One Woman's Life Part 5

"I know you can't forgive me--but I hope you won't let your father know.

It would hurt him and--"

It was a very mean thing to say, and she knew it. Afterwards she thought of many spirited and apposite words she might have spoken, but at the moment all she could do was to fling herself haughtily out of the buggy as it drew up before the curb and without a word or glance march stiffly up the steps, where her father sat smoking his after-dinner cigar.

"Why, Milly," he exclaimed, "where've you been?"

She stalked past him into the house. She could hear her father ask Snowden to stop and have some supper, and Snowden's refusal.

"You'll be over for a game later, Snow?"

"Guess not, Horace," and the buggy drove off.

Then for the first time it came over her what it would mean if she should follow her first impulse and tell her father what had happened.

Mr. Snowden was not merely his most intimate friend, but in a way his superior. If she should make things unpleasant between them, it might be serious. So when her grandmother came tiptoeing into Milly's room to see why she did not come down for her supper, Milly merely said she was too tired to eat.

"What's happened?"

"That nasty Snowden man," Milly spluttered, "tried to kiss me and I had to--to fight him.... Don't tell father!"

The little old lady was very much disturbed, but she did not tell her son. Her policy was one of discreet silence about "unpleasant things" if they could be covered up. And this was the kind of event that women were capable of managing themselves, as Milly had managed....

Milly lay awake long hours that night, her heart beating loudly, her busy mind reviewing the experience, and though her resentment did not lessen as the hours wore on and she murmured to herself,--"Horrid, nasty beast!" yet she became aware of another sensation. If--if things had been different--she--well--it--might, and then she buried her head in the pillow more ashamed than ever.

At last she had learned something of the real nature of men, and never again in her long experience with the other s.e.x was she unaware of "what things meant." Whenever a man was concerned, one must always expect this possibility. And she began to despise the weaker s.e.x.

For some days the Snowdens did not come for cards. Horatio seemed depressed. He would sit reading his paper through to the small advertis.e.m.e.nts, or wander out by himself to a beer garden near by. When the social circle is as small as the Ridges', such a state of affairs means real deprivation, and Milly, who did not approve of the beer garden any more than did her grandmother, wondered how she could restore the old harmony between the two families.

But before anything came of her good-natured intention fate arranged pleasantly to relieve her of the responsibility.

VII

MILLY SEES MORE OF THE WORLD

The Kemps had a cottage at one of the Wisconsin lakes, and Eleanor Kemp invited Milly to make them a month's visit. The girl's imagination was aflame with excitement: it was to her Newport or Bar Harbor or Aix.

There was first the question of clothes. Although Mrs. Kemp a.s.sured her that they lived very quietly at Como, Milly knew that the Ca.s.ses, the Gilberts, the Shards had summer homes there, and the place was as gay as anything in this part of the country. Mrs. Kemp might say, "Milly, you're pretty enough for any place just as you are!" But Milly was woman enough to know what _that_ meant between women.

Her allowance was spent, four months in advance as usual, but Horatio was easily brought to see the exceptionality of this event, and even old Mrs. Ridge was moved to give from her h.o.a.rd. It was felt to be something in the nature of an investment for the girl's future. So Milly departed with a new trunk and a number of fresh summer gowns.

"Have a good time, daughter!" Horatio Ridge shouted as the car moved off, and he thought he had done his best for his child, even if he had had to borrow a hundred dollars from his friend Snowden.

Milly was sure she was about to have the most wonderful experience of her life.

Afterwards she might laugh over the excitement that first country-house visit had caused, and recall the ugly little brown gabled cottage on the sh.o.r.e of the hot lake, that did not even faintly resemble its Italian namesake, with the simple diversions of driving about the dusty, flat country, varied by "veranda parties" and moonlight rows with the rare young men who dared to stay away from business through the week. All of life, the sages tell us, is largely a matter of proportion. Como, Wisconsin, was breathless excitement to Milly Ridge at eighteen, as she testified to her hostess in a thousand joyous little ways.

And there was the inevitable man,--a cousin of the Claxton tribe, who was a young lawyer in Baltimore. He spent a week at the lake, almost every minute with Milly.

"You've simply fascinated him, my dear," Eleanor Kemp reported, delightedly. "And they're very good people, I a.s.sure you--he's a Harvard man."

It was the first time Milly had met on intimate terms a graduate of a large university. In those days "Harvard" and "Yale" were t.i.tles of aristocratic magic, as good as Rome or Oxford.

"He thinks you so unspoiled," her friend added. "I've asked him to stay another week."

So the two boated and walked and sat out beside the lake until the stars grew dim--and nothing ever came of it! Milly had her little extravagant imaginings about this well-bred young man with his distinguished manner; she did her best to please--and nothing came of it. Why? she asked herself afterward. He had held her hand and talked about "the woman who gives purpose to a man's life" and all that. (Alas, that plebeian paw of Milly's!)

Then he had left and sent her a five-pound box of candy from the metropolis, with a correct little note, a.s.suring her that he could never forget those days he had spent with her by the lake of Como. Years afterward on an Atlantic steamer she met a sandy-haired, stoutish American, who introduced himself with the apology,--

"You're so like a girl I knew once out West--at some lake in Wisconsin--"

"And you are Harrison Plummer," she said promptly. "I shouldn't have known _you_," she added maliciously, surveying the work of time. She felt that her plebeian hands were revenged: he was quite ordinary. His wife was with him and four uninteresting children, and he seemed bored.... That had been her Alpine height at eighteen. The heights seem lower at thirty-five.

Even if this affair didn't prove to be "the real, right thing," Milly gained a good deal from her Como visit. Her social perspective was greatly enlarged by the acquaintances she made there. It was long before the day of the motor, the launch, the formal house party, but the families who sought rural relief from the city along the sh.o.r.es of the Wisconsin lake lived in a liberal, easy manner. They had horses and carriages a plenty and entertained hospitably. They did not use red cotton table-cloths (which Grandma Ridge insisted upon to save washing), and if there were few men-servants, there was an abundance of tidy maids. It gave Milly unconsciously a conception of how people lived in circles remote from West Laurence Avenue, and behind her pretty eyes there formed a blind purpose of pushing on into this unknown territory.

"I had my own way to make socially," she said afterwards, half in apology, half in pride. "I had no mother to bring me out in society--I had to make my own friends!"

It was easy, to be sure, in those days for a pretty, vivacious girl with pleasant manners to go where she would. Society was democratic, in a flux, without pretence. Like went with like as they always will, but the social game was very simple, not a definite career, even for a woman.

Many of these good people said "folks" and "ain't" and "doos," and n.o.body thought the worse of them for that. And they were kind,--quick to help a young and attractive girl, who "would make a good wife for some man."

So after her month with Mrs. Kemp, Milly was urged to spend a week at the Gilberts, which easily stretched to two. The Gilberts were young "North Side" people, and much richer than the Kemps. Roy Gilbert had the rare distinction in those days of describing himself merely as "capitalist," thanks to his father's exertions and denials. He was lazy and good-natured and much in love with his young wife, who was unduly religious and hoped to "steady" Milly. Apart from this obsession she was an affectionate and pretty woman, rather given to rich food and sentimental novels. She had been a poor girl herself, of a good New York family, and life had not been easy until one fine day Roy Gilbert had sailed into Watch Hill on his yacht and fallen in love with her. Some such destiny, she hoped, would come to Milly Ridge....

When at last, one drearily hot September day, Milly got back to the little box of a house on West Laurence Avenue, home seemed unendurably sordid and mean, stifling. Her father was sitting on the stoop in his shirt-sleeves, and had eased his feet by pushing off his shoes.

Discipline had grown lax in Milly's absence. Her first sensation of revolt came at that moment.

"Oh, father--you oughtn't to look like that!" she said, kissing him.

"What's the harm? n.o.body's home 'round here. All your swell friends are at the seash.o.r.e."

"But, father!"

"Well, Milly, so you decided to come home at last?"

Grandma Ridge had crept out from the house and was smiling icily.

Secretly both the older people were pleased with Milly's social success, but they tempered their feelings in good puritan fashion with a note of reproof.

That evening the Snowdens came in for the game of cards. Snowden was plainly embarra.s.sed at meeting Milly. "Good evening, Mr. Snowden, how are you? and Mrs. Snowden?" she asked graciously, with her new air of aloofness, as if he were an utter stranger. "You've come to play cards.

I'm so glad--papa enjoys having you so much!"

She felt that she was handling the situation like a perfect lady, and she no longer had any real resentment. She even consented to take a hand in the game. They were much excited about an atrocious murder that had happened only a few doors away. Old Leonard Sweet, who had grown rich in the contracting business, had been found dead in his kitchen. His son-in-law--a dissipated young man whom Milly knew slightly--was suspected of the crime. It was thought that the two had had a quarrel about money, and the young man had shot his father-in-law. Milly remembered old Sweet quite vividly. He used to sit on his stoop in his stocking feet, even on Sundays when all the neighborhood was going by to church,--very shocking to Milly's sense of propriety. And the boy had hung around saloons. Now where was he?

"Well, daughter, can't you tell us what you did at Co-mo?" Horatio urged....

No, decidedly, this sort of thing would not do for Milly!