§ iii
The next morning Bertie went again to the big hotel, and came back innocently with a new magazine for his mother. In the afternoon he went down to the garage and drove back in the startling purple car, and asked his mother to come for a drive. Filled with terror, she accepted, and spent two hours in mortal anguish, flying perilously along the edge of precipices, breathless from the terrific speed. There was no chance then for the serious talk she wished to have with her son, and after dinner he disappeared again, and didn’t return until midnight.
But she was waiting for him on the veranda.
“Bertie!” she said. “Where have you been?”
“Dancing around a little, Mammy!”
“With whom?”
“Some girls at the hotel. Very respectable and humble, Mammy. I didn’t have any trouble with them at all.”
“I don’t like it. And I’m sure your father wouldn’t like it.”
“So am I. But I’m used to that. It’s crabbed age and youth—”
“Don’t be disrespectful to your father! Bertie ...! Did you—have anything to drink?”
“Oh, yes! A couple of seltzer lemonades.”
“I mean—anything—intoxicating?”
“Nothing that intoxicated me, Mammy!”
“Don’t be so flippant and provoking! Bertie, I really feel in despair about you. Haven’t you any serious or—worthy thoughts or ambitions?”
“They haven’t come yet. But I’m only a child. Give me a chance!”
“What do you expect to do with your life?”
“Don’t you know,” he said, solemnly, “that that’s really a ridiculous question, Mammy? It doesn’t lie with me. I’m a puppet in the hands of Nature. I’m going to be used by a Blind Force—”
“Please don’t joke!”
“I don’t think I am. It seems to me it really is like that. I don’t see much use in spending all your life squirming. I’d rather go along with the rest of the crowd—wherever they’re going. We don’t count much. We’re just one more generation. It’ll take about a billion years to change us or improve us. So what care I?”
“Bertie!” she cried, quite shocked. “Where did you get such ideas?”
“Lance has corrupted me. I was a poor innocent child who wanted to be an engineer and build bridges. But when I was taught to think a million years at a time, I lost interest.”
“But you’ve got to pass your life in some sort of work, dear.”
“I’ll go into Father’s office and show him how to run the show. Then I’ll take a wad and buck the stock market and clean up a few millions and never worry again.”
“Go to bed!” she said, half-laughing. “You’re too silly to talk to! I suppose some time you’ll grow up and be a man. And I hope with all my heart I’ll be able to be proud of you.”
His exploits that week, however, were certainly nothing to be proud of. He took a golden-haired maiden from the hotel out one afternoon and quite wrecked Mr. Pendleton’s car, leaving it helpless on a mountain road to be taken back to the garage on a truck. He ran up a startling bill at the hotel for cigarettes, candies, and “seltzer lemonades” which she suspected strongly, and when she confronted him with it, he said, with chagrin:
“Pshaw! I told ’em not to send it till after I’d gone!”
She paid this herself from her own allowance, but the bill for the garage was beyond her. It was going to cost six hundred dollars to repair Mr. Pendleton’s car.
“But he’ll pay it himself!” Bertie protested. “He’s a good sport. He knows I’m a young and inexperienced driver, and sure to have accidents.”
“I’m ashamed of you, Bertie, to think of such a thing. I shall have to tell your father, and I’m afraid he’ll be very angry.”
“I don’t believe in family rows. It might give him apoplexy. I should think you’d rather sell your jewels.”
But she did tell Gilbert, and he was furious. It was not a pleasant week-end, but it didn’t depress Bertie.
“I’m the reed, you know, Mammy, that bows its head to the storm,” he said. And the very next day, told her he wanted to, and was socially obliged to, give a dinner-party to some of his friends at the hotel.
“You can’t, my dear. Mrs. Dewey wouldn’t—”
“She says she will. I hinted at it. We can have it at eight, when the others have finished. She says she’ll do it in grand style, for my sake.”
“It would cost a great deal. Your father—”
“Andrée and Edna will pay for it, out of their little savings, like sisters should, for their brother’s honour. All you have to do is to look lovely and be dignified.”
“But I don’t care to encourage those hotel people!”
“They won’t bother you when I’ve gone. Besides, you can freeze ’em thoroughly at the dinner. I don’t care how rude you are to them.”
It was a horrible dinner, of the sort that Claudine most thoroughly detested. Silly, over-dressed girls and, one or two of their mothers, and a handful of boys who seemed to her prejudiced eyes nothing but cheap travesties on her fascinating son. She was quite perfect, with the affability and politeness she never displayed so well as when among people she disliked.
But after he had gone away, she was very glad she had done this for Bertie. She missed him beyond measure; of all her children he was the one who had most of her own detached and fatalistic point of view, and he, like herself, could find but cold comfort in his own heart. She understood him, how futile all achievement seemed to him, how terribly necessary was happiness. He must be happy; it was that alone which he required from life, not success, like Andrée, not self-approbation, like Edna, but joy in the moment, like herself.
She remembered him as a little boy, a beautiful child, a gay and cajoling little thing, his grandmother’s favourite ... certainly a very much spoilt child. She liked to remember his passionate admiration of her, how she had always stopped in at the nursery to let him see her, dressed for the evening. How he had called her “pretty Mammy,” quite unabashed by his father’s disgust for his effeminacy.
Even now, with all his weaknesses, his petty vices seemed to her very innocent, very unimportant. It was only his way of looking for happiness. She felt sure that when he grew older, he would find a better way. And if he remained as he was, frivolous, reckless, pleasure-loving, wasn’t it better, after all, than being stolid, prudent, money-loving?
“My dear, dear boy!” she thought, with tears in her eyes, but a smile on her lips. “Poor Bertie!”