One Woman's Life Part 9

II

MILLY ENTERTAINS

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 acc.u.mulated 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 Sa.s.siety 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 sh.o.r.e--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 the _Star_ had it the next Sunday morning, eyed the nervous little man over her broad bosom and across her plate of salad and p.r.o.nounced 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 from _me_." 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, he _was_ a 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,--G.o.d 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 a.s.sured 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 they _could_ come, might well envy poor little Milly Ridge her one magnet gift.

"And so sweet," Mrs. Gilbert cooed fondly, watching her protege.

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 G.o.ds, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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."