Chapter 11
Maggie stared at Mrs. Stein in befuddlement as the other woman squeezed her hand as if they were old friends before letting go to take a sip of tea.
“My designs…” Maggie repeated slowly. Sometimes she felt as if she’d left that life behind, those old dreams, serving customers as she did now and falling into bed exhausted.
“I have not been able to design anything as of yet,” she told Mrs. Stein honestly, “but I have hopes that I might eventually here at Field’s. ”
Although with the way Mrs. Attlebury was, and the expression of icy fury on her face earlier today, Maggie doubted her supervisor would ever consider accepting any kind of suggestion from her, never mind a whole design.
Mrs. Stein pursed her lips. “Well, I’m glad you’re settled,” she said after a moment. “Your brother is here with you? Theo mentioned he’d become caught up with that gang.”
Once again, Maggie blushed, this time at the mention of Theo. She hoped Theo hadn’t mentioned the kiss they’d shared. She doubted Mrs. Stein would be so friendly and accommodating if he had.
“Yes, my brother Danny is here with me,” she replied. “He’s working at Jackson Park, on the construction site of the Exposition.”
“That’s good to hear.” Mrs. Stein reached for a sandwich and took a healthy bite.
“I’d say all’s well that ends well,” she told Maggie through a mouthful of cucumber, “but somehow that doesn’t seem quite right.
” Her eyes lit with humor once more. “I had to attend that picnic at the Rockefellers’ without the hat you promised me! ”
Maggie knew she was joking—at least she hoped she was—but with a flash of instinctive understanding, she realized this could be her chance, and maybe her only chance.
“I could design you another hat,” she suggested to Mrs. Stein. “One you could wear to a social engagement here. Free of charge,” she added recklessly, “to make up for the great inconvenience I caused you.”
“By not providing a hat, or by very nearly burning my house down?” Mrs. Stein replied and then laughed as Maggie felt the color drain from her face.
“The… the hat,” she managed croakily, and Mrs. Stein laughed again.
“I’m joking, my dear, I assure you!” she exclaimed, reaching over to pat Maggie’s hand.
“I didn’t like that house anyway. It was far too grand.
It made the Knickerbocker set laugh at us for our ostentation.
Don’t think I wasn’t aware of that.” She sighed and swallowed the rest of her sandwich before dabbing her lips with her napkin, her head tilted to one side as she gazed at Maggie assessingly.
“Very well,” she said at last. “I have a tea party to attend next week. That won’t give you much time, but if you can manage it, I’ll wear your hat.
You can come to my house after work and see the gown I’m intending to wear.
Most likely you won’t approve of it, but I like bright colors.
” She gazed down at her chartreuse silk with satisfaction. “Otherwise I look far too sallow.”
Maggie felt as if she were floating or in a dream as she walked back to the millinery department after she and Mrs. Stein had finished taking tea, and having agreed for Maggie to come to her house that very evening, to look at the gown.
She could barely believe the drastic turn of events her life had taken in a few short hours.
First, she’d feared she’d be dismissed, then arrested, and now this.
Another possibility. A future again, her dreams closer than ever, almost as if they were hovering by her fingertips.
First, however, she had to weather the wrath of Mrs. Attlebury.
Maggie stood completely still, her head slightly bowed in humble acceptance, her hands clasped in front of her, as her supervisor gave her a complete dressing-down, her voice lowered to a hiss so as not to alert any customers.
“You clearly have airs above your station, Miss O’Halloran, and that won’t do, that won’t do at all in a place like Field’s.
Consider this your first and most grievous warning.
If I have to give you another, you will be dismissed, no matter what interest Mr. Selfridge takes in you.
You might think you have him in your pretty little pocket, but I assure you Mr. Selfridge takes insubordination just as seriously as I do. ”
“Yes, Mrs. Attlebury,” Maggie replied as meekly as she could.
She did not want to have Mr. Selfridge in her pocket or anywhere else, but she was grateful she was not being dismissed, whether that was because of Mr. Selfridge’s interest, or Mrs. Stein’s interference.
In any case, she thought with a thrill of delighted wonder, if the hat she designed for Mrs. Stein was a success, perhaps she’d be giving her notice anyway…
Such pleasant daydreams occupied her mind for the rest of the day, and the short cable car ride to Prairie Avenue, otherwise known as Millionaire’s Row, where Mrs. Stein resided.
As Maggie stepped down from the streetcar, her eyes widened in wonder at the sight of the magnificent houses that lined the wide avenue, each one with its own grounds and carriage house.
This was where the cream of Chicago’s society lived—Marshall Field, who had started the department store named after him, as well as George Pullman, who had created the luxurious Pullman railway cars.
And Mrs. Stein, too, who occupied a gabled, three-story house, slightly more modest than its neighbors, on the corner of Prairie Avenue and Eighteenth Street.
Maggie hesitated at the front entrance, and then resolutely walked around to the back, where the servants were expected to go. Mrs. Stein might have treated her like an old friend earlier in the day, but Maggie knew better than to presume upon that relationship.
A maid she’d never seen before—she didn’t suppose Mrs. Stein had brought any staff to Chicago—answered the door and let her into the kitchen while she went to see if Mrs. Stein would receive her.
Maggie perched on a chair at the table, while the cook and her assistant moved briskly around her, clattering pots and pans and seeming far too busy to be interested in her business.
“Mrs. Stein will see you now,” the maid told her. “She’s in her dressing room. I’ll take you there.”
Maggie couldn’t keep from craning her neck to see into the rooms of the house as she followed the maid upstairs.
It was far less opulent than the grand mansion Mrs. Stein had lived in back in New York that had taken up a whole city block, but it was still an elegant establishment, with several receiving rooms on the first floor before they headed upstairs to the bedrooms.
“Ah, there you are!” Mrs. Stein was seated at her dressing table in nothing but her robe, her hair loose about her shoulders. “McCullough, you may leave us,” she told the maid with a touch of imperiousness.
With a curious and resentful look at Maggie, the maid retreated, closing the door behind her.
“I’m dining out tonight,” Mrs. Stein told her as she gazed at her reflection critically.
She had a strong, handsome face, her dark hair streaked with silver and deep lines running from nose to mouth, but the humor in her eyes lightened her whole countenance.
“At Palmer House,” she added, naming what Maggie knew from her chats with Sarah Whitman was one of Chicago’s finest hotels, built by the magnate Potter Palmer for his young wife Bertha.
It had been devastated by the Chicago Fire of 1870 and rebuilt at the astronomic cost of nearly two million dollars.
“How lovely,” she murmured, and Mrs. Stein met her gaze in the mirror, rolling her eyes good-naturedly.
“I tell you, there are so few good restaurants in this city! Chicago is crying out for someone to open up a good oyster house, or a Delmonico’s.” She inclined her head back toward a wardrobe behind her. “My gown for the tea party is in there. The blue one, with yellow stripes.”
Mrs. Stein had yet to comprehend subtlety, Maggie reflected as she opened the wardrobe and gazed at the gown in question. It was made of silk, with broad stripes of lemon yellow and turquoise, and bright blue buttons all the way down the back. It was eye-catching, to say the least.
“I know you’ll think it’s a bit much,” Mrs. Stein told her in a voice full of humor, “and for New York, it probably is. But this city is different. Brasher, like me, and I intend to wear those stripes with pride.”
“As you should,” Maggie replied swiftly.
Field’s maxim came to mind—give the lady what she wants—and she knew, despite Mrs. Stein’s penchant for honesty, she would not offer her true opinion of the dress, which was that she thought it was dreadful.
She would simply create a hat that complemented the bold stripes rather than competed with them.
“Do you think you can design a hat to suit?” Mrs. Stein asked as she picked up a large powder puff and began to powder her face. “I was just going to wear my old straw one with some new ribbons, but if you can come up with something better…”
“Oh, I can,” Maggie assured her. Even if she didn’t know what it was yet, or how she would manage to make it.
A short while later, Maggie was heading back downstairs, her fifty-five dollars of savings, returned by her old employer, tucked into her purse, with Mrs. Stein promising to send her chauffeur with her other belongings to Mrs. O’Malley’s tomorrow.
Her fortunes had turned completely, she reflected in amazement.
Now she just had to make a hat in a single week, which was a daunting thought.
As she came to the bottom of the stairs, Maggie paused by the drawing room, not knowing why she was hesitating until, with a ripple of shock, she realized who she was looking for.
Theo Stein.
She didn’t want to see him, she told herself, not after the way he’d accused her, threatening to turn her into the police… and the way she’d kissed him, as bold as any strumpet! It had been an act of desperation, but she still remembered the feel of his lips on hers, the only kiss she’d ever had.
No, she definitely did not want to see him again, if he was even in Chicago, which he probably wasn’t. He was away at university, after all, and was no doubt otherwise occupied this summer.
She hurried down the hall, back to the kitchen, where she murmured her thanks to the busy cook, and then escaped back out into the street.
It would truly be a challenge to create a hat in just one week, she knew, if not downright impossible.
She needed to come up with a design, buy the materials, and then make the thing, and all while working ten hours a day at Field’s.
Maggie very nearly wilted at the thought, but she knew she would simply have to summon the strength and will because this surely was the best chance she’d ever have to better herself, and she was determined to take it.
Her buoyant mood continued all the way back to Englewood and into the boarding house, until she stood in the little front hall, the clank of pots being washed coming from the kitchen for supper had finished and she realized she had no one to share the good news with.
Danny would be mostly indifferent, and she and Brendan were barely speaking.
Her friend Tovah would have been pleased, Maggie thought, but she was back in New York, and she hadn’t even written to her yet, although she kept meaning to.
She could tell her fellow boarders, Maggie supposed, and Sarah Whitman would surely be pleased for her, but she barely knew any of them.
The isolation of her existence swept through her like an icy wind, obliterating the warmth and excitement she’d felt about the commission.
What was the good of having exciting news if you had no one to share it with?
Especially when the one person she really wanted to share her excitement with, more than Tovah or Danny or anyone, wasn’t speaking to her… and she didn’t even understand why.