrageous prices for their delicacies, which scandalized Ernestine, who could not believe that people would be foolish enough to pay twice and three times what things were worth. But Milly insisted. "The people we are after,"

she said, "like it all the better the more they have to pay." And to Ernestine's astonishment she seemed to be right again, for the present.

That, Ernestine concluded, must be another freak of this "rich trade"; the "swells" expected to be done and would be disdainful if they weren't. Ernestine had a good deal of contempt for their patrons. But the glowing proof of their business success lay in the cash drawer, which literally overflowed with money, and they had accounts with half the families in Chicago who pretended to be "in society."

Business men began to compliment Milly upon her shrewdness and predicted a marvellous growth for the business. One broker seriously suggested incorporating the Cake Shop, as certain candy manufacturers had incorporated, and offered to boom the stock on the local exchange, Milly talked of opening a summer branch in Newport or Bar Harbor, she could not decide which. But she was a little timid about the east. She felt that she had been right in starting in Chicago. The west was less accustomed to Paris and had a l.u.s.tier appet.i.te for cake than New York, and the charm of their Gallic interior was more of a novelty beside Lake Michigan than it would be on Fifth Avenue. A branch in St. Louis or Omaha might pay: her mind was nimble with schemes.... She was also going out more or less all the time, to dinners and theatre parties, which with her long day's work took every ounce of her strength and more.

Virginia had to get along these days the best she could. But was her mother not building up a fortune for her future?

Of course they had their troubles from the very start. M. Paul's Parisian morals, it was quickly found, could not be domesticated in a Chicago home, and quarters had to be found for him outside the house.

Then the prettiest of the girls suddenly disappeared, much to Milly's grief and anxiety. The men had been specially attentive to Lulu, and it was found that she had taken a trip to the Pacific Coast with a young broker. Then in the midst of their harvest the receipts began to fall mysteriously, and Ernestine discovered an unauthorized trail from the cash drawer to the large pocket of their _dame de comptoir_. Ernestine resolutely handed her over to the police, which proved to be a very bad move indeed, for no good French subst.i.tute could be found immediately and her Nebraska successor spoke no French and tw.a.n.ged her English in the good Omaha way. She gave the Cake Shop the air of a Childs'

Restaurant. Milly cabled her ally in Paris, Madame Catteau, for a new Queen of the Counter, but she did not arrive until their first season was drawing to a close.

There were other difficulties, new ones almost every day, but the two partners met them all pluckily,--Ernestine with a determined look and a heavy hand; Milly, with smiles and tactful suggestions. Ernestine admired the wonderful way in which Milly managed "the French help,"

talking to them in their own language, flattering them, finding companions and ways of forgetting their loneliness. And through their troubles both were buoyed up by the stimulating sense of success and prosperity. They were making money,--how much they did not know because the business was complex and they hadn't time to figure it all out,--but a good, deal they were sure. As the winter season came to a close there was a lull naturally because many of their patrons left the city for California and the south. It was a convenient breathing time in which they could straighten out their affairs and plan the future campaign.

Trade revived at the end of May and held pretty well into July, then dropped as the country season got into swing. Ernestine was for turning the Cake Shop into a glorified ice-cream stand for the summer, but Milly would not hear of this desecration of her Vision; they were both tired and had earned a vacation. So while Ernestine took Virginia to one of the lake resorts, Milly rested in the big, cool, empty house and played around Chicago with her numerous friends.

She felt that she deserved a reward, and she took it.

VI

COMING DOWN

The Cake Shop started the autumn season rather dully. Some of its eclat had evaporated by the second year, and M. Paul was decidedly getting spoiled in the New World. His cakes were inferior in both quality and variety, and he demanded a sixty per cent rise in wages, which they felt obliged to give him. Another girl had drifted away during the summer, so that one lone Parisian maiden--and the homeliest of the trio--remained to "give an air" to the Cake Shop, and she, already corrupted by the free air of the west, gave it sullenly and with a Chicago heaviness. The shop itself was, of course, less fresh and dainty, having suffered from ten months of smoke, although they had spent a good deal in having it largely redecorated. Just as the cakes became heavier, tougher, more ordinary, as the months pa.s.sed, so the whole enterprise suffered gradually from that coa.r.s.ening and griming which seems an inevitable result of Chicago use. Much of the fine artistic flavor of Milly's conception had already been lost. It was becoming commercialized.

Ernestine did not perceive these changes, to be sure, though Milly did in her less buoyant moments. What troubled Ernestine was the fact that the receipts were falling off, and the accounts were hard to collect.

She suspected that Milly had lost something of her enthusiasm for the Cake Shop. Milly certainly devoted less ardor to the enterprise. She continued to go out a good deal, more than Ernestine felt was good for her health or good for the business, and she often required the use of the house and the servants for elaborate luncheons or dinner-parties.

This invariably put the machine out of order, although Milly always feed the employees liberally for their extra service. Ernestine did not like to complain, because it seemed selfish to deprive Milly of the social relaxation she craved. So she took her supper with Virgie in the latter's nursery. When she did demur finally, Milly, without a word, transferred her party to an expensive new hotel, which was not good for Milly's all-too-open purse.

Business picked up at the holiday season, but fell off again thereafter.

They were not making much money this second winter, and Ernestine was becoming anxious.

"You're always worrying about something," Milly said, when Ernestine pointed out this fact to her. "If the Cake Shop fails, I'll think up something else that will put us right," she added lightly, in the role of the fertile creator, and tripped off to the theatre.