Milly felt that he was too large for the picture. She had never been ashamed of her humble home,--not with all her fashionable friends, not with her rich lover. But now she was conscious of the poor impression it must make upon the artist youth, who was so immeasurably superior to it in culture. When the old people had withdrawn after supper, leaving the lovers to themselves in the little front parlor, there were several moments of awkward silence between them. Milly was distressed for him, but she did not try to apologize. She said in her heart that she would make it up to him,--all that she lacked in family background. A woman could, she was convinced.

Possibly she did not fully realize how depressingly his situation had been brought home to him by this first contact with the Ridge household.

He knew quite well how far thirty dollars a week went, with one man, and, as has been said, the last intention of his soul was to induce any woman to share it with him. Nor had he meant to seek out a rich wife, although having brought good introductions he had made his way easily into pleasant circles in his new home. Marriage had no part in his scheme of things. But he had been snared by the same tricksy sprite of blood and youth that had inflamed Milly. Now his was the main responsibility, and he must envisage the future he had chosen soberly.

No more pleasant dallying in rich drawing-rooms, no more daydreaming over the varied paths of an entertaining career. It was Matrimony! No wonder--and no discredit to him--that the young man was somewhat overwhelmed when he contemplated what that meant in material terms.

Never for the fraction of a moment, it should be said, did he think of evading the responsibility. His American chivalry would have made that impossible, even if he had desired it. And Milly had his heart and his senses completely enthralled.

"Dearest," she said to him that evening, divining the sombre course of his thoughts, "it will be so different with us when we are married.

We'll have everything pretty, even if it's only two rooms, won't we?"

And her yielding lips sealed his bondage firmer than ever, though he might know that beauty, even in two rooms, costs money. He shut his eyes and hoped--which is the only way in such cases.

Milly did not tell him that within a fortnight she should be without even this home.

"There's going to be no engagement this time," Milly reported briskly to Sally Norton, when she announced her news, "for I had enough of that before, with all the fuss. Jack and I are both perfectly free. We're just going to be married some day--that's all."

"Milly! Well I never!" Sally gasped, amid shrieks of laughter. "Not really? You don't mean that kid?"

(Sally was conducting a serious affair herself, with a wary old bachelor, whom ultimately she led in triumph to the altar. Ever after she referred to Mr. John Bragdon as Milly's "kid lover").

"I think it splendid!" Vivie p.r.o.nounced in a burst of appreciation.

"It's the real thing, dear. You are both young and brave. You are willing to make sacrifices for your hearts."

Milly was not yet conscious of making any tremendous sacrifice.

Nevertheless, she adopted easily this sentimentalized view of her marriage. And Vivie Norton went about among their friends proclaiming Milly's heroism. Some people were amused; some were sceptical; a few pitied the young man. "Milly, a poor man's wife--never! For he _is_ poor, isn't he, a newspaper artist?"

"He has a great deal of talent," Vivie Norton a.s.serted with a.s.surance.

Milly had so informed her.

"But an artist!" and Chicago shrugged its shoulders dubiously. An artist, at least a resident specimen of the craft, might be a drawing-room lap-dog, unmarried, but married he soon became a seedy member of society, somewhere between a clerk and a college professor in social standing. One of the smarter women Milly knew, Mrs. James Lamereux, exclaimed when she heard the news,--"It's beautiful,--these days when the women as well as the men are so keen for the main chance in everything." It was rumored there had been a sentimental episode in this lady's past, the fragrance of which still lay in her heart. Meeting Milly on the street she congratulated the girl heartily,--"And, my dear, you'll have such an interesting life--you'll know lots of clever people and do unconventional things,--be free, you know, as WE are not".... But Mrs. Jonas Haggenash remarked when some one told her the news,--"The little fool! Now she's gone and done it."

In general the verdict of friends seemed to be suspended: they would wait and see, preserving meantime an att.i.tude of amiable neutrality and good-will towards this outbreak of idealism. But Milly was not troubling herself about what people thought or said. This time she had the full courage of her convictions. The only one of her old friends she cared to confide in deeply was Eleanor Kemp. That lady listened with troubled, yet sympathetic eyes. "Oh, my dear," she murmured, kissing Milly many times. "My dear! My dear!" she repeated as if she did not trust herself to say more. "I so hope you'll be happy--that it will be right this time."

"Of course it _is_," Milly retorted, hurt by the shadow of doubt implied.

"You know it takes so much for two people to live together always, even when they have plenty of money."

"But when they love," Milly rejoined, according to her creed.

"Even when they love," the older woman affirmed gravely.

She could see beyond the immediate glamor those monotonous years of commonplace living,--struggle and effort. She knew from experience how much of life has nothing to do with the emotions and the soul, but merely with the stomach and other vulgar functions of the body.

"I haven't a doubt,--not one!" Milly affirmed.

"That's right--and I oughtn't to suggest any.... You must bring Mr.

Bragdon to dinner Sunday. Walter and I want to see him.... When are you to be married?"

"Soon," Milly replied vaguely.

"That's best, too."

Then Milly confessed to her old friend the dark condition of the Ridge fortunes, with the uncomfortable fact that very shortly she herself would be without a home.

"I must find some place to stay--but it won't be for long."

"You must come here and stay with us as long as you will," Mrs. Kemp promptly said with true kindliness. "I insist! Walter would want it, if I didn't--he's very fond of you, too."

Thus fortune smiled again upon Milly, and the two friends plunged into feminine details of dress and domestic contrivance. Eleanor Kemp, who had a gift lying unused of being a capable manager, a poor man's helpmate, tried her best to interest Milly in the little methods of economizing and doing by which dollars are pushed to their utmost usefulness. Milly listened politely, but she felt sure that "all that would work out right in time." She could not believe that Jack would be poor always.... The older woman smiled at her confidence, and after she had gone shook her head.

The young artist had his due share of pride. When he realized that the woman he loved and meant to marry was staying with the Kemps because she had no other refuge, he urged their immediate marriage, though he also had a fair-sized package of bills in his desk drawer and needed a few months in which to straighten out his affairs. Milly was eager to be married,--"When all would come right somehow." So she opposed no objection.

Indeed as she let her lover understand, she was indifferent about the mere ceremony. She would go and live with him any time, anywhere, if it weren't for the talk it would make and hurting her father's feelings.

Milly was, of course, an essentially monogamic creature, like any normal, healthy woman. She meant simply that, once united with the man she really loved, the thing was eternal. If he should cease to love her, it would be the end of everything for her, no matter whether she had the legal bond or not. However flattered her lover may have been by this exhibition of trust, Bragdon was too American in instinct to entertain the proposal seriously. "What's the use of that, anyway?" he said. "We mean to stick--we might as well get the certificate."

So, as Milly confided to Eleanor Kemp, they determined "just to go somewhere and have it done as quickly as possible, without fuss and feathers."

And Mrs. Kemp, realizing what a sacrifice this sort of marriage must mean to any girl,--without the pomp and ceremony,--felt that it was a good sign for the couple's future, showing a real desire to seek the essentials and dispense with the frills. She and her husband had planned to give the young adventurers a quiet but conventional home wedding, with friends and a reception. But she readily acquiesced in Milly's idea, and one bleak Sat.u.r.day in January slipped off with the lovers to a neighboring church, and after seeing them lawfully wedded by a parson left them to their two days' holiday, which was all the honeymoon they allowed themselves at this time....

Milly was a fresh and blooming bride in a becoming gray broadcloth suit, and as she stood before the faded parson beside her chosen man to take the eternal vows of fidelity, no woman ever gave herself more completely to the one of her heart. The wonderful song of bliss that had been singing inside her all these last weeks burst into a triumphal poem. She felt curiously exalted, scarcely herself. Was she not giving everything she had as a woman to her loved one, without one doubt? Had she not been true to woman's highest instinct, to her heart? She had rejected all the bribes of worldliness in order to obtain "the real, right thing," and she felt purified, enn.o.bled, having thus fulfilled the ideals of her creed.... She turned to her husband a radiant face to be kissed,--a face in which shone pride, confidence, happiness.

As the older woman, with tear-dimmed eyes, watched the two bind themselves together for the long journey, she murmured to herself like a prayer,--"She's such a woman! Such a dear woman! She MUST be happy."

That was the secret of Milly's hold upon all her women friends: they felt the woman in her, the pure character of their s.e.x more highly expressed in her than in any one else they knew. She was the unconscious champion of their hearts.

Again the older woman murmured prayerfully,--"What will she do with life? What _will_ she do?"

For like the wise woman she was she knew that in most cases it is the woman who makes marriage sing like a perpetual song or become a sullen silence. All the way to her home she kept repeating to herself,--

"What will she make of it? Milly!"

PART THREE

ASPIRATIONS

I

THE NEW HOME