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CLAUDINE mounted the front steps with an unusual languor.
“I’m afraid I’m going to be ill,” she thought. “This cold hangs on so.... I must have some hot tea and lie down.”
To tell the truth, she would not really have been sorry to be ill. It would have been a respite from the nightmare life of the past weeks. Nothing but worry and distress about her son, nothing but disgraceful quarrels between him and his father, and an exasperation and irritability on the part of Gilbert which terrified her. He blamed her for everything, for his disappointment in the boy, for the costly folly of the boy’s existence. Claudine was neither able to quarrel nor to keep silent. She felt obliged to defend Bertie, to make excuses for him, she even told lies for him, and paid his debts herself when she was able. Gilbert frequently found this out, and said that she deceived him treacherously, which was true. She was not at all contrite; she knew that with Bertie threats and bluster were of no use whatever; one had either to convince him by reasoning—which she was incapable of—or to win him through his affection, which was what she tried to do. She knew that he loved her perhaps more than anyone else had ever loved her.
“How can you bear to make me so unhappy, Bertie!” she had asked him.
“It isn’t me that makes you unhappy, Mammy,” he had answered. “It’s Father. You wouldn’t worry about me, if he didn’t make you. You know I’m all right—a heart of gold under a rough exterior. A harmless buffoon. I’m just consciously being wild, as is proper for my years. It’s all Father’s fault.”
She acknowledged to herself, with some surprise, that he was right. Left to herself, she would not have worried over Bertie; there was a quality in even his most grave follies, a grace, an innate delicacy which in her eyes quite redeemed them. He didn’t love his vices, he played with them.
She rang the bell, and the door was opened instantly, not by the maid, but by Bertie himself.
“Hello, Mammy!” he cried. “I’ve been waiting for you! Your tea’s ready!”
She followed him into the front room, and found it charmingly prepared for her. He had lighted the gas logs, and had drawn up before the blaze a little gilt table never before used for such a purpose, on which he had arranged a silver tea-service always kept in state on the dining-room sideboard, and a bowl of red carnations.
“Why, Bertie!” she cried. “How dear of you!”
“Wasn’t it? Sit down, Mammy, and try a cake!”
“My dear boy! Did you buy the flowers and cakes for me yourself?”
“I bought the flowers. The cakes were a gage of love. Mammy, lookin’ about you, don’t you feel convinced that I’d be the best husband that ever was?”
“I dare say!” she answered, smiling.
“Mammy, don’t you smell a rat?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why these preparations? Why this introduction of the topic of husbands?”
“Do explain! what new nonsense is this?”
“I’ll tell you, Mammy! I’m going to be married!”
“Bertie!”
She frowned with displeasure.
“True!”
“I don’t like to hear you say such things, even in joke. A boy of eighteen—”
“Oh, it wouldn’t be for five years, Mammy!”
“You mustn’t think of binding yourself to anything of that sort at your age. Surely you’re sensible enough to know that you’re sure to change—”
“I never do. But don’t you see what a good idea it is? How it will keep me safe in the midst of all sorts of temptations which beset a handsome youth? I suppose I am a youth, aren’t I? Although no one ever called me one.”
“It’s not right to expect any girl to wait five years for you. And what makes you think you’ll be able to marry in five years, you silly boy? You’ve never earned a penny—”
“I’ll explain all that presently. Mammy, seriously, I’ve arranged my future in a very remarkable way.”
“And who on earth do you imagine will marry you, after waiting five years?”
“She is beautiful, good, and rich,” said Bertie. “She’s the daughter of the King of the Pastry-Cooks.”
“Who?”
“Her name is Giulia Santigiorni.”
“But who is she? An Italian?”
“Yes, her father’s Santi, the caterer.”
“Oh, Bertie!”
“I only ask you to see her. She’s altogether lovely, and she’s had one of those marvelous nouveau riche educations. You know the sort of thing—lessons in everything from the most expensive teachers. Sings, plays, paints, speaks all known languages, studied deportment and household management and First Aid. She’s been for the last two years in a convent in Paris, and they’ve made one of those regular foreign young girls out of her. You know, modest and gentle, always on the alert to be respectful and polite to old people.... The King of the Pastry-Cooks is rather keen on society. He gives monster parties—you never saw anything like them; they’re awfully pathetic. He gets paid entertainers, singers and dancers and—oh Lord!—wizards! He loves wizards. We sit in rows in the ball-room, while the wizard holds a show on the stage he’s had put up. Then he serves a supper! Oh! Never in your life have you dreamed of such suppers!... And when you’re going home, you each get a present. Not a favour, Mammy, but a genuine present—silver cigarette case, and so on.... Of course, he doesn’t know half the people who come. He prowls around, a poor, fat, gloomy devil, and no one bothers with him. But he sees a crowd in his house, and that satisfies him.”
“Dead, long ago. He has two daughters and two sons. They’re all very nice and respectful.”
“But do you think it’s quite a suitable match?”
“Couldn’t be more so! My Giulia is the most well-bred thing that ever drew breath. You’d feel quite ashamed before her. I believe she took lessons in how to behave in all European courts, and how to entertain royalty.”
“But, my dear boy, how do you propose to live? On the—the pastry-cook father?”
“No; I’ll get on, Mammy. I always do. I’ll either go to Princeton next autumn, or go into Father’s business, whichever you advise.”
“No, Bertie, you’re the one to decide. What do you want to do? What do you want to make of your life?”
“Whatever I can,” he said. “I don’t really care very much. I want to make a good show, that’s all—earn a living.”
“Bertie, dear boy, with your intelligence you ought to aim higher than making a living. Isn’t there something you can put your heart into? Some sort of work you could really—”
“Not any more, Mammy. It’s this ice-cap.”
“What do you mean?”
“You ought to know. Old Lance talks enough about it.... It’s going to cover the earth—a new glacial period—going to destroy life on this planet.”
He rose and began walking about the room and when he spoke again, his voice had changed.
“I’ve always wanted to be useful. I’m so dam’ sorry for people—for almost everyone. I welcomed Evolution like a long lost brother. I thought I could do something to help it, perhaps.... I imagined us all evoluting along into something magnificent. I didn’t see any end to our possibilities. I agreed with Al that, if we got together, we could make a heavenly world out of this.... But then Lance sprang this ice-cap on me. And—”
He paused.
“It was something pretty much like despair.... Nothing seemed any use. The happier we got, the less would we want to be frozen, don’t you see?”
She was terribly touched by the pain in his voice, by the suffering she divined in his queer soul.
“But it’s millions of years away,” she said.
“That doesn’t matter, as long as it’s sure.”
“We might find a way to live in it, by the time it comes. It might even be a mistake.”
“Lance couldn’t be mistaken. You have only to look at him to know he’s infallible. And—have you seen their fossils, and their reconstructed pre-historic animals? Those chaps know everything, Mammy, past, present and future.”
“Come here!” she said. “Sit beside me, dear.”
She drew his sleek head down on her breast.
“Did this idea bring you to—to any sort of—faith?” she asked.
“No, Mammy. I simply felt that the ice-cap ought to be kept a secret. I’d have been glad to be a martyr to humanity and kill all the scientists who knew about it, only I knew more would crop up. I even thought of being a fake scientist myself, and getting up something more cheerful, but that wouldn’t get by.”
She cried over him a little, and he sat quite still, with his head resting on her shoulder. She wished so passionately that she had something to give him, some invincibly right word.
“I think you’ll get over this, dear boy,” she said.
“Of course I shall,” he answered promptly. “I’ll get fat and pompous in fifteen years or so. You know that dish, Mammy—Angels on Horseback—oysters wrapped up in bacon? I’m in a hurry to wrap my little oyster of a soul in a lot of nice fat bacon. Then I’ll be comfortable. Nothing better, is there, than making money and getting married?”
“Don’t be cynical,” she said, gently.
“You know I’m not. I’m only trying to do what I can. I know what’s good for me. Little Giulia’s good for me. She’s all spirit, but it’s the nice, old-fashioned, hopeful kind. I never could tell her anything about the ice-cap, for instance; nothing that would hurt her; and being by nature very candid, that’ll help me to learn not to have anything to tell. I’ll have to grow placid, don’t you see?”
He sat up and looked at her, with his diabolic smile and his soft eyes.
“Now, then, will you tell Father in some nice mendacious way that I’ve got serious and want to settle down to something? Is it to be college or business?”
“I think college,” she said, smiling back at him. “You know, after all, Bertie, there may be something left for you to learn.”
“All right!” he answered, cheerfully. “And then—come with me to see my pastry-cook’s daughter.”
“But shouldn’t you bring her here?”
“I want you to see her in all her gorgeousness.”
“But it isn’t quite the thing. You see, you’re not—you can’t be actually engaged to her.”
“She considers that we are. Anyway, their code of etiquette isn’t inflexible. Please come! And—look here, Mammy, if you don’t like her, if you don’t agree that I’ve done a masterly thing in getting her, I’ll give her up!”
“I’ll go, Bertie,” she said. “But bear this in mind, dear boy. If you change your mind, for any reason whatever, about either of your plans, don’t hesitate to say so. Don’t go on in a wrong course, simply because you’ve entered upon it.”
“You know I wouldn’t. But this time I’m righter than I’ve ever been before.”