Читать книгу Her Mother's Daughter - Nalbro Bartley - Страница 6

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IN 1895 Jules Beaumont had a heart attack which kept him in bed for three months. Min saw her opportunity and grasped it. When Jules came below stairs he found machines mixing his dough and new helpers daring to tamper economically with his sacred recipes. The money box held more profits but Jules’ reign had ended.

Min was more domineering than ever—still looking thirty-odd and feeling forty-odd at heart.

“Where would your business have been but for me?” she scolded at his protests. “Why should I run upstairs to tell you everything I do? I had to run up and down enough taking care of you. No nurse would come to such a place as ours, the doctor said as much. Of course I bought machines and hired extra help when I saw it was to our advantage. We have made twice as much as when you puttered around—yes, puttered around,” she flung back at him. “And we’re going to go on this way. It’s the Yankee way of doing things. The men at the bank said so. I’ve leased the ground floor of the new Grant Building and taken an option to buy it, as well. I’m going to have the girls in the new tea room (it is a tea room, mon mari) wear black dresses and ruffled aprons and caps and a woman is going to paint peacocks and vines on the walls. Well, it is my business how much she will charge. I’m to have canary birds in wicker cages and a big music box. Oh, but we’ll get it back on the price of tea, stupide,” as Jules broke into argument.

“We are ruined—you fool of a wife,” he screamed back at her. “Only millionaires lease in the Grant Building. How much can you charge for a cup of tea—a hundred francs? Peacocks on the wall! Mon dieu—” and his heart trouble threatened to begin again.

“I am to have a child in September,” finished Min as if he had not spoken.

She spoke in such a reverent voice that Jules could not remain unimpressed.

“So,” he said softly, “another mouth to feed—yet you lease in the Grant Building and plan on peacocks for the wall decorations! May it be a son to help me in my old age—and against your mad plans.”

Min did not attempt to share her hopes. She alone believed that this child, boy or girl, was to enjoy everything which the Beaumont money could buy. This child was the answer to her restless longing for self-expression, her disappointment in personal achievement. This child was to be born free and sheltered and adored—to be given everything the Beaumonts could earn. In America’s mushroom soil, the Beaumont bakery would be forgotten in the greater light of the child’s education and new environment. How many of these Rutledge aristocrats but whose parents had been in trade?

That her child might have its own preferences or even abilities never once occurred to Min. It was to be hers—a sense of supreme possession completed the self-hypnosis. Her future power in dictating her child’s future helped her to endure the monotonous months when Jules grumbled because she bought nursery furniture and fine, white baby clothes, refusing to take her turn at the machines when the help was away. Jules resented the coming of this child; Min reverenced it. To its advent she gave the same fervor that she would have given to a new creed.

She planned to move into a house on the west side, a house with double-parlors and a veranda and a stable. She would make Jules pay for the proper furnishings. She would stay away from the bakery except for the Saturday rush so that she might take proper care of her child. She would join another club and they must have a buggy for pleasure drives. Her full, red mouth would curl upwards in that glad grin as she thought of all this and she would go to the best department store and buy filmy white slips or a corded silk bonnet edged with swansdown. She would return to stand behind the bakery counter, making change and taking orders. No one suspected that she was miles away from the little shop with its hungry customers—millions of miles away. She was standing in an imaginary drawing-room while her beautiful daughter was acclaimed the belle of the evening or in the front pew of a fashionable cathedral while her handsome son preached to his adoring congregation or in an opera box while her prima donna child made a successful début. She, Min Beaumont, mother of these matchless creatures——

“I wanted the bread with carraway seeds, please,” some flat voice would interrupt.

“Have you any more Poor Man’s Cake left?”

Scornfully and only momentarily Min would descend to reality.

Min’s child was not born easily as the doctor had expected of this broad-hipped young woman but after hours of agony and doubt as to her surviving. It proved a delicate, tiny girl with a fluff of fair hair and blindish blue eyes blinking solemnly upon the room of curious neighbors. It was the sort of child a woman like Min never has, thought the Doctor, the kind of newborn creature that arrived in the big houses on the avenue, suggestive of being carried on down pillows and dressed in gossamer slips and family lace shawls, being overly burdened with godparents and silver mugs and bank accounts ... the Beaumont setting was anything but correct.

The doctor told Jules that his wife never must have another child. She must rest for a long time before going back into the shop.

“You must think of her before you do your customers,” he emphasized, for he had not been overly impressed with Jules’ tenderness during the confinement. “As for the child, she is all right. Probably she will grow into a great, strong woman—you wanted a son? Well, most of us get what we don’t want. Remember, Mrs. Beaumont must rest for a long time.”

Min had heard everything they said although she pretended to sleep. She was eager to be alone with her treasure, dreaming without interruption. She wished the neighbors to go away and the old woman, who was half nurse and half housekeeper, to start making broth. Then she could smile at this flaxen-haired doll and wonder what she should be named. She must find some superb, effective title. Perhaps Pearl or Rosita—there was Marcella, after the leading woman of the local stock company, an institution which Min infrequently enjoyed. Or Corinne or Muriel—Regina was a name she almost decided in favor of but was swayed by recalling the heroine of a recent novel whose fortunes she had followed with unflagging interest. The name of that beautiful and persecuted creature had been Gloria. Gloria! Mentally Min pronounced it several times. It had a satisfying effect. Gloria Beaumont! Min had found her religion. The relationship of parent and child never was to be established; it was to be adoring and adored.