Читать книгу Her Mother's Daughter - Nalbro Bartley - Страница 10

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BECAUSE she did not know what else to do with life, Gloria was an expert at wasting it. Having won Tag over, she dismissed him and ran up to her mother’s room to demand that she arrange for Tag’s invaluable services to begin without delay.

Min bridled. “Now, honey, I said I’d find him a place,” she began. “But Tag ought to learn the business——”

“Begin at the flour sifters and wear a white skullcap and apron? Oh, lovely. Only skullcaps would never be becoming. I’m off for some rest, mama, so write the letters to the president and call up Violette. Tell her I must have my dress by four or I won’t accept it. You’ll get my flowers, won’t you? And make me some chicken broth—I feel as if that was the only thing I could enjoy. Tag and I will have the three rooms at the back—my old one and the two next to it. We won’t need so many new things but you might get a line on Jennison and ask if he could have some time for me next week,” vanishing before Min could reply.

It was difficult for Gloria to indulge in forty winks even the delectable orchid and white room of her own furnishing. She tore off the Russian frock, the strands of pearl beads snapping as they were disentangled from her hair. She broke a finger nail as she unstrapped her slippers. Her head ached and her eyes burned. For a moment she wished that she had asked her mother to brush her hair. But she decided not to call her. Min would talk. Gloria wanted to think.

By the time she had slipped into some gauze-like negligée and flung herself upon the canopy bed with its endless down pillows, she had decided to engage a personal maid. She would need one after marriage and it was time her mother’s services should end. She preferred that Tag never knew the extent of these services. Jealously Min had cherished the privilege of waiting upon her child.

Tag had been easy to convert, she thought, reaching for a midget cigarette from a Dresden shoe on her night stand. Whenever she was fagged, a quarrel proved stimulating. She wished that Tag had made more of an issue of the matter. Of course he loved her too much to cross her, she thought soberly. He always had loved her—away back in the days when Dodo omitted her from her birthday party list and Tag saved her a piece of the cake, the piece with the wedding ring, no less.

Was it that she loved Tag or that he loved her? Time must prove that. There was so much time ahead. And she flattered herself that she knew life at first hand and, therefore, knew how to spend that time to the best advantage.

Following her graduation from Miss Finch’s Finishing School, Gloria had decided against college and in favor of doing some “serious work.” Miss Finch’s had been an eastern establishment where one met the best people. During Gloria’s four years spent under Miss Finch’s expensive eye, Min had remained in the background, sending prompt checks for her child’s tuition and presenting the school with chimes for its chapel. It never proved convenient for Mrs. Jules Auguste Beaumont to be present at school festivities until the actual day of Gloria’s graduation. Correctly gowned and wisely monosyllabic, Min had been an imposing figure upon the velvety lawns.

Gloria’s serious work had taken the form of working at the Beaumont bakeries! A steel magnate’s daughter and the ward of a financier so inspired her. They were to do “serious work” work in the offices of the steel plant and the stock exchange. College taught only theories, these chiffon-clad young things chattered. They desired reality.

Within six months the steel magnate’s daughter eloped with a bookkeeper and was lucratively forgiven. The financier’s ward abandoned sharpening lead pencils to appear in a Broadway revue while Gloria, who spent all of a week in the ovens of the Beaumont plant, was promoted to the office force. Here she redecorated to her heart’s desire, making it an issue with the general manager as to whether or not she be allowed to have built-in gold-fish aquariums instead of window sills and bedroom cretonnes fluttering throughout the shipping department. Each afternoon she served tea at her desk, from one to six friends dropping in to see the show.

Her picture in a swank sports costume was printed in the New York and local papers as “Gloria Beaumont, a refreshing type of modern rich girl, who prefers to learn at first hand the reason for her wealth.”

The week after the pictures appeared Gloria resigned in favor of a six weeks’ cruise to South America. Throat trouble was the reason given to the general manager. Upon her return Gloria “came out” at a tea. It was not the sort of affair she would have liked but the amount spent on the decorations was whispered about even to the confines of Duffy’s hidden courtyard and the list was fairly creditable. Well-bred people are always willing to work for a prospering cause.

Ever afterwards Gloria democratically referred to the time when she “worked her way up at the plant.” She deluded herself that she understood the mechanism of that growing octopus which threatened to supply the nation with its baked goods. As time went on the delusion grew. She claimed a camaraderie with the factory girls as well as being informed as to the office end of the game. Had she not triumphed over the general manager in the matter of the gold-fish aquariums? She was intolerant of anyone who spent the money a business earned but who refused to understand that business. She gave out an interview in which she was quoted as “being proud to be part of such a marvelous concern whose coöperation made for harmony and prosperity, to trace its growth from the industry of her father and mother and their shabby red book which recorded the famous Beaumont recipes. Indeed, to-day, she valued that little book as another might treasure jewels,” etc., etc.

“She’ll kid herself around the whole course,” was the general opinion of the Beaumont employees.

Every few weeks the foremen threatened to resign if Miss Beaumont and her friends made another lengthy tour of the bakeries, dawdling through the departments, tampering with the machines and finally clamoring for lunch being served at the employees’ cafeteria—lunch with specially made cakes frosted with individual initials. If they were going to work for a sight-seeing company, they wanted time to train for it.

As for philanthropies, Gloria considered that she had scientifically mastered the art of giving. She wrote liberal checks for certain established charities and donated tons of stale bread loaves and cakes. She was always captain of a team for raising funds—with plenty of supper dances to celebrate each additional donation—and whenever she spoke to the district nurses association she mentioned the fact that when one was privileged to serve humanity the financial aim was subservient—n’est-ce pas?

Now and then Gloria came into contact with some beaten but still proud individual who could not face the associated charities. She was always liberal—particularly if the dramatic element was uppermost. As a consequence she had been cheated by imposters who knew how to win sympathy. She took her losses lightly, charging them up to the “Beaumont memorial fund” as she dubbed it.

But she never gave of herself. “I cannot endure sniffy, underbred people,” she explained. “Besides, they are stupid to be wretched and abused. If a man beat me, I’d beat him. If someone stole my money, I’d arrest them. That’s fair play. I’m sorry for children with twisted spines and sore eyes, and overworked horses and homeless old women. But that is no reason that I must wear Jaeger cloth and go about with pails of mutton broth. I’m sure our board handles that sort of thing more efficiently. Such cases are fearfully depressing.”

Sometimes Min ministered to such cases. Min had an ability for individual relief work. She feared neither drunken bully nor disease placarded slum. Hers was a practical but unscientific method of immediate relief and blunt advice. She seldom told Gloria what she did in this line.

Min’s personal life was a rather shy affair. While she revelled in Gloria’s success, she kept her own interests to herself. There were commonplace visits to friends who remembered the days when Min was “that Swiss woman” and envied Mrs. O’Toole. There were sentimental matinées which Gloria would have considered “too killing for words” and at which Min wept gullible tears. She took a shrewd interest in the stock and bond market and never missed a director’s meeting at the bakeries. At night, waiting for Gloria’s return, she would read old-fashioned novels and make black coffee in a quaint French kettle which she kept by the side of her bed. Whenever there was an opportunity she slipped into the kitchen and cooked. She enjoyed the immaculate cupboards and refrigerator room over which supercilious servants reigned. She liked to “poke around” and discover what was being wasted and what was neglected. To concoct some Swiss delicacy of which Gloria was fond and place it in her room for a surprise. She did Gloria’s fine washing—unless Gloria caught her at it. She delighted in making the gossamer underthings twice as gossamer as before.

Min would have been a happy woman could she have supervised a modern middle-class home. She would have been in her element with the new labor-saving appliances, driving her own car to market, arranging her own rooms. There was an element of loneliness in this correct grandeur. While Gloria was a child or away at school Min was necessarily supreme, a glorified caretaker. Not that she resented the deposing of her authority. But she was wistful for the days on Oak avenue when she had tied up her dauntless head in white cloth and given the front parlor a vigorous cleaning to put to shame the hired girl’s efforts, only to replace the white cloth with a feathered hat and drive her bay mare downtown to call for Jules. Min’s plight was to be expected in the case of any alarm clock purchasing a cathedral chime!

Throwing away the cigarette, Gloria rolled over on a nest of pillows until her heels kicked up in the air and her chin rested in the palms of her hands. Then what? Children? Possibly. New York? She rather thought so. Tag’s increasing devotion? Certainly. The fault with wading pools is their shallowness ... what was it she wanted, what satisfying, worthwhile feat? Restlessly, she tried to sleep ... nice old Tag, what good times they would have. Duffy would rage when Tag became a vice-president of the bakeries ... but what was it she ultimately wanted to achieve? “Who’ll play with the playman’s daughter, when the playman’s out at play?” she hummed as she drifted off to sleep.