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Title: Earth and High Heaven
Author: Graham, Gwethalyn (1913-1965)
Date of first publication: 1944
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott
   ["Second impression"; no later than 1947]
Date first posted: 16 March 2018
Date last updated: 16 March 2018
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1515

This ebook was produced by
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& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

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EARTH AND HIGH HEAVEN

by Gwethalyn Graham




For Joyce Tedman





    Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
      Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong,
    Think rather,--call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
      The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.

    Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
      I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
    Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
      Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.

    Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,
      I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
    Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:
      Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.

    Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;
      All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:
    Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation--
      Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again?


    --A. E. Housman

    _From "A Shropshire Lad"_




EARTH AND HIGH HEAVEN




CHAPTER I


One of the questions they were sometimes asked was where and how they
had met, for Marc Reiser was a Jew, originally from a small town in
northern Ontario, and from 1933 until he went overseas in September,
1942, a junior partner in the law firm of Maresch and Aaronson in
Montreal, and Erica Drake was a Gentile, one of the Westmount Drakes.
Montreal society is divided roughly into three categories labeled
"French," "English," and "Jewish," and there is not much coming and
going between them, particularly between the Jews and either of the
other two groups; for although, as a last resort, French and English can
be united under the heading "Gentile," such an alliance merely serves to
isolate the Jews more than ever.

Hampered by racial-religious distinctions to start with, relations
between the French, English and Jews of Montreal are still further
complicated by the fact that all three groups suffer from an inferiority
complex--the French because they are a minority in Canada, the English
because they are a minority in Quebec, and the Jews because they are a
minority everywhere.

Thus it was improbable that Marc Reiser and Erica Drake should meet, and
still more improbable that, if by some coincidence they did, that
meeting should in any way affect the course of their lives.

Leopold Reiser, Marc's father, had emigrated from Austria to Canada in
1907 and owned a small planing mill in Manchester, Ontario, on the
fringe of the mining country five hundred miles away; Charles Sickert
Drake, Erica's father, was president of the Drake Importing Company, a
business founded by his great-grandfather which dealt principally in
sugar, rum and molasses from the West Indies. Marc was five years older
than Erica; when she was beginning her first term at Miss Maxwell's
School for Girls in Montreal, he was starting his freshman year at a
university in a town about halfway between Manchester and Montreal. When
he entered law school four years later, the original distance of five
hundred miles had shortened to nothing; on the night of her coming-out
party at the Ritz, he was within three blocks of her, sitting in his
room in a bleak boardinghouse for Jewish students hunting down the case
of Carmichael vs. Smith, English Law Reports, 1905. They must have
passed in the street or sat in the same theatre or the same concert hall
more than once, yet the chances of their ever really knowing each other
were as remote as ever, and it was not until ten years later when Erica
was twenty-eight and Marc thirty-three, that they finally met at a
cocktail party given by the Drakes in their house up in Westmount.

During those ten years their lives had ceased to run parallel; some time
or other, Erica had jumped the track on which most people she knew
traveled from birth to death, and was following a line of her own which
curved steadily nearer his. When she was twenty-one, her fianc had been
killed in a motor accident, two weeks before she was to be married; not
long after, she awoke to the realization that her father's income had
greatly shrunk as a result of the depression and that it would probably
be a long time before she would fall in love again. She got a job as a
reporter on the society page of the Montreal _Post_ and dropped,
overnight, from the class which is written about to the class which does
the writing. It took people quite a while to get used to the change. In
the beginning, there was no way of knowing whether she had been invited
to a social affair in the ordinary way, or whether she was merely there
on business, but as time went on, it was more often for the second
reason, less and less often for the first. When, at the end of three
years, she became Editor of the Woman's Section, she had ceased to be
one of the Drakes of Westmount and was simply Erica Drake of the _Post_,
not only in the minds of others, but in her own mind as well. She had no
desire to get back on the track again, but it was not until the war
broke out that she realized how far it lay behind her.

In June, 1942, she met Marc Reiser.

None of the Drakes had ever seen him before; he was brought to their
cocktail party by Ren de Sevigny, whose sister had married Anthony
Drake, Erica's older brother, two months before he had gone overseas
with the R.C.A.F.

****

Almost everyone else had arrived by the time Ren and Marc got there.
Having caught Erica's mother on her way to the kitchen, where the
Drakes' one remaining servant was having trouble with the hot canaps,
Ren had introduced Marc, then got him a drink and went off in search of
Erica, leaving Marc with no one to talk to.

He found himself all alone out in the middle of the Drakes' long,
light-walled drawing-room, surrounded by twenty or thirty men and women
none of whom he knew and all of whom appeared to know each other, with
Ren's empty cocktail glass in one hand and his own, still half full, in
the other. At thirty-three he was still self-conscious and rather shy,
and he had no idea what to do or how to do it without attracting
attention, so he stayed where he was, first making an effort to appear
as though he was expecting Ren back at any moment, and when that
failed, trying to look as though he enjoyed being by himself.

He finished his drink, having made it last as long as he could, and then
attempted to get his mind off himself by watching the other guests
gathered in small groups all around him. When you look at people,
however, they are likely to look back at you. Marc hastily shifted his
eyes to the plain, neutral-colored rug which ran the full length of the
room, transferred one of the glasses to the other hand so that he could
get at his cigarettes, and then realized that he needed both hands to
strike a match. He put the package of cigarettes back in his pocket and
went on standing, feeling more lost and out of place than ever.

He had had an idea that something like this would happen, and when Ren
had phoned to ask him to the Drakes' he had first refused, and then
finally agreed to go, only because Ren said that he had already told
Mrs. Drake that he was bringing him. Marc disliked cocktail parties, in
fact all social affairs at which most of the people were likely to be
strangers; if the Drakes had been Jews he would have stayed home
regardless of the fact that they were expecting him, but the Drakes were
not Jews and that made it more complicated.

A dark girl of about twenty suddenly turned up in front of him asking
"Aren't you George...?" then broke off, smiled and murmured,
"Sorry," and disappeared just as Marc had thought up something to say in
order to keep her there a little longer. There was another blank pause
of indefinite duration, then a naval officer swerved, avoiding someone
else and jarring Marc's arm so that he nearly dropped one of the
glasses, apologized and went on.

The scene was beginning to assume the timeless and futile quality of a
nightmare. He glanced at his watch and found to his amazement that it
was only six minutes since Ren had left him, which meant that, adding
the ten minutes spent in catching up with their hostess on her way to
the kitchen and finding their way to this particularly ill-chosen spot
in the middle of the room, they had arrived approximately a quarter of
an hour ago.

What is the minimum length of time you must stay, in order not to appear
rude, at a party to which, strictly speaking, you were not invited, and
where it is only too obvious that no one cares in the least whether you
stay or not?

"Excuse me," said Marc, backing up and bumping into an artillery
lieutenant in an effort to avoid someone who had bumped into him. He
turned and said, "Excuse me" again, and then identifying the lieutenant
as a former lawyer who had been at Brockville on his O.T.C. in the same
class as himself, although Marc could not remember ever having spoken to
him, he said with sudden hope, "Oh, hello, how are you?"

The lieutenant looked surprised, said "Hello," without interest or
recognition and went on talking to his friends. It did not occur to Marc
until later that if, like himself, the lieutenant had happened to be out
of uniform, Marc would not have recognized him either. Having been
turned down cold by the only human being in the room who was even
vaguely familiar, Marc abruptly made up his mind to go, only to find
when he was halfway to the door that Ren had vanished completely and
that Mrs. Drake was blocking his exit, standing in the middle of the
hall talking to an elderly man in a morning coat. He would either have
to wait until she moved, or until the hall filled up again so that he
could get by her without being noticed. To return to the middle of the
room and the lieutenant's back was unthinkable.

"...glasses, sir?"

"What?" asked Marc, jumping.

"Would you like me to take those glasses, sir?" asked the maid again.

"Yes, thanks. Thanks very much." He put the two glasses on her tray, lit
a cigarette at last, and having worked his way around the edge of the
crowd, he finally reached the windows which ran almost the full length
of the Drakes' drawing-room, overlooking Montreal.

The whole city lay spread out below him, enchanting in the sunlight of a
late afternoon in June, mile upon mile of flat gray roofs half hidden by
the light, new green of the trees; a few scattered skyscrapers, beyond
the skyscrapers the long straight lines of the grain elevators down by
the harbor, further up to the right the Lachine Canal, and everywhere
the gray spires of churches, monasteries and convents. Somehow, even
from here, you could tell that Montreal was predominantly French, and
Catholic.

"Hello, Marc," said Ren's sister, Madeleine Drake. "What are you doing
here all by yourself?"

"I don't know, you'd better ask your brother. How are you, Madeleine?"

"I'm fine, thanks," she said, but she looked tired, and sat down on the
window-seat with a sigh of relief. She was twelve years younger than
Ren, with fair hair and a quiet, self-contained manner; her husband had
been overseas since late in January and she was expecting a baby in
August.

"Where is Ren?"

"Out in the dining-room."

"Oh, so that's where they all went," said Marc. "I was wondering. Can't
I get you a chair?"

"No, thanks, don't bother. I can't stay long. Have you had anything to
drink?"

"I had a cocktail when I came in. It's all right," he added quickly as
she made a move to get up again. "I don't drink much anyhow, and I'd
much rather you stayed and talked to me."

"You must be having an awful time," said Madeleine sympathetically.
"These things are not amusing when you don't know anyone." Her parents
had died when she was a small child and she had grown up in a convent,
so that her English was more precise and less easy than her brother's.
She smiled up at Marc and said, "It's a long time since you've been to
see us--could you come to dinner on Tuesday next week?"

"Yes, thanks, I'd love to."

"About seven?" He nodded and she asked, "Have you met any of my
husband's family?"

"Just Mrs. Drake. That's a Van Gogh over the fireplace, isn't it?"

"Yes, 'L'Arlsienne.'"

"It must be one of those German prints, it's so clear."

From the Arlsienne his eyes moved along the line of bookcases reaching
halfway up the wall, across the door, past more bookcases and around the
corner to a modern oil painting of a Quebec village in winter, all
sunlight and color and with a radiance which made him think of his own
Algoma Hills in Ontario. Walls, furniture and rug were all light and
neutral in tone; Marc liked their room so much that he knew he would
like the Drakes when he got to know them. Apart from all the strangers
clustered in groups which were constantly breaking up and re-forming as
some of them drifted out into the hall and the dining-room beyond, and
others drifted back again, and apart from the fact that he would be
stranded again with no one to talk to as soon as Madeleine left, he was
beginning to feel quite at home. More at home than he had ever felt in
the bleak rooming house for Jewish students where he had continued to
live from a combination of inertia and indifference to his own comfort,
ever since he had arrived in Montreal to go to law school thirteen years
before. The rooming house was large and dusty, with high ceilings, buff
walls trimmed with chocolate-brown like an institution, and
uncomfortable, leather-covered furniture; during the college term it was
so noisy that he usually worked in his office downtown at night, and
during holidays it was like a graveyard. About twice a year the place
got on his nerves and he determined to do something about it, but after
spending several evenings looking at other rooming houses which were
worse, and apartments which were not much better and had the added
disadvantage of having to be kept clean some way or other, he always
gave up and went on living where he was. Now it was no longer
worth-while moving in any case, since he would be going overseas in a
short time.

"It's nice to be in a house again," he said to Madeleine. "Most of the
people I know live in apartments. I was brought up in a house."

Out in the hall, Madeleine's brother, Ren de Sevigny, was starting his
fourth cocktail, while waiting for Erica to return from the kitchen. He
was about Marc's age but looked older, with dark hair, an aquiline nose,
and fine, highly arched eyebrows which gave him a slightly satanic
expression. At the moment he was leaning against the staircase with his
long legs crossed, staring thoughtfully into his Martini and doing his
best to overhear as much as possible of a conversation between two men
and a woman in the doorway leading to the library. They were obviously
English Canadians, not necessarily because they were speaking English,
but because they had devoted most of the past quarter hour to a
discussion of Quebec and the war in language extremely unflattering to
French Canadians.

"I don't understand them," said the woman, who was wearing a red hat,
which, Ren had already decided, would have looked much better on Erica,
who was several inches taller, a great deal thinner and who had hair
which was naturally blonde. Except, thought Ren, sighing inwardly, that
Erica took no interest in hats, even very chic red hats with coq
feathers; she never wore one except in winter or on the regrettably rare
occasions when she went to church. "Surely they must know that the war
is going to be won or lost in Europe and the Pacific, so why all this
ridiculous talk about being perfectly willing to fight for Canada
provided they can stay on Canadian soil?"

"Because they don't want to fight for Canada," said the man on the
right, yawning.

The man on the left was a young officer with a good-looking, but not
particularly intelligent face. What he lacked in intelligence however,
Ren realized, he made up in prejudice, and he now rendered judgment.
"I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "Quebec knows that
the war isn't going to be lost if they don't fight. But, on the other
hand, if enough English Canadians make suckers of themselves and get
killed, then the French who had enough sense to stay home will be that
much nearer a majority when it's over."

"Tiens," observed Ren admiringly to himself. "Now why didn't I think of
that? Eric!"

"Yes?"

"Wait for me." He caught up with her just inside the drawing-room door
and asked, "By the way, where's your father?"

"Upstairs in his study. He always gives up after the first half-hour."

"Have you seen Chambrun?"

"Who on earth is Chambrun?" asked Erica, taking advantage of the pause
to sit on the arm of a chair for a moment. She was one of the few women
Ren had ever seen who could wear her hair almost to her shoulders and
still look smart. Seven years of working on a newspaper with erratic
hours had given Erica a strong preference for tailored clothes; she wore
her fine, well-made suits on all possible occasions and on some which,
like the recent large, and very formal wedding of one of his innumerable
cousins, to Ren were definitely not possible.

"He's just arrived from Mexico--escaped from France two years ago on a
coal boat."

"Why must it always be a coal boat?" inquired Erica, closing her eyes.

"He's a de Gaullist. I think he hopes to do propaganda in Quebec for the
Free French."

"What an optimist," said Erica, and then asked hastily, "Friend of
yours?"

"Well," said Ren cautiously, "I've met him a couple of times."

"Don't tell me you're committing yourself to something...."

"Certainly not," said Ren, looking amused. "Your mother knows him and
said she was going to invite him today. I just thought you might have
seen him around somewhere," he added with a vague gesture which included
the drawing-room, the hall, the dining-room and the library.

"Maybe he's hiding," suggested Erica.

"Are you asleep?"

"Practically." She opened her green eyes wide, blinked, gave her head a
shake, and asked, "What does he look like?"

"Like a Michelin tire with a drooping black mustache," answered Ren,
after due consideration.

"Oh, there are dozens of those running in and out of the woodwork in the
dining-room," said Erica. "You might go and see if one of them is your
Free Frenchman--and bring me a drink, will you, Ren?"

"Rye and water?"

"Yes, please. You haven't got a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on you anywhere,
have you?" He shook his head and she said sadly, "I was afraid you
hadn't."

She stood up for a moment when Ren had gone, looking over the room to
see if everyone had drinks and someone to talk to, then collapsed into
the chair with her legs straight out, and closed her eyes again.

She was aroused a minute later by her mother's voice saying, "Oh, there
you are, Erica. I've hardly seen you since you came in. I'm so glad you
were able to get away in time for the party, darling."

"I have to go back to the office after dinner," said Erica, yawning.
"Special Red Cross story--they sent us the dope but the morning papers
will use it as it is, so we'll have to re-write. After that there's a
Guild meeting."

"I didn't know you'd joined the Guild," said her mother, looking
startled.

"I joined last month, as soon as they really began organizing."

"Why?"

"Partly on general principles and partly because Pansy Prescott fired
Tom Mitchell after he'd been on the _Post_ for ten years, because he
went on a five-day drunk after his wife died of T.B. up at Ste. Agathe."

"Well, I suppose..."

"It wasn't just because of the bat," interrupted Erica. "Or because
Pansy doesn't like women interfering with his arrangements, even
indirectly after they're dead--it was mostly because Tom was the chief
organizer for the Guild. I thought if Tom could stick his neck out, so
could I. The _Post_ is all for unions provided their employees don't
join any," she explained. "They have to put up with the linotype
operators and the..."

"Mr. Prescott will object to your joining, then, won't he?"

"You bet," said Erica placidly.

"When I was your age, I didn't even know men like that existed!"
remarked her mother irrelevantly. In appearance, although not in
temperament or in outlook, she and her daughter were very alike. They
were about the same height, and Margaret Drake was still slender, with
light brown hair which had once been even fairer than Erica's and which
she wore rather short and waved close to her head. She was intelligent,
practical and unusually efficient, born and bred in the Puritan
tradition. She had very definite and inelastic convictions and had had
the character to live up to them, and yet you could see in her face that
somehow, it had not come out quite right, although she herself was
largely unaware of it, consciously at any rate. She never realized that
the expression at the back of her blue eyes did not quite bear out what
she said with such certainty and so little room for argument; it never
occurred to her that there could be anything wrong with her system, but
only, on the rare occasions when she had the time, and the still rarer
occasions when she had the inclination to think about Margaret Drake,
that there must be something wrong with herself.

"You didn't know Mr. Prescott," said Erica.

"It seems funny to think of your joining a union. The Guild is a union,
isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, it's a union. Or it will be someday if the _Post_ doesn't fire
us all first."

Her mother glanced over the room, remarking absently, "I'm glad you got
home in time, Eric," and then remembering that she had said it before,
she added, "I wouldn't know how to give a party without you any more.
You don't know how much it means to Charles and me just to--just to have
you around," she said, smiling down at Erica. "All the same, you can't
spend the rest of the afternoon in that chair. Get up and be useful,
darling."

"Where shall I start?" asked Erica without much enthusiasm.

"Start by doing something about that young man over there by the window.
Madeleine was talking to him a while ago, but she seems to have
disappeared."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know. He looks like the one Ren phoned about. His name sounded
foreign so I suppose he's a refugee."

"I don't think Ren knows any refugees," said Erica.

"Well, do something about him, Eric!"

"All right," said Erica, struggling to her feet.

The strange young refugee was tall and very slender except for his
shoulders; he had slanting greenish eyes, high cheekbones, a square jaw,
and to Erica, looked more Austrian than anything else.

She said, "Hello, I'm Erica--one of the invisible Drakes. I'm afraid I
got home rather late...."

"My name's Marc Reiser," he said, shaking hands.

"Austrian?"

"Native product," said Marc.

"Oh, _Reiser_--of course, you're Ren's friend, he's often talked about
you." She sat down on the window-seat and inquired, "Have you seen Ren
recently?"

"Not since he disappeared half an hour ago."

"That's what I thought," said Erica. "How long have you been standing
here?"

"Well, I..."

"And of course he didn't bother to introduce you to anyone, he never
does." She said, looking amused, "Once he deserted me in the middle of
an enormous party, all French Canadians, where I didn't know anyone,
even my hostess...."

"What did you do?" asked Marc with interest.

"I just left. I don't think anyone would have noticed if Ren hadn't
come to a couple of hours later and started running around in circles
wanting to know where I was. I refused to phone and apologize next day,
so he had to, because they were rather important people and he'd made
quite a fuss about bringing me. Now, whenever we go anywhere, he's
scared to take his eyes off me, for fear I'll do it again. Wouldn't you
like a drink?"

"Not if you have to go and get it. I've spent most of the past half hour
trying to look like a piece of furniture and all I want is not to be
left alone."

"All right, then, I won't leave you if I can help it," said Erica,
smiling up at him.

There was a pause, during which he looked back at her with a curious
directness, and finally he said, "This is an awfully nice room...."

"Yes, it--it is, isn't it?" said Erica lamely. Something in the way he
had looked at her had thrown her slightly off balance. He was leaning
against the window-frame, half-turned away from her, with his eyes back
at the Van Gogh print over the fireplace again, and after another pause
she asked, "You're a lawyer, aren't you?"

"Yes. I'm with Maresch and Aaronson. I was articled to Mr. Aaronson in
my first year at law school and I've been there ever since."

"What about Mr. Maresch?"

"He's dead." Marc glanced at her and then said quickly, "I'm not doing
much law at the moment, I'm just sort of hanging around at Divisional
Headquarters waiting for my unit to be sent overseas."

"Army?"

"Yes, reinforcements for the first battalion of the Gatineau
Rifles--unfortunately," he added.

"Why unfortunately?"

"We've just been pigeonholed for the time being, apparently. It doesn't
look as though the first battalion is going to need us until they go
into action somewhere. They've been sitting in England for almost three
years doing nothing."

The naval officer and his wife were coming toward them and Erica got up
to say good-by. When they had gone, she remarked, "I didn't introduce
you, because I never have seen any sense in it when people are just
leaving."

"Cigarette?" asked Marc.

"Yes, thanks."

He felt through his pockets and finally produced a folder containing one
match. As he held the flame to the end of her cigarette he said, "Your
father isn't here today, is he?"

"He was here for a while at the beginning and then he evaporated. He
always does. It's not shyness, exactly; he's just not interested in
people in general, he's a rugged individualist. It's Mother who keeps up
the social end of things. Charles can't be bothered, except at his club.
Why? Do you know him?"

"I've seen him once or twice, I've never met him."

"If you'd like to meet him, I'll take you up to his study and introduce
you to him...."

"Oh, no thanks," said Marc hastily. "I'm sorry," he added, rather
embarrassed, "I didn't mean to sound rude, but I'm no good at meeting
people, I never know what to say to them. The idea of barging in on your
father just... well, I'd rather not, if you don't mind."

Erica was looking up at him with interest. Finally she remarked
involuntarily, "You and Ren are not a bit alike...."

"Why should we be?"

"You're one of his best friends, aren't you?"

"No," he said, "I don't think so. I've known him for about ten years,
but in all that time I doubt if we've ever had a really personal
conversation. We usually talk law when we're together. He's a very good
lawyer...."

"Not politics?" interrupted Erica.

"No, not politics," said Marc. "We stick to law. I suppose he's told you
that he's going to run in the by-elections...."

"Is he?" asked Erica, surprised. She said with a faintly amused
expression: "One of our difficulties is the fact that Ren refuses to
stop being funny about everything that really matters. Probably it's
just as well," she added reflectively. "I don't like quarreling with
people."

"Ren wouldn't quarrel with you. He's too good a politician."

She could see Ren across the room talking--French, she realized by his
gestures and his expression--to Mrs. Oppenheim, the Viennese refugee.
Although she was not in love with him, the very sight of him moved her a
little, and she said, her voice changing, "Ren's not just a good
politician. He's really brilliant, he studied in France, and even though
he disapproved of the French, it isn't as though he'd been stuck in
Quebec all his life! He's an awfully good speaker and he knows what this
war's all about...."

"Does he?" asked Marc.

"Don't you think he does?"

"I'm not sure," said Marc noncommittally.

Between the Drakes' house and the house on the street below, the steep
slope was planted with rock gardens, squat pines and cedars, flowers and
flowering shrubs, and halfway down there was a cherry tree in blossom.
Beyond the cherry tree and the lower houses half hidden by green leaves,
the skyscrapers and church spires were turning to gold and the city was
full of long blue shadows.

"What a marvelous place to live," said Marc.

"Wait another hour when the lights are on and it isn't quite dark. I've
lived up here all my life and I still haven't got used to it. I've been
in love with Montreal ever since I can remember."

He was watching a ship which was moving slowly up the Lachine Canal, and
thinking of Erica, only half-hearing her voice as she went on talking,
softly and unselfconsciously as though she had known him for years. She
was not only lovely to look at, she was also the sort of person whom you
liked and with whom you felt at ease from the first moment. Her
character was in her fine, almost delicate face, in the way she talked
and listened to what you had to say; there was nothing put on about her
and nothing hidden. You could tell at a glance that she had a good
brain, that she was generous, interested and highly responsive. Her
manner was neither arrogant nor self-deprecating; it was as though she
had already come to terms with life and had made a good bargain, asking
little on her side, except that she might be herself. She was wearing a
gray flannel suit and very little make-up, sitting on the window-seat
with the light falling on her long fair hair, and he knew that she had
stirred his imagination and that if he never saw her again, he would not
forget her entirely.

Erica was staring at Ren, who, with his shoulders against the
mantelpiece, his hands in his pockets and his eyes squinting against the
smoke rising from the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, was
listening to the talkative Mrs. Oppenheim with a polite expression, but
not much interest. She was actually thinking of Marc, however, for there
was something not only preoccupied but remote about him, as though he
had spent half his life learning how to withdraw into himself and
observe the world from a safe distance. He had an unusually fine body
and a physical grace which reminded her of her sister Miriam; he was
obviously sensitive and very intelligent, and she realized instinctively
that his disconcerting remoteness and preoccupation were both a kind of
defense. Defense against what?

Another thing that was interesting about him was the structure of his
face. High cheekbones usually went with a light skin, but Marc Reiser
was rather dark; his eyes were the same greenish mixture as her own but
set quite differently, and although he did not look particularly Jewish
nor particularly foreign, at the same time, it would have been a shock
to discover that his name was Brown, or Thomas.

"Where do you come from?" she asked suddenly.

"From Manchester. It's in northern Ontario."

Erica had spent a night in Manchester once, it was on the
transcontinental line, but all she could remember was the sweetish smell
of rotting lumber down by the docks, the brilliant blue of the lake with
the sun cutting across the outer islands from the west, and the
magnificent sculptured forms of the Algoma mountains, lying across a
stretch of fields and bush behind the town. Of Manchester itself, she
had only a hazy recollection of an interminably long main street which
looked like all the other main streets of North America--the inevitable
collection of groceterias, hardware and drug stores, gas stations,
vacant lots, show windows containing approximately ten times too many
unrelated objects, soda fountains, airless beer parlors and three-story
office buildings.

She made an entirely unsuccessful effort to visualize the obviously
civilized individual beside her, against a background of hardware
stores, beer parlors and vacant lots, and finally asked, "How on earth
did you get there?"

"I was born in Manchester." He seemed rather proud of it.

"Where were your parents born?"

Marc grinned. He said, "You remind me of the man named Cohen who changed
his name to O'Brien and then wanted to change it to Smith, and when the
judge asked him why, he said, 'Because people are always wanting to know
what my name was before.'" He paused and then told her, "My parents were
born in Austria."

"Oh, that explains it," said Erica.

"Explains what?"

"When I first saw you I thought you were Austrian. Why did your parents
choose Manchester, of all places?"

"Partly because they didn't want to live in a city, and partly because
the Reisers had always been mixed up with lumber in some form or other
and my father heard there was a planing mill for sale there. I like it,"
he said, looking down at her. "I'd far rather spend the rest of my life
in Manchester than in Montreal."

"Why?"

"Because in a small town you have a chance to do something. You can
be..." He broke off, searching for the right word, and went on, "You can
be effective. I suppose that's the only criterion of 'success' which
isn't somehow associated with the idea of making a lot of money."

"Aren't you interested in making a lot of money?" asked Erica, regarding
him curiously.

"Not particularly. I wouldn't know what to do with it." He paused,
looking off down the room, and remarked, "I'd like to make enough out of
law to be able to have a farm someday, though."

"Why?" asked Erica again.

"Because I like horses. I've always done a lot of riding, and I like
living in the country--not out in the middle of nowhere, of course, but
near enough to a town so that I could go in to the office every day. You
ask an awful lot of questions."

He didn't appear to mind her questions and she said, "It's the only way
to get anything out of you. Besides, if you know what a person wants
most, you usually have a pretty good idea what he's like."

"What do you want most?"

"Just what every other woman wants," said Erica. "I'm afraid I'm not
very original. What else do you dream about besides horses?"

"That sounds rather Freudian," said Marc, grinning, and then answered,
"Nothing much. I'd like to be able to buy all the books I want and..."
He paused for thought and added, "Oh, yes. I want a custom-built
radio-phonograph with two loud-speakers and a room full of good
records."

"Do you like music too?" asked Erica.

"What do you mean, 'too'?"

"Never mind," said Erica. "I was just wondering where you'd been all
these years. What kind of music do you like?"

"Almost everything." He said quickly, "I don't know anything about it;
almost every time I go to a concert or turn on the radio I hear
something that I haven't heard before. I'm still at the beginning
stage."

She told him about her father's custom-built radio-phonograph and his
record library and said, "You must come with Ren some evening and we'll
play whatever you like. Charles has almost everything from Corelli to
Shostakovich."

Afterwards she was to remember the way his face lit up, and the way he
said, "I'd like to awfully, if your father wouldn't mind."

And the utter confidence with which she had answered, "Charles wouldn't
mind at all, once he'd recovered from the shock of meeting someone who
was really interested. He doesn't get much encouragement from most of
the people we know. Music is all right in its place, of course, but its
place is the concert hall, once or twice a month, and Charles has no
sense of proportion. He even interrupts bridge games and rushes home
from the golf course in order to hear the first North American broadcast
of some symphony written by some crazy modern composer, which nobody in
their senses would call 'music' in any case. I think a lot of our
friends feel that it isn't quite normal or in very good taste, for a man
otherwise as sound in his opinions as C. S. Drake to know so damn much
about music and take it so seriously."

She said with amusement, "My father is incapable of being even
moderately polite about a bad performance, regardless of how successful
it was from a social standpoint."

"What sort of music does he like?"

"Almost everything, except that, in general, he's anti-romantic. He has
a passion for Bach and the very early composers and for some of the
moderns, particularly Mahler."

"Do you always call him 'Charles'?" asked Marc.

"Yes. We have a very odd relationship, I guess. We even lunch together
downtown once or twice a week, as if we didn't see enough of each other
the rest of the time!"

"How does your mother feel about music?"

"Mother?" said Erica. "Oh, she has far more sense of proportion."

People were beginning to go. Erica got up and crossed the room to say
good-by to someone, and then came back and sat down on the window-seat
beside Marc again, hoping that no one else would notice her. Their
guests were almost all friends of her mother's, with the exception of a
few who had been friends of Erica's but who belonged to the period which
had come to an end after she went to work on the _Post_ and in whom
Erica had gradually lost interest. Unlike her mother, who refused to
believe it, she knew that the loss of interest was mutual; it was as
disconcerting for them to discover that in any discussion involving
politics or economics, Erica was likely to be on the side of Labor, as
it was for her to realize that they were not. She had tried to explain
it to her mother but it was no use. Margaret Drake had invited some of
Erica's former friends today because she still felt that Erica was being
"left out of things" and remained convinced that the mutual lack of
interest was partly the product of Erica's imagination, partly due to a
temporary upset in her daughter's sense of values, and partly due to the
fact that Erica simply would not make any real effort to see them.

Having done her duty and made the rounds before she had discovered Marc,
Erica had no intention of moving again if she could help it, at least
until the general exodus got under way. No one else in the still crowded
room showed any sign of being about to leave, and she turned to Marc,
who was still leaning with one shoulder against the wall looking down at
her, having watched her all the way across the room and back again with
an expression which told her nothing except that he was as absorbed and
as oblivious to everyone else as she was herself, and asked, "What did
you mean a while ago when you said you didn't want to go on living in
Montreal indefinitely, because you couldn't be 'effective'?"

"I meant that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in a place
where no matter how bad social conditions are, I can't change anything."

He paused and then said, "I don't know whether I can explain it or not,"
wondering if she realized that he had never even tried to explain it to
anyone else. "It's this feeling of being completely helpless, of having
to watch people suffer, through a combination of bigotry and stupidity
and sheer backwardness, without ever being able to do anything about
it."

His eyes left her face and looking out over the city again, he remarked,
"I don't know which is worse, the feeling of not knowing what's going on
behind all the barred windows and high walls of these so-called
'welfare' institutions run by the Church, or the feeling that it
wouldn't make any difference if you did. You're up against a colossal
organization that interferes everywhere, in the life of its own people,
but which must never be interfered with--even by its own people. In its
treatment of the poor and the sick, of orphans, illegitimate children,
juvenile delinquents, adolescent and women prisoners, unmarried mothers,
and in fact almost everyone who gets into trouble--it is responsible to
no one and nothing but itself. What it chooses to tell you about the way
it deals with these people, you are permitted to know; what it does not
choose to tell you, is none of your business. And of course, if you're
not a Catholic, it's none of your business anyhow."

His oblique, greenish eyes came back to her face and he said, "I suppose
it all boils down to the one question of just how you want to live, or
what you think you're living _for_. You can make a lot of money in
Montreal, you can be a big success, but you can't change anything
outside your own little racial category. You have to adjust your
conscience so that it doesn't function, except in relation to people who
bear the same label as you do, and then spend most of your life passing
by on the other side of the road, minding your own business."

She could not think of any way of telling him that she knew what he was
talking about, because he was talking from the same point of view as her
own. Instead, she looked up at him and smiled, and then realized that
there was no need to tell him. He already knew.

Marc offered her another cigarette, then found he was out of matches and
as Erica started up to get them, he said quickly, "No, I'll do it. If
you go, someone else will stop you and start telling you the story of
his life. Where are they?"

"Over there on that little table at the end of the sofa."

Her eyes followed him as he made his way through the groups of people
toward the fireplace, and she said to herself that he would stop to look
at the Arlsienne. He did.

When he returned with the matches she asked him where he lived.

"In a rooming house on Sherbrooke Street."

"Is it a nice one?"

"No, it's awful. You don't know where I could get a furnished apartment,
more or less central, on a month-to-month lease, do you?"

"Well, there's that new building on Cte des Neiges. I don't know
whether it's open yet or not--I think it's called 'The Terrace.'"

"I know, I've been there."

"Didn't they have any vacancies?"

"Yes, they did have then, but the janitor told me they don't take Jews."

He said it so matter-of-factly that Erica almost missed it, and then it
was as though it had caught her full in the face. There was an interval
during which she was simply taken aback, and then she looked up at him,
her expression slowly changing, and found that he had begun to draw away
from her, to recede further and further into the back of her mind until
finally she no longer saw him at all. He said something else which she
did not even hear; she was listening to other voices repeating phrases
and statements which she had heard all her life without paying much
attention, because they had been said so often before and were so
tiresomely unoriginal, but which had abruptly become significant, like a
collection of firearms which have been hanging on the wall for years
unnoticed, and then are suddenly discovered to be fully loaded.

The voices were talking against a background of signs which she had seen
in newspaper advertisements, on hotels, beaches, golf courses, apartment
houses, clubs and the little restaurants for skiers in the Laurentians,
an endless stream of signs which, apparently, might just as well have
been written in another language, referring to human beings in another
country, for until now she had never bothered to read them.

She had met a good many Jews before Marc, but in some way which already
seemed to her inexplicable, she had neglected to relate the general
situation with any one individual. Evidently some small and yet vital
part of the machinery of her thought had failed to work until this
moment, or worse still, she might have defeated its efforts to function
by taking refuge in the comfortable delusion that even if these
prejudices and restrictions were actually in effective operation, they
would only be applied against--well, against what is usually designated
as "the more undesirable type of Jew." In other words, against people
who more or less deserved it.

Now she saw for the first time that it was the label, not the man, that
mattered. And even if it had been the man, there was still the good old
get-out, "Yes, so-and-so's all right, the very best type of Jew, and
we've nothing against him personally, but first thing you know, he'll be
wanting to bring in his friends." And so "the best type of Jew" was
thereby disposed of.

That human beings, regardless of their own merit, should take upon
themselves the right to judge a whole group of men, women and children,
arbitrarily assembled according to a largely meaningless set of
definitions, was evil enough; that there should not even be a judgment,
was intolerable.

It made no difference what Marc was like; he could still be told by
janitors that they didn't take Jews, before the door was slammed in his
face.

"Hello," said Marc. He smiled at her, then the smile faded. He stared at
her, straightening up so that he was no longer leaning against the
window-frame, without taking his eyes from her face, and then he said
with an undercurrent of desperation in his voice, "You did realize I was
Jewish, didn't you?"

"Yes, of course," said Erica, appalled. "Of course I did!"

"I'm sorry, I thought..."

"Yes," said Erica. "Well, you thought wrong. If you'll sit down, I'll
try and explain it to you."

He sat down beside her on the window-seat and after a pause she went on,
"You see, the trouble with me is that I'm just like everybody else--I
don't realize what something really means until it suddenly walks up and
hits me between the eyes. I can be quite convinced intellectually that a
situation is wrong, but it's still an academic question which doesn't
really affect me personally, until, for some reason or other, it starts
coming at me through my emotions as well. It isn't enough to _think_,
you have to feel...."

"I see," said Marc, as Erica stopped abruptly, somewhat embarrassed. He
took her hand without thinking and held it for a moment, then remembered
where he was and quickly let it go again, remarking, also embarrassed,
"That makes us even."

Erica laughed and said, "You're very tactful, anyhow."

"I wasn't being tactful."

"How long have we known each other?" asked Erica, after a pause.

"What difference does it make?" He glanced at his watch and remarked,
"Three quarters of an hour. You're very honest, aren't you?"

"It seems to me my honesty is rather belated. Anyhow," she said, smiling
at him, "if I never meet you again, Mr. Reiser, you'll still have done
me a lot of good."

"You can't call me Mr. Reiser when I've just been holding your hand. And
what makes you think you're not going to see me again? You've already
invited me to come and listen to your father's records," he pointed out,
and then asked, "What do you do on the _Post_?"

"I'm the Woman's Editor--you know, social stuff, fashions, women's
interests, meetings, charities, and now all the rules, regulations and
hand-outs from the Wartime Prices and Trade Board that have to do with
clothes, house furnishings, food, conservation of materials--that sort
of thing."

"How many pages?"

"Three or four, usually. Depends on which edition it is. I have an
awfully good assistant, a girl named Sylvia Arnold from Ottawa, and an
office boy named Weathersby Canning, known as 'Bubbles.'"

"Is he any relation to the stock-broking Cannings?"

"Yes, he's one of their sons--younger brother of the one who got the
D.F.C. in April. 'Bubbles' is waiting to get into the Air Force too;
he's got another year to go before he's old enough."

"Do you like your job?"

Erica paused, and said finally, "Yes. I like working on a newspaper
because I like people, particularly newspaper people, but I'm not a
career woman, if that's what you mean."

She broke off as Ren appeared, sauntering toward them with a glass in
either hand. He asked, "Is there room for me to sit down?" and then
remarked, glancing from one to the other, "I see you've met each other.
Do I have to give him my drink?" he asked Erica as he lowered himself to
the window-seat beside her.

"It's about time you did something for him besides leave him alone. I
thought you were drinking Martinis, Ren...."

"I was," said Ren.

"Then stick to them," advised Erica, removing the glasses and handing
one to Marc. "How do you like Mrs. Oppenheim?"

"I would like her considerably more if she didn't insist on speaking
French. She has the most atrocious accent--a vient du ventre," he
explained, gesturing. "She told me I was the first French Canadian she'd
met who didn't speak a kind of patois, and with that graceful compliment
she passed on to politics. She's a Monarchist."

"My God," said Marc, "another one."

"Well, why not?" said Ren.

Marc regarded him, evidently amused, and finally inquired: "Just what
has Otto of Hapsburg got that the King of England hasn't got?"

"I think he has you there, Ren," murmured Erica, smiling into her
glass, and answered, "The right religion."

"I have nothing against the King of England," protested Ren.

"No?" said Marc. "But you don't see any reason why our Liberal
Government at Ottawa shouldn't go on issuing official pamphlets and
placards with 'For King and Country' in the English version and simply
'Pour la Patrie' in the French."

"I haven't your English Canadian passion for England," said Ren.

"I don't give a damn about England," said Marc impatiently. "It hasn't
anything to do with England, as such. It's the British Commonwealth of
Nations. We're living in a period where the tendency is toward greater
international units, and for us as a country to resign from the
Commonwealth is to move in the opposite direction, backwards toward a
pure nationalism that's already out of date. I don't see why our Liberal
politicians should make such an effort to avoid reminding the people of
Quebec that they _are_ a part of an organization which, whatever its
faults, is still the only concrete example of the kind of international
federation which we want to see existing all over the world. What's the
use of talking about 'federating Europe' in one breath and un-federating
Canada in the next? It doesn't make any sense."

"One of them is a geographical and economic unit and the other isn't,"
said Ren mildly. He turned to Erica and said, "And the Hapsburg
question hasn't anything to do with religion either. Mrs. Oppenheim
appears to be Jewish."

"That just makes it worse," said Marc. He took a drink and added, "Much
worse."

"I didn't say that it had anything to do with religion so far as Mrs.
Oppenheim is concerned," said Erica.

Ren smiled back at her, remarking, "I don't know why I put up with you.
Speaking of ventres, where's your father?"

"You're about the tenth person that's asked me that. If we ever give
another party, which," said Erica, "I must say is unlikely, I'm going to
hang a sign in the front hall saying 'Mr. Drake welcomes you all and
hopes you will have a good time, but wishes to be left strictly alone.'
He's upstairs in the study," she told Ren.

"Your mother seems to be waving at you," said Marc.

She got up with a sigh, saying, "I'll probably be back sooner or later,"
and went over to the doorway where her mother was talking to two young
Army officers and their wives. Erica smiled at them but kept in the
background. As soon as they were on their way down the hall to the front
door, her mother said, "I was wondering if you could persuade Charles to
come down, at least for long enough to say good-by to Scotty and the
others. I know they're more my friends than his but I don't think
Charles realizes that they're on draft and he probably won't have a
chance to see them again."

"I'll try," said Erica. "And do talk to Marc Reiser if you get a
chance."

"Which one is he?"

"Ren's refugee friend I was suppose to rescue, only he isn't a refugee,
he comes from Ontario. He's over there by the window with Ren now, and
he's awfully nice. You'll like him."

Upstairs, she found her father sitting in the corner of the study with
the evening newspaper on the floor at his feet and the ash-tray beside
him heaped with dead matches. He was very tall and heavily built with
dark eyes and black hair streaked with gray, an unusually warm and
pleasant voice, and a personality which was both magnetic and charming,
so that quite involuntarily he fooled most of the people he met into
thinking that he was far more interested in them than he actually was.

The air was full of pipe smoke and the scent of blossoms from the garden
next door; her father had his head against the back of the
leather-covered chair and his long legs stretched straight out in front
of him. He was listening to the short-wave English-language broadcast
from Berlin. His custom-built radio-phonograph--with two
loud-speakers--was a miracle of construction; the announcer's voice
sounded as though it were coming from the next room.

"Hello, Charles."

"Oh, it's you, Erica--come in," he said, beckoning with one hand. He
changed his position so that he was sitting instead of half lying in his
chair; he was glad it was she, he was always glad it was she, and
usually managed to show it in some way.

He never realized that he made more of an effort for his daughter, more
of an occasion of her arrivals and departures, than he ever did for
anyone else. He knew that Erica was the only human being who really
understood him and with whom he did not have to put up a false front of
consistency, but that was as far as he got. To go any further would have
involved some disloyalty to his wife, and in all the years of his
marriage Charles Drake had never been disloyal to her, even in thought.

The growing difference between one side of his character and the other,
made Margaret Drake uncomfortable; she was baffled by the way he
contradicted himself and was always trying to fuse the two opposing
aspects of his nature by sheer force of logic. Since she was more at
ease with his conservative side than she was with the other increasingly
skeptical and unpredictable part of him, and since he realized that he
could not be consistent to both at once and that consistency was what
she wanted, with his wife he was tending more and more to be the
complete conservative, emotional, prejudiced, and intolerant. In this
way Margaret Drake got the worst of him and she knew it, but she had
made her choice and did not know how to go back on it. Often when she
came into the room where her husband and daughter were talking, there
would be a pause, and she would have the very odd feeling that they were
both waiting, hoping that she would say the right thing and that she
would come in on their level. And sometimes for the first few minutes it
was all right, but she could not keep it up. Sooner or later she always
returned to her own level of pure logic where the matter of greatest
importance was not whether Charles was being consistent in what he was
saying now, but whether what he was saying now was consistent with what
he had said yesterday. From then on, the argument fell into the
meaningless pattern of most arguments between Charles Drake and his wife
in which she struggled fruitlessly against a rising current of
irritation and unreason from her husband, and Erica gradually became
silent.

She had accepted the duality of her father's nature; unlike her mother,
it seemed to Erica quite possible that an individual could have two
opposing opinions on economic, political and even moral questions and
yet be equally sincere in both. It was primarily a conflict between the
theories and beliefs on which he had been brought up and which were an
integral part of his background and tradition, on the one hand, and the
facts, as they presented themselves to him from day to day, on the
other. He wanted to go on believing in the continued existence of a
world which, although he admitted it only to Erica, he knew had gone for
good.

Almost everyone needs at least one person to whom he can talk off the
record, and in the case of Charles Drake, that person was his daughter
Erica. He had a great many friends, but they were all cut from the same
economic and social pattern as himself, and if he sometimes deviated
from that pattern, he did not care to have them know it. He neither
wanted, nor could he afford to have people going about saying that C. S.
Drake had got some rather advanced and unconventional ideas and worse
still, possibly classing him as a "radical." That sort of thing doesn't
go down well with your fellow members on the Board of Directors. Erica,
however, was safe; he could trust her not to quote him afterwards. He
could talk like a Tory one day and like a Socialist the next,
without--as often happened with his wife--being informed that he was
"hopelessly illogical" and without running the risk of having anything
he might say used against him the next time he chose to contradict
himself.

As for Erica, her father had fascinated her ever since she could
remember. Because she knew when, and still more important, how to
disagree with him, he rarely tried to override her opinions and never
tried to override her personality. She was the only one of his three
children with whom his relationship had so far been entirely successful.

Gesturing toward the radio he said, "Listen to him, Eric. It's too good
to miss. He's trying to explain how the R.A.F. got through their
'impregnable' anti-aircraft defenses."

Erica lit a cigarette and sat down on the arm of a chair. The broadcast
seemed to be almost over, and after making an effort to keep her mind on
what the announcer was saying, she gave up and went on thinking about
Marc, letting the voice from Berlin drop away from her out of hearing.
She was wondering what people meant when they talked about love at first
sight, and whether she was already in love with Marc Reiser or simply
knew beyond doubt that she was going to fall in love with him.

Her father got to his feet to switch off the radio with the observation,
"There don't seem to be any limits to the amount of bilge they think we
can swallow."

"Speaking of bilge," said Erica. "That reminds me of our lunch. What
happened to it?"

"I had to meet some men at the Club." He sat down heavily, yawned, and
changing his tone he stated, "'The only way to guarantee full employment
after the war is by a return to pre-war freedom of enterprise.' What in
hell are we supposed to have been doing during the depression--firing
our employees for fun?"

"It must have been a nice lunch."

"Yeah," said her father moodily, then, asserting himself, he said, "Damn
it, I don't like the idea of living under a bureaucracy any more than
they do. I believe in capitalism," he added firmly, and then remarked
with a faintly amused expression in his fine dark eyes, "when it works."

"Yes," said Erica. "Well, in the meantime, Mother thinks you would like
to come downstairs and say good-by to Scotty and the rest of them."

"Does she? Why?"

"They're going overseas, Charles...."

"Oh, are they? All right," he said resignedly, but without moving an
inch.

Erica wanted to tell him about Marc and was trying to make up her mind
how much to tell him and where to begin, when she realized that her
father was looking at her intently, as though he also was trying to make
up his mind about something.

Finally he said, "Eric..."

"Yes?"

He took up his pipe and began to repack it, asking, "Do you like your
job on the _Post_?"

"Yes, why?"

"I was just wondering. Do you really like it or is it just a job?"

"No, I really like it." She waited for him to go on and then asked,
"What were you wondering, Charles?"

"About you. You can't go on being a newspaper woman all your life. It
doesn't get you anywhere--you've already gone about as far as you're
likely to go, from now on you'll probably just mark time until they fire
you because they want a younger woman, or pension you off."

"My, you make it sound attractive," said Erica admiringly.

He grinned, and then, leaning forward and punching the air with his pipe
for emphasis, he said, "The same thing would happen to you anywhere
else--as a woman you can just go so far, and then you're stuck in a job
where you spend your life taking orders from some fathead with half your
brains, whose only advantage over you is the fact that he happens to
wear trousers. What you need is a job where you can get away from all
this sex prejudice and be given a chance to work your way right up to
the top if you want to."

"Yes, but..."

"I don't know why I didn't see it long ago...."

"See what?"

"The answer to the whole thing," said her father impatiently. "Evidently
I'm just as narrow-minded as everybody else."

As Erica still did not seem to have a very clear idea of what he was
talking about, he said, "Look, I start out with a business, a son, and a
daughter..."

"Two daughters."

"Miriam doesn't count. She's the kind of girl who gets married...."

"Ouch!" said Erica, wincing.

"Well, damn it," Charles expostulated, "she's already _been_ married
once and she's only--how old is Miriam?"

"Twenty-four."

"And how old are you?"

"Twenty-eight."

"Besides, Miriam hasn't half your brains," said her father, dismissing
Miriam, and asked, "Where was I?"

"Starting a business with a son and a daughter," said Erica. "Though why
you have to pick a time when your wife's in the middle of giving a
cocktail party..."

"Yes," said her father unconcernedly. "Anyhow, the point is that with
you and Tony to choose from, I just automatically picked Tony. I don't
know why. It isn't even as though Tony had ever particularly liked the
idea of going into the firm. He did all right, he was there for five
years, but I often had a queer feeling that he was just waiting for
something to happen."

"So did I."

"Well, something did happen. I don't know what he's going to do after
the war, he's talked a lot about staying in aviation, but at any rate, I
might just as well face the fact that he's not going back to Drakes'.
After four generations, it looks as though we're finished...."

"Wait a minute," said Erica, staring at him. "Are you offering me Tony's
job?"

"Not Tony's job--just _a_ job. From then on it's up to you."

"No," said Erica involuntarily. "I couldn't. I couldn't possibly."

Ever since her childhood she had had one recurrent nightmare of an
interminably long corridor from which there was no turning back and no
exit, except the door at the other end toward which she was walking
faster and faster, trying to get away from something which threatened to
close in on her. Nothing ever happened; the door always remained the
same distance ahead of her and whatever it was that threatened her, the
same distance behind. The nightmare had neither beginning nor end, and
when she woke up, she was still hurrying along the corridor, with a
sense of oppression which was so strong that it often stayed with her
half the morning.

Sitting on the arm of a chair in her father's study she wondered why the
mere suggestion that she should go into the family business had been
enough to bring back that unpleasantly familiar sensation of something
closing in on her, unless it was simply that, like the corridor, there
would be no exit from Drakes' except a door which it would take her
forever to reach. The job would be permanent; after all, that was the
whole idea. Once there, she would have to stay, and the only way of
getting out would be for her to marry someone, and even that possibility
would become increasingly remote as time went on. Her father would
dominate her life; she would not only be living in his house but working
in his office, and at some point, that domination would begin to take
effect, probably without her even realizing it. It is all very well to
view a situation from a distance and vow to remain detached, but when
you are actually in the middle of that situation, detachment is not so
easy. Your point of view and your scale of values alter without your
being aware of it. Between her father's opposition--and influence--on
the one hand, and her own sense of responsibility to him and to her job,
on the other, marriage would not stand much of a chance.

"Don't you like the idea, Eric?"

She glanced at him, then got up suddenly from the arm of the chair and
went over to the window. There was an apple tree in the sloping garden
next door, and as she looked at it, she remembered Marc and felt free
again. The tree was in full blossom and half of it was white against the
bluish haze of the city below and half of it was gold against the
setting sun. The apple tree, the singing and the gold....

"You and I have always got along so well together...."

She could not bear the sudden drop in his voice and she said quickly,
turning back to the room and the dark, heavy figure in the chair in the
corner, "It isn't you, darling," remembering that in spite of all his
dogged, rather touching efforts--though Tony had never made much
effort!--he and his son had never got along well together. "I wouldn't
be any good at it, Charles," she said desperately.

"Yes, you would. You're good at everything you really put your mind to."
He shifted a little in his chair and added, smiling at her
affectionately, "Anyhow, I'm glad it isn't just me."

The smile did not quite hide his disappointment and she said, hoping
that if he understood it, he would not mind so much, "There's something
too final about going into a family business, particularly when it's
been the family business for four generations. Dash it, Charles, I'd
have the feeling that I was going to join my ancestors! People are
always coming and going on the _Post_, I couldn't be stuck there for the
rest of my life even if I wanted to, but Drakes'..."

She shook her head and said, "I don't want to end up with rum and
molasses instead of a husband and children!"

"Well..."

"After all, I'm only twenty-eight!"

"It depends on the husband." He relit his pipe and went on, puffing,
"You can be a lot surer that you're not getting married in order to
escape from a more or less unsatisfactory set-up, if you've got a really
good job that's going to lead somewhere, than if you've got the kind of
job that leads nowhere."

She said incredulously, "Do you really imagine that I'd marry anybody
for a meal-ticket?"

"Not anybody," he said, flicking a dead match across the carpet and into
a waste-basket standing beside his desk. "And not for a meal-ticket, but
as you've just finished saying yourself, for a husband and children."

"Yes?" said Erica. "Who, for example?"

He blew out a cloud of smoke and as it drifted upwards he said, watching
it, "Ren."

"Ren! Ren's not in love with me...."

"I've never been wrong yet about any of the men who've been in love with
you."

"Well, you can always start."

He said imperturbably, "And I'd prefer rum and molasses to Ren."

"But he doesn't _want_ to marry me!"

"Why not?"

"Why should he?"

"I can think of a lot of reasons besides the fact that he's in love with
you...."

"Now, look, Charles," said Erica. "Ren doesn't _approve_ of mixed
marriages between French and English Canadians, particularly when the
English Canadian is Protestant...."

"Don't you believe it. He's headed for politics--there's even some talk
of his running as Liberal candidate in the provincial by-elections next
month...."

"Where?"

"In Saint-Cyr down in the Eastern Townships. Apparently his
great-grandfather owned a mill there or something."

"He's never said anything about that...."

"Hasn't it occurred to you yet that Ren has a talent for never saying
anything about anything--even to you? And he never will, either."

"Really, Charles," said Erica, exasperated.

She sat down on the arm of the chair again. "Have you got a cigarette?"

He tossed her a package and when she had lit one, she said, "Anyhow, if
Ren's going to be a politician, he won't have much use for a wife who's
one of the ultra-Protestant Drakes, will he?"

"That depends on whether he intends to end up in Quebec City or Ottawa.
My guess is Ottawa. And if I'm right, then marrying you wouldn't be at
all a bad idea."

"I suppose you think Ren's got all that figured out, too."

"Obviously."

She blew three smoke rings, considered her father for a while with her
tongue in her cheek, and finally observed in a detached tone, "You know,
Charles, you have a very suspicious mind. No matter who it is, as soon
as some poor man shows signs of wanting to invite me out to dinner, you
start to think up a set of perfectly hideous motives. Rather
unflattering, if you ask me. Who knows? Some day some poor deluded idiot
might want to marry me just for the sake of my beaux yeux and then where
would you be?"

"I never had any objection to George--George--I've forgotten his last
name. Anyhow, I never had any objections to him, did I?"

"No, but you knew damn well that I did." She said reminiscently, "He was
always making speeches about how pure he was..."

"Now, see here, Erica..."

"I know, Charles, I know." She began to laugh and said, "Only really,
you can overdo anything, even being pure. And his last name was
Strickland."

"Oh, yes, Strickland. Old John Strickland's son. I wonder what's become
of him? Must be ten years since I last saw him...." He paused,
dismissed old John Strickland and back at Ren again, he said with a
sudden change of tone, "I don't want to see you end up as an old maid,
Eric, but after what's happened to Miriam's marriage, and God only knows
what will happen to Tony's by the time this war's over, I don't want to
see you making any mistakes. It's no use my pretending that they mean as
much to me as you do. They don't. And if you married someone and then he
let you down some way or other, I think I'd probably murder him. So far
my children haven't shown much talent for picking the right person."

"Mimi was too young. And give Tony and Madeleine a chance; after all,
they were only married two months before Tony went overseas."

"Even when he left, Madeleine didn't really know what Tony was all
about. How could she, after spending most of her life in a convent? I
don't know what's happening to these boys like Tony in the Air Force,
and neither do you or Madeleine or anyone else. They're going to be
something new in the way of a post-war problem. Not that you'd have
_that_ to contend with in Ren, at any rate," he added rather acidly.

"Don't let's get started on Ren again."

"How in hell can I help it with my only son in the Air Force, making the
world safe for Ren to sit at home playing politics?" he demanded
angrily. "Not that Ren ever says anything about it," he went on
sarcastically. "He doesn't even bother to make excuses for himself. He
just blandly ignores the whole war except when he's talking all round
the subject and then he's so bloody smart when it comes to avoiding
issues that you can't even push him into it--apart from the fact that he
thinks Tony should have stayed home and played nursemaid to Madeleine,
of course, instead of going overseas. It doesn't seem to have dawned on
Ren yet that Tony isn't a French Canadian."

"That's not fair, Charles," she said calmly.

He started to say something else and then let it go. "No, I know it's
not fair," he remarked at last, and got up. "Come on, Eric, I guess it's
about time we gave your mother some moral support."

As they reached the door leading into the upstairs hall Erica said, "By
the way, he's downstairs."

"Who is?" he asked without interest.

"Ren."

She knew her father and found herself wishing violently that Marc had
come with someone else, or at least that they had not got started on
Ren again at this particular time. Her father had always disliked Ren.
She said as casually as she could, "He brought a friend of his, a young
lawyer named Reiser...."

"Sounds like a Jew."

She said quickly, "But he's the most charming person, Charles, I know
you'll like him."

"I don't usually care much for Jewish lawyers," he said coolly. "What
firm is he in?"

"Something and Aaronson."

"Then he definitely is a Jew. I didn't know Ren was so broadminded.
What on earth did he bring him for?"

With steadily rising anxiety she said, "I told you, Charles--because
he's thoroughly nice and Ren wanted him to meet us."

"What are you making all this fuss about?" he asked, eying her
curiously.

"I'm not making a fuss!"

He went on, "Anyhow, I'll bet you anything you like that it wasn't
Ren's idea."

She stopped with her hand on the post at the top of the stairs and
asked, "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that since we've known Ren for more than a year and he's never
shown much interest in introducing us to his friends before, when he
finally turns up with some shyster lawyer, it's more likely to be the
shyster lawyer's idea than Ren's."

The half-sick feeling that she had had when Marc had said so matter of
factly, "They don't take Jews," came back, only this time it was worse,
because instead of some anonymous, ill-educated concierge, it was her
father who was saying in effect, "_We_ don't take Jews," and because she
was already beginning to be frightened. Marc was still downstairs; he
would expect to be introduced to her father, and if there was anything
wrong with Charles' manner, anything at all, Marc would be certain to
notice it.

Her father was on the second step down. She reached out and caught his
arm and said, slowly and clearly, "Charles, I've met Marc Reiser and
talked to him. I liked him. I want you to like him."

He came round slowly and faced her, looking into her eyes which were on,
a level with his own; his expression altered slightly as he looked at
her, and then he said deliberately, "I'm afraid I'm not very interested
in whether you like him or not."

They went down the stairs. Erica had made up her mind that she would not
introduce Marc to her father; instead, she would get hold of Ren and
tell him to take Marc away at once on any pretext he liked. But it was
not to be changed; the pattern had already been designed and laid out,
and none of them could change it.

At the foot of the stairs Ren was standing with Marc, waiting for her,
and as Erica and her father reached the last step he said, "Good
afternoon, sir. I'd like to introduce a friend of mine, Marc..."

Her father said "Oh, hello, Ren," cutting him short, then glanced at
Marc without pausing and went on.




CHAPTER II


It was after midnight when Erica got home, having left the house soon
after Ren and Marc. She had spent three hours on the Red Cross story
which would ordinarily have taken her less than an hour to rewrite,
because she could not keep her mind on what she was doing. From the
office she went to the Guild meeting where she heard very little that
was said and afterwards was unable to remember who had been there. The
Guild was slow in getting organized and every extra person made a
difference. She had promised to go, in any case. The meeting broke up
late, long after she had finally accepted the fact that nothing could be
done about Marc, even supposing her father could be persuaded to do it.
It had been quite obvious from the way Marc had said good-by to her,
immediately after Charles had failed to stop at the foot of the stairs,
that he did not expect to see her again.

There remained the problem of her father and herself.

He was sitting in his pajamas and dressing-gown with an untouched whisky
and soda on the table beside him and from the door of the study Erica
said, "Charles, I want to talk to you."

Although he had left the study door open so that as usual, he would hear
her come in, and had in fact been waiting for her ever since dinner, not
knowing what to do with himself, he said, barely raising his eyes, "It's
rather late, isn't it?"

"I won't take long."

He knew that what she wanted to talk about was his behavior toward
Ren's Jewish friend, and he not only had no intention of being put in a
position where he would have to justify an action which, so far as
Charles Drake was concerned, did not require justification, he was still
irritated by Erica's rudeness when he had last seen her just before she
had left for her office.

As soon as he was certain that Ren and whatever-his-name-was, had taken
their departure, he had returned from the drawing-room to find that
Erica had gone upstairs. His wife said that she had some work to finish
downtown and that after that, she was going to some kind of union
meeting. He had hung about in the hall trying to avoid getting into
conversation with anyone, keeping his eyes on the landing so that he
shouldn't miss her. It was not that he wanted to say anything in
particular, he just wanted to have a look at his daughter to see if
everything was all right, and to let her know that so far as he himself
was concerned, there were no hard feelings.

When Erica had finally come running downstairs he could see that she had
been crying; he knew that she wouldn't want to stop in the hall among a
lot of people, so he had cut across to the front door, getting there
just ahead of her, and had opened it for her.

"Have you had any dinner, Eric?"

"No."

"Are you going to get some somewhere?"

She said nothing but simply stood with her hands at her sides and her
eyes on some point near the floor at his feet, waiting for him to let
her pass.

"You'd better let me pay for your dinner and then I'll be sure you won't
forget and go without it."

He took a bill from his pocket and held it out to her but she did not
take it, and he asked, "What time do you think you'll be back?"

"I don't know."

"Is something the matter?"

Her eyes moved up to his face, then down again, and she said, "Let me go
please, Charles. I'm late enough already."

It was the first time that he could remember Erica ever having gone off
without saying what was on her mind and for a while he had been
thoroughly upset. He was sensitive to the moods of everyone with whom he
lived or worked, particularly where his wife and Erica were concerned,
and he had watched his daughter disappear down the long flight of steps
which led from their street to the one below, still holding the
two-dollar bill in his hand and wondering if he had been right to act on
his hunch about the fellow, after all.

Since then, however, he had had four hours in which to think it over,
four hours during which he had, in fact, found it impossible to think
about anything else. He had intended to spend the evening rearranging
and listing fifty or sixty miscellaneous records which were at present
scattered through half a dozen big albums so that he could never find
anything without searching for it. He had got out all the records and
grouped them, according to the composer, on the big, flat-topped desk
which he had had brought up from his office for just this sort of thing,
and had then lost interest. The listing would have to wait. Having
returned the records to their albums in even worse disorder than they
had been in to start with, he had then tried to read for a while, and
had finally ended up by simply sitting, waiting to hear the front door
open and the sound of Erica's footsteps in the hall below.

In the meantime, he had come to certain conclusions. The fact that Erica
could be so worried by his behavior toward a complete stranger that she
would first go up to her room and cry, and then refuse even to tell him
where she was going to have her dinner or so much as thank him for
having offered to pay for it, was clear proof that his hunch had been
right. Besides that, even if it had been entirely groundless, what he
did in his own house was his own business, and it was not up to Erica
either to regard his unwillingness to meet Ren's singularly ill-chosen
friend as an injury to herself, or to take it out on him by refusing to
be even civil.

He said, "Whatever you want to talk about can wait till the morning.
You'd better go to bed."

Instead of going to bed, she left the door and went over to the windows,
asking with her back to him, "Why did you do it, Charles?"

She heard him knocking his pipe against the brass ash-tray standing
beside his chair and finally his voice saying, "If you'll think back to
what I said when you first told me that Ren had turned up with some
Jewish lawyer..."

"His name is Marc Reiser." The apple tree in the garden next door had
turned to mist and silver; it looked like a ghost in the moonlight.
"Anyhow, that isn't enough to explain it."

"I don't think I'm called upon to give explanations."

Erica swung around, so that she was facing him. She was still inwardly
raging; like her father, she had had four hours in which to think over
his behavior at the foot of the stairs, but she had come to somewhat
different conclusions. Still managing to keep her voice fairly level,
however, she said, "It's no use talking like that to me, Charles. It
isn't going to work. I've been going around in circles all evening
trying to find some way of straightening this thing out. So far as
Marc's concerned, there doesn't seem to be any--nothing you or I can say
will make the slightest difference, it's done and we can't change it.
Every time he remembers what happened to him in our house, it will
happen to him all over again...."

"I daresay it's happened to him before," said her father dryly.

"Probably," said Erica. "After all, we Canadians don't really disagree
fundamentally with the Nazis about the Jews--we just think they go a bit
too far."

There was a quick flash of anger in his dark eyes and a momentary
tightening of the muscles around his mouth, but he said nothing, and the
next minute his face was as impassive as ever. He went on looking at her
steadily, almost speculatively, with no indication of what he was
thinking showing in his face. It was so unlike him that Erica felt
vaguely uneasy, but she added in the same tone, "Anyhow, the fact that
other people have kicked him around doesn't mean that Marc has worked up
an immunity which more or less lets you out--or that I feel any better
because all you did was gang up with the others."

She said, "Apart from your manners, which are usually a good deal better
than that, what on earth has become of your sense of justice..." and
suddenly pulled herself up short. She was on the wrong track. None of
them had ever got anywhere with Charles by a discussion of abstract
principles--though after thirty-two years of marriage, Margaret Drake
was still trying!--the only way to reach him was through his emotions.
Her father had never cared what his family thought on any subject, since
in most arguments, he did not think himself; he only cared how they
felt. Any stand he took with them was likely to be largely emotional,
and to counter emotion with logic was useless; the only effective way to
deal with him was to take advantage of his intuitive understanding of
people and to substitute either your own or someone else's feelings for
his own. Once her father started to be sympathetic, he usually defeated
himself.

She said, "I don't know when I've met anyone I've liked as much as I
liked Marc, or anyone as intelligent and civilized and as easy to talk
to. He's the complete opposite of everything you seem to think. He
hasn't much self-confidence and he didn't know anybody but Ren; I think
he had an awful time until I came along and rescued him. If you'd even
bothered to look at him, you'd have known what kind of person he is
because it's all in his face...."

Unimpressed and still nowhere near losing his temper, her father broke
in at last, "You don't seem to realize that fortunately or
unfortunately, the kind of person he is has almost nothing to do with
it...."

"What matters is the label, is that it?"

"I didn't invent the label, Eric. And I've already told you that I don't
intend to sit here and be lectured by one of my children...."

"I'm not trying to lecture you," said Erica desperately. "I'm trying to
get you to tell me _why_ you did it. Along with what you did to Marc,
you gave me the worst shock I've ever had--you, of all people! I thought
I could count on you to back me up--you always have until now--and
instead of that, you let me down. You couldn't have let me down any
harder if you'd tried. And having put me in the most humiliating
position--believe it or not, Charles, I'd just finished telling him that
you'd like to meet him because both of you are so keen on music; I'd
even invited him to come and listen to your records!--you tell me that
I'm not even entitled to an explanation."

The reading lamp standing beside his chair was almost in line with Erica
and himself, shining into his eyes whenever he looked up at her. She was
still standing with her back to the windows, and the pupils of her eyes
were so enlarged that her eyes appeared black instead of green. Her
pupils had always done that when Erica was either very angry or had gone
too long without food.

He swung the lamp out of the way and said at last, "You know as well as
I do that among the people we know--your mother's friends, my friends,
even your own friends for that matter, or most of them at any rate--a
Jewish lawyer sticks out like a sore thumb. He just doesn't fit; from a
social point of view, he's unmanageable--makes everybody else feel
awkward, and if he's as decent as you seem to think your friend Reiser
is, after an intimate acquaintance of half an hour, probably he feels
pretty awkward himself."

"He did."

"What's all the argument about, then?"

"Go on, Charles," she said.

He shrugged. "Very well, then, since you asked for it. When you've known
as many Jews as I have, particularly young Jewish lawyers who are on the
make professionally, you'll realize that when they choose to mix with
Gentiles after business hours, it isn't usually because they prefer to
spend their free time with Gentiles instead of Jews. It's because
they're out to do themselves a bit of good socially. Contacts count,
Eric--the more contacts, the better. You never know when they're likely
to come in handy... particularly a contact with, say, people like
us...."

"Speak for yourself, Charles."

He gave another shrug of his heavy shoulders and said, "All
right--people like me. The point is that once they..."

"'They'?" repeated Erica innocently.

He said impatiently, "Jewish lawyers..."

"But we're not talking about 'Jewish lawyers,'" said Erica. "We're
talking about Marc Reiser."

"I don't give a damn about Marc Reiser!" said her father angrily.

"That was more than obvious," said Erica. "However, you started to say
something about the point. What is the point, exactly?"

"The point is that once they get a foot in your door, if you treat them
the way you would anyone else, either they deliberately take advantage
of it, or simply misunderstand it, and before you know it, they're all
the way in and there's no way of getting rid of them."

"So it was in the nature of a prophylactic measure."

"I don't like your tone, Erica."

"Well, I don't like your point of view, so that makes us even," said
Erica, unmoved.

He said almost indifferently, "You'll find my point of view is pretty
general, whether you like it or not. I've had a great deal more
experience of the world than you. I've no objection to Jews, some of the
ones I know downtown are very decent fellows, but that doesn't mean I
want them in my house any more than they want me in theirs--it works
both ways, don't forget that--and I prefer to choose my own friends, and
not have Ren do it for me."

Erica had heard most of that before, particularly the part about not
having any objection to Jews, but, etc., which seemed to be the one that
was always used in this connection... not by her father, but by
people in general. She said mildly, "If Ren was doing any choosing, it
wasn't for you, it was for me."

What her father had said sounded all right, and there was no doubt that
he was sincere; the only trouble was that it had nothing to do with
Marc, and as the "explanation" of Charles' treatment of Marc, it was
totally unsatisfactory. You can't offer a series of vague
generalizations referring to the supposed characteristics of
approximately sixteen million people scattered over the earth's
surface--that was the pre-war figure, of course--as a valid explanation
of your attitude toward a given individual. It doesn't make sense. Nor
even, narrowing it down somewhat, by referring to the supposed
characteristics of "Jewish lawyers." As she herself had just made a
futile effort to point out, they were discussing one specific human
being, not a category.

She watched her father relighting his pipe and said finally, "If you
want to play the heavy father and start telling me whom I'm to know and
whom I'm not to know, there's nothing I can do to stop you, at least so
far as the people I invite to your house are concerned--presumably whom
I see outside your house is my own business." She paused and remarked,
"You're starting a bit late, of course," and went on, "however, if you
don't pay any more attention to my opinions than you did to Tony's and
Miriam's, then you're likely to end up in the same relationship with me
as with them...."

"It's up to you, Eric."

She said incredulously, "When I ask you particularly to be nice to
someone and your answer to that is to refuse even to show him the most
ordinary courtesy, how on earth can you say that what happens to us
after that is _my_ responsibility?"

There was no response, her father did not appear to be listening. After
a lifetime of making mountains out of molehills, this time, for some
inexplicable reason, he was evidently determined to make a molehill out
of a mountain, or determined to try, at any rate. Nothing she had said
so far had had any effect; for all she had accomplished, she might just
as well have done what he had suggested when she had first told him that
she wanted to talk to him, and gone straight to bed.

She sat down in the chair by the radio, regarded her father curiously
for a while longer and then asked, "What's back of all this, Charles?"

"I've already explained it once."

"You've only given me half the explanation. The other half is still
missing." Strong as they were, she knew that her father's anti-Jewish
prejudices and his even more pronounced anti-Jewish lawyer prejudices
were still not strong enough to stand alone when they came into conflict
with his innate kindness and sense of chivalry. He would blast away at
nations, classes, groups or categories of human beings, but to
individuals he was unfailingly considerate, regardless of their
category, or always had been, until this afternoon. He had objected
violently and at length to a convent-bred French Canadian
daughter-in-law, but the moment Anthony had stopped shouting and let all
the misery inside him come out, his father's opposition had collapsed.
It had collapsed too late to get Tony back, but once rid of the
generalization and confronted with the individual, Charles had been so
consistently good to Madeleine that, of all the Drakes and outside of
Tony himself, Charles was the one Madeleine was fondest of. It was
rather unfair, when you came to think of it, for whatever Margaret
Drake's opinions had been on the subject, her sense of justice and her
determination to respect her children's right to make their own
decisions had kept her from expressing them, and now, after she had done
her best from the beginning and her husband had done his worst as long
as he could, it was her husband who was Madeleine's favorite. As
Margaret Drake had once observed ruefully to Erica, Madeleine's devotion
to her father-in-law was just another example of Charles Drake's
extraordinary talent for having his cake and eating it. People with
charm can get away with a lot.

"Do you want a drink?"

"Yes, please."

Her father poured some whisky into a glass and asked, "How much soda?"

"Two thirds of the way up."

He got to his feet and gave her the glass, then began to walk up and
down the room, from the flat-topped desk at one end to the row of
bookcases at the other, with his hands in the pockets of his dark blue
dressing-gown.

As he passed her for the third time, Erica, still searching for the
missing half of the explanation, remarked idly, "Of course you knew how
much I liked Marc," because in some way or other, her father always knew
these things, just as he always knew when someone was lying, and when a
member of his immediate family was in serious trouble. His
disconcertingly well-developed intuitive processes seemed to be
unaffected by the distance between himself and the person concerned;
three years before, he had been in New York on a business trip and his
wife had been hurt in a motor accident in Montreal, and within half an
hour of the accident, Charles Drake had been on the long distance phone,
asking in alarm what had happened to her. One night during the Blitz he
had had a "feeling" that something was wrong with Miriam in London and
had suddenly taken it into his head to cable her: "ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?"
The cable had reached her in the hospital to which she had been taken a
few hours before, with a piece of shrapnel embedded in her left shoulder
and another one in her thigh.

In 1937, Erica remembered, Miriam had written her mother from
Switzerland, mentioning among other things, that she had met a young
Englishman named Peter Kingsley, who was a very good skier, had a job in
a London publishing house and had spent the evening defending British
policy in India. "Huh," was Charles' comment. He took an unusual
interest in Peter Kingsley from then on, and when Miriam married him two
and a half months later, her father was the only person who was not
surprised. And four years later, Charles had got the wind up on the
strength of nothing whatever but a casual announcement from his son that
he, Anthony, had met a girl named Madeleine de Sevigny, at a party the
night before, and that he was taking her out to dinner on Thursday.

"Catholic?" asked Charles.

"I suppose so," said Anthony.

"French Canadian?"

"Yes, of course."

"Huh," her father had said for the second time, and then the fireworks
had started.

If all he had needed in Miriam's case was a letter containing four facts
about one Peter Kingsley, and all he had needed in Anthony's case was a
casual statement followed by two facts about Madeleine, then, in telling
him about Marc and in saying so desperately, "I like him, I want you to
like him," she had certainly provided her father with more than enough
to go on.

As he passed her again on his way down the study toward the flat-topped
desk, she began, "You know, Charles, you really owe it to the
advancement of science to go down to Duke University and offer yourself
as a subject for their experiments in Extra-Sensory Perception..."
and came to an abrupt stop.

She had stumbled on the missing half of the explanation. It was
precisely because her father had known how much she had liked Marc that
he had refused to speak to him. Charles Drake was simply not going to
have his favorite daughter, who was also, in some respects, his favorite
human being, getting mixed up with a Jewish lawyer.

"Well, I'll be damned," said Erica, viewing her father with amazement.
"Of all the nerve...."

"What are you talking about?"

"You and your little performance this afternoon. _Really_, Charles..."
she said, exasperated, and then as the funny side of it struck her,
she began to laugh.

Her father sat down in the corner chair again and finally he said, "Do
you mind telling me what in hell you're laughing at?"

"I'm laughing at you. You don't seem to realize that other people just
don't behave the way you do. Incidentally," she said, looking at him
with interest, "did you say 'Huh' to yourself when I told you about
Marc?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Never mind, it doesn't matter."

"Now what?" he asked a moment later as the amusement died out of her
face.

"I just remembered Marc." It wasn't so funny after all. She sat with her
head against the back of the chair and her hands on the arms, looking
straight ahead of her, remarking idly after a pause, "It seems to me
you're being a little previous this time. Besides, your system doesn't
make any sense. It's illogical...."

"Why?"

"Because if something weren't going to happen, you wouldn't have a
premonition about it, so since it _is_ inevitable, what's the use of
going to all this trouble to try and stop it? I'm just being academic,
by the way," she added, "because judging from the look on his face when
he left, Marc Reiser has been stopped quite effectively."

He said impatiently, "It's not the event or whatever you call it that I
can see coming--that's pure fatalism. It's just that if you know how
people feel, or rather how strongly they feel it, then you can tell
whether or not their feelings are likely to lead to a particular course
of action...."

"That doesn't apply in either Miriam's or Tony's case," Erica
interrupted. "You went off the deep end about Madeleine when Tony hardly
knew her and didn't 'feel' anything in particular about her...."

"I was right, wasn't I?"

"I suppose so."

"As for this afternoon," her father went on, "it was perfectly obvious
that Reiser had made a great impression on you. Probably you'd impressed
him just as much--it usually works both ways. Anyhow, it seemed to me
that it was better for everybody all round to make things quite clear at
the very beginning, than to let an impossible situation develop and then
have to clear it up later...."

"Yes," said Erica. "What you mean is that an ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure...."

"Of course," he said, obviously relieved that she had finally come to
see it that way.

"...and since you've always done exactly what you like, it hasn't
even occurred to you to wonder whether it's up to you to prevent it or
not." She paused, surveying him, and finally added, "As I remarked a few
minutes ago, Charles, you really have a lot of nerve."




CHAPTER III


For three weeks nothing happened. Erica's one contact with Marc Reiser
was through Ren de Sevigny, and the day after the cocktail party, Ren
had gone to Quebec City. His secretary told Erica that she did not know
when he would be back, except that it would not be until toward the end
of the month. Erica could not get Marc out of her mind, she even tried
to persuade her father to write him a note of apology, a suggestion
which Charles Drake considered preposterous, and when that failed, she
made several unsuccessful attempts to write him herself, but there was
no way of either explaining or apologizing for her father's behavior,
and all she could say on her own behalf was that she was sorry, which
was hardly enough under the circumstances. There was nothing to do but
wait until Ren came back, and go on hoping that she would run into Marc
somewhere by accident. His office was not far from hers, and Erica fell
into the habit of looking for him, scanning faces in restaurants and
theatres and glancing at everyone who passed her in the street, without
even realizing that she was doing it.

On the last Friday in June, Charles and Margaret Drake went away for the
week-end, and on Saturday morning, Erica's younger sister Miriam
telegraphed to say that she was arriving on the train from Quebec City
at three o'clock that afternoon. Two months before she had written that
she would be sailing "soon" but they had not expected her for at least
another week.

The telegram was phoned to the Drakes' house and taken by Mary, the
cook, who in turn phoned Erica at her office. Erica had no way of
reaching her parents; their fishing cabin was in back of Lachute,
separated by five miles of rivers, lakes and mountains from the nearest
village. Letters and telegrams delivered to the village simply stayed
there until called for which, in her parents' case, would not be until
tomorrow night when they would be on their way home anyhow.

Erica said into the phone, "You'd better make up Miss Miriam's room,
Mary...."

"Yes, Miss Drake. Will you be asking anyone to dinner tonight?"

"No, I don't think so."

She put down the phone and sat looking at the litter on her desk for a
moment, wondering whether Miriam had changed much and whether it would
be easy or difficult to get to know her again. Miriam had never been
very easy to know, and it was three years since Erica had last seen her,
the summer war broke out, when they had had two weeks together in Paris.

There were four other people in Erica's office beside herself--two
reporters who had no business to be there, sitting on the bench by the
door, one of whom was asleep with his hat on, and his hands folded
across his stomach, and the other yawning over the war news; Erica's
assistant, Sylvia Arnold, a slim, dark-haired girl with gray eyes, a
sense of humor and a clear, balanced intelligence, and finally, a very
tall, bony youth of about sixteen whose name was Weathersby Canning, one
of the Westmount, stock-broking Cannings, who was usually known as
"Bubbles." He was a combination copy and messenger boy who was permitted
to write up the less important weddings.

Dismissing the subject of Miriam for the time being, Erica read over the
page she had just written which was headed "Sugarless Recipes" and
remarked, "For someone who can't cook, this really sounds
extraordinarily convincing," then pulled it out of her typewriter and
threw it into the cage attached to the side of her desk.

"Who was Wing Commander Howard's wife before she married him last
Saturday?" asked Sylvia.

"Margaret Denham," said Weathersby.

"Bubbles knows everything," said Erica.

"For the love of Mike, will you stop calling me 'Bubbles'?"

"Why, what's the matter with it?" asked the reporter who was reading the
war news.

"It hasn't any dignity."

"I can't possibly call you Weathersby," Erica pointed out, running a
fresh sheet into her typewriter. "It has too much dignity."

"Call him Butch," advised the reporter.

"Butch Canning," repeated Weathersby. "Say, that's not bad. How do you
spell 'mousseline de soie'?" he asked, and then as nobody answered and
his phone rang, he said, "Social Department, Butch Canning speaking..."
then to Erica, "Mrs. Wallace Anderson, Mrs. Wallace P. Anderson wants
someone from here to cover the A.S.A. meeting this afternoon...."

"I can't," said Erica. "My sister's arriving from England. What have you
got on for this afternoon?" she asked Sylvia.

"One tea, one art exhibit and one speech," said Sylvia without looking
up from her typewriter.

"Can't you cut the speech?"

Sylvia shook her head. "Some American newspaper woman who's just back
from Chungking."

"How about the art exhibit...?" She thought a moment and said, "Butch
can go."

"I hate Art," said Weathersby intensely. "Besides, who's going to answer
the phone?"

"You don't have to look at the pictures," said Erica. "And switchboard
can answer it. What does the P. stand for?"

"Pritchard." He informed Mrs. Wallace P. Anderson that "a member of the
staff" would cover her meeting, and then remarked patiently to the room
in general, "I still don't know how to spell 'mousseline de soie.'"

"'Mousseline de what?" asked the second reporter, waking up. His name
was Mike O'Brien; he had an attractive freckled face and red hair.

"Soie!" said Weathersby.

"Where's the dope on the Burroughs wedding?" asked Erica, searching
through the pile of papers and photographs on her desk.

"Over here--do you want it?" asked Sylvia.

"No, put it with the rest when you've got finished. I suppose I'd better
do that Merchant Navy story," she remarked vaguely. "What's the date?"

"The twenty-ninth," someone answered.

Toward the end of the month, Ren's secretary had said. The twenty-ninth
was certainly toward the end of the month.

"Mike," said Erica absently, beginning on the Merchant Navy.

Mike grunted.

"Tell Butch how to spell 'mousseline de soie,' only write it out for
him."

"What is it?" Mike asked Weathersby.

"How should I know?"

"Well, you work here." Mike pondered, then as the door opened and a
middle-aged man in overalls appeared, he asked, "Do _you_ know how to
spell 'mousseline de soie'?"

"Nope," said the stranger, trying the light switch and then attacking it
with a screwdriver.

"How in hell would he know?" demanded Weathersby.

"He's probably a French Canadian. Are you a French Canadian?"

"Nope."

"Put something else," Mike advised Weathersby. He got up, yawned and
asked, "Would you like us to lunch together, Eric?"

"Is that your delicate way of suggesting that I should pay for myself or
both of us?"

"Both of us."

"I'll just put lace," decided Weathersby.

"No, you don't," said Sylvia. She printed the words "mousseline de soie"
in block capitals on a pad, muttering, "It beats me how you expect to
get into the Air Force when you can't even spell...."

"In the Air Force," said Weathersby loftily, "you are not required to
spell words like mousseline de soie."

"Lunch?" repeated Mike hopefully from the door.

"Sorry," said Erica, smiling at him.

"How about you?"

"Do you mean _me_?" asked Sylvia.

"You don't think I'd ask Butch to lunch, do you?"

"That depends on whether or not you thought I could afford it," said
Weathersby, typing rapidly with two fingers.

"All right, I'll meet you at Luigi's at one." Mike and the other
reporter went out; Sylvia's eyes met Erica's and smiling at her, a
little embarrassed, Sylvia said apologetically, "Well, you don't want
him, do you, Eric?"

"Mike?" asked Erica, surprised, and shook her head.

"That's good, because I do."

"Women," said Weathersby derisively.

"Bubbles, get me Ren de Sevigny on the phone and be quick about it,"
said Erica.

After a pause she heard Weathersby asking, "Est-ce que M. de Sevigny est
l, s'il vous plat? O.K., Eric, he's coming."

Erica picked up her phone. "Hello, Ren..."

"Is that you, Eric? I was just going to call you. I only got back this
morning and I'm in an awful rush but I'll be through in half an hour.
How about lunch?"

"Love to. Where?"

"Charcot's--in the bar downstairs?"

"Yes. Ren..."

"Yes?"

"How about bringing Marc Reiser with you?" It was out before she had
even realized that she was definitely going to say it.

He started to answer, then stopped. "Just a minute, I've got to talk to
someone--hold on a moment, will you?"

The silence lasted more than a moment, during which she sat rather
nervously, drawing small squares on the back of a photograph of some
officers in the Canadian Women's Army Corps. Then Ren said, "Hello,
Eric--did you say you wanted me to ask Marc?"

"Yes," she answered, adding uncertainly, "if you think he'd like to
come."

"Have you heard from him since that day at your house?"

Damn Ren, she thought, and trying to keep the awkwardness out of her
voice, she said, "I wouldn't be asking you to bring him to lunch if I
had."

"Well, I _don't_ think he'd like to come."

"Ren, please listen a moment. I want to..."

Weathersby was gesturing violently toward the phone on his desk in the
corner of the room; she broke off long enough to say, "Tell whoever it
is to go to hell," then heard Ren's voice again.

"My dear child, I am listening. I'll invite him if you like, but after
the kick in the pants that he got from your father, I think you'd better
leave Marc alone."

She said desperately, "But don't you see, it's _because_ of that..."

"Is it, petite?"

"All right," said Erica, giving up. "Forget the whole thing. Lunch 
deux, Charcot's, one-thirty. Right?"

"Entendu."

"Well, little man, what now?" she asked Weathersby. "Did you tell him to
go to hell?"

"No, I didn't. It's the Managing Editor and he's still there."

"What does he want?"

"He wants to know if you've made up your mind about his niece. Say,
Eric, you're not going to let her work here just because she's Pansy's
niece, are you?"

"What do you think I joined the Guild for? Don't look so frightened,
darling," she said to Sylvia. "Anybody who gets your job gets it over my
dead body and that goes for Pansy's relations just like everybody else.
Switch him on, Bubbles."

She took up her phone and disposed of Mr. Prescott's niece as tactfully
as she could and for the time being at any rate; finished the Merchant
Navy story, did half a column on war-time clothing, sorted out the
announcements of next week's meetings and with the Woman's Section of
the final edition ready to go to press, she set out to walk to
Charcot's.

It was a clear, sunny day with a fresh wind blowing off the river and
although she was already a little late, she stopped to buy some corn for
the pigeons and to chat with the old gaspsien sitting on a stool in the
shade of the cathedral. He had been there with his big sack of corn and
his pile of little paper bags weighted down with a stone, ever since
Erica had gone to work on the _Post_. During the past six years she had
bought enough corn from him to fill several wagons and had finally come
to understand his French, which was pure Gasp to start with and further
complicated by the fact that the old man had no teeth. From year to year
she had watched him grow steadily older, dirtier, poorer and happier. He
was always happy, even when it was twenty below zero and nobody would
stop long enough to buy corn, and he had to feed the pigeons himself.

Ren was waiting for her at Charcot's, having somehow managed to take
possession of one of the eight little tables in the crowded little bar
downstairs. He was wearing a brown suit and his intelligent face lacked
its usual expression of half-amused skepticism; he looked thoroughly
tired.

"I'm starved--I've ordered a Manhattan for you, a Martini for myself and
lunch for both of us."

She took the cigarette he offered as he sat down opposite her and asked,
slightly irritated, "Do you mind telling me what you ordered?"

"Lobster, a green salad, and coffee. You can choose your dessert later."

"Thank you," murmured Erica.

"What for?"

"For allowing me to choose my dessert."

"Don't be American," he said, raising one of his highly arched eyebrows.
"You don't lose your feminine prestige merely because I order your lunch
without consulting you. Any woman but an American would be more
interested in the lobster than in her independence," he stated, and then
remarked with a complete change of tone, "You look nice, petite, though
your beautiful hair needs combing. Isn't that the suit you insisted on
wearing to Philippe's wedding?"

"Do you want me to go and comb my hair?"

He shook his head. "Another Martini, please," he said to the waiter who
was just setting his first Martini in front of him. "How about you?"

"No thanks. Where have you been all this time, Ren--down in St. Cyr?"

"No, mostly in Quebec City. The Conservatives have decided not to run
anyone against me--there's a lot of feeling about wasting money on
provincial by-elections in war-time, and besides, St. Cyr has always
been a Liberal riding."

"So you're already in," said Erica. She considered him in silence for a
moment and then said, "Tell me, Ren, what's your program? What do you
stand for?"

He paused, gazing reflectively at the ceiling, and answered finally,
"Let me see--national unity, of course; the preservation of French
Canadian independence and our way of life; compulsory education for
Quebec, more and better jobs for French Canadians and a bigger share in
the national wealth."

"I see," said Erica. "With a program as revolutionary as that, you'll
probably be a sensation."

Some time later, when she was halfway through her lobster, which had
turned out to be excellent, she said suddenly, "You're on your way up
now, aren't you, Ren?"

He shrugged and said, "With luck."

"You've always had luck."

"What's that?" he demanded, turning to the waiter.

"The salad dressing, monsieur."

"No, no, no!" said Ren, closing his eyes. "I told you I wanted to mix
the dressing myself. You haven't put any on the salad, have you?"

"Oh no, monsieur." The waiter scrutinized the dressing, remarking at
last, "Owing to the war, there is no olive oil. That is what makes it
look like that."

"It isn't the way it looks, it's the way it tastes. Bring me some oil,
vinegar, salt, pepper and mustard."

"You forgot the sugar," said Erica.

"Oh, yes, and some sugar. What was I saying when we were interrupted by
the outrage?" he asked Erica. "Luck... that was it." He paused, his
eyes running over her and said, smiling faintly, "Who knows? My luck may
be running out."

"You've always got everything you've ever wanted."

"Perhaps I've been careful never to want anything I couldn't have--that
is, up till now."

"If, now, you've decided that you want to be Premier of Canada, then
you'll be Premier of Canada," said Erica.

Ren's French dressing was even better than usual, and she had two
helpings of salad.

"You are now about to be able to choose your dessert," said Ren,
signaling the waiter.

"I'm sorry I was nasty about the lobster. It was _very_ good."

He bowed to her across the table, and as she looked undecidedly at the
tray of French pastries which the waiter was holding for her inspection,
he said without thinking, "Take the one with the strawberries," and then
said apologetically, "I didn't mean it, petite. Take whatever you like,
the one with the strawberries is probably uneatable."

The waiter looked offended and said, "Pardon, monsieur, but _everything_
at Charcot's is eatable."

"Everything but your French dressing."

"Look," said Erica, falling back in her chair and addressing the waiter,
"there's really no reason why I should choose my own dessert either.
Which pastry would _you_ like me to eat?"

"The one with the strawberries, madame," said the waiter.

"Mille-feuilles," said Ren when the tray came round to his side of the
table. "And bring the coffee right away, please. How is your pastry?"

"It's all right so far. If I should wake up with violent pains in the
middle of the night, I'll telephone you and you can sue the waiter.
How's Madeleine, by the way?"

"I don't know, I haven't been home yet. Haven't you seen her lately?"

"Not since I had dinner with her on Monday night," said Erica, shoving
her chair back a little so that she could cross her legs. "Why? Do you
think anything's likely to go wrong?"

"I don't know. I only wish Tony were here." He pushed his plate away
from him and said unhappily, as she had heard him say so often during
the past six months, "I'll be glad when it's all over."

"You haven't told Madeleine what you think about Tony, have you?"

"Of course not," he said almost angrily. "What do you take me for?"

"I'm sorry."

"She knows just as well as I do that the R.C.A.F. wanted him to stay
here and instruct, that he was pretty old for a pilot anyhow, and that
if he hadn't kicked up such a fuss he wouldn't have been sent overseas
just when she was starting to have a baby. It's all in your point of
view, Eric," he said, leaning forward with his elbows on the table. "I'm
not so enthusiastic about women doctors and lawyers and politicians as
Tony is, but I wouldn't desert my wife when she was having her first
child if I could help it."

Erica said nothing. The old loyalty to Tony refused to die; she could
not discuss him even with her father.

"It isn't just Madeleine," said Ren. "It's his whole outlook on life.
The war seems to have knocked him right off his base."

No, thought Erica, there never was a base, even before the war. Anthony
had spent his whole life, not just those five years at Drake's, as her
father had said, waiting for something exciting to happen. He was
clever, and very good-looking, and he had got by all right; you had to
know him very well to realize that he had never found himself, and that
he had never done anything but mark time.

Erica had no idea why he had fallen so violently in love with Madeleine
de Sevigny; as Charles Drake still observed moodily to his wife and
daughter on an average of once a week, Anthony and Madeleine didn't seem
to have much in common. As for Erica, she had finally lost contact with
her brother sometime toward the end of 1940. Until the war broke out
they had been unusually close, partly because there were only two years
between them, while the other war had created a gap of almost five
between Miriam and herself.

She said mildly, in order to get Ren off the subject, "You never object
to your charwoman or your stenographer earning her own living. You only
object to women doing jobs you might like to do yourself."

"Of course," said Ren. "Trying to stop other people from doing
something they like and you don't, is a characteristic of Protestants,
not Catholics. Who ever heard of a Catholic W.C.T.U.?"

Several of the tables in the little room were already empty, and there
were only two people left at the bar, a sailor sitting with his chin in
his hands staring fixedly at a bottle of Cointreau and an Air Force
officer lounging with his hands in his pockets, apparently waiting for
someone. Erica glanced at her watch. It was twenty past two, which gave
her another half-hour before she would have to leave to meet Miriam at
the station. She wanted to talk to Ren about Marc, but she did not know
how Ren was going to react; he had an implacable streak, and leaving
Marc out of it altogether, he himself had been put in a thoroughly
awkward position since it was he who had brought Marc to the house and
had attempted to introduce him to her father. Erica did not know how to
start; she would have preferred to have Ren bring up the subject first,
but they had been sitting here for almost an hour and he had not once
referred to either Marc or the cocktail party, even indirectly.

"May I have a cigarette, please?" she asked absently, with her eyes on
the familiar small placard reminding readers, "Acheter des certificats
d'pargne de guerre" which was hanging among the whisky, wine and brandy
advertisements at the back of the bar. Rather an odd place for it, she
thought, and then glanced at Ren to see if he had heard her.

He was looking at her with such an intensity of feeling in his dark eyes
that she forgot all about Marc and everything else in the one
overwhelming realization that Ren was in love with her and that his
desire was an agony to him, partly because he could not have her and
partly because he knew that if by some chance he did, having her would
bring so much unhappiness to both of them.

The look in his eyes began to die away and after a while he remarked
flippantly, "For once in my life I wish I were an English
Canadian...."

"Why?"

"Then I could take you up Mount Royal in a cariole and kiss you for an
hour and feel better, instead of infinitely worse."

"Ren..."

"Don't say anything, petite."

She relaxed against the back of her chair, feeling rather weak, and
remarked at last, "You seem to have a peculiar impression of English
Canadians. Also, you're one of the most race-conscious individuals I've
ever met..."

"That's what Marc says," he interrupted without thinking. He gave her a
cigarette and lit it for her, lit one for himself, sighed and said
resignedly, "Well, there's your opening, Eric. You've been looking for
one, haven't you?"

"How did you know?"

He beckoned to the waiter, said, "Bring some more coffee, please," and
then asked Erica, "Do you want a brandy?"

"No, thanks."

"Just one brandy, then."

"What did you mean this morning when you said you thought I'd better
leave Marc alone?" Erica asked him when the waiter had gone.

He shoved his chair around so that he could sit with his legs crossed
and still lean with one elbow on the table, and said, "Marc has enough
trouble without your adding to it."

"Why would I add to it?"

"Ask your father." Looking away from her toward the wall he said
unwillingly, "Marc liked you just as much as you liked him, I realized
that as soon as I saw you together. If he hasn't called you, it's quite
deliberate, Eric."

With her eyes following the line of his slightly aquiline profile she
asked with difficulty, "Ren, did he say anything about Charles?"

He turned sharply and asked with a sudden edge on his voice, "You don't
really imagine he would, do you?"

"I don't know." She looked down at her hands and said wretchedly, "I
suppose it depends on how well you know each other."

There was a pause. He said at last, "The whole thing was my fault," with
a curious bitterness in his voice.

"Why?"

"Because I let Marc in for it." His expression changed slightly but he
went on looking at the wall. "I'm not usually so nave as that."

"What's being nave got to do with it?"

"Isn't it rather nave to imagine that a man with your father's
background and tradition really means what he says?"

"Please look at me! I can't go on talking to the side of your face."

He turned his chair back again and with one hand drumming on the table
with a fork, he said, "I've known your father for more than a year,
Eric. I know what he thinks about the war, what a violent anti-Nazi he
is, how revolted he is by the way the Germans are treating the Jews and
the Poles and the Czechs as 'inferior' races either to be exterminated
or intellectually sterilized and reduced to the mental and psychological
level of robots. I know what a good democrat he is, and that unlike a
lot of his friends, he does _not_ imagine that he can have his cake and
eat it--or win the war and hang on to his profits and his taxes."

"But he really means it."

"Of course he means it."

"Well?" she asked, after waiting for him to go on.

He looked at her speculatively and said, "I took him a little too
literally, that's all. And that was where I was nave."

"Ren, don't talk like that!"

He said acidly, "Sorry, I'm just a French Canadian. I don't quite grasp
these subtle distinctions. You English Canadians are always preaching at
us, but it never seems to occur to you that if you'd once make an effort
to practice what you preach, your preaching might have a little more
effect."

He took the brandy from the waiter's tray, swallowed it all in one
movement, put the empty glass back on the tray and said, "The check,
please."

"It's there, monsieur."

Having glanced at the total Ren pulled some bills from his pocket and
waved the waiter away with, "Non, non, c'est correct. More coffee,
Eric?"

"Yes, please."

As he was pouring it he said expressionlessly, "So there we were, two
representatives of minority groups being entertained by the democratic
majority. Don't worry, I know what your father thinks of French
Canadians and the Catholic Church."

"I doubt if he thinks as badly of you as you do of us," said Erica
wearily. She had realized soon after she had met him that arguing
abstract problems with Ren was useless and that she would never be able
to alter his prejudices or change his opinions. He never gave her a fair
hearing, because although he probably had more respect for her as a
rational being than for most of the women he knew, he was incapable of
regarding any woman as primarily rational. They were first and foremost
simply women, with reason a long way in the rear.

He dropped two lumps of sugar into her cup and she said, "I only wanted
one."

"Don't stir it then." He raised his eyes to her face and said almost
incredulously, "Even people like you don't see how it looks to us."

"It," she thought, "it" is the war, English Canadian domination, English
Canada's attitude toward Great Britain and the Empire, English Canada's
outlook on the world, English Canada's superiority, hypocrisy and
ineffable Protestant self-righteousness.

"If you want to convince us that you really mean what you say about
Nazism, and your 'democratic' ideals, you've got to start at home by
smashing the Orange Lodge in Toronto; you've got to stop exploiting
French Canadian labor and let us control our own economic life instead
of having you control it for us. And just to make it really impressive,
you might take down a few of your 'Gentiles Only' signs."

"As a French Canadian you're hardly in a position to criticize us for
being anti-Semitic."

Ren shrugged. "At least we don't say one thing and do another."

Erica said nothing. She gathered up her gloves and her purse and her
handkerchief, which had fallen on the floor, and getting up, Ren said,
"I'm afraid I just smell another racket. Did you ever read about the
last war, Eric, and how we were going to see that every nation got the
raw materials it needed, how we were going to continue war-time
co-operation after the war, and make a better world? You should. It's
very instructive."

"I don't want to be instructed that way. You're a Catholic, you ought to
know that nothing can be accomplished without faith."

She got up and started toward the door, tired and discouraged for no
reason at all, because Ren was only one person and everyone else she
knew had, if not faith, at least a certain amount of hope.

On the pavement outside Ren put his hand on her arm and asked, "Where
are you going?"

"Windsor Station. I told you, my sister's arriving this afternoon."

"I've got to go home and see Madeleine."

There was a syringa bush which was just coming into blossom against the
gray stone faade of a house across the street; she would have liked a
sprig of it to hold in her hand and sniff at intervals on her way down
to the station.

He said involuntarily, "I don't want to leave you like this, Eric!"

Erica glanced up at him quickly and said, "It's all right."

"No, it isn't."

He went on standing there in the middle of the pavement, looking
harassed and unhappy. Erica had forgotten how young he was, only
thirty-three. He was usually so sure of himself that he seemed much
older.

"I hate quarreling with people," said Ren. "Particularly you. I wish
you'd forget everything I said...."

"I will if you'll do something for me." She said, "I want a sprig of
that syringa...."

****

The notice board in Windsor Station covered a great deal of wallspace,
and she was standing in front of it, making a bet with herself that the
Quebec train would arrive before she had succeeded in finding out when
it was due and which track it would be on, when the unforgettable voice
of three weeks before said from somewhere behind her, "Hello, Erica."

She caught her breath, then turned and said quite casually, "Hello,
Marc, what are you doing here?"

"Meeting the train from Quebec."

"So am I. Is it late?"

He pointed to a smaller board headed "Special" and said, "It's an hour
late so far. By the way," he remarked, "you were looking at
'Departures.'"

"Oh, was I?" Evidently he had been watching her for some time before he
had spoken to her. He was in uniform, with two pips on his shoulders. As
an elderly man in spectacles got between them, he altered his position
slightly. He had not really smiled yet; she had no idea whether he was
really glad to see her or not.

"Are you expecting someone too?"

"Yes, my sister Miriam. I haven't seen her for three years, she's been
living in England."

With his green eyes fixed expressionlessly on her face, as though he
were looking through her, he asked, "Where's the rest of your family?"

"They're away for the week-end."

He had his hands in his pockets and went on looking through her in
silence, while Erica waited, forcing her eyes back to the long line of
chalk figures running down the right-hand column on the notice board.
She knew as definitely as if he had told her, that he was trying to make
up his mind to go away, and that if he did, she would never see him
again, but although she wanted him to stay so much, she would not turn
toward him and smile, and try to influence him that way. She would not
influence him at all.

To concentrate on something else and keep her eyes away from him was
somehow to neutralize the effect of her own personality, and she went on
counting the trains marked "Due at..." in order to arrive at a total
which could, or could not be subtracted from the total marked "On Time."

"Erica," he said at last.

"Hello," said Erica, coming to a full stop at the figures 4.46. "I'm
still here."

"Have you got anything to do for the next hour?"

"No. Have you?"

"Yes, but I'm not going to do it. Do you want to go somewhere and have a
drink?"

"Well, I've just had lunch...."

"Let's go over to Dominion Square then."

As they walked down the concourse he asked, "Where did you get the
syringa?"

"It was a peace offering," said Erica, sniffing it.

They crossed the street, passed the line of horses and carriages, the
only vehicles except bicycles which were allowed on Mount Royal, and
then started over the grass toward Dorchester Street and the broad walk
leading to the Boer War Memorial up at the other end of the square.

"I'm sorry I didn't call you, but I've been up to my eyes in work for
the past three weeks."

"I know." There were a few pigeons scattered along the walk and Erica
threw them some corn from the bag which she had bought from the old
gaspsien at noon and which was still half full. "Ren told me how busy
you are."

A little further on she heard him remark dispassionately, "That excuse
sounded even more feeble than I expected."

"You don't have to make excuses," said Erica almost inaudibly.

"I wanted to call you."

They found an empty bench and sat down. For a moment neither of them
said anything and then Erica asked, "Who are you meeting from Quebec?"

"My former boss, Mr. Aaronson. He's been there on a case all week."

"What's he like?"

"Mr. Aaronson?" He glanced at her absently, then at the old derelict
sitting on the bench opposite them in the sunlight. Further down, on the
next bench, there were three New Zealand airmen. If Marc had ever
wondered what Mr. Aaronson was like, he had seldom tried to put it into
words before, and with his eyes back at the derelict again he said
finally, "Well, he's about fifty-five or sixty, quite a lot shorter than
I am and three times as big around the middle. He chews cigars all the
time except when he's in Court. He's one of the best corporation lawyers
in the city."

"Was he born here?"

"No, he was born in a Russian ghetto. His father never got much further
than the push-cart stage when the family came over here but he somehow
managed to scrape enough money together to send old Aaronson to England
for part of his legal training. He's been going back, whenever he could,
ever since--sometimes on Privy Council cases and sometimes just on
holidays. He's completely nuts on the subject of England; he thinks it's
the only really civilized country in the world, and every time we get
into a political discussion, it always ends up with Mr. Aaronson making
a speech on the subject of the Pax Britannica. He's a complete
Imperialist."

Only part of her mind was following what Marc said; most of it was
concerned with Marc himself--the warmth of his voice and his unusually
fine, rather small hands, and particularly, the startling change in his
face when he stopped smiling. It was like a light going out. The
indefinable quality of youth which was part of his charm disappeared,
and then you saw that he was all of thirty-three, solitary and unsure of
himself. There was a lurking bewilderment in his eyes, as though, in
spite of all his common sense and most of his experience of living, he
still expected things to turn out better than they usually did.

Above all, when that smile went out like a light, his appalling
vulnerability became evident, and you began to realize how much strain
and effort had gone into the negative and fundamentally uncreative task
of sheer resistance--resistance against the general conspiracy among the
great majority of the people he met to drive him back into himself, to
dam up so many of his natural outlets, to tell him what he was and
finally, to force him to abide by the definition.

"...so all we have to do is hand it over to England and say, 'Here,
you run it.'"

"Run what?"

"The world," said Marc, with a gesture which included the skyscrapers
which formed one end and most of one side of the square, the Boer War
Memorial on his right, the New Zealand fliers and the old derelict who
had settled down full length on the bench with his shoes off and with
both his feet and his face covered by newspaper.

"Do you think the English want to run the world?" asked Erica
doubtfully, running her fingers through her long fair hair and then
shaking it loose so that the sun could get at it.

"It's not me," protested Marc. "It's Mr. Aaronson. Were you listening?"

"Well, some of the time," said Erica apologetically, and before he could
go on about Mr. Aaronson or start on another subject, she asked, "Have
you got any brothers and sisters?"

"One brother."

"What does he do?"

"He's a bush doctor."

"Where?" asked Erica in surprise.

"Up in the mining country in Ontario." He smiled at her suddenly, to let
her know that he was glad she was there, sitting on the bench beside him
with the sunlight on her hair. "Give me some corn," he said. "One of
those pigeons always gets there late and he looks undernourished."

She poured a stream of corn into his hand and said, "Go on about your
brother."

Marc had got up to feed the undernourished pigeon. From a few feet away
he said, "Well, he's paid by the local nickel mine because they're
required by law to employ a doctor when they employ a certain number of
men, but he spends most of his time doctoring the people who live around
there--mostly French Canadian farmers and their families. It's pretty
rough country, not much good for farming and only about half cleared;
the farms are half rock and half bush and the people are very poor."

"How does he get to them?"

"He rides the freights up and down the line and goes in from there by
car or sleigh if somebody meets him, and he just walks or snowshoes if
they don't. Sometimes he goes on horseback. There aren't many roads and
anyhow, you can't use them except in the summer and fall."

"Do you ever see him?"

"Yes, I usually go up to stay with him for part of my holidays and
sometimes he comes here for medical meetings or to spend a few days at
one of the hospitals. Besides that, he's had to spend his holidays in
Montreal since the war started. You see," he explained, sitting down on
the bench beside her again, "we each have one thing we like to do
outside of our jobs...."

"What do you like to do?"

"Fish. Do you fish?" he asked hopefully.

"Well..." said Erica, and then as truth prevailed, "No, not much.
Somebody else always has to kill them and put the worms on for me."

"Worms," said Marc witheringly, "that's not fishing."

She laughed and asked, "What does your brother like to do?"

"Go to the theatre. Before the war he always spent his holidays in New
York--he used to stay two weeks, go to the theatre every night and twice
a day when there were matinees, eat enormous dinners in all the best
restaurants, and then go back to the bush again for another year. Now
the Foreign Exchange Control Board won't let him have anything like
enough money for twenty theatre tickets in the third row center, not to
mention his dinners and his hotel bill, so he has to stay in Montreal
and just go to the movies."

"This is really one of the saddest war stories I've heard. What's your
brother's name?"

"David."

"Dr. David Reiser," she repeated. "His name sounds just as nice as he
does. Doesn't he ever get homesick?"

"Homesick? What for?"

"For... well, after all, he's stuck all by himself off in the middle
of nowhere, isn't he?"

"Oh, I see what you mean. No, it's the other way round. He's quite a
good surgeon and once, about five years ago, he got a job on the staff
of one of the hospitals here, but after three months he was so homesick
for his French Canadian farmers that he quit and went back to the bush
again."

Marc lit two cigarettes one after the other, handed her the second, and
went on, "He tried to enlist at the beginning of the war but they found
out that he was the only doctor for a couple of thousand people and
wouldn't take him."

"Does he mind it much?"

"Yes, I think so. His best friend was killed in Burma last spring and he
tried to enlist again but it's too tough a life for a doctor over
military age and he couldn't get any guarantee that someone else would
be sent up there in his place. The doctor the miners had before never
left his house and ended up by drinking himself to death." He said
matter-of-factly, "Dave really leads a dog's life. He's out at all hours
in every kind of weather from thunderstorms to forty below zero, and
sometimes he gets paid in potatoes or half a cord of wood, but mostly he
never gets paid by the farmers at all. Most doctors couldn't stand it."

Erica had been listening to him with a growing surprise which made her
slightly uncomfortable but which she did not wish to analyze for fear of
being still more uncomfortable. She kept trying to dismiss the feeling
that something about Dr. David Reiser did not seem to fit, and then
suddenly angry at her own evasiveness, she swung round and deliberately
faced it. Her surprise was due to the fact that Dr. Reiser did not sound
like a Jew.

A Jew describes another Jew simply as a human being; a Gentile describes
him, first and foremost, as a Jew. Even if the Gentile doesn't happen to
be generalizing at the moment, nevertheless the whole description is
given in terms of that one specific frame of reference, at least by
implication, so that the finished portrait is, at best, distorted and
somewhat less than life size. The highest compliment the average Gentile
can pay a Jew, apparently, is to say that he doesn't look or behave like
one, so that although it may only be operating in the negative, the
frame of reference is still there. All the time Marc had been talking
about his brother, she had been trying unconsciously to reduce the
individual, David Reiser, to the size of the generalization, and because
he simply could not be reduced that far and made to fit, she had been
surprised.

Evidently it was not going to be anything like as easy as she had
thought; you could not rid yourself of layer upon layer of prejudice and
preconceived ideas all in one moment and by one overwhelming effort of
will. During the past three weeks she had become conscious of her own
reactions, but that was as far as she had got. The reactions themselves
remained to be dealt with.

She had counted too much on the fact that her prejudices were relatively
mild and her preconceived ideas largely unstated, from an instinctive
feeling dating from sometime in 1934, that so long as the Jews of
Germany, and after 1938 the Jews of Europe, continued to suffer purely
for their Jewishness, then to run down the Jews of Canada was in some
way merely to add to that suffering. From 1934 on, whenever the subject
of Jews as such had come up to their disfavor, Erica had kept her mouth
shut.

Now it occurred to her that her chief problem was not her opinions,
which were conscious and had already changed considerably, but the way
in which she thought and by which she had arrived at those opinions,
which was still largely unconscious. There is nothing in the education
of the average non-scientific human being to discourage him from the
habit of generalizing from little or no evidence, and worse still and
far more important, nothing to discourage him from the habit of starting
with a generalization and ending up with the individual, instead of the
other way round. That was precisely what she herself had done when she
had tried to visualize David Reiser through a miasma of vague
impressions associated with the word "Jewish" even though his religion
or his race or whatever it was that the adjective actually meant,
happened to be entirely irrelevant.

"I'd like you meet David sometime. You'd like each other."

She had been looking at the pigeons gathered on the walk at their feet,
waiting for more corn, but something in the way he said it made her turn
her head quickly to glance at him, and she found that he had been
watching her and knew what she was thinking. She said, "I might just as
well think out loud and be done with it!"

He touched her cheek lightly with one hand, and with his arm lying along
the back of the bench again, across the space between them, he said, "We
just operate on the same wave length, that's all."

Erica scattered some corn among the pigeons, and then she said suddenly,
letting herself go at last, "The whole world has changed for me since I
met you. I'm not being sentimental--I'm not even being particularly
personal. It's not that, it's something else." She paused, searching his
face, and went on, "It's as though I'd shifted position after
twenty-eight years of seeing things mostly from just one standpoint, and
I haven't got used to how different everything looks. Do you understand
that too?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Maybe it sounds silly, I don't know. I haven't even tried to explain it
to anyone else because--well, because there isn't anyone."

She said after a pause, "I got the most awful jolt that day. It was the
result of three things, really--first of all, the..." she smiled at
him quickly and said, "the wave length, I guess, then what you said
about that apartment house and then Charles--all one right after the
other...." Her voice trailed off and then she remarked, "You must
think I'm awfully stupid."

"You're not stupid." His eyes left her face and looking straight ahead
of him he said, "Only you don't know what you're letting yourself in
for. It's a lot more comfortable to be on one side or the other than out
in the middle where you get it both ways."

"I don't care whether it's comfortable or not."

There was a brief silence and then she heard Marc laugh. "What a weird
conversation for two people sitting on a park bench who've only met once
before for half an hour! The trouble is that I feel I know you so well
that I can't be bothered going through all the preliminaries. I hope you
don't mind."

Erica slid down on the seat until her head was resting against the back.
Looking up at a patch of blue sky between two trees she said, "No, but I
do want to know more about you."

"What, for example?"

"Well..." She paused, considering, and then asked, "Is your family
very religious?"

"No, not particularly. I doubt if I've been in a synagogue more than
half a dozen times since I was confirmed. Why?"

"I think I'm trying to get an idea of the general background."

"The general background in my case is more middle-class and small town
Ontario than particularly Jewish."

He threw away his cigarette and with his hands in his pockets and his
eyes following the cars passing by on the other side of the square he
said, "It's funny, but for some reason or other it doesn't seem to have
occurred to most people that the agnosticism or whatever you call it
which has swept over the democratic countries in the past fifty years
has hit the Jews in those countries to about the same extent as everyone
else. There are still good Orthodox and Reform Jews, of course, but
there are still a lot of good Catholics and Protestants too. The chief
difference is that the strength of religious feeling among Jews depends
to a certain extent on the degree of persecution, so that in general,
you might find that even among Canadian Jews, the ones who came
originally from Poland and Russia tend to be more devout than those of
us who came from Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia."

He broke off and said, "By the way, don't ever imagine that I'm giving
you 'the Jewish point of view,' will you?"

"Why not?"

"Because there isn't one. You get Jews like Mr. Aaronson who are British
Imperialists, Communist Jews who are Russian Imperialists, Jews who are
Zionists, Jews who are violently anti-Zionist, Jews like me who are just
Canadians or Americans or Englishmen, and if you put them all together
and tried to work out a 'Jewish' viewpoint, you wouldn't get very far.
There are only two characteristics which most Jews have in common, that
I've ever been able to observe anyhow--one of them is a determination to
survive, if possible, and the other is a basic sense of insecurity. Yet
there's no unanimity on how survival is to be accomplished, and the
sense of insecurity takes the form of almost every conceivable kind of
behavior from the extreme of aggressive materialism to the opposite
extreme of complete idealism. I have a theory that the ghetto produces a
disproportionate number of both and that the effects of the ghetto take
two or three generations to wear off, but I may be wrong. It's
impossible to prove or disprove it because wherever we go, the ghetto
environment still exists to some extent."

He said after a pause, "The only thing to do is to go on being yourself,
but in order to do that, you've got to remember when someone's rude to
you _not_ to say to yourself that it's because you're a Jew; when you
meet people and say 'How about lunch' and they turn you down a couple of
times, to remember that other people get turned down too and it's
probably just because they don't like your face--not to get a chip on
your shoulder, not to start looking for insults, not to misinterpret
things people say..."

He remarked ironically, "Reiser on the subject of the inferiority
complex," and then rather abruptly a moment later, "That's enough about
me. Have you seen Ren lately?"

"Yes, I had lunch with him today." There was a group of soldiers a few
yards away, reading the inscription on the pedestal of the Boer War
Memorial and as one of them said something which made the others laugh,
she remarked, "Ren seems to think the war is just a racket."

"I know. He says it's just another war for conquest between the Great
Powers and the political aspect of it doesn't matter because
ideologically, we're immune. Just why he imagines we're more immune to
Nazi ideas than anyone else, I don't know. Do you mind if I ask you
something?"

"No, what is it?"

"Are you in love with Ren?"

"No, why?"

"Well, I know how he feels about you and I thought..."

He did not go on to explain what he had thought, and she said, "I asked
him to bring you to lunch today...."

"And Ren wouldn't."

"Would you have come?"

He smiled at her and said, "No, I don't think so."

"I guess Ren knew you wouldn't. You know why I wanted you to come,
don't you?"

"Yes."

She brought herself back to a straight sitting position and said, "I
wanted to explain and tell you that I..."

"My dear child, do you imagine that you can possibly tell me anything I
don't know already?"

"No," said Erica, "I guess not. But I don't want you to think that
Charles makes a habit of that sort of behavior. He has some Jewish
friends downtown and knows quite a lot of refugees...."

"That's a little different," said Marc. "I'm sure that if I'd been
sixty-five and preferably direct from Europe, he'd have been perfectly
charming."

Erica let out a long sigh and then said, slightly embarrassed, "You know
too damn much!"

At the end of a brief silence he remarked, "There's a man over there
selling popcorn. Do you want some?"

"No thanks."

A middle-aged couple stopped on the walk in front of them, glanced from
the sleeping derelict to the New Zealand fliers and then started toward
Marc's and Erica's bench. They both moved over. After another pause Marc
said in a low voice, sitting forward with his elbows on his knees so
that all she could see was the back of his head and part of his profile,
"But you know, Eric, your father's quite right not to want you to get
mixed up with me."

After waiting for her to answer he asked, "Did you hear what I said?"

"Yes, I heard you."

"I don't blame him. I guess he realized what was likely to happen,
otherwise he wouldn't have bothered. It's obvious that I don't fit into
your particular social set-up. I don't know when I've felt so completely
out of place as I did after Ren walked off and left me and before you
came along. It would be silly for me to try and deny it. I was the only
Jew in the room, except for a couple of refugees and they don't count.
I'd probably just go on being the only Jew in the room so far as your
family and most of your family's friends are concerned, which isn't
awfully pleasant for either them or me."

He had stopped again, evidently still expecting her to say something,
even though it was again obvious that if he agreed with Charles, then
nothing she could say would make any difference.

She continued to sit motionless and silent beside him, feeling
completely cut off from him, as though he had suddenly closed the door
in her face without warning, leaving her standing on the mat outside. It
had happened so fast that to the people passing by and glancing casually
in their direction, she thought they must already look as though they
were as unrelated and as irrelevant to one another as they themselves
were to the middle-aged couple at the other end of the bench.

Anything would have been better than to find that Marc was, in effect,
taking the same side as her father. Where does that leave me? Exactly
nowhere. That was probably what Marc had meant when he had made that
remark about how uncomfortable it was to be stranded somewhere out in
the middle. Uncomfortable is not the word for it, thought Erica, and
with her eyes following a shabby, very young girl who was wheeling a
carriage down the walk away from them, she asked indifferently, "Have
you any other reasons for thinking he's right?"

"Didn't you listen to what I was saying a while ago?"

"Yes, of course I was listening."

His voice was pitched so low that it was almost inaudible, and she could
still see nothing more than the back of his head and part of his
profile. "Do you think I usually talk about myself that way?"

"I don't know." She went on mechanically after a pause, "I suppose I
thought you wanted me to understand as much as I could so that I..."
So that what? So that nothing. Understanding doesn't get you anywhere;
you are not permitted to make use of it. It is of no practical
advantage, since the issues have been decided long ago and both sides
have agreed that it is too bad, really most unfortunate, but human
nature being what it is, nothing can be done about it. We'll stay on our
side of the fence and you stay on yours, and that way, there won't be
any complications and nobody will get into trouble.

"Did you ever see _The Insect Play_?" asked Erica.

"No."

"The last act is the battle between the Black and the Red Ants for the
space between two blades of grass. If there's anyone on Mars at the
moment, I guess that's about the way we look to him...."

He did not let her go on. He said, not patiently, but as though he had
been scarcely listening, "I was trying to give you the other side of
your father's case, Eric."

"My father's case is already quite complete, you needn't have bothered.
Anyhow, I didn't take it that way. I thought it was the case for the
defense."

"No, it wasn't. With things as they are, you haven't any case and
neither have I, and if I'd had any sense, I'd have said, 'Hello, how are
you,' and left you standing by the notice board trying to find the train
from Quebec under 'Departures.'"

That was as much as Erica could stand.

She said, "Well, better luck next time. You came pretty close to it,
anyhow," and got up, adding over her shoulder as she started away from
the bench, "I guess we'd better be getting back."

He caught up with her after a few steps, but she said nothing to him all
the way back down the square, across Dorchester Street, past the line of
carriages, through the arched stone entrance of the station and along
the concourse to Track 5, where Miriam's and Mr. Aaronson's train was
already in sight, far down at the other end of the long shed.

He was standing beside her in the crowd behind the rope barrier by the
gate when he said suddenly, "I meant to buy you some flowers."

For one appalling moment Erica thought she was going to cry. She
blinked, swallowed, kept her eyes fixed on a sergeant of the Provost
Corps who was standing just inside the gate talking to a railway
policeman, and when the danger had passed, she asked stonily, "What for?
As a sort of going-away present?"

"Don't be a bloody fool!" said Marc, exasperated.

Then suddenly it was all over. She said, "You can't call me a bloody
fool the second time we meet, it isn't polite." She let out her breath
in a long sigh of relief and then asked with interest, "What kind of
flowers would you have bought me?"

"I don't know. What kind do you like?"

She glanced down at her beige suit, observing tentatively, "Everything
seems to go with it..." and, after another pause, "I think I would
have liked dark red carnations."

"Supposing there weren't any?"

"Then I would have liked white carnations."

"I object to this persistent use of the past conditional," said Marc.
"I'm asking you for purposes of future reference so the least you can do
is put it in the indicative. Do you always insist on carnations?"

"No," said Erica faintly, "just get whatever you like."

The train had stopped and as the first passengers began to appear on the
long platform stretching away from the gate, he asked, "Could we have
dinner together some night next week?"

She turned suddenly so that she was facing him and said quickly, looking
up into his oblique, greenish eyes, "Are you sure you want to?"

"I told you I haven't any sense," he said under his breath. "Wednesday?"

"I'd love to."

"I'll call for you about seven. There's Mr. Aaronson."

"Which one is he?" asked Erica.

"The fat man with the brief case and the cigar, just in front of those
two sailors. Do you see your sister anywhere?"

"It's much too early for Miriam to put in an appearance. She's always
the last one off." She drew back a little as Mr. Aaronson came through
the gate and said, "You'd better go, hadn't you?"

"Yes, I guess so. Good-by, Eric, see you Wednesday."

"Good-by, Marc."

The long concrete platform was empty except for a few straggling
passengers, some porters and a noisy little motor pulling half a dozen
clattering freight wagons toward the baggage room when she caught sight
of Miriam at last, stepping down from a car near the other end.

She was wearing a black suit with a foam of white at her throat,
carrying her hat in her hand and walking rapidly with that extraordinary
grace which characterized all her movements. She was perfectly
proportioned, tall, slender and yet fully developed, what the French
call "fausse mince," with her father's dark eyes and dark hair, and her
own almost flawless features, the only really beautiful woman Erica had
ever known who seemed to take her own beauty for granted. She seldom
made use of it and when she did, it was always with her tongue in her
cheek and usually in order to maneuver her way out of a ticket for
speeding, or past a gateman. People in general did not interest her, and
she could rarely be bothered to go out of her way for anyone. Most of
the men who fell in love with her bored her; she would put up with their
efforts to make an impression for just so long and then, because they
always turned out to want just one thing, and worse still, were
apparently incapable of believing that she herself could really be
interested in anything else, still wholly unimpressed, Miriam would
proceed to get rid of them. In spite of her appearance, she had a
pronounced intellectual streak which was generally ignored by all
unattached men under sixty, and she had grown thoroughly tired of always
discussing the same subject. She had told Erica when they had been
together in Paris three years before, that it was like being expected to
subsist entirely on a diet of cake, adding with an abrupt change of
expression, that it was not as though cake had ever agreed with her very
well either.

She had always been uncommunicative, and that remark in Paris was one of
the most revealing that Erica had ever heard from Miriam.

As soon as she saw Erica standing by the barrier, Miriam began to run,
lifting her shoulders and half turning her body like a dancer to get
past the few remaining people at the gate.

"Eric!"

"Hello, darling," said Erica with a catch in her throat. She kissed her
sister somewhere near her ear, then drew back and looked up into the
glowing dark eyes a little above her own. "How are you? Is everything
all right? We've been scared to death ever since we got your letter
about coming back. What kind of crossing did you have?"

"Just a minute," said Miriam. "Where are Mother and Dad?"

"They're up in the mountains for the week-end, I couldn't reach them. If
you'd only had enough sense to wire from Halifax..."

"When will they be back?"

"Tomorrow night."

"How are they?"

"Oh, fine, although Mother still doesn't know how to say 'No' when
people ask her to take on still more war-work. Three years are too long
if you're that conscientious, and not so young as you once were; she's
practically worn out and so are most of her friends."

"And how about you?" asked Miriam as they started after the porter who
was trundling Miriam's luggage toward the station entrance.

"I'm still on the _Post_," said Erica.

"My God."

Erica did not know what she meant by that exactly. She asked, "How's
Tony?"

"Having the time of his life. You knew he'd been promoted, didn't you?"

"Yes."

In the cab Erica said, "You'll have to go and see Madeleine tonight, or
sometime tomorrow anyhow...."

"Why the rush?"

"Because she'll be dying to hear about Tony, of course. How long is it
since you've seen him?"

"About three weeks."

"Well, it's almost six months since Madeleine's seen him." There was
evidently still a lot about people which Miriam didn't grasp until it
was explained to her. "How's Peter?" asked Erica idly.

"He's been missing since Hong Kong," said Miriam in the same tone in
which she would have said that her ex-husband was lunching at his club.
They had gone three blocks when she suddenly added, "I spent his last
leave with him in London. It was the one thing he seemed to want and
I..." She broke off and then observed, "I guess there are times when
it means a lot less to you to do something than not doing it means to
someone else. There must be quite a few women in the world who have gone
to bed with motives which, in almost any other form of human conduct,
would be regarded as thoroughly unselfish," she remarked in the
quizzical tone which characterized most of Miriam's more serious
utterances. "Still, we'd been divorced for over a year by that time, so
perhaps you'd better not mention it to the family."

"I wasn't thinking of mentioning it," said Erica absently, suddenly
struck by the change in her sister's face. Something had happened to her
since Erica had last seen her; she had lost the rather guarded and
slightly inscrutable expression she had had as long as Erica could
remember. She was leaning forward, looking out the open windows of the
cab on first one side and then the other; her dark hair was blown back
and along with her eagerness to see everything that there was to be seen
along the way from the station to the home which she had left six years
before, there was another quality, an inner light reflected softly in
her face which made her more beautiful than ever.

They were winding their way up through Westmount, past the big houses
set in their own gardens which sloped steeply down to the retaining wall
running along the inner edge of the pavement. A little more of Montreal
became visible with each hairpin turn in the road until at last they
reached the street where the Drakes lived and the whole city lay spread
out in the sunlight.

Erica had forgotten her key and had to ring the door-bell. "Hello,
Mary," she said, when their plump, gray-haired cook appeared. "This is
my sister, Miss Miriam."

As the taxi driver carried Miriam's luggage into the hall, Erica saw
Mary glance at Miriam from time to time, as though, like so many people,
she would not believe at first that Miriam was quite real. Or that she
could be my sister, thought Erica, feeling discouraged. Nobody had ever
looked at her like that.

When the three of them had carried the bags up from the hall and into
Miriam's pale green and beige bedroom, Mary paused in the doorway, still
plainly beglamoured and asked, "Is there anything you'd like, Miss
Miriam?"

"Yes," said Miriam, throwing her hat on the bed. "I want some oranges,
lots and lots of oranges."

She went over to the windows which faced the mountain and said
whistling, "My gosh, look at that garden," her eyes traveling slowly up
from the retaining wall across the street, past flowering shrubs, a
fountain, some dwarf cedars and innumerable flower-beds to the summer
house at the top. "If it was in England, it would be full of carrots."

"Come on," said Erica, "let's unpack and get it over with."

Sometime later as she was on her way to the cupboard with an armful of
shoes, Erica asked, "Mimi, why did you come back? You wouldn't leave
during the Blitz...."

"I know, but we weren't being blitzed any more." She paused and said
with her back to Erica, "I came because someone else did."

"Did he come with you?"

"No. He's been over here for about a month."

"Whereabouts?"

"I don't know exactly--Washington and Ottawa, I guess. He's on the
Purchasing Commission."

"English?"

Miriam straightened up, having put the last of her underwear into the
chest of drawers, and glancing at her three suitcases lying open and now
almost empty in a row on the window-seat, she said, "No, one of those
Americans who has lived all over the place and might be almost anything.
Sit down, Eric, I'll finish up. There isn't much left."

"Are you going to marry him?" asked Erica after a brief silence.

"Not at the moment anyhow. He's already got a wife somewhere in
California. They've been separated for five years."

"Do you think..."

"I don't think," said Miriam with her back to Erica again. "I just
hope."

"How old is he?"

"Forty-two."

"Here are your oranges, Miss Miriam," said Mary from the door.

"Put them over there by the bed, will you, please?"

On her way out again Mary said, "I'll take your bags up to the store
room if you're ready with them, Miss Miriam."

"Thanks, Mary."

Erica helped her move the bags as far as the hall, closed the door again
and went over to the chaise longue in the corner. She lit a cigarette
and smoked in silence while Miriam changed into a flowered house-coat,
and sitting cross-legged in the center of her bed, began peeling an
orange. Finally Erica asked, "Why are you so much in love with him,
Mimi?" thinking that anyone who had known Miriam before had only to look
at her now to realize how much that was.

It was a silly question to ask anyone, particularly Miriam who had
always disliked personal questions even when she knew the answer, and
Erica was startled to hear her say rather slowly a moment later, "You
don't know how much he's done for me, Eric. He's given me something that
I've never had before. I didn't think I ever would have it. Some women
manage to be philosophical about it--they even manage to go on being
married and make up for what they're missing by raising a family and
having 'outside interests.' I don't know how they do it. I couldn't."

She ate two slices of orange and said, "The worst of it was that I
didn't look the part, and I got so sick of having men make passes at me
that by the time I met Max, I'd reacted so violently against the whole
business that what I really needed was a psychiatrist."

"Or Max," said Erica.

"Yes," said Miriam, half smiling to herself. "Or Max. Are you shocked?"

"What about?" asked Erica, bewildered. "What kind of person do you think
I am?"

"You?" Miriam scrutinized her in silence and said finally, "You're the
best of the three of us, you're the one everybody depends on. Tony and I
just do what we want, but you spend your life doing what other people
want. You're the sucker. They say there's one in every family," she
added.

"Thanks," said Erica.

There was a bird singing in the tree outside the bedroom windows and
they could hear the fountain splashing in the garden across the street.
Downstairs the telephone began to ring and Miriam turned her head toward
the door to listen, then as Mary's footsteps retreated into the kitchen
again she said, relaxing, "I guess it must have been for Mother or Dad."

"Do you think he'll call you today?"

"I don't know. I sent him a wire to the Mount Royal because he expected
to be in Ottawa this week and said he'd be here for the week-end but he
may not have been able to make it."

"Why don't you phone and find out?"

"If he's here he'll call me."

"What's his last name?"

"Eliot."

"Throw me an orange, will you?" asked Erica. She caught it and began
peeling. "What did you mean when you said I was a sucker?"

"I don't know. You've never even thought of getting out and living
somewhere else, have you?"

"Why should I?"

"Because you're the sort of person who ought to be married, not staying
home and keeping your parents company year after year."

Miriam lit a cigarette, looked about for an ash-tray and failing to see
any but the one Erica was using on the other side of the room, she
rolled over and reached out for the waste-basket. The waste-basket was
some distance away and anyone else, thought Erica, watching her
fascinated, would have fallen off the bed. But not Miriam. She stretched
out, half her body apparently supported by nothing, picked up the basket
and deposited it beside her, then rolled over and back all in one
movement until she was lying down with her head against the pillows
again.

"I suppose you realize that there's never going to be anyone Charles
will let you marry."

"Why not?"

"You're too important to him. Sometimes I think he could get along
without Mother better than he could without you, at least in some ways.
It isn't just that he adores you. It's more complicated than that."

Miriam paused, frowning at the wall above Erica's head. Finally she went
on, "I remember when he and Mother were in London last time he was
always saying how interested you would have been in some speech or other
and cutting things out of the papers to send to you. More or less
radical ideas that should have shocked him, didn't seem to shock him at
all...."

"Charles is a lot more radical than most people think," interrupted
Erica. "He just doesn't want to be labeled, that's all. I don't know
exactly where he stands, but it's certainly somewhere to the left of
center...."

"Because of you," said Miriam.

"It's not because of me," Erica said impatiently. "He's too much aware
of things and has too much heart to belong on the Right."

"Maybe, but he's pretty deeply rooted in the past too." Miriam paused
again, watching the smoke from her cigarette drifting toward the window,
and finally she remarked, "I don't think you or I can begin to realize
how completely cockeyed everything must seem to people who are so aware
of events and at the same time so conditioned by pre-depression ideas on
almost every subject as Charles. If he could fool himself like his
friends he'd be all right, but he can't. He knows he'll never be rich
again...."

"That isn't what matters," said Erica. "Fundamentally, Charles isn't
really awfully interested in money."

"I know. What does matter, though, is the fact that everything looks so
horribly unsettled. He doesn't know where he's at now, and still less
where he's going to be ten years from now. All he knows is that whatever
is coming, it won't be his kind of world and he's scared, or he would be
if it weren't for you. He has a lot of respect for you--you know the way
he's always saying that 'Erica's got her head screwed on straight.' And
besides, you know how to talk to him without putting his back up...."

"It's perfectly simple..." began Erica.

"It may be simple for you but it isn't for the rest of us! Anyhow, the
point is that Charles will listen to you. You're about the only person
who isn't hopelessly committed to the past that he _will_ listen to. So
far as he's concerned, you're about his only bridge between the past and
the future because you can translate ideas into terms he can understand
and because, when you say something, it makes sense. He's going to hang
on to you as long as he possibly can, and I'm willing to bet you
anything you like that no matter whom you pick, Charles will try to stop
you from marrying him."

"There's no way he can stop me," said Erica. "This is 1942, not
1867...."

Looking at her rather oddly, Erica thought, Miriam interrupted, "And as
a situation, it's been so overdone and it's so out of date that it just
couldn't happen to you, could it?"

"What do you expect Charles to do? Lock me up in my room and feed me on
bread and water until I come to my senses?"

"He doesn't have to do that, Eric--so long as you're living here, he can
work on you without your ever even realizing it."

"Look," said Erica patiently. "You got married when Charles thought you
were far too young and Tony married someone he didn't approve of at
all--even if Charles doesn't want to let me go, if you two could get
away with it, why can't I?"

"He didn't care half as much about us." She said rather deliberately,
"And we didn't care half as much about him either."

"You forget one thing," said Erica. "I have far more influence on
Charles than you ever had."

"You'll probably need it."

A door slammed somewhere downstairs and Miriam started, then said
lightly, "If you're determined to stick around until someone decides to
come and rescue you from your overly devoted father, at least pick a man
who's got all the necessary qualifications and a couple of extra ones
for good measure, so that Charles won't have any valid grounds for
objecting. He'll object anyhow, but you might just as well make it as
tough for him as you can...."

"I wish you'd shut up," said Erica with sudden violence.

Miriam glanced at her quickly and after a pause she said, "I'm sorry,
Eric."

"It's all right. Do you want this orange? It's all peeled."

"Don't you want it?"

"No." She got up and gave it to Miriam, then went over to the window and
sat down on the seat with her hands in the pockets of her jacket. She
said, looking down at the toe of her shoe, "I have picked someone, only
he hasn't got the necessary qualifications--he came to a cocktail party
here with Ren, and Charles refused to meet him."

"My God, what was he?" asked Miriam in amazement.

"A Jewish lawyer."

"Oh." She said as though she were reading aloud to herself, "Mr. and
Mrs. Charles Sickert Drake announce the engagement of their daughter,
Erica Elizabeth, to a Jewish lawyer..." She broke off and said,
"Well, never mind, Eric, you can count on me anyhow. What's he like?"

"He's about six feet, with brown hair and eyes about the same color as
mine, but they slant..."

"Upwards or downwards?" inquired Miriam with interest.

"Upwards, you ass!"

"That's good. Otherwise I should think he'd have rather a droopy
look--you know, like a bloodhound. Is he good-looking?"

"Not particularly, he's just attractive. Nice shoulders and no hips. His
skin is dark enough so that he won't look as though he's come out from
under a stone the first time he goes swimming--you know, that sort of
golden skin that's very smooth...."

"How many times have you met this guy?"

"Just twice."

"I must say you notice a lot," said Miriam admiringly. "And what sort of
person is Ren?"

"Thirty-four, dark, aquiline, slightly satirical, very intelligent and
very Catholic."

"Very Quebec Catholic?"

"I don't know. We usually try to stay off the subject. I somehow can't
quite see Ren with twelve children, but you never can tell. We might
invite ourselves there for dinner tomorrow night. Mary's going to be
out."

"For heaven's sake let's get ourselves invited somewhere, then."

"You'd better leave out the part about Tony 'having the time of his
life' when you're talking to Madeleine and Ren. Madeleine still has too
many illusions about Tony and Ren hasn't enough. I suppose there's
someone else in the picture?" she asked.

"Well, there was for a while anyhow. I don't know whether it's still
going on or not, and if it is, how much it means to Tony or how far it
goes. She was certainly nuts about him, at any rate. I ran into them
together a couple of times."

"So here's Madeleine," said Erica, "having a baby in August and saying
'Of course Tony's always hated writing letters, and anyhow he's so busy,
and besides there are so many sinkings that we're not getting half the
English mails....'" She said furiously, "I could break his bloody
neck!"

Miriam said calmly, "You can't imagine the sort of life he leads now,
Eric. These are such extraordinary circumstances..." she began and
stopped, confused by the sheer inanity of her own remark. "Anyhow,
Madeleine doesn't need to know anything about it," she added at last.

They were silent for a while and then Erica said idly, "John Gardiner's
been phoning practically every day for the last month to see if you'd
got here yet...."

"Good Old Faithful," said Miriam. "Is he still strong and silent and
full of ideals?"

"I guess so," said Erica, uncomfortably. The description, while
recognizable, did not strike her as quite just, although there was no
doubt that so far as his attitude toward Miriam was concerned, John was
certainly too full of ideals for his own good. Erica had had to spend a
good many evenings off and on during the past eight years, listening to
John on the subject of Miriam, and half the time he had sounded as
though he were talking about someone else. Or so she had thought, but
now Erica was beginning to wonder. It was possible that he had not been
so far off the track after all. Unlike the rest of them, he had never
regarded Miriam as impervious: unlike Charles and Margaret Drake he had
never believed that Miriam had divorced Peter Kingsley "for no really
good reason"; John had said over and over again that Miriam was
altogether too vulnerable, that her emotions were likely to run away
with her, that her ex-husband had given her a "raw deal"--Erica did not
know exactly how John had worked that out for himself--and that what
Miriam needed was someone to look after her. All of which, Erica
reflected, might turn out to be true after all.

"How is he?" asked Miriam, turning her head toward the door again as the
telephone rang.

"He's still mad about being sent back from England just because he's
bilingual. Apparently they're short of bilingual officers."

Miriam finished her second orange and then asked suddenly, "Why don't
you tell him what I'm really like, Eric? He still thinks I'm some kind
of superfatted angel. After all this time, he deserves a break."

"Maybe he knows," said Erica.

There was a knock on the door and Mary said, "The telephone's for
you, Miss Miriam--a Mr. Eliot. I called you but I guess you didn't
hear me..."

Miriam was off the bed and out the door before Mary had finished her
sentence.

From the window Erica said resignedly, "I'll be alone for dinner after
all, Mary."

"Yes, Miss Drake," she said, and then added vaguely, "but it's only a
quarter past six and maybe something will turn up."

"At a quarter past six?" asked Erica. "Well, maybe." She got up from the
window-seat, wandered about for a while after Mary had gone, then
decided she would kill the next half-hour by taking a bath.

When the telephone rang again she did not hear it; she was cold-creaming
her face in her bathroom with both taps running.

"Miss Drake..."

"Yes, Mary?"

"You're wanted on the phone." As Erica opened the door Mary said
happily, "It's a gentleman, Miss Drake. I told you something would turn
up."

Erica went off down the hall to her mother's room to answer. By the time
she got there, she had succeeded in convincing herself that it could not
possibly be Marc, and that it was probably someone from the _Post_. Thus
fortified against the inevitable let-down, she picked up the phone, sat
down on the edge of her mother's bed and said, "Hello?"

"Hello, this is Marc Reiser--you know, the guy you only managed to get
rid of three hours ago."

"Yes, hello," said Erica, taking a firmer grip on the phone.

"I'm in my office."

He did not seem to know where to go from there so she said, "What are
you doing in your office at this hour?"

"I don't seem to be doing anything much but sit here wondering why in
hell I asked you out to dinner next Wednesday when it's still..." He
paused, evidently counting, and went on, "...almost five days off.
Look," he said hurriedly, "I know it's awfully late notice but... Oh,
Good Lord!"

"Now what?" Erica wanted to know.

"I forgot about your sister."

"My sister has already forgotten about me," said Erica, "so that makes
us even."

"Do you mean you can have dinner with me tonight?"

"I'd love to."

"There's some kind of ghastly affair at the mess and I'm supposed to put
in an appearance--do you mind if we drop in for a while later on?"

"I don't mind a bit."

"We don't have to stay long. Is it all right if I pick you up about
seven-thirty?"

"Yes, that's fine," said Erica in a tone which was admirably
matter-of-fact, she thought, under the circumstances.

"Good-by, Eric."

"Good-by."

She put down the phone and went on sitting on the edge of her mother's
bed for a while, looking up at a water color of some calla lilies on the
opposite wall. Instead of next Wednesday, she would be seeing Marc again
in less than an hour.

Downstairs Miriam called out something which she did not hear, then a
door slammed, and some minutes later Erica became slowly aware of a
clock ticking somewhere in the house. She listened to it for a while,
still half dreaming, and wondering idly where it came from, and then
finally she recognized the sound. It was the clock in her father's
study.




CHAPTER IV


At breakfast the following Wednesday morning Erica remarked to her
mother, "By the way, I'm going to be out to dinner tonight."

Her father put down his cup with an abrupt movement which spilled some
of his coffee over the edge of the saucer onto the cloth, and looking
directly at Erica around the corner of the table on his right he asked,
"Are you going out with Ren?"

It was obvious from his expression that he already knew who it was
without asking, but she said matter-of-factly, "No, with Marc Reiser."

His eyes left her face and returned to his newspaper. He said nothing.

"More coffee, Eric?" asked her mother.

"Yes, please."

Miriam was not down yet. Erica held out her cup, returned it quickly to
her place as she noticed that her hand was shaking slightly, put in some
cream and sugar and then said into the silence, "I ran into Marc at the
station when I was meeting Miriam and had dinner with him on Saturday
night...."

"Do you mean to say that you left Miriam to have dinner here alone on
her first night home?" interrupted her mother.

"No, she'd already arranged to go out with a friend of hers from
England--some American on the Purchasing Commission."

Her father was still reading his newspaper but he could not avoid
hearing her. In order to get it over with, once and for all, Erica went
on as casually as she could, "I saw Marc again on Sunday. We went
swimming at Oka."

"You could hardly wait for your mother and me to get out of town, could
you?" said her father without glancing up from his paper.

"After twenty-eight years I'm not likely to start doing things behind
your back, Charles," said Erica calmly. She had no intention of allowing
herself to be sidetracked by losing her temper if she could help it; she
had seen Anthony and Miriam make that mistake too often.

"You must have known that we wouldn't like it, Erica," said her mother.

"How was I supposed to know? You've never objected to any of my friends
before."

There was another silence and finally Erica said, "I think we'd better
get this thing settled now. So far as I'm concerned, I like Marc and I
respect him, and I intend to go on seeing him...."

"Regardless of our opinions on the subject?" asked her mother.

"You can't have 'opinions' on the subject of someone you've scarcely met
and Charles has never met at all...."

Her father put down his paper and said, interrupting, "We've already
been over all this, Eric. If some Jewish lawyer nobody's ever heard of
is more important to you than we are, and as you say, you intend to go
on seeing him in spite of knowing perfectly well the way we feel about
him, then I'm afraid you'll have to do your seeing somewhere else."

"Do you mean that I can't even bring him to the house?" Her father did
not answer and turning to her mother, she said incredulously, "You're
not going to be as unfair as Charles, are you?"

"It's not a question of being fair or unfair, Eric. It's simply a
question of facing facts. There's no sense in going out of your way to
create a situation which might turn out to be very awkward for everyone,
when you can so easily avoid it. You scarcely know the man yourself, and
he can't possibly mean anything to you."

"And you, Brutus," said Erica.

Her father said angrily, "You have no reason to feel so sorry for
yourself, Erica."

"The persecution complex seems to be catching," observed Margaret Drake.
With a gesture which had become almost automatic, she straightened the
skirt of her pale blue linen dress to keep it from crushing, and then
shoved her chair away from the table in order to change her sitting
position. Although it was so early in the day, her back had already
begun to ache again. She said, "I've never known you to behave like this
before. You're usually so reasonable. And apart from everything else,
since he _is_ the only person we've ever objected to, why can't you
just..."

"You wouldn't expect me to sacrifice someone I like for a set of
objections I don't agree with, would you?"

She was appealing to that sense of justice which was one of her mother's
strongest characteristics and after considering it, her eyes raised
toward the light flowing through the windows of the dining-room, her
mother said at last, "No, I wouldn't, but I would expect you to give us
a fair hearing."

"But the only thing you've got against Marc is the fact that he's
Jewish."

"No," said her father. "What I've got against him is the fact that he's
obviously making use of my daughter."

"How? By taking me out to dinner on Saturday and swimming on Sunday?"

"A man who makes three engagements in five days with a girl he hardly
knows is obviously out for something, isn't he? You're not exactly high
school age, either of you."

"Out for what?"

"Well," said Charles shrugging, "say he seems just a little too eager."

"And just why should you say a thing like that about a friend of mine?
Or does the fact that you're my father automatically give you the right
to say anything you choose?"

"I'm not going to quarrel with you, Erica," he said, unmoved. He lit a
cigarette, observing through the smoke, "I got your friend Reiser's
number the moment I heard he'd turned up here with Ren."

"That was remarkably psychic even for you, considering the fact that you
were still upstairs and had to form your opinion of Marc's character
through a hardwood floor."

"What's the matter with you, Erica?" demanded her mother who had been
watching her with increasing anxiety and surprise. "I've never seen you
like this before. You're not yourself at all."

"I don't think Charles is either." Looking down at her empty coffee cup,
Erica went on without raising her voice, "I told you that one of these
days some guy was going to fall for me just for the sake of my beaux
yeux. I'm not so bad, Charles--he doesn't necessarily have to have
ulterior motives."

"Why doesn't he pick a Jewish girl then?"

"That's not supposed to be necessary in this country," said Erica after
a pause.

"Erica, what _is_ the matter with you?" said her mother desperately.
"There's no need to go on about it, is there?"

"Why don't you ask Charles?" Without taking her eyes from his face she
said, "Charles knows everything. The only thing he doesn't seem to know
is that what with the war and various other developments, the Drake
connection isn't quite as important as it used to be, even to a Jewish
lawyer. So far as Marc Reiser is concerned, you might just as well be a
couple of people named Smith, except that if you were, you wouldn't be
quite so likely to assume that he was 'out for something,'" she added
with a slight change of tone. "He's in the Army, he's going overseas in
a few months, maybe sooner, and he's got something else to think about
besides how to do himself a bit of good by getting to know the Drakes
and running after the Drakes' daughter in order to improve his social,
and indirectly his professional standing."

She paused again and then asked, "That's about it, isn't it, Charles?"

"No, that is _not_ it!" her mother burst out before Charles, still as
impassive as ever, had a chance to answer. She did not know what to make
of Erica; she was not only badly hurt, but utterly at a loss to
understand her daughter's behavior. As she had so often said to her
friends in the past, in all her life Erica had never given either of her
parents a moment of unhappiness or even a moment of worry.

Grasping the arms of her chair and almost in tears, Margaret Drake said,
"It doesn't even seem to have occurred to you that all we're trying to
do is protect you against yourself. I thought your father was wrong to
take this man so seriously. I told him I thought he was simply being
melodramatic when he said he knew that something like this was going to
happen. I couldn't imagine you losing your head over anyone,
particularly a man you hardly know, who obviously isn't your kind of
person at all, and who can't possibly really matter to you."

She broke off, her eyes searching Erica's face for some sign of change
and then she said hopelessly, "I don't understand you, Eric. It isn't as
though we'd ever tried to interfere with you before, and surely you can
see why we don't want you to get involved with him for your own sake."

"But Mother, I am involved with him," said Erica steadily.

At that moment Miriam entered the dining-room. She was wearing her
flowered house-coat and had a red ribbon in her dark hair. She glanced
from her parents to Erica, then slipped into her chair murmuring, "Good
morning, everybody."

Neither her mother nor father answered; they did not even appear to have
noticed her.

"Hello, darling," said Erica mechanically.

Her father asked at last, "And what do you mean by that, exactly?"

"I don't know, except that I can't just stop seeing him." It was no use
trying to explain to them how she felt about Marc; so far as her mother
and father were concerned, you could not feel deeply about someone you
had only met three times, and that was all there was to it. As her
mother had already pointed out, Marc Reiser could not possibly really
matter to her, and anything she might say to the contrary would simply
be taken as a further proof that she had "lost her head" and was "simply
not herself."

Looking aimlessly at the breakfast table in front of her, Erica said, "I
realize that it's awkward for everyone, but at least it's nothing like
as awkward now as it will be if you go on refusing to have anything to
do with him...."

"In other words, you're not interested in our opinions. We're just to
shut up and do what we're told." He said, "Well, that's clear enough.
You're not only deliberately walking into God knows what kind of mess,
but you expect your mother and me to go along with you and back you
up...."

"Not necessarily," said Miriam, helping herself to a piece of toast.
"Why not just give the guy an even break and reserve judgment? Who
knows? He may not turn out to be so bad after all."

"Mind your own business, Miriam!"

"Yes, please, darling," said Erica, as her self-control suddenly began
to give way. The worst her father had been able to say had somehow been
far easier to take than that one casual remark from Miriam.

"No," said Margaret Drake from the head of the table. "That's not the
point." She sipped some cold coffee and went on more matter-of-factly,
still determined not to allow herself to break down although she was so
tired and so upset, "You can't pretend with people, Miriam. It isn't a
question of giving him an even break, it's a question of being honest
with him. It's no use our having him here and pretending that he's on
the same basis as Erica's other friends, as though we were actually
encouraging him in fact. You can't go just so far with people and then
suddenly stop. It's not fair."

"You sound as though I were already engaged to him," said Erica under
her breath.

His face more set than ever, her father said, "You probably will be next
week at this rate."

"Charles!" gasped his wife.

"We might just as well face it, Margaret." He paused and then remarked,
"Mr. Reiser seems to have done pretty well up to now. Erica would hardly
be making all this fuss if he hadn't. Would you?" he asked, turning to
Erica.

"No."

"And you're going to go on seeing him, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Erica.

There was a complete silence and then Erica said suddenly, "Charles, I
want to know why."

"Why?" he repeated, looking at her. "All right, I'll tell you why. I
don't want my daughter to go through life neither flesh, fowl, nor good
red herring, living in a kind of no man's land where half the people you
know will never accept him, and half the people he knows will never
accept you. I don't want a son-in-law who'll be an embarrassment to our
friends, a son-in-law who can't be put up at my club and who can't go
with us to places where we've gone all our lives. I don't want a
son-in-law whom I'll have to apologize for, and explain, and have to
hear insulted indirectly unless I can remember to warn people off
first."

"In fact," said Miriam coolly, "you don't want a son-in-law. Or not if
it's Erica who's married to him at any rate."

"Don't be ridiculous," said her mother. "Charles has never objected to
anyone else."

"Erica has never showed any signs of wanting to marry anyone else."

Her father was paying no attention. Still looking at Erica, he observed,
"If Reiser is anything like you say he is, he deserves something better
than that...."

"We want you to marry someone--someone like us. Someone who'll fit in
and whom we can..." Margaret Drake caught her breath, then managed to
say, "...can all be proud of," and suddenly shoving back her chair,
she got up and left the room. With one final glance at Erica, Charles
followed his wife out the door.

"Mother was crying," said Erica, and then began to cry herself, with her
face in her hands and the tears running through her fingers.

"Have you got a handkerchief?" inquired Miriam after a while.

Erica shook her head.

"Take mine, then." She gave Erica the handkerchief across the table, bit
into her piece of toast, put it down on her plate again and asked at
last, "Do you remember what I said, Eric?"

"No," said Erica, blowing her nose. "What did you say?"

"I said they wouldn't have to lock you up in your room and feed you on
bread and water."

****

Her father never asked Erica again who was taking her out or where she
was going; sometime during the day following the scene at the breakfast
table, he had apparently decided to show no further interest in Marc
Reiser, nor for the time being at any rate, even in Erica herself. When
she came home at ten-thirty that night, having cut short her evening
with Marc in order to try once more to talk to her father and work out
some compromise which would make it possible for them to go on living as
they had before, she found that his attitude toward her had changed
completely. Instead of the anger, which she had expected, she was faced
with a wall of indifference. He did not refuse to discuss the subject;
he simply went on reading his paper and did not bother to listen.

To his wife and Miriam he was the same as ever, but from then on into
the first week of August, whenever Erica tried speaking to him directly,
no matter what she said, his expression would begin to set at the first
sound of her voice, and by the time he had swung round to look at her,
he had walled himself up again. Erica did not know what to do; he was
treating her rather like a guest who had overstayed her welcome, and it
was so unlike him and such a startling reversal of their former
relationship, that in the beginning, she somehow managed to ignore it
and to go on as though nothing had happened. At the end of a week,
however, the most bewildering and miserable week she had had for years,
her father remained as remote and as unapproachable as ever, and she
gradually lost hope and stopped trying. She began to avoid him as much
as she could, and hardly ever said anything to him without including
either her mother or Miriam. On the evenings when both of them were out,
Erica either stayed out herself or went to bed almost immediately after
dinner, in order not to be left alone with him.

The whole atmosphere of the house had changed with the change in the
relationship between Charles and Erica, but Margaret Drake could do
nothing. It had only taken her a few hours to regret her loss of
self-control at the breakfast table; and early in the afternoon, just
after the final edition had gone to press--nothing short of disaster
could have induced her to disturb Erica before then; she had too much
respect for her daughter and her daughter's working hours--she had
phoned from Red Cross Headquarters where she had been working full-time,
eight hours a day, ever since September, 1939, to apologize. She told
Erica that her opinions remained unaltered, but that on thinking it
over, she could not see that either her own or Charles' behavior had
been in any way justified. If, on her side, Erica would make a genuine
effort to see things from their point of view and to realize that their
one desire was to protect her as far as possible, she herself would do
her best to persuade Charles to adopt a more rational and less emotional
viewpoint.

But her best was not good enough. Night after night, sometimes until
very late, Erica could hear their voices in the study. It was like the
year before, when Margaret Drake had stayed up till all hours attempting
to persuade her husband to adopt a more rational viewpoint toward his
son's French Canadian and devoutly Catholic fiance. She had not got
anywhere then either. Now, she needed sleep more than ever; for three
years everything which did not come under the heading of war-work had
been crammed into the hours before nine in the morning and after five,
and the only way Margaret Drake had been able to keep it up was by going
to bed each night at ten. Instead of that, she was once more talking
until eleven, twelve, and occasionally even one, dragging herself out of
bed again at seven in the morning, having slept only in the intervals
when the argument stopped turning round and round in her head and let
her alone for a while. If she had appealed to Erica at that time, Erica
would have given in for her mother's sake, not for the sake of her
father who, apart from the fact that he was obviously lonely without
Erica, seemed comfortable enough behind his wall of indifference. For
reasons of her own, however, Margaret Drake preferred to wait, to go on
struggling with her husband until she was finally convinced that it was
hopeless, and then only appeal to Erica as a last resort and not because
she felt that Erica was chiefly to blame. By then it was too late.

Charles did not budge an inch. He told his wife that his position was
clear and his decision final; he would not have Reiser in the house, and
so long as Erica continued to ignore her parents and show so little
concern for their peace of mind that she could go on seeing a cheap
Jewish lawyer two and three times a week outside the house, he, Charles,
would have nothing to say to her.

As an explanation of his own attitude toward the whole affair, it was
fairly good as far as it went, and since Margaret Drake had always had a
tendency to oversimplify her husband's character and motives largely
because her own character and motives were so eminently simple and
straightforward that she could not conceive of his as being anything
else, she accepted his explanation for what it was worth, and failed to
realize that even for Charles Drake, it did not go far enough.

Putting it like that, it implied that Erica was the cause of his
behavior, which was only partly true, and that he himself really
believed that she was oblivious to his own feelings and those of his
wife, which was not true at all.

He knew exactly how unoblivious Erica was, and how much she cared about
her parents' peace of mind, and in actual fact, whether he was entirely
aware of it or not, half his behavior was put on in the instinctive
effort to wear down Erica's resistance. The effort might have been
successful if it had not been for one fact which he had overlooked.
Erica's concern for her mother and father and their evident unhappiness
was slowly becoming outbalanced by her resentment at their treatment of
Marc.

That resentment was steadily growing, having taken root on Wednesday
afternoon, the day everything else had started, when she had had to
telephone Marc from her office, to ask him not to call for her that
night. It had not occurred to her until the lull after the final edition
went to press and she at last had had time to think, that if Marc were
to call for her that night, there was no way of making certain that he
and Charles would not run into each other again. At that hour, just
before or during dinner, her father was likely to be almost anywhere on
the ground floor. She could not instruct Mary to leave Mr. Reiser
standing on the front steps with the door closed; the only thing to do
was to keep him away from the house altogether.

Keeping Marc away from the house without telling him why, which would
have made him feel worse than ever, turned out to be even more difficult
than she had expected. For that first evening, she had invented an
appointment downtown which would keep her so late that it would not be
worth-while to go home before dinner. The second time, it was gas
rationing and the distance up to the top of Westmount. Marc had been
well brought up, and he appeared to be definitely unreceptive to the
idea that when you invite a girl to dine at a restaurant, you do not
necessarily have to call for her. The third time, as his car happened to
be laid up for repairs, he told Erica that he would take a tram to the
boulevard, and walk up from there. After all, he pointed out, there were
steps and other people used them. Unable to think up a fresh excuse on
such short notice, Erica had fallen back on the one about having a late
appointment downtown.

So then, at last, he got it. There was no fourth time, he never
suggested calling for her again.

Compared to the problem as a whole, whether he called for her or not was
relatively unimportant, but Marc happened to be one of those people to
whom good manners are second nature, and he could not get used to
letting Erica find her own way to wherever it was that they were to
meet, while he simply sat and waited for her.

One Sunday afternoon when they were walking on Mount Royal, along one of
the roads which always reminded Erica of Europe, there were so many
people on bicycles, on foot, or riding by in carriages since no cars
were allowed on the mountain, he said suddenly, "Remember Hans Castorp,
Eric? 'Life consists of getting used to not getting used to it.'" A
moment later he added moodily, "Well, at least I can still take you
home."

Only as far as the front door, however. He would probably just have to
get used to not getting used to that too.

Sometimes Erica found herself thinking that it was as though Charles and
Margaret Drake were determined to put Marc down on the level on which
they apparently thought he belonged, to force him to be as they imagined
him to be, and not as he actually was. Each time that Erica set out to
meet him at a restaurant, a bar, a hotel lobby and once or twice even on
a street corner, and each time that she left him at the front door and
watched him turn back, down the walk to his car or along the street
leading to the steps which were a short-cut to the street below, back to
his own world again, she could feel her resentment growing and the gulf
between herself and her mother and father steadily widening.

The gulf was worse than the resentment. To be really good at resentment,
you have to have had considerable practice, and until the Wednesday
afternoon when she had heard herself telling her first lie to Marc, over
the telephone, Erica could not remember ever having resented anything in
her life. The moment her parents showed signs of coming round, she knew
that her resentment would be over and done with, but the gulf was a
different matter. The most vital part of her life was lived with Marc,
away from home, and in spite of herself, she was coming to regard the
house in Westmount merely as a place to eat and sleep. In a desperate
effort to bridge the gulf, at least to some extent, and to bring the two
separate halves of her life closer together, she had tried to talk to
her mother and father about Marc, literally forcing herself to refer to
him or quote something that he had said just as though he were--well,
just as though he were anybody else. But she found herself talking into
a vacuum; the moment she mentioned him, or even looked as though she
were about to mention him--Erica was no actress, and the effort it
required in order to sound natural was probably fairly obvious--her
mother and father stopped listening. And the gulf went on widening.

The night before Margaret Drake finally appealed to Erica, Max Eliot,
Miriam's American on the Purchasing Commission, had come to dinner and
the gulf suddenly widened still further.

He had turned out to be quite presentable, of medium height, rather
heavily built, very well-dressed and very good-looking, but everything
about him seemed to Erica to stop just short of too much. Another few
pounds and he would have been overweight; his clothes were such that
John Gardiner summed him up a few weeks later as "something out of
_Esquire_," and his profile was so good that it made you wonder whether
he was conscious of it or not. With Max Eliot, you could not be sure.
All his various qualities and characteristics added up to a personality
which just missed being both slick and a little caddish; he was neither
slick nor caddish, as it happened, but it was too close a miss for
either Charles, his wife or Erica to feel entirely at ease with him.

Apart from the fact that he was obviously very intelligent, he had
almost nothing to recommend him, since along with everything else, there
was even a Mrs. Eliot in California; he was in almost every respect Marc
Reiser's inferior, and his one advantage over Marc was purely negative.
But negative or not, it made all the difference. He could call for
Miriam when he was taking her out; he could have a drink with Charles in
the drawing-room while he was waiting for her, because Miriam was always
late, and he could come for dinner.

Erica spent the evening observing Mr. Eliot from the sidelines, saying
almost nothing, and trying to figure out the system by which one
negative advantage counted for more than any number of positive ones.
Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with ordinary human values, or
with even the most elementary justice, although you had to know Marc
Reiser as Erica knew him by this time, really to appreciate how unjust
it was.

The following day her mother came into Erica's room as she was dressing
to go out to dinner with Marc and after talking rather disjointedly for
a while about people and things which interested neither of them at the
moment, she said at last, "I can't do anything with Charles; I've tried
and tried, but it's hopeless. I guess from now on, it's up to you,
Eric."

"You don't imagine he'll listen to me, do you?"

"No."

Erica was sitting at her dressing-table taking the cold cream off her
face; she had her back to her mother who was standing by the chest of
drawers on the other side of the room but in direct line with the
dressing-table mirror which reflected her straight, slender figure like
a full length portrait. After waiting for her to say something else,
Erica asked expressionlessly, although she knew the answer already,
"What do you want me to do then?"

"I want you to stop seeing him." She went on without pausing, "You've
got to, Erica! We can't go on like this, our whole life seems to be
falling apart. Marc Reiser can't possibly mean as much to you as you
mean to us, and the damage you're doing is out of all proportion to the
very most you can hope to get out of an infatuation which can't
conceivably last or lead anywhere. It isn't worth it, Eric!"

"It is to me," said Erica. "I wouldn't be doing it if it weren't. You
know me well enough to know that."

Her mother said despairingly, "I don't know you at all any more! You've
changed so much... sometimes I think..."

"Yes, what?"

She said, her mouth trembling, "Sometimes I wonder if Marc Reiser has
any idea what he's done to you--what he's doing to all of us. I don't
suppose he'd care anyhow."

A moment later she burst out, "You think you're in love with him, but
real love doesn't make you turn into someone else overnight--it doesn't
make you hate everyone else because of it. You couldn't be in love with
him anyhow, you haven't known him long enough and he isn't the sort of
person you could..."

"How can you tell what sort of person he is?"

"I can tell easily enough and so can your father, just from the way he's
behaving. If he were genuinely in love with you, instead of just out for
what he can get, apparently, he wouldn't be rushing you off your feet
and doing his best to make you fall in love with him, when he's old
enough and certainly experienced enough to be fully aware of the fact
that there's no real future in it for either of you, and you're the one
who's going to have to pay for it. He must realize how we feel about it,
of course, although obviously our opinions don't matter in the least so
far as Marc Reiser is concerned, but that's beside the point. If he were
really in love with you, he'd care far more about your happiness and far
less about himself."

There was no point in arguing; the system of ready-made definitions and
generalities by which Margaret Drake arrived at her moral judgments was
infallible. All you had to do was to compare the behavior and reactions
of a given individual with the standard set of measurements which had
long ago been laid down for all time, and you could even tell whether he
or she was "genuinely" in love or not. It was as simple as that. Erica
had been brought up on the system, but she had never been able to make
it work, although she realized that it had worked well enough for her
mother and father and for a great many others of their generation,
enabling them to go through life with fewer misgivings, less uncertainty
and probably a good deal less muddle in the long run than she herself
had any reason to expect.

She said, "I don't think you're being fair to either of us," and let it
go at that.

"Do you imagine you're being fair to us?"

She left the chest of drawers and sat down on the chair by Erica's desk
with her back to the windows. She was wearing her pale blue linen dress
and the late afternoon light fell on her shoulders and her soft brown
hair, and was kind to her tired face. She said, "You don't understand,
Eric. You seem to expect us just to sit back and do nothing and let you
make a mess of your life without even trying to stop you. That's not
what we're for. That's not what any parents are for, just to sit back
and say nothing...."

"But most of what you say about Marc simply doesn't make any sense. You
always sound as though you're talking about a couple of other people."

Her mother said impatiently, "I'm talking about a general situation
which you know exists as well as I do! There is no use your trying to
pretend that it doesn't exist...."

"I'm not," said Erica, switching on the light by her dressing-table
mirror in order to put on some make-up. "And I don't, but what I do have
to do is balance Marc, and what he's worth to me, against the general
situation and decide for myself whether I'm going to gain more than I
lose. Nobody else can decide that for me. I haven't lived your sort of
life, you were born in 1890 and I was born in 1914, and obviously what
matters most to me isn't what matters most to you. Our whole scale of
values is different. What would 'ruin' your life wouldn't necessarily
ruin mine, and anyhow, I don't think it's a question of ruining my life
at the moment, so much as a question of who's going to run it.
Obviously, if I were to stop seeing Marc purely because you wanted me to
and for a set of reasons which I don't agree with, then it would be you
and Charles who were running it, not I."

"You know perfectly well your father and I haven't the faintest desire
to run your life. If we had, we'd have started long ago." Her mother
paused, looking at Erica, one hand absently turning a pencil by hitting
first one end and then the other against the desk and sliding it through
her fingers.

She was on the point of saying something else when Erica broke in
suddenly, "Mother..."

"Yes?"

"Do you remember what Miriam said about Charles not wanting a son-in-law
at all if it was a question of _my_ getting married?"

"A lot of what Miriam says is pure nonsense."

"Is it?" She herself had not taken the idea very seriously until now,
but she had been listening to her mother for the past few minutes with a
growing feeling that something was wrong somewhere, for while her father
was as prejudiced as her mother on the subject of Jews, at the same
time, he was a great deal less conventional. He could not possibly be as
concerned with the purely social aspect of the problem, since he was
such a thorough-going individualist, so that, strictly speaking, he
actually had fewer reasons for objecting--unless there was another
motive still unaccounted for.

Erica said at last, "I'm not so sure that Charles doesn't want to run my
life, and I'm beginning to wonder if he ever will want me to marry
anyone."

To Erica's surprise, her mother answered calmly, "I doubt if Charles
will ever think anyone is really good enough for you, if that's what you
mean, but Marc Reiser is hardly a fair example. After all, what matters
most to your father is your happiness, and no one in his senses could
possibly imagine that you and Marc have even a reasonable chance of
being happy. There's too much against you." She glanced at Erica and
then went on in a different tone, "There'll be someone else,
Eric--someone who'll really belong and who'll mean far more to you than
Marc Reiser ever could and who wouldn't put you into an impossible
position simply by marrying you."

"Marc has never said anything about marrying me. He's never even said
anything about being in love with me." Although she knew it was useless,
because her mother's theories on the subject of Marc Reiser were so
wildly at variance with the facts that they were literally discussing
two different people, one real and one imaginary, she added, "You keep
forgetting that the person who's going to take the most convincing is
Marc, not me--or you and Charles."

"Then just what does Mr. Reiser think he's doing at the moment?"
inquired her mother.

"Maybe, like Miriam, he doesn't think, he just hopes."

"Really, Erica," said her mother, exasperated.

Erica picked up her lipstick and said as she unscrewed the cap, "As for
there being 'someone else,' the only answer to that is that I'm in love
with Marc."

Her mother said nothing but went on silently turning the pencil through
her fingers.

"I can understand why you and Charles feel the way you do and why it
would be hell for either of you to be married to a Jew, in the world in
which you've lived, but I'm not you and your world isn't the same as
mine, and what I simply cannot see is how you can expect me to feel the
same way. One of the things which seems to appall Charles most is the
fact that if I married Marc, my husband could not be admitted to his
club. _I_ don't care about clubs!"

She got up, took the green and white print dress which was lying on her
bed and as she pulled it over her head, Erica asked suddenly, "What did
you mean when you said that you couldn't do anything with Charles? You
agree with him, don't you?"

"Yes, so far as your marrying Marc Reiser is concerned. Yes, I know,"
she said impatiently as Erica's head appeared and she saw that her
daughter was about to protest again, "but neither of us has ever seen
you so worked up about anyone else, you're obviously not yourself and
there's no telling what may happen or what you're likely to do in this
state," she added, her face drawn with anxiety. "You're in love with
him, or you think you are, and you've said absolutely nothing to give us
any grounds for thinking that you wouldn't marry him, or that you even
realize what you'd be letting yourself in for."

"Listen, Mother," said Erica, staring at her. "The first night I ever
went out with Marc, he asked me where I wanted to go and I suggested a
restaurant over on the Back River. It's quite a long drive to the Back
River, and when we finally got there, there was a sign on the gate
saying 'Select Clientele.'"

In a voice of sheer despair her mother said, "And you expect us to help
you and treat Marc Reiser as though he were anybody else, when all he
has to offer you is that sort of thing for the rest of your life!"

"I only told you that to make you see that I _do_ know what I'd be
letting myself in for, and so does Marc. The second time I saw him he
said it was better to be on one side or the other than out in the middle
where you get it both ways...."

"Then why doesn't he leave you _alone_...."

"I don't want to be left alone," said Erica after a moment's silence.
She realized now that to have expected her mother and father to treat
Marc as though he were anyone else was to have expected them not only to
change character but to alter _their_ scale of values, which was
obviously out of the question and far more than she herself was capable
of doing, even supposing she had been willing to try. They were not to
be blamed for doing everything in their power to shield their daughter
against even the possibility of a lifetime out in the middle and for
acting in what, in all sincerity, they conceived to be her best
interests.

It was a complete deadlock.

Her mother went on at last with a visible effort, "What I don't agree
with is the way Charles is going about it. This is your home, and
although I can't imagine your father and me and Marc Reiser having much
to say to each other," she observed with a slightly different
expression, "whether we happen to care for him or not, he is a friend of
yours and you should be able to invite him here. You might just as well
be living in a boardinghouse..." she said, and broke off, remembering
that she had said it before in another connection altogether. Then,
because Margaret Drake was nothing if not honest, she made herself go
on. She said wearily, "Well, it's true, and certainly that part of it is
not your fault."

Erica was standing by the window, so that her mother had to turn her
head toward the light in order to look at her. The long rays of the sun
drove straight into her mother's face, and for the first time, Erica
could see how tired she was. She was tired out.

In spite of everything Margaret Drake had been saying, Erica knew that
left to herself, she would have followed a different course. She would
have said what she thought, but having done that, she would not only
have invited Marc to the house but she would have done her utmost to
regard him objectively and to be fair to both Marc and her daughter.

Erica said suddenly, "It's Charles who's behind all this! It's our
fault, not yours. Why should you have to be dragged into it?" she asked
desperately. "You can't do anything, you're just caught...."

"I can't stop unless you do, darling," said her mother, smiling faintly.
"I can't help being dragged into something that concerns both my husband
and my daughter. You're such a baby in some ways, Eric."

A moment later she remarked, "I always wondered what would happen if you
and Charles came up against each other. I don't understand you as well
as he does, and I don't understand him the way you do, but I couldn't
just sit by and watch you killing the best in each of you, even if I
weren't involved in it myself. Your relationship with your father was a
very fine thing, Eric," she said, glancing at Erica and then back to the
window again. "There's one side of him which you've been able to bring
out, but which I've scarcely been able to touch since we were first
married."

Her eyes came back to the room, to the poster of Carcassonne which Erica
had brought back from her last trip to France, just before the war, and
she said, "Because it was you and not me is no reason for me to let that
side of Charles disappear again without a struggle. I don't know what
he'd do without you. If he should lose you, he'll lose an outlet that he
needs and that he's never been able to find in anyone else."

She said quietly, "I want him to keep his outlet," and got up, adding on
her way to the door, "as for you, I just want what every mother wants--I
want you to be happy, to marry the right person, and not the wrong one."

"Mother," said Erica.

"Yes?"

"Won't you meet Marc? Couldn't we have lunch together some day, just the
three of us?"

"Why?" she asked, pausing with her hand on the door-knob. "What
difference would it make?"

"I don't know," said Erica, dropping her eyes. "I just thought that you
wouldn't be so worried if you really knew him. I'm sure you'd like
him...."

"Liking him would just make everything that much more complicated,
wouldn't it? The situation is awkward enough as it is. I don't think I
particularly care about meeting him now in any case. After all, he must
have some idea of the damage he's doing by this time."

"You don't know how hard I work to keep him from finding out!" said
Erica involuntarily.

"What do you mean?" asked her mother, staring at her. As Erica did not
answer she said, "How hard you work to keep him from finding out the
truth, is that it?"

"I told you Marc was the one who really needed to be convinced," said
Erica after a pause.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Her mother opened the door and Erica said, "You will meet him sometime,
won't you?"

"I don't see how I can manage lunch very well. You know I always stay at
the Red Cross, it takes too much time if I go out."

"All right," said Erica. "No harm in asking."

She realized that it was still Charles, and not her mother, but she was
crying when Miriam wandered in through the communicating door between
her bedroom and Erica's.

Miriam was in slacks and a white shirt, carrying a glass of rye in one
hand and a hairbrush and another glass of rye in the other. She put the
first glass down in front of Erica on the dressing-table and retired to
the window-seat, remarking, "Private stock. If this goes on, we're all
bound to take to drink sooner or later anyhow, and I thought it might
just as well be sooner. How are things?" she inquired conversationally.

"Lousy, thank you," said Erica, drying her eyes.

"So I gathered. Is that a new dress? It looks nice, darling--I'll say
this for Marc Reiser, at least he's got you out of suits."

She scrutinized Erica in silence for a while, absently brushing her dark
hair, and then asked suddenly, "Would it make any difference if I came
along some night? After all, I'm family--sort of," she added, qualifying
it.

"Thanks, Mimi!"

"You don't have to start crying all over again. Have a drink instead.
And how about a cigarette?" She tossed one to Erica, lit one for
herself, and observed, "I suppose you've heard the latest...."

"No, what?"

"The latest is that Mother and Charles are not going to take any
holidays this summer because they're so worried about you that they
wouldn't get any real rest anyhow, and they might just as well stay in
town and go on working."

She inhaled deeply, blew out a long thin stream of smoke and added,
shrugging, "Well, it's probably true, but it's still blackmail. This
whole business is so damn silly, all they do is stay at home brooding
about a man they don't even know."

"It isn't just that," said Erica. "Even if they knew him and liked him,
he'd still be impossible."

"Yes, but not so impossible as he is now. People are funny," said Miriam
gazing thoughtfully into space. "You'd think one problem would be
enough, without going out of your way to invent a couple of extra ones.
Most of what Charles says about Marc comes under the heading of pure
invention, doesn't it?"

"I guess so."

"He reminds me of someone erecting an ogre to frighten himself with."

A moment later she said idly, "Do you know what I'd do if I were you?"

Erica was sitting on the edge of her bed, completely discouraged, with
her head and her shoulders down, and as she raised her eyes inquiringly
but without much interest, Miriam said, "If I were you I'd get out."

"Why?" asked Erica, startled.

"Not for your own sake, but for Marc's. I don't know much about him, and
maybe he's so tough he can go on taking it, but there are other ways of
knocking a man down than just hauling off and socking him!"

"What are you getting at?"

"Every time he meets you somewhere and every time he brings you home and
leaves you on the door-step, it must get him down that much further,
whether he realizes it or not. I think that is what Charles is counting
on," she went on reflectively. "He's banking on the probability that
some day, Marc will get so far down that he'll just quit."

"How did you know that?" demanded Erica.

"Oh," said Miriam, raising her eyebrows. "So I'm not the only one."

"I don't mean about Charles. He can't be doing it deliberately...."

"Why can't he?"

"He thinks Marc is the aggressive type with a skin six inches thick."

"Oh, nuts," said Miriam.

"But Mimi, he doesn't know what Marc is like. You've heard him on the
subject of Marc often enough."

"A lot of that is eyewash put on for your benefit. Charles doesn't
really believe it; he did in the beginning but he doesn't now. The only
person who does is Mother. You see, Eric, the great thing about being
temperamental, like Charles, is that when ninety-nine times in a row
your outbursts against someone are genuine, nobody is likely to spot the
hundredth as partly faked. I don't mean that Charles isn't sincere--just
say that he's letting himself be carried away by his own arguments. He
may end up where he started by believing that Marc is just a 'cheap
Jewish lawyer,' as he so charmingly expresses it, but he doesn't at the
moment."

"Why not?"

"He's been making a few judicial inquiries about Marc downtown and over
at Divisional Headquarters...."

"But, Mimi, that makes all the difference," said Erica eagerly.

"Does it?"

"Of course it does. Good heavens, it means that..."

Miriam interrupted. She said flatly, "It means nothing. What good does
it do Charles to hear Marc described as quite exceptional--for a Jewish
lawyer? Or first-rate--for a Jewish officer? You don't imagine any of
them left out the word 'Jew,' do you? Nobody ever does."

Erica sank back again. She said listlessly, "I suppose that was what
Mother meant."

"Mother doesn't know even that much. He hasn't told her."

"Why?"

Miriam regarded her quizzically for a moment and said finally, "What's
the use of getting Mother all confused?"

She smoked for a while in silence and then remarked, "However, that's
not the point. If you think this atmosphere of concentrated disapproval
is all you're going to have to contend with, you're crazy. Charles
hasn't finished with you yet, he hasn't even started, and he'll put up
the fight of his life before he'll hand you over to a Jewish
lawyer--even if he _is_ exceptional. And though you may be able to stand
it, some of it is bound to get through to Marc sooner or later. Since he
must have been getting it in one form or another all his life, my advice
to you is to make up your mind whether you want Marc or Charles, because
Charles isn't going to allow you to have both of them, and if it's Marc,
then clear out where Charles can't get at him and where you don't have
to leave him standing on the door-step."

Miriam drank some rye, lit a cigarette and as Erica glanced at her clock
and got up, Miriam said, "I guess I sound pretty hardboiled but compared
to Charles, I'm not even coddled."

"He's only trying to do what he thinks is best for me," said Erica,
running a comb through her hair and then taking her bag and gloves from
the dressing-table.

"Nobody can really tell what's 'best' for anyone else." Looking up at
Erica who had paused in the center of the room on her way to the door,
she said, "If you don't clear out, what are you going to do?"

"Nothing. I'm just going to hang on. Charles can't break this thing up
if I don't let him, and provided I just hang on long enough, he'll come
round sooner or later."

"I hope you're right," said Miriam.

****

Marc was waiting for Erica in the main dining-room at Charcot's, sitting
at a table in the back of the room underneath a great golden cock
painted on the smooth light wall over his head. He did not notice Erica
until she was within a few feet of him; he was looking fixedly at the
big menu in front of him. The menu was actually just a trick, a form of
protection against his own nerves and the glances of the people around
him for he hated waiting alone in a crowd. Usually he bought a paper and
took refuge behind the war news, but today he must have forgotten.

"Hello, Marc...."

"Eric!" He got up so quickly that he almost upset the table. When he
first caught sight of her, his face always lit up as though he had not
seen her for weeks.

"Have you been waiting long?"

"No, only about five minutes."

"I'm sorry," said Erica, smiling at him.

They sat side by side on the white leather banquette facing down the
room, Erica in a green and white print dress and Marc in uniform.

"What's ris de veau  la bonne femme?" Marc wanted to know.

"Haven't you read _Young Man of Caracas_?"

"I've just started it."

"Well, when you get a little further you'll find out that it means
'Laugh of the sheep at the good woman.'"

"Really," said Marc. "It sounds more like an hors d'oeuvre than an
entre."

"What else is there?" asked Erica, looking at the menu over his
shoulder.

"Poulet, filet mignon, escaloppe de veau, filet de sole  la something
and something grenouilles. Why do they always have to write these menus
in purple ink?" He paused and then asked, "What does that remind me of,
Eric?"

"_This Above All?_"

"Right. Cultured, aren't we? Well, which do you want?"

"Let's have poulet."

"Poulet frit, poulet grill, or poulet rti?"

"Grill. They do it well here."

"Poulet grill, s'il vous plat," he said to the waiter. "Des hors
d'oeuvres--do you want soup?" Erica shook her head. "Moi non plus.
Fish?"

"No, thanks."

"Pas de poisson. We'll choose our dessert later. How about a cocktail?"

"Yes, Manhattan, please."

"Two Manhattans--non, je prendrai un Martini."

"Un Manhattan, un Martini," said the waiter.

"Merci." He turned to Erica and said, "You look beautiful tonight,
darling. Don't ever cut your hair, will you?"

He remembered that it was the combination of fine, almost delicate
features and that look of emotional strength which came through from
underneath, which had so struck him the first time he had met her. It
was not only in her face but in the lines of her slender, almost
boneless body, a blending of sensitivity and passion which disturbed him
so profoundly whenever he was with her, close to her, that afterwards he
forgot what they talked about and almost forgot where they had
gone--what remained chiefly in his mind was his own sense of strain at
always holding back, sitting on the opposite side of a table or if they
were in a restaurant like this with seats along the wall, of keeping a
foot of space between them, and when they were driving, staying on his
own side of the car.

Erica was something that had never happened to him before. With all the
others, an essential part of him had remained detached and isolated from
the rest of his consciousness, out of reach of everyone, including
himself. He could do nothing about it but try to confine it and fight it
off as long as possible. His detachment had set a time limit to all his
relationships, and since he was always aware of it, he had never been
able to fool himself into believing that any of them would be permanent.
Sooner or later and against his will, because he had no liking for
short-lived affairs and wanted permanence, the old withdrawal process
would begin again, until eventually he would find himself back where he
had started, having completed another circle and got nowhere.

Then Erica had come along and for the first time in his life, he had
found himself wholly involved. He did not know how or why it had
happened, or, more important, since under the circumstances a lot of
people were going to take a lot of convincing, how to explain to anyone
else that, this time, he knew he was _not_ going to get over it. So far
he had only tried explaining it to one person, his brother David, having
run into him accidentally at the Rosenbergs' when both of them had been
in Toronto on business the week before, and David had remained quite
unconvinced. Apparently the more you talk about being in love, the more
you sound like a dime novel. At one point he had even heard himself
protesting that this time it was different and that he and Erica
belonged together!

They had been sitting in some ghastly Toronto beer parlor, having left
the Rosenbergs' with an hour still to spare before both of them had to
catch their trains. He would probably not have mentioned Erica to his
brother if he had not been thoroughly depressed, partly by things in
general and partly by the Rosenbergs. Betty Rosenberg was not Jewish,
and she was a Montrealer with much the same background as Erica. In
order to get away from the apparently inevitable family complications,
when they had been married two years they had moved to Toronto where Max
had had to start all over again. They had two children, there was
another due soon, and Marc had been heartsick at the way in which life
was obviously wearing them down. He had not known Betty Rosenberg before
her marriage, but she was fair-haired, and he supposed that she had once
looked like Erica.

"Is that what happens?" he had asked David as they were walking away
from the house.

His brother was shorter than Marc, with black hair and dark eyes; he
glanced up sideways at Marc and said briefly, "I guess all married
couples have their off nights."

He had forgotten what they had talked about after that, until they were
sitting at a corner table in the beer parlor and his brother had asked
suddenly, "What's the matter with you?"

"I don't know," he answered after a pause. "I guess it was just the
Rosenberg atmosphere."

"Why? Are you thinking of doing what Max did?" After waiting for a
while, David said resignedly, "You might just as well tell me all about
it, laddie. You will sooner or later anyhow. What's her name?"

"Erica Drake."

His brother finished his beer and then asked, "What's she like?"

He tried to tell David what Erica was like but that came out all wrong
too. The more he said, the less it sounded like Erica. Finally his
brother cut him short with, "All right, all right... so you think
you're in love with her."

"I don't just think so."

"It wouldn't be the first time if you did."

"I know," said Marc impatiently, "but this time it's different."

"Not really."

"I can't remember ever having wanted to marry anyone before!"

His brother was sitting hunched over his glass with his pipe between his
teeth. He removed the pipe, glanced at Marc and with his eyes back on
the table again he said, "You haven't shown much talent for sticking so
far, and if you're really serious about marrying her, you'll need a lot.
I wouldn't make it too tough for myself if I were you."

"I'm not worried about myself. I'm really in love with her; I've never
felt this way about anyone before in my life. We just belong together,
that's all. Oh, hell," he said, exasperated, grinding out his cigarette.
"You can't explain these things."

There was a brief silence and then Marc asked, "Are you just against it
on principle?"

"No," said David. "I haven't got any of those particular principles. How
long have you known her?"

"About a month. It hasn't anything to do with that. I knew Eric better
after I'd been talking to her for half an hour than I know Ren de
Sevigny after ten years."

"That's not what I'm talking about." David glanced at his watch,
signaled the waiter for their bill and got up. Looking down at Marc, he
said, "The trouble with you is, laddie, you've never really grown up.
You haven't found yourself yet. I'm sorry if I sound like a copy-book
but I can't think of any other way of putting it. And until you have,
and really know what you want, you'd better stay clear of complicated
situations. After all, it isn't just a question of messing up your own
life."

You haven't found yourself yet.

He still did not know exactly what his brother had meant by that. And he
certainly did not want to mess up Erica's life, or even run the risk of
hurting her. It was because he was afraid for her and for himself, but
particularly for Erica, that he had sat on the opposite side of the car
and kept on driving, or had gone from one public place to another, for
what had once begun in the car or on the mountain or in a park--the only
places in which they were ever alone--would inevitably end in a hotel in
the Laurentians for a week-end. The idea of leaving Erica to pick up the
pieces in Montreal when he himself went overseas, after one or several
week-ends in the Laurentians, did not appeal to Marc particularly.

And along with everything else, he had himself to cope with.

The cocktails had arrived. He drank his all at once, then said to Erica
who was staring at the cherry in the bottom of her glass, "Spear it with
a match."

"I wonder what's become of the tooth-pick?"

"It's probably a war measure."

"What were you thinking about?"

"You," he said. "Us."

His life had been run largely by his intelligence so far; his emotions
had never threatened to run away with him until now--the only thing
which could be said ever to have run away with him was his lack of
emotion. He had never got either himself or anyone else into trouble
through feeling too much, only through his having felt too little.

And now, Erica. She was wearing some kind of green and white summer
dress, sitting beside him with her fair hair almost down to her
shoulders, spearing the cherry at the bottom of her glass with a match.

"Don't look like that!" said Marc.

Erica raised her head and asked, startled, "Like what?"

But he did not know what he wanted her to look like, except that it
would have been a help if she had looked less like herself. He moved a
few inches away from her and ordered another cocktail.

There was a radio playing out in the hall. Erica ate the cherry and
listened above the murmur of voices and the soft clatter of dishes, and
asked finally, "What is it?"

"Schubert No. 5. I think he stole most of the last movement from
Mozart."

Charles would have liked that, even if he had considered that Marc was
slandering Schubert. The utterly lunatic part of it was that there was
nothing about Marc which either Charles or her mother would _not_ have
liked.

"What did you say?" she asked a moment later.

"I said, you should have had a Martini too."

"Why?"

"Because all I've got in my room is half a bottle of gin."

"Are we going to your room?" Erica asked, looking at a woman out in the
middle of the long, light room who was wearing a very large black hat
and eating lobster.

"Don't you think it's about time you learned something about my
background?"

She found that he was smiling at her, but the next moment the amusement
died out of his oblique, greenish eyes. He took her hand suddenly for
the first time, and held it with a pressure which went on steadily
increasing until the waiter appeared on the other side of the table with
his wagon of hors d'oeuvres, and he released it.

"Everything except onions, beets, herring and that pink stuff," said
Erica, after the waiter had waited patiently for one of them to pay some
attention to him. "What's your room like?" she asked Marc.

"Depressing."

Some time later as she was struggling with her chicken, Erica remarked,
"When I eat hors d'oeuvres I never have any appetite left for the rest
of the meal."

"You never have any appetite anyhow."

He was watching her with an anxious expression and an angry look in the
tight muscles around his mouth. "What was it today?" he demanded without
warning. "More trouble?"

Erica glanced at him quickly and then answered matter-of-factly, "No, of
course not. I'm just not hungry."

He picked up the basket of bread and when she shook her head, he put a
slice on her plate anyhow. "You've got to eat, Eric." He gave her some
butter and then asked, "Do you really think I'm worth it?"

"Yes," said Erica under her breath. Her eyes met his, and she said
involuntarily, "Darling, don't look at me like that!"

"I can't help it. I've behaved very well so far but I don't think it's
going to last much longer. In the meantime, you'd better go on eating.
No woman looks romantic with her mouth full."

"Do I have to eat all of it?"

"There isn't much, Eric, it's mostly bones."

He was talking about something else and she thought that once again she
had succeeded in heading him off, when he asked suddenly, as they were
waiting for their dessert, "Do they go on at you about me all the time,
or is it just intermittent?"

Evidently some of it had got through to him anyhow, in spite of the way
she had worked to keep him from finding out, having realized from the
beginning that the most dangerous aspect of the whole situation was not
her father's attitude toward Marc but Marc's reaction to that attitude
once he became fully aware of it. He would take it as final, because it
was confirmed by so much in his own experience if for no other reason,
when in fact it was not. Erica's conviction that sooner or later Charles
Drake would come round was not based on hope so much as on a fairly
complete knowledge of Charles Drake. If, at some future date, he should
be faced with the choice of accepting Marc Reiser or losing his
daughter, then Miriam to the contrary, Charles would accept Marc Reiser,
but whether she could succeed in convincing Marc of that fact was a
different matter. Marc did not know her father. And in any case, to ask
Marc simply to wait and put up with that attitude until her father was
forced into a position where he had to change it, and with nothing to
look forward to, so far as Marc could see, but a grudging "acceptance"
under due pressure, was to ask altogether too much of anyone with as
much pride as Marc Reiser. He could not be expected to realize that the
word "acceptance" had a different meaning for her father than it had for
most people. You had actually to have seen Charles Drake do one of his
voltes-faces before you could believe it was possible. He did not put
his prejudices behind him and go on from there; he went back to the
beginning and started all over again.

If only Marc had known her father--if only her father had known Marc.
But neither of them did, and all she could do was to go on playing for
time, trying to keep Marc from finding out what her family really
thought of him, until, after a while, they thought a little better.

She said, "They don't 'go on' about you, darling; you're hardly ever
mentioned."

After dinner they drove through the gray streets lined with trees, every
shade and depth of green in the evening light, out of the city, through
a village and across the canal, then on the straight new highway for a
while and finally off to the left down a series of narrow country roads
until they came to the river, and the primitive cable ferry which sailed
back and forth on the current between Ile de Montral and Ile Bizard.
They found the old ferryman sitting as usual on a kitchen chair at one
end of his barge, puffing on his pipe. There was no sound but the
movement of the water in the long grasses by the bank, and some bells
ringing in the monastery across the river. The old man stood up,
beckoning them to drive onto the barge, then he cast off, and barge, car
and kitchen chair started for Ile Bizard. Of all the islands near the
island of Montreal, Bizard was the one Erica loved best.

"How can anyone make a living out of ferrying people across here?" asked
Erica. "Nobody ever goes to Ile Bizard but us, I mean not on this thing.
Everybody else uses the bridge. Which river is this anyhow?"

"The Back River."

Erica sighed. "I'm always hoping it will turn out to be the Ottawa or
the St. Lawrence but it never does."

The top of the car was down and looking up at the sky she remarked, "By
the way, Vic and Barbara Wells are having a cocktail party on Friday. Do
you want to go?"

"Was I invited?"

"Yes, Barbie asked if I'd bring you. She's going to phone you herself
tomorrow."

"I don't have to be brought."

It sounded more like an observation than an objection.

So far so good, thought Erica, and said, "May I have a cigarette,
please?"

He lit one for her and then one for himself and said at last, "I've
known Vic ever since my first year at law school; he was a year ahead of
me and he went into his father's firm as soon as he graduated. I've had
lunch with him a couple of times since but that's about all--strictly
business. So why the sudden interest?"

Farther up, the river was dotted with heavily wooded islands and there
were a few villages hidden among the trees along the shore, although all
you could see of them was an occasional roof or a church spire. Erica
had been born and brought up in Montreal but she had never managed to
get the geography of the region completely straightened out; it remained
a green and watery tangle of islands, rivers, lakes and villages all
named after saints, the more obscure and improbable, the better. Just
who, for example, was St. Polycarp de Crabtree Mills?

The sudden interest was due to the fact that she had had lunch with
Barbara Wells the day before and since she knew Barbara very well, she
had asked, "You wouldn't like to invite a friend of mine too, would you?
His name is Marc Reiser, he's a Jewish lawyer and Charles won't have him
in the house."

"Good Lord," said Barbara. After a moment she remarked, "If he's a
lawyer, Vic probably knows him."

"That's more than can be said for Charles," said Erica. "He's one of
those people who judge the quality of the contents by the label on the
can."

"Your father's not the only one. Vic can be pretty stuffy when he wants
to be, particularly about the Jewish legal fraternity--he was well away
on some frightful story about a firm of Jewish lawyers last night before
he remembered that the Oppenheims are Jews and they were sitting on the
opposite side of the table. Of course they're Austrians and you'd never
guess..."

"Yes, dear," Erica interrupted patiently. "Well, Marc's parents are
Austrian too, if that's any help." She could not imagine anyone who knew
Marc not liking him and she said, "Anyhow, ask Vic what he thinks."

Later on in the afternoon Barbara had phoned to say that Vic had said by
all means, bring him along, and that was that, except for the fact that
there was something in the tone in which Marc had asked about the sudden
interest which made Erica suspect that he had no intention of going.

She did not care particularly whether he went or not, but she knew that
this business of always being alone together was bad for them both and
sooner or later, something would definitely have to be done about it. As
things were, they were simply playing the parts Charles Drake had
assigned to them--the parts of a couple of outcasts. With the exception
of one or two friends of Marc's who, like himself, were waiting to go
overseas, most of his other friends having gone long since, and an
occasional friend of Erica's, they had kept to themselves. The longer
they went on keeping to themselves, without even trying to behave like
ordinary people with a place in the society which surrounded them, the
easier it was for Charles. If, on the other hand, enough people outside
the family got to the point where they took Marc and herself for
granted, the situation would begin to be thoroughly awkward for her
parents. The Drakes could not go on indefinitely refusing to meet
someone whom a steadily increasing number of other people they knew had
met and accepted, without appearing rather silly. Vic and Barbara Wells
combined an unassailable social position--which meant that their
approval would automatically carry some weight with her father and
mother, since the social aspect of the problem seemed to be one of their
chief worries--with intelligence and, in spite of Vic's temporary lapse
in the presence of the Oppenheims, a general lack of stuffiness, so
their cocktail party looked to Erica like a good place to start.

The ringing of the monastery bells had died away. They heard the long
whistle of a distant railway train, then a faint shout from somewhere on
the shore behind them, and then there was silence again except for the
splashing of the swift current, driving at an angle against the barge,
and the noise the pulleys made as they creaked along the cable up in the
air.

"I think I'd rather not go," said Marc.

"Why?" Before he could answer Erica said, "You know what cocktail
parties are like, Marc--a lot of people bring their friends without even
asking."

"Did _you_ ask, Eric?"

"No."

His right arm was lying on the back of the seat behind her, and all he
had to do was let it down to her shoulders in order to bring her around
so that she was facing him. "Say it again."

"All right then," said Erica defiantly, "I did ask her. Good heavens,
I've asked dozens of people if I could bring someone to their parties.
Look at the one we gave in June--we started out with thirty people and
ended up with over fifty."

"I know, I was one of them," said Marc noncommittally.

He took his arm away from her shoulders and turned so that he was
sitting under the wheel again, looking past the bent figure of the old
ferryman who was standing on the bow staring upriver, to the tumble-down
landing stage on the green shore in front of them.

"You said once that..."

"Go on."

"You said it was important not to start imagining things."

"I'm not imagining anything, darling. You don't realize what the legal
profession is like. It isn't the same as being a Jewish doctor, or
professor, or even a Jewish businessman. You've got Vic on the spot, and
the only thing for me to do is not to turn up. He knows he's never made
any effort to see me outside of business hours since we were at law
school--I tried once or twice after we graduated but he was always busy
or something--and I know it, and he knows I know it. So now when you
come along and finally get me invited to his house after twelve
years--what does it all add up to?"

"It adds up to everybody going on forever playing this idiotic game
according to the rules and never getting anywhere!" She said miserably,
"You're just helping to make it work."

"Well, if I didn't, I'd only be accused of pushing in where I'm not
wanted."

The barge slid into place against the beach and with her eyes on the old
French Canadian who was adjusting the two planks which served as
runways, she asked after a pause, "Are you going to feel like this about
everyone?"

"No, of course not. You just happened to pick the wrong people."

They drove past the monastery, then into a village by a steepled church,
around one side of the green square where a few old men were playing
bowls, and out the other side among the fields and scattered farm-houses
painted white and with the softly curving bell-cast roofs of Quebec, and
the great barns of faded yellow and blue and red. There was a shrine by
the side of the road and a few people grouped around it, old men and
women and children and the village cur, and later on they came to a
herd of cows and had to follow along behind with the car in low gear
until the cows turned in at a gate.

This is Quebec, where you were born and brought up, and these are some
of the things you would remember if you had to go away and live
somewhere else--wayside shrines and fields of cornflowers, the view from
the top of Mount Oka where you can look down on the roofs of the great
Trappist Monastery and out over the valleys of the Ottawa and the St.
Lawrence, green islands and green shores, blue water with a white sail
here and there and the blue mountains in the distance. You would
remember a village with a white church steeple at the end of a
Laurentian valley, a farmer driving a high-wheeled buggy down a dark
country road at night, singing on his way home; sea-gulls flying over
the rocky coast of Gasp, sailing-boats and villages and the long narrow
farms running down to the St. Lawrence, and everywhere over cities,
towns, villages and the green countryside, over mountains and valleys,
rivers and lakes, the sound of bells tolling for mass and the dark
anonymous figures of priests, nuns and monks. You would remember the
jangle of sleighbells in winter, the sharp, pointed outlines of pine
trees black against the snow, the flat white expanse of frozen lakes
crossed and re-crossed with ski-tracks, and the skiers themselves
pouring down the cold mountainside at dusk, toward the train waiting
down below in the valley.

And you would remember Montreal, the incredible tropical green of this
northern city in summer, the old gray squares, the Serpentine at
Lafontaine Park with little overhanging casinos and packed with little
boats; the harbor, the river; the formalized black-and-white figures of
the nuns taking the air just at dusk among the trees around the Mother
House of the Congregation de Notre Dame, the narrow gray streets of
downtown Montreal like the streets of an old French provincial town, the
figure of the Blessed Virgin keeping watch over the harbor from her
place high up on Bonsecours, the sailors' church; the steep terraced
gardens of Westmount, and the endless narrow balconies of endless walled
convents and monasteries, where nobody ever walks.

Erica said reflectively as they passed an old stone farm-house on one
side of the road with a grove of pines on the other, "When they go on
about preserving the French Canadian way of life, sometimes I think I
know what they're talking about."

"Yes," said Marc, adding after a pause, "Only their way of life is
rather a luxury at the moment and somebody has to pay for it. I don't
feel the way you do about Quebec. I feel that way about Ontario."

He slowed down, looking warily at a dog which was standing undecidedly
in the middle of the narrow winding dirt road just ahead of them, and
then finally came to a dead stop. "Well, make up your mind," he said
patiently. "We're not in a hurry, just take your time about it." The dog
regarded him without interest, and eventually started toward a near-by
gate, waving his tail in the air.

"It doesn't matter so much where it is, though, provided it's Canada.
I'm hopelessly provincial, Eric. I've been in Europe and the States of
course, but though I had a marvelous time, it was always a relief to
come home again. I just belong here, that's all. I couldn't imagine
living anywhere else. How long can you see the shore after you leave
Halifax?"

"Only for a short while."

"That's good. The shorter the better. I don't want to stand around for
hours watching Canada fade into the distance."

He drove on in silence for a while, looking straight ahead of him, and
then said suddenly, "Gosh, it will be great to come back again, though,
won't it, Eric?"

"Yes, darling."

"How about something on the radio?" He turned past several dance
orchestras and an announcer saying, "Ainsi se termine, chers auditeurs,
un autre concert symphonique..." and another one beginning, "Nous
vous presentons maintenant quelques bulletins de guerre..." and
finally he left it at a symphony orchestra playing a Strauss waltz.

A hay wagon was lumbering toward them and as he slowed down again in
order to go off the road and give it room to pass, he said, "They told
me at Headquarters today that it probably wouldn't be much more than a
month now."

"And then what?"

"Petawawa or Borden for a while, and then overseas."

"I hope it's Petawawa," said Erica under her breath. Camp Borden was
four hundred miles away.

He stopped the car in an open space underneath some evergreens at the
edge of a small wood and turned off the radio which had changed from
Strauss to advertising, so that they were caught up in the silence all
around them. The moon was rising over an orchard, and the lamps were
already lit in the small farm-house up the road. Nearer at hand there
was a wayside cross partly outlined against the dying light in the west.

Marc took the cigarette from her hand and threw it out on the road and
then his arm was around her, drawing them together. He kissed her throat
and then her mouth and she had no will at all until at last memory came
back. She slipped one arm up behind his head and clung to him, trying to
forget the time when she would have to let him go, probably not much
more than a month from now.




CHAPTER V


In the first week of August Charles Drake suddenly changed tactics. His
conduct from the Wednesday morning in mid-July when they had had that
scene at the breakfast table, through to the end, sometime in September,
represented three different and distinctive methods of attack, from the
negative in which he had withdrawn in apparent indifference and simply
waited, through the positive but indirect, in which he attempted to
break down Erica's resistance by abandoning all efforts to conceal what
he felt while never actually referring to his feelings, and at the same
time by letting loose a continuous stream of broad statements, anecdotes
and even rather pointless jokes on the subject of Jews in general, to
the third and last stage in which he swung round and made use of every
weapon he could lay his hands on.

For reasons of her own, Margaret Drake went along with him. Although so
far as her surface behavior was concerned, she seemed to take her cue
from her husband, her attitude was fundamentally different. She believed
that all msalliances are the result of infatuation, and therefore from
start to finish, she consistently underestimated Erica's love for Marc.
In fact, she did not regard it as love, in the proper sense of the word.
She lacked her husband's ability to understand emotion as such,
particularly an emotion which lay outside the field of her own
experience. The sexual element did not exist for her except in a
derogatory sense; in her conception of a valid and lasting relationship
between a man and a woman, that element was removed. She did not
discount it; she simply left it out altogether. The ingredients of a
successful marriage, she had often said, were community of tastes,
interests, and a similarity of viewpoint and background. All these were
blended together by an emotion called "love" of course, but a love which
was to her a composite of other kinds of love, rather than a separate
entity with a basic character of its own. She was devoted to her
husband; he was her best friend, her father and counselor, her child,
her brother--in fact he was the sum total of all her other relationships
and because that was so much, it had never occurred to her, consciously
at any rate, that he could have been anything more.

Surveying Erica's relationship to Marc from the standpoint of community
of tastes and interests and similarity of viewpoint and
background--above all, similarity of background, since it is the
background which gives rise to the viewpoint--and convinced as she was
that you cannot be "genuinely" in love with a man whom you have only
known for a period of weeks, rather than months, Margaret Drake could
not bring herself to regard it as anything but an infatuation.

Charles Drake was under no such delusions, and in this respect, his
conduct was considerably less justifiable than that of his wife. If he
had regarded it as an infatuation, he would have let it run its course,
and trusted Erica to come to her senses in time to prevent her from
taking any final step on the strength of it, but as a matter of fact, he
knew Erica too well to imagine that she was capable of being infatuated
with anyone.

It was precisely because he realized how much Marc meant to her that he
did everything in his power to get rid of him. In the end, unlike his
wife, he could not plead ignorance; he could not say as Margaret Drake
was to say in sheer despair, after Marc had finally gone home, "Erica, I
didn't _know_--I didn't know!"

Charles Drake had known, as he generally did, from the very beginning.
His only excuse was self-defense, for in trying to defend Erica, he was
defending not her interests, but his conception of her interests.

The change in tactics came without warning so far as Erica was
concerned, except for Miriam's statement that her parents had decided to
stay in town because they were too worried to derive any benefit from
their much-needed holiday.

The morning after Marc and Erica had crossed the river to Ile Bizard by
the cable ferry, her father asked Erica suddenly if she was going to be
in to dinner the following night.

"No, I don't think so," said Erica.

"Who are you going out with? Ren?"

Once before he had asked her if she were going out with Ren when he
already knew she was not.

"I haven't seen him for weeks."

"So even Ren is getting the short end of it. Do you mind telling me who
you _are_ going out with?"

"Yes, Marc Reiser."

"Weren't you out with him last night, Erica?" asked her mother.

"Rather overdoing it, isn't he?" said Charles.

"He isn't going to be here much longer...."

"Oh, I don't know," interrupted her father. "We've been at war three
years and he seems to have managed pretty well so far."

"You don't know anything about it, Charles," said Erica
expressionlessly. She had reached the stage where nothing he said about
Marc could make her angry, which, she thought, was simply so much the
worse for them both. "It isn't his fault that he was posted to a
reinforcement unit and just told to mark time at Divisional Headquarters
until..." Erica stopped. Neither of them, as usual, appeared to be
listening; her father's eyes were back on his newspaper and her mother
was pouring a second cup of coffee for Miriam, who opened her mouth to
say something, glanced at Erica, and then subsided, muttering
resignedly, "O.K., darling, have it your own way."

Erica said at last, looking down at her plate, "I thought you wanted to
know why Marc and I are seeing so much of each other."

"We already know that without being told." Her father made an effort to
read a little further, obviously thoroughly depressed, then with an
exclamation he suddenly put down his paper, got up and left the room.

From then on, any direct or indirect reference to Marc always produced
the same result. It wasn't what they said, for they rarely said
anything, but the way they looked. Whenever they knew that Erica was on
her way to meet Marc somewhere or had just come back from meeting him,
the moment she entered the room, that look would settle down over their
faces. It was apparently necessary that she should not go out the front
door under any illusion that they would be enjoying themselves while she
was with Marc, and when she returned home, it was equally necessary that
she should realize that it was they who were paying for any happiness
she might have had from her dinner, or her drive or whatever it was. The
look was not in any way put on; it was a matter of simple fact that they
did not and could not enjoy themselves when they knew Erica was with
Marc, and that her happiness, such as it was, was purchased at their
expense, and they made no effort to conceal it, that was all.

Erica lived with that look from the beginning of August until the middle
of September when Marc went home, back to his own people, and she
finally broke down. She never got used to it, and up to the very end, it
still required an effort of will before she could force herself to enter
a room and face it.

The indirect attack on Marc started a few nights later at dinner. It did
not amount to very much; Charles Drake had lunched that day with a
dollar-a-year man on the Wartime Prices and Trade Board who had told him
that the most persistent violators of the price ceiling were the Jews,
particularly the Jewish clothing firms who were so universally
determined to beat the Government that there would have been no
particular risk involved in arresting every Jewish clothier first and
taking the chance of being able to secure enough evidence for the
conviction of each of them individually, afterwards. "The Jews" had no
sense of responsibility and regarding themselves as outside the
community, for some reason or other, you simply could not make them
realize that what affected the community as a whole would ultimately
affect them to the same extent as everyone else.

Since she had heard it all before from various other people, and had
grown up in a society in which almost everyone threw off derogatory
remarks about "The Jews," often from sheer force of habit, Erica would
probably not have attached any particular significance to her father's
remarks if he had not rather gone out of his way to avoid all
unflattering references to Jews, as such, until now. He was too
imaginative ever to be accidentally tactless and since he himself
bracketed Marc with Jews in general, until now he had preferred to stay
off the subject altogether.

Erica was out the following night. The night after that it was something
about "The Jews" safeguarding themselves against the inflation for which
their own conduct would be partly responsible, by buying up all the
available real estate.

At breakfast a day or so later, it was the old story of fire insurance;
in a slightly different form, however. The previous night he had been
playing bridge at his club with the president of an insurance company
who had remarked in the course of a discussion about the Jews, that Jews
and fires always went together, and that if you wanted to find the
Jewish districts in any given city, all you had to do was look at the
nearest insurance company map for the heaviest concentration of fires.
In fact they were such a bad risk that a good many companies preferred
not to sell them fire insurance, with the result that a group of Jews
who were angered by the discrimination against them had got together and
started an insurance company of their own, only to go broke in short
order. The richest part of it was that these same Jews would now sell
fire insurance only to Gentiles.

The maps were something new so far as Erica was concerned, but the
Jewish company which refused to insure other Jews against fire was not.
She had often wondered if it really existed.

There was a curious, very faint deliberateness in the way her father
went about it, a barely perceptible change of expression and a barely
audible change in his voice, so that she always knew when he was going
to start, and tried to steel herself against what was coming. She had an
odd feeling that to allow herself to be hurt by it, would be to fall
into the same fundamental error as her father--the error of identifying
the characteristics of the individual with the usually misrepresented
characteristics of the group.

It was not until his observations on the subject of "The Jews" began to
be interspersed with anti-Jewish anecdotes and rather unfunny jokes
which Charles Drake had usually heard from "a man downtown"--well, he
undoubtedly had; Erica knew from her own experience that there were a
large number of people with that particular kind of sense of humor--that
Erica realized what was happening to him.

The faint air of deliberateness had gone; having set out to convince his
daughter, Charles Drake was in danger of convincing himself. He had
already forgotten what he had been told about Marc downtown and over at
Divisional Headquarters. After a very brief appearance, the individual
had once more been obliterated by the generalization.

Some time very lately he must have begun to associate the interminable
gossip about Jews which he heard "downtown" directly with Marc, to
assume more and more that this endless stream of astronomical
generalizations which tossed sixteen million human beings, scattered all
over the pre-war world, into one heap and covered the lot of them, must
inevitably apply at least to some extent to the man his daughter was in
love with and probably intended to marry. From then on, every chance
remark that other people made either to him or simply in his hearing,
must have struck home, until the idea that someone about whom such
things could be said, might also in the future be referred to as Erica's
husband and C. S. Drake's son-in-law, became finally too much for him.

It was an indication of how far Charles Drake had degenerated in the
past two months that he could tell a pointless and sordid story of
"Jewish" behavior during the Blitz, for example, and insult both Erica
and himself by suggesting, even indirectly, that it reflected on Marc.
All his life he had been unusually free of malice and in spite of his
explosive prejudices, he had had a certain largeness of mind and
generosity of spirit which had prevented him from gibing at individuals
for characteristics beyond their control. That he should have lost so
much of what had been the best in him in such a short time, was also an
indication of the way he was suffering.

He no longer seemed to care what methods he had to use in order to get
through to Erica, provided she could be made to face facts. There was no
reason why she should be protected and encouraged to go on living in a
world of illusions, among a handful of friends who apparently believed
that one war could change the whole structure of human society. Married
to a Jewish lawyer whose parents had been ordinary immigrants, life
would be no easier for Erica in 1945 than in 1910.

He had no idea what she would do with Marc Reiser; he had no idea what
any of them would do with him. He could not be made to fit in, one Jew
among a lot of Drakes. Wherever they took him, to the houses of their
relatives or their friends, he would stick out like a sore thumb.

That was not all. Later on there would be children, Erica's children who
would be half-Jewish by race and probably brought up in the Jewish
religion--Jews and Catholics could always be counted on to look out for
their own interests--so that his grandchildren would be wholly Jewish by
faith.

And what on earth would they do with Marc Reiser's family, since
presumably he had a family? When your son or daughter marries, you
cannot pretend that the relatives of your daughter-in-law or son-in-law
simply do not exist.

Charles Drake could not imagine what Marc Reiser's family would be like.
The fact that their son was presentable enough on the surface proved
nothing, since there was often an extraordinary difference between the
first and the second generation. He remembered what a shock he had had
when the parents of a Jewish importer whom he had known for years and
had always regarded as quite exceptional, the very best type of Jew...
what a shock he had had when the fellow's parents had turned out to
be pure ghetto. The old man wore a black skull cap, both he and his
wife kept dropping into Yiddish, and what English they knew sounded as
though they had learned it on New York's East Side. Their accent had
reminded Charles Drake of the old days of vaudeville and the inevitable
cheap Jewish comic who had elected to make a living by holding up his
own people to ridicule. There always seemed to be one on every program
and either he or his straight man was usually called "Ikey." To this day
Erica's father did not know what had possessed their son when he had
suddenly invited C. S. Drake to his home for "supper" on Saturday night;
it was one of the most uncomfortable evenings Charles Drake had ever
had.

Uncomfortable or not, however, at least he had been able to escape at
the end of the evening. From the elder Reisers there would be no escape,
and no end, from the day on which he would find himself standing beside
his wife and a couple of middle-aged immigrant Jews from some small town
in Ontario, attempting to introduce his son-in-law's parents to Montreal
society.

It is no good thinking of life in terms of vague and idealistic
principles; life is not made up of common sense, logic or even
elementary justice. It is made up of the way people think, feel and
behave, with or without due cause, and when they have felt and thought
that way for two thousand years, one war and a fresh outburst of lofty
generalities about a better world are not going to make much difference.
Even supposing by some miracle or other, the Reisers should turn out to
be moderately well-bred, from a social point of view they would still be
unmanageable.

Charles Drake was almost beside himself.

At breakfast, at dinner and in the evenings when Erica was at home, he
would suddenly start in on the Jews again and go on talking, talking,
talking; he said anything that came into his head without fully
realizing what he was saying, except that he was careful never to refer
to Marc directly. It was as though everything he had ever heard against
the Jews, back to his earliest childhood, was coming out all in a period
of a few weeks, five, ten or fifteen minutes at a time, during which he
would keep his eyes fixed on Erica, searching her face to see if at last
he had succeeded in making an impression.

He did not succeed; he failed altogether. Erica had lost the faculty of
thinking in reverse, she was no longer even capable of applying the
generalization to the individual. She knew Marc, she was in possession
of the evidence, of the actual facts concerning Marc Reiser, and between
those facts and her father's statements about Jews, there was simply no
connection. He was still talking about someone else.

She would sit and listen to him in silence, or at any rate she appeared
to be listening. His voice only reached her at intervals, becoming
audible and then fading away again, according to the rise and fall in
the level of her consciousness.

What he was saying was of no importance in itself, it had all been said
before so many times, repeated parrot-like but with an air of acute
perception and originality by one person after another, in one country
after another, all the way down through history. After all, even Hitler
was unable to think up anything really new on the subject of the Jews;
he merely said what everybody else had been saying, only of course he
said it louder and oftener, and put it a bit more strongly.

The importance lay, first, in the fact that it was Charles who was
saying it, and second, in the fact that if he believed what he said, if
he believed that even half of what he was saying applied to Marc, then,
whether or not her father ultimately came round, it would make no real
difference. He might put up with Marc, he might endure him for her sake,
but he would never like him. He would never even get near enough to Marc
to find out whether he was likable or not.

You might just as well try to see a man through a brick wall as try to
see him through a mass of preconceived ideas.

In the intervals when she was really listening, Erica sometimes tried to
visualize Marc as he must appear to her father. He always came out as a
nightmare figure, a crazy conglomerate of a shyster lawyer, quick,
insinuating and tricky; a fat clothing merchant with a cigar in his
mouth, employing sweated labor with one hand and contriving to outsmart
both his competitors and the Government with the other; a loud-voiced,
flashy young man pushing his way up to the head of the queue; a
skull-capped figure muttering incantations in a synagogue; a furtive,
greasy individual setting fire to his own house or his own shop in order
to collect the insurance... all this not only combined in one
individual, but an individual who was determined not to be assimilated
but to remain an outsider, and who was perpetually turning up where he
was not wanted, overrunning hotels, beaches, clubs and practically every
place he was permitted to enter.

It might have been funny, only it wasn't. Coming from her father--not
Charles, her Charles, the individual on the left with whom she was never
in contact any more except when they were listening to music--as the
creature of his imagination and set beside Marc Reiser who, in this
house, lived only in her mind and in her heart, it was not funny at all.
Neither was the spectacle of her father, apparently powerless in the
grip of a steadily mounting obsession--he had told his wife and his wife
had told Erica that there was not one moment of the day when Erica was
really out of his mind--nor the spectacle of her mother, appalled at
what might happen to Erica and what was already happening to her
husband, nor Erica herself. Beneath her silence and her expressionless
face, she was beginning to break up, and she knew it.

Only Miriam remained detached and objective, partly because she was
Miriam, not Charles or Margaret Drake, and Erica was her sister, not her
daughter, and partly because she knew Marc.




CHAPTER VI


Miriam had met Marc in the last week of August. The four of them, Erica,
Marc, Max Eliot and herself were to have had dinner together, but that
morning Max Eliot had left unexpectedly for England, and Miriam brought
John Gardiner instead. John was the complete opposite of Max in almost
every respect, blond, towering, physically hard and innately kind, and
he and Marc took an immediate liking to each other. They were both in
uniform, John with a red First Division patch on his sleeve. As soon as
Marc had finished ordering, they began to talk about various men they
both knew among the officers of the First Battalion of the Gatineau
Rifles, who had been stationed near John's unit on the south coast of
England, for almost a year.

They were well away, and Erica said to Miriam, "Where's Max?"

"He's gone,"

"Where?"

"England. He left on a bomber this morning."

"When is he coming back?"

Miriam was looking at the wall beyond John's fair head, her dark eyes
wide and her face unnaturally stiff. She said at last, as though she had
had to wait in order to be sure that she would say it casually, "I
haven't the remotest idea. I got the air last night."

A little later when she had finished her cocktail and Marc had ordered
another one for her, she observed to Erica as the two men went on
talking, "I guess I always knew it was going to happen. I had such a
strong feeling about it that I even tried to plan the whole thing in
advance, so that if or when it did happen, I wouldn't make any fuss."

"And did you, darling?"

"No," she said under her breath. "No fuss." She glanced at Erica and
went on in the same even tone, "I can't let go because if I do, I'll
probably just go to pieces. I hate crying, it always makes everything so
much worse. What shall we do after dinner?"

"We might go somewhere and dance."

"You should have seen me getting the air at two o'clock this morning. I
was really terrific, Eric. Not that it makes any difference. An exit is
just an exit, whether you mess it up or not."

"You should have stayed home, darling," said Erica, watching her.

"Not on your life. I'm going to get good and drunk."

"How do you like Marc?" asked Erica after a pause.

Miriam looked at him and said, "He isn't exactly what I expected."

"What _did_ you expect?"

"He looks marvelous in uniform," remarked Miriam irrelevantly, and then
answered, "Somebody you could probably do pretty much what you liked
with... up to a point, that is."

"Oh, dear no," said Erica, shaking her head.

"No," said Miriam, "evidently not." Since she was the first member of
Erica's family that Marc had really met, she realized now that what she
had chiefly expected was that Marc would try to make some kind of an
impression. Not an obvious effort, of course, but still, an effort. She
had supposed that he would put himself out at least to some extent.
Instead of that, and although she had never seen him before, she was
certain that he was simply being himself, and nothing more. Of the four
of them, he seemed to Miriam to be the one in control, as though it were
John and herself who were up for inspection, so to speak, and not the
other way round, and finding that it helped her to keep her mind off
Max, she went on watching Marc as he sat across the table with his head
turned toward John, twisting the stem of a cocktail glass through his
fingers and not talking much himself, wondering how he did it. It
occurred to her that there was something in his oddly set eyes and his
sensitive face which was rather disconcerting--a latent quality, both
hard and resistant, like a metal which will be hot on the surface and
cold in the center and which, try as you will, you cannot heat all the
way through.

She thought with sudden astonishment, Marc Reiser is just as tough as
Charles and probably still harder to handle. She said again to Erica,
sitting on the banquette beside her because it was more comfortable than
the two straight-backed chairs occupied by Marc and John across the
table, "No, he definitely isn't what I expected," and suddenly found
herself back at Max again. This small restaurant with old-fashioned
wallpaper, white-clothed tables and dark woodwork, in a converted house
on a side street had been Max Eliot's favorite place to dine when he was
in Montreal. She had often been here with him, and had even sat at this
very table one Saturday night when all the tables for two were already
taken.

She said, gripping the edge of the banquette with both hands, "May I
have another drink?"

She had already drunk two cocktails and John asked, "Why don't you wait
for a while, Mimi?"

"Mind your own business," said Miriam in French, and then added in
English, "I've got a headache."

John looked relieved, and then almost immediately concerned again.
"Wouldn't you like some aspirin?" he asked.

"I would like another cocktail," said Miriam patiently. She smiled
faintly as she saw a flicker of amusement in Marc's face. He turned to
give the order to a passing waiter and then started talking to John
again. They were discussing the problem of Germany, and she tried to
focus her mind on what they were saying for a while but it was no use,
and she lapsed back into herself again.

It was not only Max and the fact that she was not going to see him
again, never again; there was something else which she could not afford
to think about until she was back on solid ground and had really got
hold of herself again. It was the old game of keeping your balance by
looking straight ahead and not allowing yourself to look down. When they
were children, they had sometimes gone for walks along the railway up in
the Laurentians, and she had always been able to balance on the rail
long after Tony and Eric had got bored and were down in the ditch or
racing along the path. Erica had never been any good at it, though she
was almost five years older than Miriam; she had always looked down and
then fallen off. Through all these unpredictable years leading up to the
present, with Tony flying a bomber over Europe, Erica close to a final
break with their mother and father because she was in love with a Jew,
and herself... well, anyhow, she could still hear Tony yelling at the
fair-haired, tottering little figure on the rail, "Don't look down,
Eric! Look straight ahead...."

Don't look down, Miriam, look straight ahead. Straight ahead at what?
That was the trouble, instead of a curve of a railway track, a white
farm-house and the plowed fields running halfway up the mountain to the
edge of the pine forest, there was nothing to look at, absolutely
nothing.

She realized now that although consciously she had known that she could
not hold Max indefinitely, unconsciously she had gone on hoping that,
not only would he not leave her, but that by some miracle, he would want
her enough to go through all the bother of a divorce so that he could
marry her.

She said suddenly to Erica, "Damn it, I thought I'd be a better sport
than this!" Eric did not answer, she was listening to Marc and John. She
would not have known what Miriam was talking about anyhow, for no one,
not even Erica, knew how much Max had done for her. When someone does as
much as that for you, the least you can do is not feel sorry for
yourself all over the place, because he didn't do more!

"Putting the whole blame on the German nation isn't going to get us
anywhere," said Marc, "It's like treating a case of smallpox by cutting
off a man's leg because there happen to be more spots on his leg than
anywhere else."

"You're Jewish, aren't you?"

What was John asking that for? She had told him the whole story of Marc,
Erica and her parents when she and John had been pub-crawling one night
the week before. Somewhere between the Mount Royal bar and the Colony
Club, she had observed that John was about to start telling her how much
he loved her all over again. Miriam always knew when he was about to
start, because whatever he was feeling found its way to his face before
he could get hold of the right words, and in order to stop him, she had
hurriedly taken refuge in Erica and Marc and the behavior of her
parents. She could not remember what she had said, exactly, but she had
certainly told John that Marc was a Jew. After all, that was the whole
point.

"Yes, of course," said Marc.

"Most of the Jews I know would like to see the entire German nation at
the bottom of the Atlantic."

"Oh?" Marc looked briefly at Erica's plate, remarked, "There's no excuse
for your leaving half your steak, darling, it hasn't any bones in it,"
and then back at John again, he said mildly, "I'm not giving you a
racial opinion of the Germans, if there is such a thing. I'm just giving
you my own opinion, though as a matter of fact, every Jew ought to know
by this time that Nazism isn't a German monopoly. Given complete power
over every possible source of public information, I'm inclined to think
that you could make any nation believe anything in six months."

"I don't agree with you," said John.

"Have you ever met anyone who's actually lived under the Nazis?"

"Well, a lot of refugees."

"I don't mean refugees, particularly Jews. I mean ordinary Germans. I
met a lot of them coming back from Europe on the boat in 1937. They were
just out on business and expected to be back in Germany in a few months.
Anyhow, arguing with them was like arguing with someone in a nightmare,
or arguing geography with a man who's been brought up to believe that
the earth is square. They'd been so consistently misinformed on every
subject for so long that there was no common ground for discussion at
all. It was hopeless. Every time you produced a fact, they produced a
contrary fact, and neither of you could advance an inch."

"It's a lot easier to convince the Germans that the earth is square than
it is most people," said John.

Miriam saw Marc glance at him with a skeptical expression but he said
nothing. Then she heard Erica remark, "It probably depends on whether
the particular nation wants to be convinced or not."

"And what makes them want to be convinced?"

"I suppose a combination of certain historical, economic and
environmental factors."

Miriam began to lose track again. Her mind was like a badly functioning
radio transmitter; for a while the voices would come over quite clearly,
then they would begin to fade, and finally there would be another
interval of silence.

Some time later John's voice reached her, asking if anyone minded if he
smoked a pipe. He never smoked until he had finished a meal and Miriam
glanced at him in surprise, then down at her own plate. Somebody, she
remembered, had said something about steak, but all she herself had been
aware of eating was a shrimp cocktail. On her plate, however, was half a
French pastry.

"Just as a matter of interest, Eric," she said, "what entre did I
have?"

"Chicken."

"Well, well. I must be going nuts." Here, she added peremptorily to
herself, pull yourself together. Hoping that they were still on the same
subject, she said almost briskly, "There seem to be two theories about
this war. One that it's all the fault of the Germans and the other that
it's part of a--of a..."

She looked helplessly at Marc who said "...a historical process?"

"Yes, thanks."

He said to John, "We've got to a point where we recognize that the basis
of government is the individual, but the individual is not yet the basis
of the economic system, and until we produce primarily for consumption
and not primarily for profits, democracy as a purely political system
with almost no economic application is not going to work. We'll just
have another war if we blame it all on the Germans and try to revert to
the status quo ante. That's what you mean, isn't it?" he asked, turning
to Miriam.

"Er... yes," said Miriam.

"What are you two?" asked John, glancing from Marc to Erica across the
table. "Socialists?"

"Must we be labeled?" asked Erica, making a face. She grinned at Marc
and said, "I'm allergic to labels."

A cloud of smoke from John's pipe floated over to an elderly woman at
the next table who turned slowly and deliberately in her chair, directed
a long look in John's direction and slowly resumed her former position.

John put down his pipe and said resignedly, "Give me a cigarette,
somebody."

He took one from Marc's case and Miriam asked him rather curiously,
"What do _you_ think we're fighting for?"

He said slowly after a pause, "I can tell you what the men in the Army
don't think they're fighting for, if that's any help. They're not
fighting for the kind of life they've been leading for the past ten or
twelve years." He paused again, frowning, and went on at last, "The
trouble is that so far, even after three years of war, their only
definite ideas seem to be negative ones--they know they've got to beat
Hitler, of course, but they seem to be fairly cynical about the post-war
world. It's not their fault; the people who do all the talking haven't
really said anything yet."

"Do you think the people who are in a position to do all the talking
really know?" asked Erica.

"Maybe a few of them do, but all we seem to have got so far is a kind of
mass consciousness of the way things are changing or ought to change, if
we're really going to get anywhere after the war. At least the English
masses seem to be getting the hang of things, and I guess we are too,
though naturally not to the same extent yet, because we haven't taken
anything like the beating they have. I don't know about the Americans,
though I'd be willing to bet that when capitalism is a dead duck in the
rest of the world, the Americans will be the last nation to admit it."

"Why?" asked Erica.

"Because their attitude toward Government seems to be fundamentally
different from ours. The further you get from unrestricted capitalism
the more Government you have to have. So far as the war is concerned,
for example, the Americans apparently get production in spite of their
Government, half the time, and not because of it. It's their individual
industrial geniuses who work the miracles, not Washington. They still
believe in rugged individualism and don't believe in 'government
interference,' so rugged individualism works and Government doesn't.
Most of the Americans I know talk about their Government as though it
was on one side of the fence and they were on the other. Good
old-fashioned capitalism is the only economic system that suits that
point of view."

He said, "That's not the point though. I can't describe what I mean by a
mass consciousness, exactly. A few people up top seem to know what it's
all about, like Vice-President Wallace and Sumner Welles and their
opposite numbers in England. They have put into words what the masses
just sort of feel. But it's all vague, and the worst of it is that the
people with most of the power have everything tied up in the status quo,
so we're back where we started again, with the big interests fighting
for one kind of world and the masses fighting for something else."

Miriam had been staring at him with growing amazement. Now she asked,
"How long has this been going on, for goodness' sake?"

"How long has what been going on?"

Failing to think of any way of saying it which wouldn't sound rude, she
answered finally with a helpless gesture, "You've come such a long way
from the bond house!"

"Thanks," said John. "When you've been in the Army for three years,
you're bound to start wondering why you're there, some time or other."

"And do you know now?" inquired Miriam.

"Yes, or at least I'm beginning to get a general idea. I joined up more
or less at the start in '39 because my sort always does," he said
matter-of-factly, as though he were discussing someone else. "Not
because I was particularly anxious to pull up stakes and go out and die
for my country, but just because I come from a certain type of
background--a good school, university, do your job and don't leave it to
the other fellow--that sort of thing. Fine in 1900, but not enough to
get you through this kind of war. I don't like England much, it gives me
claustrophobia, and I was stuck in a holding unit down on the south
coast, homesick as the devil for a country big enough so that if you
went walking at night you wouldn't be running the risk of falling off
the edge, and half the time I had nothing to do but play chess with the
local vicar and think."

"So you thought," said Miriam.

"Shut up," he said good-humoredly, but he was embarrassed. He ran one
hand over his fair hair, glanced at Miriam with that expression at the
back of his blue eyes which gave him away every time he looked at her,
and asked, "What shall we do now? Has anybody got any good ideas?"

"I want to go somewhere and dance," said Miriam.

On the way to the door she asked John how he liked Marc. "First rate,"
said John. "Your father must be crazy."

"Oh, no," said Miriam. "He just thinks we're ighting the other kind of
war--you know, the one for the status quo."

****

Later, as she was dancing with Marc, Miriam asked suddenly, "Don't you
think it would be a good idea if Eric got a place of her own to live?"

"Why?"

He was watching a couple who were dancing on the floor somewhere behind
her and she said, "Eric thinks Charles is going to change his mind, but
he isn't. Not..." She stopped herself just in time, having been on
the point of adding without thinking, "Not until it's too late," and
said instead, "Not until he's just about worn her ragged."

"She doesn't eat enough," said Marc noncommittally.

"Well, no," said Miriam, rather at a loss. Marc was too close for her to
see him properly and find out whether he minded her going on or not. She
decided to take a chance on his not minding and said, "He never leaves
her alone, that's the trouble. He doesn't say anything about you
directly, of course, but he does manage to get in a devil of a lot
indirectly, and when he's not doing that, he and Mother just sit and
look blue, as though Erica's the only thing they ever think about."

He surprised her by saying in the same expressionless tone, "Maybe she
is." Still looking over Miriam's shoulder, he added, "I didn't know they
still objected to me so much. I thought they were probably getting used
to it by now."

She did not know how he could possibly have thought that when Erica must
have told him that her parents were not making the slightest effort to
get used to it--on the contrary!

The music stopped, then started again, and she said, "Tell me, Mr.
Reiser, do you do everything as well as you dance?"

"Practically everything," said Marc, grinning. "By the way, I like your
friend Major Gardiner."

"He likes you too." Like Erica, she found it difficult to imagine anyone
with a grain of sense not liking Marc. It was not only that he was
attractive and intelligent, with charm and good manners and a marvelous
smile, but he had another quality, still more important. He was
completely straight. After talking to him for even a short time, you
knew that he would never lie nor take an advantage, and after a little
longer, you also knew that he was incapable of consciously going out of
his way to make an impression no matter who it was, and that he would be
the same person in Court or at a social affair as he was with Erica,
John, his own family or his Chinese laundryman.

"You have a Chinese laundryman, haven't you?" asked Miriam.

"I think he has me. He always comes when I'm out and takes whatever he
thinks needs washing. It doesn't make any difference whether I think so
or not, unless I take the trouble to hide it somewhere so he won't find
it." He sighed and said reminiscently, "My secretary used to be like
that too. She even had my lunch sent up to the office whenever she
could, so that she could make certain I had a properly balanced meal."

He went on talking about his secretary, whose name was Miss Carruthers,
who was wonderful, and who had promised to come back as soon as he got
out of the Army and started practicing law again.

Miriam was only half-listening, she was far more interested in Marc
himself than in his former secretary.

Without realizing it, she had assumed that the chief problem in Erica's
apparently hopeless situation was her father... as though Marc were
more or less in the position of someone hanging around the door waiting
to be let in. Now that she had met him and he had turned out to be so
subtly different from what she had expected, that bland assumption which
she supposed was shared by her father, already struck her as fantastic.

"There's no sense your starting to worrying about it," said Marc
suddenly.

She had been following him automatically with her left hand twisting the
upper of the two pips on his shoulder. She moved her hand nearer his
collar and said, "I can't help worrying. I care more about Eric than I
do about anyone else. If she weren't so damned decent, none of this
would have happened to her. Mother used to be fond of saying that Erica
had never given either her or Charles a moment's worry--well, you'd
think that since she's never done anything they didn't want her to do
until now, they'd take her seriously and show some respect for her. But
it doesn't work that way at all--they're so used to Erica never doing
anything they don't want, that they're damn well not going to allow her
to start at the age of twenty-eight."

"That's a rather brutal way of putting it, isn't it?"

"Isn't that really what Charles means when he says this is the first
time Erica has ever let them down, and that he's not going to let her
ruin her life if he can help it? Whose life is it, for God's sake?
Charles' or Erica's?"

He said nothing. He only smiled at her and looked away again.

She remarked a moment later, "It's amazing the way people can assume
that they know what's 'best' for someone else--that they know better
than the individual concerned what is going to make him or her happy or
unhappy. Really, when you come to think of it, it is the most stupefying
arrogance. I'm not talking about children, of course, but grown-up
people who are obviously old enough to make up their own minds."

The music stopped again and in the pause he said, watching the band
leader who was talking to one of the saxophone players, gesturing as
though he were angry about something, "It's not always as simple as
that. Their assumptions may simply be based on what they know happened
to everybody who tried breaking the rules, because they thought they
were exceptions too."

"But surely there are exceptions, aren't there?"

He said wearily, "For every individual who really is exceptional there
are about fifty thousand who just imagine they are--until it's too late,
and they find out they aren't after all."

She was too disturbed to notice that the other couples had left the
floor and after looking at him blankly for a moment she said, "Let's go
to the bar. I feel like a drink and we can't talk very well at the table
with John and Eric."

The bar was all blue and silver, dimly lit by pin-pricks of light
scattered over the low, dark blue ceiling. There were a few people
sitting here and there, talking in low voices against the sound of the
orchestra from the next room. Miriam and Marc sat down at a table in the
corner beside a large, stylized plant which appeared to be made of some
kind of metal.

It was another place where she had often been with Max, even oftener
than at the little restaurant in which the four of them had had dinner.
For some reason or other he had taken a liking to the blue atmosphere
and the deep, comfortable leather-covered chairs, and there was an
interval just after they sat down and before she or Marc said anything,
when the past obliterated the present, like one picture dissolving into
another on a screen. The room blurred, then slowly came into focus
again, only it was very slightly changed, with the chairs and tables not
where they were now but a few inches to the left or right where they had
been last time, Tuesday night of the week before. Miriam had reason to
remember that it was Tuesday in particular.

Max was sitting beside her in a dark suit, his legs straight out under
the table and his head against the back of the low chair, running his
fingers lightly over the inside of his wrist. His profile was outlined
against the light drifting through the door down the wall. She had been
talking about herself and Peter and the deep-rooted conviction of her
own inadequacy with which she had had to go on living after her divorce.
She was wondering why it was so easy to talk to Max when it had been so
difficult to talk to anyone else, and she had turned her head toward
that profile, on the point of asking him, when she saw that for the
first time since they had known each other, she was boring him. She had
told him too much.

She had forgotten that there are people who are born superficial, whose
superficiality is usually related to ideas, to their attitude toward
politics, economics, art, literature and the objective world, but also
occasionally to their attitude toward other people. They prefer not to
have to deal with more than a limited number of oversimplified
ideas--they prefer the book reviews to the books, the headlines and the
leading paragraph to the full report, the generalization to the facts,
and the negative to the positive. For these people, more than a little
knowledge is a burden; they don't know what to do with it. They put down
a book or a newspaper, turn off the radio, change the subject or break
off a love affair, simply for fear of knowing too much and getting in
too deep.

That was what had happened with Max. He had found himself getting in too
deep. The basis of their relationship had been almost entirely physical
and in her mistaken effort to broaden that basis, she had overlooked the
fact that Max simply did not want it broadened. It suited him far better
as it was. In telling him a lot of things about herself which, she
realized now that it was too late, he did not in the least desire to
know, she had given herself away for the first time in her life, and to
the wrong person. Not knowing what to do with her, he had taken a week
to think it over and had then, in effect, handed her back to Miriam
Drake again.

She became aware of Marc's greenish eyes watching her with an expression
which was oddly incurious and understanding. She had no idea how long
they had been sitting here, it probably wasn't more than a few minutes
but even so, if Marc had been John, he would have been all over her with
bewilderment and sympathy by this time. She found herself thinking that
she might still marry John sometime in the future, if she could get over
her fear of his inexperience and if, in the meantime, someone would just
tell her how you can manage to get through life with a man who has to
have all but the most elementary emotions explained to him in words of
one syllable.

"There's your drink, Miriam," said Marc at last. "Would you rather go
back?"

"No, I'm all right." She raised her glass, then put it down again,
remarking, "I thought I was one of the exceptions, that's all--one of
your fifty thousand who think they're smart enough to figure out what's
going to happen in advance so that it won't hurt so much when the time
comes. You know, a realist. Are you a realist?"

"I'm a super-realist," said Marc, grinning. "I know that no matter how
bad I think something's going to be, it will undoubtedly turn out to be
a lot worse."

"Optimistic, aren't you? Why don't you marry Eric before you go?" she
asked abruptly.

"And leave her to cope with the whole thing alone?"

She knew that she had had no right to ask such a question and was
surprised at his giving her even that much of an answer. He had been
definitely uncommunicative up till now.

A moment later he surprised her still more. He said, "Anyhow, I may not
come back, and I've complicated Erica's life enough already without
going on doing it after I'm dead. Some day she might want to marry
someone else and I'd rather it was the first time for her, not the
second. If I were going to be here another six months it might be
different."

After a pause he went on, looking down at his glass, "And apart from
everything else, we've got to win the war first. I know that's what a
lot of people say but in our case it happens to be true. So long as
there's even one chance in ten that we don't win, I couldn't afford to
take it, because naturally I couldn't involve her in what would happen
if we lost."

"Wouldn't she be involved anyhow?"

"Not quite to the same extent," said Marc rather dryly. "I don't know
whether I have any right to involve her if we win the war and then lose
the peace."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean if we get rid of the Nazis only to end up with the status quo
ante. You know, a lot of the mud that Hitler slung at us from '33 to '39
is still sticking. Even when he didn't succeed in stirring up active
anti-Semitism, he managed to make almost everybody thoroughly
Jew-conscious, even over here and in the States."

"Do you think things are worse here than they were before 1933?"

"Oh, yes. Much worse." He paused and said, "Erica doesn't really know
what she's walking into. I do." His face lost some of its expression and
he said, "Evidently your father does too."

"How do you know Eric doesn't?"

"Because she can't."

"Well," said Miriam into her glass. "At least Eric's beginning to
learn."

For the second time she was realizing that there was something inside
Marc Reiser which you couldn't change, and which, perhaps, he couldn't
even change himself. He had been born skeptical, and under ideal
conditions, he might simply have gone on with the same degree of passive
skepticism or it might even have been gradually reduced and eradicated
finally, if not in his children, then in his grandchildren. But the
conditions were not ideal; you might almost say that they were specially
designed to work on that skepticism, to confirm it and enlarge it and
ultimately to transform it into an active influence.

She had grown up in a country where Jews were Jews, and with a few
exceptions--musicians, one or two painters, occasionally a university
professor, scientist or doctor--that was all there was to it. You leave
us alone and we'll leave you alone. Thus having been brought up to view
"The Jews" from a safe distance, she had thought of them as a category
rather than as individuals, and therefore, without being aware of it and
more or less in spite of herself, all this time she had been waiting for
Marc to do something which would relate him directly to the category--in
short, to do or say something "Jewish."

Now, she thought, this is it, this skepticism, this "super-realism"
which consists of reminding yourself that no matter how bad you think
things are going to be, they usually turn out to be worse; this basic
sense of insecurity, this profound discouragement which was all the more
baffling because it was so matter of fact.

She said at last, "You can't tell whether or not it would be worth it to
Erica. Nobody can. Nobody can tell which things matter and which don't,
or how much they matter one way or the other--to anyone but himself. You
can't tell what price anyone else can afford to pay for what they want
most, because their price is their whole system of values, and their
system of values is the result of everything which has ever happened to
them--the way they have come to think and feel and the sum total of all
their experience. You'd have to know all that about Eric, and you don't.
You can't." She broke off for a moment, staring at him, and then said
half to herself, "That's what I simply can't forgive Charles for. He
presumes to know everything about Eric, far better, of course, than she
knows herself."

"Let's leave your father out of it."

"Sorry."

"He isn't the main problem anyhow."

She raised her eyes to his face again and said, "I'm beginning to
realize that, but to do Charles justice, he helps!"

"He certainly helps," said Marc, smiling at her. "I suppose you know
you're beginning to get drunk?"

"Yes," said Miriam. She glanced around the small blue and silver bar and
then remarked, "Everything seems nice and distant. I'm even getting away
from myself."

He signaled the waiter and ordered another drink for her and then said,
"After that we'd better go back."

"Cigarette, please."

Leaning forward to light it for her he observed, "You're quite right, I
don't know enough about Erica, but she doesn't know enough about what
she would have to deal with either. It's not just marrying into a set of
social restrictions--like not being able to go to some beach to swim or
to some hotel in the Laurentians to ski, unless she goes without me and
carefully explains that although her name is Reiser, she herself isn't
Jewish. It isn't even knowing that there are certain things I can't do,
like going on the Bench or the board of directors of a bank or
something. The big restrictions aren't so important, there aren't an
awful lot of them, and they're not what gets you down. What does get you
down, particularly when it's not you but someone you're fond of, are the
intangibles--the negatives, the endless little problems in human
relationships which you never think of until you come up against them
and which are so small that you hardly notice them until they start to
pile up and eventually amount to a staggering total."

"Don't be so vague," said Miriam. "I'm a little too drunk to follow you
except when you're specific."

"All right, then. Erica was born on top. She's been on top all her life.
She's part of a complicated social system where she has a place, where
she can go anywhere and do anything on a basis of complete equality with
anyone, and it's simply up to her. If she marries me, she'll lose all
that overnight. Where there was certainty, there'll be doubt--nothing
definite, just doubt. She'll lose some of her friends who simply won't
take to the idea of always having to invite a Jew along with Erica;
she'll keep others. Maybe she'll keep most of the others, but she'll
never again be _sure_. She'll never be sure of anyone the first time she
meets him. She won't even be sure of people she's known all her life
until she's had a chance to re-examine every last one of them and find
out where they stand. She's never before had to pick her friends on the
basis of whether they liked Jews or not, Miriam."

"And what about you?" asked Miriam. "Would you be willing to go through
life waiting for the verdict of one person after another?"

"I have to anyhow," he said quietly.

That was a rather extraordinary remark when you came to think of it. "I
really think it's about time we tried that new system." She put her
elbows on the table, gazed at him dreamily and then asked, "What do they
call it? You know the one I mean--the one that begins with a D. Oh, yes,
democracy, that's it. Have you heard about it?"

"Everything is relative," said Marc.

"You mean, you don't mind being kicked out of hotels and most of the
better Montreal homes when you think of Nazi Germany...."

"You bet I don't!"

"I suppose that's the reason nothing's ever done about it here," said
Miriam reflectively. "Whenever a good Canadian begins to have doubts, he
says, 'Oh, well, look at the Nazis,' and figures he's so superior, he's
practically perfect."

"But he is."

"Oh, nuts," said Miriam. "Has it occurred to you that you might have a
lot less trouble if you moved away from Montreal?"

"Why?"

"To get rid of your wife's family and most of your wife's friends. Or
are you wedded to Mr. what's-his-name?"

"Aaronson?"

Miriam nodded.

"Not that I know of. But I don't think that would help much."

"It might," said Miriam, sliding down in her chair until her dark head
was resting against the back. She closed her eyes and said sleepily,
"They say it's much better out West, for example."

"I doubt it."

"You doubt everything, damn it! You're a nice person, in fact you're one
of the nicest people I've ever met but you..." She yawned
unexpectedly, opened her dark eyes and said with renewed decision,
"You're too bloody fatalistic. What you need is a little simple faith in
your fellow men, a dash of optimism, a couple of illusions and a lot
more self-confidence. You've got everything else, and if someone like
you can't break it down, then no one can. At least you can try--God damn
it," said Miriam, exasperated, "it's your _duty_ to try!"

She found that he was regarding her with a certain amusement and she
said, "I know. It's easy for me to talk. All the same, if you just stay
away instead of facing up to it and jolly well _making_ people take a
good look at you... if you don't have a shot at it, no one else
will." She was no longer quite clear what she was driving at, but it
sounded as though she was suggesting that he should put himself
permanently on exhibition. Life must be almost intolerable when, like
Marc, you know that you will always have to turn up in person, to pass
the inspection, in order to get a break. Never to be taken for granted
but always to bear the burden of proof. The burden of proof, she
repeated to herself, trying to imagine what it would be like to be Marc
Reiser. She could not imagine it; her mind was too tired and too
muddled, and anyhow, she herself was a Drake, and had been taken for
granted ever since she could remember.

Marc was back on the subject of Erica. His voice seemed to be coming
from some point a lot farther away than the other side of the rather
small table in front of her, and by the time her mind had veered round
again, he was saying, "Put it this way. I don't know what price she can
afford to pay and Erica doesn't know what she's buying."

"Couldn't you get together and pool your information?"

"My God," said Marc in amazement. "What do you think we do all the
time?"

****

At a table on the edge of the dance floor opposite the orchestra, Erica
was building a house out of matches and once again listening to John on
the subject of Miriam. He was feeling discouraged and was sitting with
his heavy shoulders against the frail back of the chair, drawing a
series of squares and rectangles on the white cloth with the pointed
handle of a fork.

"What odds would you give on our ever getting married?"

"Five to one," said Erica.

"The last time I asked you that you said five to one against."

"I know, but you've improved a lot. If you could manage to be as bright
about Miriam as you are about most things now, I'd even give you ten to
one."

"Why?"

"Because Miriam's on the rebound. Max walked out on her for good this
morning and went to England on a bomber."

"But she didn't really care about him, Eric...."

"Didn't she? Why not?"

"Eliot wasn't her type."

He seemed so sure of that anyhow that Erica asked, "And what is Miriam's
type?"

"Well, whatever it is, it's not something straight out of _Esquire_!" he
said impatiently.

"Well, maybe not," said Erica, "but even if he wasn't her type, Miriam
is now getting good and drunk out in the bar."

"Miriam doesn't get drunk." He frowned at her, looking less certain, and
finally asked, "Are you serious, Eric?"

"Mm," said Erica, carefully placing another match.

"We'd better go and get her then."

"Marc will look after her," said Erica without moving. Her eyes had been
following one line, from the pile of matches on the table before her to
the door which led to the bar, from the door back to the matches, the
matches back to the door again for what already seemed like several
hours, but although every minute without Marc dragged interminably, what
mattered most to her at the moment was not Marc and herself, but Marc
and Miriam. She wanted them to have a chance to get to know each other.

It did not even occur to her that while Marc and her sister were getting
to know each other, Marc might also be getting to know a good deal about
her parents as well. He asked no direct questions; he was simply letting
Miriam talk. In telling him her attitude toward the whole situation, she
was giving him a fairly clear idea of the situation itself, without
being aware of what she was doing. She never realized that in part of
one evening, Marc had found out more from her than he had been able to
find out from Erica in two months. By the time he left the bar and
returned with Miriam, his former guesswork and suspicion had turned into
actual knowledge. He was not yet ready to admit that he was beaten; it
was simply that the future had become that much darker and he was no
longer able to see clearly beyond the next few weeks. The rest was
obscurity. His point of view had not changed, it had merely shortened
and covered only the period between the present and the day on which he
would leave for overseas.

John was still looking unsettled, and Erica said, "Besides, Miriam never
gets drunk enough for it to be noticeable."

"That was rather unnecessary, wasn't it?"

"What was?"

"I wasn't worrying whether it would be 'noticeable' or not."

"Oh, hell," said Erica as her house of matches collapsed. "I meant that
since there's no danger of her making an ass of herself, it'll probably
do her good. And for heaven's sake, Johnny, don't be _stuffy_."

"Sorry, Eric. You've had an awful lot to put up with, haven't you? I
don't know why you didn't tell me to damn well pack up my troubles and
take them somewhere else long ago. Do you think Miriam's really upset
about that fellow?" he asked incredulously.

"More upset than I've ever seen her before, anyhow."

"Why on earth did she come out with us then?"

"Haven't you ever tried to postpone thinking about something until
you've had a chance to get used to the idea a little at a time?"

His handsome face stiffened, only instead of looking years older as Marc
always did, unhappiness made him much younger, as young as he had been
when Erica had first known him, eight years before.

At that time, all his thoughts had been orderly, catalogued and arranged
under the proper headings. He had just graduated from McGill and started
work in the family bond house. Until he had been sent back from England
after two years overseas, because there was such a shortage of bilingual
officers, Erica could not remember ever having heard John say anything
which had not been said before. He had been quite unoriginal; his life
had been unoriginal, conforming completely to the given pattern for his
age, class and country, so that looking first at John Gardiner and then
at his father and his father's friends, you could see quite clearly the
direction he was taking and where he would undoubtedly end up.

Erica could remember the way he had thought, if you could call it
thinking. At university he had done the required reading and no more. In
a bond house, no reading is required, so at the age of twenty-one, and
apart from the sports and finance sections of the morning and evening
papers, a few magazines and still fewer bestsellers, John had found
himself relieved of the necessity for doing any reading at all. He
played a very good game of bridge, golf and tennis; he was an officer in
the Reserve Army of peacetime, he had no interest whatever in any of the
arts or in ideas, as such; he was unshakably decent, honest,
hard-working, and unimaginative. He was a typical Canadian. From 1930
until far too late, he had assumed that the depression would right
itself; he had hung on to the illusion that the depression would right
itself long after Charles Drake had abandoned it, and had resigned his
reserve commission because his regiment showed no signs of being
mobilized, for the time being at any rate, in order to enlist for Active
Service in September, 1939, because, as he had said at dinner, his sort
always does.

He was, however, one of the few men Erica knew whom the war had turned
right-side up, instead of temporarily upside down. When you've been in
the Army for three years, as John had pointed out himself, sooner or
later you're bound to start wondering why you're there.

His face stiffer, younger and more uncomprehending than ever, he said,
"Did Miriam think she was going to marry him, Eric?"

"No," said Erica.

"Then what's it all about?"

Erica regarded him helplessly for a moment and then said, "Don't you
think you'd better ask Miriam instead of me?"

"Did she _want_ to marry him?"

"She may have," said Erica vaguely.

"Why?"

Having finally found an answer which she thought would do, she said,
"Well, you know they say that when divorced people remarry, they usually
go to the opposite extreme."

"Really," said John. "I've never heard that before."

Neither had Erica, but it was as good an explanation of Max Eliot's
attraction for Miriam as any Erica could think of--as well as a partial
explanation of Miriam's continuing inability to fall in love with John,
she realized a moment later. In one respect, John and Peter Kingsley,
Miriam's ex-husband, were too much alike, or at least Miriam thought
they were, and it was impossible to talk her out of it. The worst
mistake John had made was when he had told Miriam in London, just when
she had been on the point of falling in love with him at last, that he
had never looked at anyone else since he had met her, adding, rather
embarrassed, that of course that meant that he had never looked at
anyone else at all. If he had not been embarrassed, Miriam might not
have known what he was talking about, or rather that what he was saying
was to be taken literally; as it was, she did know, even before he went
on still more embarrassed, to add something about having kept himself
for her.

Even without the embarrassment, it would have sounded like Peter all
over again, and that was enough for Miriam. Out of every ten idealists,
nine are likely to be more or less neurotic and only one entirely
genuine, and having been tricked once, Miriam was not going to run the
risk of being tricked a second time. And genuine or not, she did not
want the burden of John's idealism and above all, she wanted no more
embarrassment and no more speeches. Instead of being moved by what he
said, because John happened to be a thoroughly genuine human being
genuinely in love with her, Miriam froze up. From then on she had
scarcely allowed him to touch her. In some very deep sense, she was
afraid of him, and because he was so decent and hadn't the faintest idea
what was wrong, he let her get away with it, thereby following up his
worst mistake with another which was almost as bad for both of them.

Erica had no idea what it would be like for him when he found out, as he
must inevitably find out sometime, that during this past year and in
fact up until last night, while he had been denying his own desire for
Miriam's sake and his, and for the sake of their future, as he thought,
she had been the mistress of a man for whom he had so little use that he
had just described him as something out of _Esquire_. John hadn't much
vanity, but even if he had had none at all, he could not fail to realize
that he was worth a great deal more according to anybody's standards,
except those of the one person who mattered most to him, than Max Eliot.
And leaving out everything else, that would hurt. It would hurt like
hell.

As though he had guessed a little of what she was thinking he said, "I
didn't know I'd been playing second fiddle again, Eric."

He was looking down at the table, the orchestra was making a great deal
of noise and his voice was pitched so low that Erica could hardly make
out what he said. She missed the next few words altogether and then, "I
ought to have got it through my head by this time that there always is
someone else."

"Always?"

"Yes, there was another one she was in love with after Kingsley and
before she met Eliot--while I was still in England."

The whole romantic room with the long windows at one end through which
you could see a cluster of lighted buildings against the night sky, the
orchestra in its fantastic white shell, and the people dancing or
talking at their tables--all of it had dropped away from him. He had
forgotten where he was and went on sitting half-turned away from her, a
tall, fair-haired man in an officer's uniform whose blue eyes were fixed
on some point near the door leading to the bar.

"Eric."

"Yes?"

"Remember that nursery rhyme, 'The Farmer Takes a Wife' and the wife
takes somebody else who takes somebody else? Even when I was a kid I
always hated that rhyme."

The next moment Miriam and Marc were skirting the edge of the dance
floor on their way back again, Marc with his hands in his trouser
pockets and Miriam walking with her head up, her movements as light and
full of grace as ever. Except for her burning dark eyes and a slight
flush, there was no outward sign that she had eaten almost nothing for
the past twenty-four hours and had drunk far too much in the last three
and a half.

"Hello," said Marc, smiling down at Erica. He touched her fair hair
lightly with one hand and then added, "Come and dance, darling."

She was the right height for him, in fact everything about her was right
and he held her close, wishing that they would play a waltz and turn the
lights down so that he could kiss her. There was always an interval like
this after he came back to her, when everything that had been confused,
remote and difficult to understand seemed to be rearranging itself in
order, and all he could feel for the first few minutes was relief and
happiness and a kind of amazement which usually took a while to wear
off. He was in love with her, and it seemed to him that if only Erica
and he could stay together, then sooner or later he would know what it
was all about. But they could not stay together; all they had left was a
handful of days scattered over a month or possibly six weeks at the
most, although Erica did not know it yet.

"Do you love me?"

Her arm moved up a little on his shoulder and with her mouth brushing
his ear she murmured, "I adore you."

His grip tightened for a moment, then loosened a little and he said,
"Don't, darling."

"Don't what?"

"Don't melt in public, it's not done."

"You started it, I didn't."

"Damn it," said Marc, "why don't they play a waltz?" and swerved just in
time to avoid an overstuffed colonel who was sailing back and forth
across the floor, four sheets to the wind, with a rather bewildered
red-headed girl in tow.

"I thought you didn't like waltzes," said Erica.

"I don't. It's what goes with them. By the way, your sister is
definitely drunk. I wouldn't mention it, but she's bound to tell you
herself sooner or later."

"You liked her, didn't you?" asked Erica anxiously.

"Yes, darling, of course. I never saw a woman who could drink so much
and show it so little."

"This is one of her off nights," said Erica apologetically.

"Extremely off, I should say. What I liked most about her is the fact
that she likes you. By the way, she asked me if I didn't think it might
be better for you to leave home and get a place of your own to live."

Erica missed a step, said mechanically, "I'm sorry," and then answered
matter-of-factly, "She thinks I'm going to develop into one of those
spinsters who devote their lives to their parents. It's just one of her
ideas."

"Yes," said Marc.

"What else did she say?" asked Erica over his shoulder.

"Nothing much. My God," said Marc, "he's back again." The only way to
make certain of avoiding him was to dance in a circle around the outside
of the dance floor, for the colonel always tacked several feet from the
edge.

It took them several minutes to get past the orchestra where Marc could
talk again without shouting into her ear. He said, "Don't look so
worried, Eric."

"I'm not, only..."

"Only what?"

"Miriam often makes thing sound much worse than they really are."

"I haven't the remotest idea what you're talking about. If you think
your sister was giving me a blow-by-blow account of your home life..."

"That's a nice way of putting it!"

"I was speaking figuratively," said Marc with dignity. "Anyhow, the
conversation was entirely general, mostly on the subject of relative
values, only just as I was beginning to be really profound, she said she
felt sleepy."

The music stopped and they waited, hand in hand, and then the lights
went down. "Thank God. Where do you think we're least likely to be
noticed?"

"Out in the middle," said Erica, "but you don't waltz _that_ badly."

He took her in his arms without answering, steered her out to the
middle, kissed her quickly and holding her very close again, he said
with his lips against her check, "We're too tall. I don't suppose it's
ever occurred to you that there are distinct advantages in being a
dwarf?"

"Well, no, it hadn't," Erica admitted, "but I see what you mean."

They danced for a while in silence. She could feel his mood changing,
and at last he said abruptly, "Eric..."

"Yes?"

He paused and then said, "I've got something to tell you."

"Something--unpleasant?"

"Yes, darling."

She drew away from him so that she could look up into his face, his
dark, sensitive, intelligent face which she loved so much. The orchestra
was playing a waltz left over from the last war; she had been trying to
think of its name and for some idiotic reason, she went on trying to
think of its name although it did not matter in the least, and she
already knew from his expression what was coming. She said, "All right,
I'm ready."

"I'm on draft."

"Yes," said Erica. A young naval officer knocked against her left
shoulder as he danced by and she said, "I'm sorry," again, without
thinking, and asked, "When, Marc?"

"Some time around the last week in September."

About a month from now.

She said suddenly, "It's the Missouri Waltz."

"I know. There are only two waltzes I really like, except the Viennese
waltzes, of course, and that's one of them."

"What's the other?"

"'Moonlight Madonna.' It always reminds me of your--I mean, your hair
isn't really gold, it's..."

He stopped, and she said, "That means you're going to camp again,
doesn't it?"

"Yes, next Monday."

It was Wednesday already.

The Gatineau Rifles had gone over to Dieppe a few days before; time and
again she had heard Marc say, "Reinforcements for the First Battalion
overseas," but it had sounded like something which would materialize
with the opening of the Second Front some time next year, and not--next
Monday.

The Missouri Waltz went on and the colonel passed them again, this time
with a brunette in tow. She found herself thinking that he must go
through his partners a lot faster than most people, and hoped that he
had come well provided, like a racing car equipped with several extra
sets of spark plugs.

"Marc, you are going to Petawawa, aren't you?"

"Yes, darling."

He could feel the breath going out of her with relief and he said, "I'm
sorry, Eric, I should have told you that right away."

"I was so afraid it would be Camp Borden, and you'd be too far for me to
see you."

It was better to figure things out so that you knew exactly where you
stood, like collecting all your bills and adding them up when you were
broke, in order to see just how broke you were. He would get one
forty-eight hour leave, so what it amounted to was five days between now
and Monday, then forty-eight hours and finally a week or ten days'
embarkation leave--probably a week, because they were obviously rushing
it now--most of which Marc would have to spend with his parents five
hundred miles away. They had already discussed that. Five days,
forty-eight hours, say two days of his embarkation leave to be on the
safe side, and finally a last dinner together when he was on his way
through to Halifax. They could be more broke, this being August, 1942,
though not much.

"It makes nine days altogether," said Marc. "That is counting from now
to next Monday too, of course."

He paused and then went on hurriedly, evidently afraid that if he
stopped to think how this thing ought to be said, he might not be able
to say it at all, "They told me at Headquarters that I could go as soon
as I'd got everything cleaned up there. I don't think it will take more
than one day--tomorrow and maybe part of Friday. If you could get off,
then we'd have almost three days together. Sylvia wouldn't mind, would
she? I can get to Petawawa any time before midnight on Monday and..."

It seemed to him that he had been talking a long time without getting
anywhere except back to Petawawa again. The music stopped and he stood
facing her, his hands at his sides, and said, "I'm asking you to go away
with me, Eric."

"Yes," said Erica, "Yes. Darling, you didn't have to ask!"




CHAPTER VII


Through the open windows of the bedroom they could hear the church clock
striking in the village down at the other end of the lake, and Erica
said wonderingly, "It's three o'clock." So five hours had flowed by them
uncounted, into the past, for she remembered that the clock had been
striking ten as they opened the door of Marc's room. Before that, there
had only been one brief interval since they had left Montreal when she
had known what time it was. They had gone for a swim as soon as they
arrived at the hotel, drifted for a while in a canoe, and then spent
what was left of the afternoon lying in their bathing suits on the float
anchored off-shore. Someone had called to them from the beach, "It's
half past seven and the dining-room closes at eight; if you want any
dinner, you'd better hurry."

The lake was in a valley with the Laurentian mountains rising steeply
all around the edge except at the other end where the rise began farther
back, leaving enough more or less level ground for the village. The
hillsides were green, and across the lake there were a lot of small
houses up and down on different levels, like brightly painted toys.

Above them as they lay on the float, up a path like a stairway with
broad, grassy steps, was the hotel, a long half-timbered building from
which you could look down on the lake or out over the mountains, north,
west and south. The hotel stood with its back to the east, and the road
wound its way through the Laurentians and then down a steep slope to the
back door, so that you came into a small lobby on the second floor and
went downstairs to get to the front door facing the lake, and the path
to the beach.

There was a stone-paved terrace with small tables under orange and
yellow umbrellas where they had sat for a while after dinner drinking
coffee and then a brandy, watching the sunset and the slowly moving,
slowly changing reflections in the water. The lights had come on one by
one in the little houses across the lake, but before the moon rose they
had come upstairs. Erica had heard the village clock striking the first
of the ten notes as Marc opened the door, and the last sound to reach
her from the outside world was a whippoorwill calling from the bush
somewhere behind the hotel. After that there was silence and she was in
his arms at last.

As she lay beside him later, individuality began to return and take
form; she could feel the outlines growing clearer and more firm but it
was a new mold, subtly different from the old one. She wondered if you
got a new one each time and was on the point of asking Marc, but it was
all rather involved and difficult to explain, and instead she went to
sleep.

"Hello," said Marc.

"Hello. Have I been asleep long?"

"I don't know."

"Have you?"

He drew his arm out from under her and sat up, rubbing it. "No, I've
just been looking at you."

Erica also sat up, asking anxiously, "Have you got a cramp?"

He shook his head. "Just stiff."

"Why didn't you shove me off?"

"Because I didn't want to." He paused, listening, and remarked, "Romeo
and Juliet had a nightingale but all we get is a whippoorwill.
Persistent, isn't he?"

"Maybe it's a different one."

"I don't think so. He always goes flat on the second note."

"He may have a slight cold," said Erica. "I remember thinking he
probably had when we first came up, so I guess it must be the same one."
She settled back on the pillow again while Marc took two cigarettes from
the table beside the bed and lit them, and finally Erica said candidly,
"I don't see how even a whippoorwill can expect to get anywhere with a
voice like that. He might just as well give up and go home.
Incidentally, it was a lark, not a nightingale--remember?"

She repeated softly,

            "'It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
            Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.'"

"Go on," said Marc.

"What with?"

"Shakespeare."

She thought a moment, looking up at the ceiling, and then said,

          "'O fortune, fortune! All men call thee fickle;
          If thou art fickle what dost thou with him
          That is renowned for faith? Be fickle, fortune;
          For then, I hope, you wilt not keep him long....'

"I don't think I particularly care for that bit after all," said Erica
after a moment's silence.

"I wasn't listening to the words," said Marc, "It's your voice. Did I
ever tell you what a lovely voice you have?"

"No, I don't think so. You may tell me now if you like."

"Some other time." He kissed her shoulder and the hollow at the base of
her throat and then lifting his head to listen again he said,
"Everything is sort of suspended. It's so quiet, Eric... even our
whippoorwill seems to have gone off the air for the time being."

He pulled the pillows up behind his head and turned so that he could see
her better. "Are you sleepy?"

"No, are you?"

He shook his head.

"When _do_ we sleep?" asked Erica without much interest.

"Later," he said vaguely, paused, and then added, "Probably much later."

Erica moved over so that she was lying with her head on his shoulder and
observed in a detached tone, "You know, you're going to be in a shocking
condition when you arrive at camp Monday."

"They must be used to it by this time."

After another brief silence she asked suddenly, "What were you like when
you were a little boy?"

"Why?"

"You've told me a lot, but there are still too many gaps. It's like a
jig-saw puzzle with half the pieces missing; I want a whole picture, not
one full of holes."

"Where shall I start?"

"Well..." She thought, and then asked, "Have you always lived in the
same house?" He nodded. "What's it like?"

"It's just a house, with a big veranda in front and a lot of trees
around it, and a garden at the back that slopes slightly down toward the
garage, so in winter when the snow is melting, the water in front of the
garage is about a foot deep. David and I used to get hold of some planks
every year and paddle around on them till we fell off. It was
wonderful," he said reminiscently. "The water was good and muddy."

Erica wanted to know about the inside of the house and after struggling,
Marc finally produced the information that the sitting-room contained
some ferns or something in brass pots, and a canary named Mike that
never sang.

"How long have you had Mike?"

"Oh, years. He must be pretty old by now."

After trying to visualize a sitting-room furnished with brass pots and
one aging canary, Erica gave up. "What about your room?"

He was much more satisfactory on the subject of his own room. He even
told her that there was a large spot on one corner of the carpet where
years ago, the afternoon plane on the Moscow-Zagreb line running above
his desk had come down too low, picked up a bottle of ink and deposited
it somewhere in Transylvania.

"Of course that was around 1922 when the airplane industry was still
pretty young and almost anything was like to happen."

Erica laughed and then asked, "How did the planes work?"

"On wires. They had hooks on the nose and tail so you could attach them
to the wire on one side of the room and they'd shoot down the slope to
the landing-field on the other. I kept building more planes and rigging
more wires and our maid kept complaining to Mother that whenever she
tried to get in there to clean, the wires either caught in her hair or
tripped her up. Mother was sympathetic but that was about as far as she
was willing to go. For the first time in my life I seemed to be learning
geography, accidentally, of course, but she'd realized by then that
accidentally was the only way I was ever likely to learn any. Then David
came home from his first year at medical school and I lost interest in
airplanes and began dissecting frogs all over the house and filling my
room with bottles containing various forms of animal life, more or less
preserved in alcohol."

"What happened to the less preserved ones?"

"Mother used to go into my room and remove them when I was out," he
said, sighing. "I remember being particularly annoyed about a small
mud-puppy which vanished when I was out fishing. Mud-puppies are pretty
rare and it had taken me weeks of digging around in swamps and streams
before I finally found one. I felt that its scarcity value should have
outweighed its smell. Mother didn't."

He said thoughtfully, "You know, I've always wondered what Mother did
with those things. Do you suppose a young mud-puppy, slightly over-ripe,
would burn easily?"

"I shouldn't think so."

"I must ask her some time."

"What's her name?"

"Maria," he said, giving it the German pronunciation. "How are the
gaps?"

"Filling up nicely, thank you."

"Mine aren't," Marc pointed out.

Erica was more interested in her own gaps than in his, and she asked,
"When did you first decide you wanted to be a lawyer?"

"I don't know. I must have been pretty small anyhow. I used to sit on
the back fence and look at the Algoma Hills and dream of being a judge.
I don't know what gave me the idea of going on the Bench either, it must
have been something I'd read."

There it is again, she thought, as the stone wall which had appeared for
the first time that day back in June when Marc had said, "They don't
take Jews," suddenly turned up again in front of her. She knew by now
that there was no way of getting through it, over it or around it, but
she had not yet learned to take it for granted. Whenever she was
confronted with it she always stopped and stared for a moment, while the
conversation went on without her.

Marc, however, having been brought up with it, barely gave it a glance.
He said, "By the time I got cured of that idea it was too late to change
my mind," and then asked immediately, reverting to his own gaps again,
"What did you want to do when you grew up?"

"I wanted to be a conductor."

"On a tram?"

"Certainly not," said Erica indignantly. "I wanted to conduct an
orchestra."

"And what happened?"

"Nothing, that was the trouble. I took theory and harmony and tried
awfully hard, but no matter how hard I tried, I always ended up at the
top of the class in English and at the bottom in music, so finally I got
discouraged."

"Did you collect anything?"

"Yes. Later on I collected rocks."

"What kind of rocks?"

"Any kind of rocks. After giving up music, I'd decided I wanted to be a
geologist."

"And what happened that time?"

Erica sighed, leaned over to reach the ash-tray on the small table
beside him, then back on the pillows again she remarked sadly, "Nothing
happened then either. I took various courses at McGill and tried awfully
hard, but I still ended up at the head of my year in English and the
bottom in geology, so then I..."

"You decided to be a journalist."

"No, I decided to get married."

He looked at her, rather startled, and then said, his face clearing,
"Oh, yes, I remember. You told me you were engaged to someone who was
killed in a motor accident. That must have been pretty tough... how
old were you?"

"Twenty-one. We were supposed to be married in June after I'd graduated.
Well, I did graduate, but he was killed two weeks before the wedding."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Yes," said Erica.

At the end she remarked, "It seems now as though it had all happened to
someone else, because I'm not the same person now that I was then. My
whole life would have been different if I'd married him. I like it
better the way it is, not just because it is this way, but because I've
had to develop more and work harder and adapt myself to life, rather
than arrange things so that it would more or less adapt itself to me.
You see, he had quite a lot of money, and I don't know what would have
happened to us, but we would probably have been much too comfortable for
our own good."

"How old was he?"

"Twenty-six."

"What was his name?"

"Eric Gardiner."

"Any relation to John?"

"Yes, his older brother. That was the way John got to know Miriam,
though we'd always vaguely known each other." Leaning across him toward
the bedside table again, she said, "You might put that ash-tray where I
can reach it, darling."

This time he caught and held her against him, murmuring into her hair,
"Why should I? It's much nicer this way."

When he finally let her go he said reflectively, "You know, Eric, this
is one of the best things in life...."

"What is?"

"Just talking. Maybe it's the only time when it's really easy to talk,
because you're so mixed up with someone else that you're not sure which
of you is which, and it's like talking to yourself."

"Is it always like this?"

"No, of course it isn't. Why?"

"Because I don't mind the idea of your having made love to other women
before you met me--at least, not _much_--but I would object to your
having got mixed up with them so you didn't know which was you and which
was several other people. I mean it sounds sort of collective."

"Yes, it does, doesn't it? It sounds awful. I think I'm insulted, as a
matter of fact, or I would be if there were any truth in it."

"Isn't there any?" asked Erica hopefully.

"Not an atom of truth. I've never been mixed up with anyone but you."

"How do you like it?"

His expression changed as he looked at her and he said under his breath,
"You know how much I like it, darling."

"Yes," said Erica faintly, and putting both her arms around him she
said, "Well, kiss me, for heaven's sake."

After a while he said, looking up at the ceiling, "I wasn't just
talking, when I told you that you'd never happened to me before and I
know nothing like you will ever happen to me again. Life is pretty
average, on the whole, and even when you fall in love, you feel the way
most everybody else has felt at some time or other. You only hit
perfection by accident. It's like a sweep-stake, trying doesn't get you
anywhere and the odds are a million to one against the accident taking
place. Have you ever been absolutely happy?" he asked suddenly. "I mean
as though the whole world were an orchestra and instead of playing more
or less off key, for once in your life you managed to be in complete
harmony and for one day or just maybe for a couple of hours, everything
was exactly right?"

"Yes, once," said Erica.

"Once for me too."

"Tell me about yours first."

He said, "It was four years ago, in October, 1938, when I was staying
with David on a fishing trip. At least I was fishing but he wasn't.
Morning after morning we'd start out together and then someone would
fall off a horse or decide to have a baby or something and I'd end up by
going alone. Finally, the second to last day I was there, by some sort
of coincidence nobody needed a doctor for once and off we went. It was
early in October, one of those autumn days when everything seems to be
standing still, holding its breath and waiting..."

He broke off, trying to remember, with his eyes fixed on the mirror over
the chest of drawers. The mirror dissolved into a window through which
he could see, not the soft rise and fall of the Laurentians all around
them, but the high, clear-cut barrier of the Algoma mountains, guarding
the North. He said, "I've got it. Listen:

                   'Along the line of smoky hills
                     The crimson forest stands
                   And all the day the blue-jay calls
                     Throughout the autumn lands.

                  Now by the brook the maple leans
                    With all his glory spread
                  And all the sumachs on the hills
                    Have turned their green to red.'

"It was like that. We walked through the bush and fished for a while and
then had lunch and fished some more. We came out by a small lake just at
sunset, and then we went home. That was all."

His eyes left the mirror and came back to her face and he said, "What
about your day?"

"It wasn't a day, it was an evening in Paris the last time I was there,
when Mimi and I were walking down Champs Elyses all the way from the
Arc de Triomphe to Place de la Concorde. Every time a car went by it lit
up the lower branches of the trees and then it was dark with just the
street lamps and the moon again. Mimi was just as happy as I was. We
couldn't even talk."

"Paris will never look like that again, Eric...."

"It wasn't just Paris, it was the whole world."

"...or the woods back of David's place in October, 1938." A moment
later he said, looking straight ahead of him, "Or anyone else after
you."

Days later, when she was trying to locate the exact moment at which she
had received the first warning, the moment which marked the beginning of
the final stage in their relationship, she was to remember the way he
had said, "Or anyone else after you." There was no hope in his voice at
that moment, either for a future with Erica or a future without her,
only the first indication of his acceptance of a world in which the
chances were still a million to one against his ever managing to be in
complete harmony again.

The moment went by unnoticed at the time, for immediately after he said,
"October, 1938," in a different tone, and after another pause he
repeated it a third time, as though the words were the key to another
memory of which all he could recall so far was its purely evil
associations.

Not October, Erica thought. He was a month out.

She said, "May I have a cigarette, please?" He handed her the package
and she took one, and after waiting a little, she asked for a match.

He said absently, "I'm sorry," and gave her the packet of matches.

"Our whippoorwill's back again." There was another pause and she asked,
"Who wrote that poem?"

"Wilfrid Campbell."

It was no use. You could not hope to keep it out, even out of a hotel in
the Laurentians at three o'clock in the morning, by talking about
whippoorwills and poetry and asking for cigarettes and matches, and at
last she said, "I know what you're thinking of. You've got the date
wrong; it wasn't October, it was November, 1938."

"Yes," said Marc. "Yes, of course it was."

He put the ash-tray down on the bed between them and remarked, "I'm glad
it wasn't October, that would have been carrying escapism too far.
Besides, I'd hate to have my pet memory go sour on me." He turned his
head and smiled at her and said, "I don't know what I'm talking about."

"You hadn't any relatives in Germany, had you?"

"Yes, some of my mother's family, particularly my first cousin. He was
about my age, and when I was over there in 1932 I stayed with them and
he and I went on a hiking trip in Switzerland together. We were both
students then. Afterwards he took a degree in science and another one in
law and got a job working on patents in one of the big chemical firms.
He was pretty brilliant and I guess the Nazis just decided to overlook
him--anyhow, he and his family managed to get along somehow or other
until November, '38."

He said aimlessly, "I was always arguing with them about getting out but
they wouldn't, of course, because even in 1932 there were fewer
restrictions in Germany than here. I mean, they were a part of things."

"What happened to him?"

"I don't know. They said he'd been 'shot trying to escape' from a
concentration camp. My uncle was arrested at the same time and last year
my aunt and Hedy, the daughter, were sent to Poland. They were the only
ones left."

As soon as she had heard him say "October, 1938" the second time, she
had known that there was something more than the fact that November,
1938 had been a black month, by far the blackest until much later, but
she had not known that there was a family with whom he had lived and a
cousin about his own age with whom he had gone hiking in Switzerland.

He was lying on his back looking up at the ceiling, and she could feel
him drawing steadily farther and farther away from her until he seemed
to be wholly detached. There began to be something strange and
unfamiliar about him, and she was seized with panic, wondering what she
was doing here beside him where she so obviously did not belong. His
isolation was so complete that it was as though he had entirely finished
with her. In despair, and overwhelmed by the one impulsion to cover
herself with something beside the sheet which covered both of them, in a
single movement she caught up her nightdress which had been thrown
across the foot of the bed and slipped it over her shoulders.

"What are you doing that for?"

She was so startled by the sound of his voice that she stopped,
transfixed, with her arms over her head. "Because--because you--Oh!"
said Erica helplessly. "The damn thing's got twisted. Help me on with it
and don't ask silly questions."

"Not until you tell me why."

"I feel indecent."

She got her head out at last and their eyes met. They looked at each
other in silence until Marc said, "I'm sorry, Eric."

"It's all right."

"No," he said, shaking his head. Still looking at her he said, "You
certainly do get it both ways, don't you?" and a moment later he
suddenly pulled her down beside him and said again with his face against
hers, "I'm sorry, darling, I'm an awful fool. I didn't mean to desert
you like that...."

"Particularly with nothing on," she said in a muffled voice. She clung
to him until it was really all right again, and then raising her head so
that she could look into his eyes she said, "I want to tell you
something, Marc. I'm not afraid of other people, nothing they say or do
can get inside me where it really hurts if I don't let it. I'm only
afraid of one thing...."

"Yes, go on."

"I'm afraid of being shut out." She sat up, holding his hand tightly in
both hers and said, "Please start by assuming that I _can_ understand
and not that I can't. It's terribly important, I think it's more
important to me than anything else. If you say or even let yourself
think that I can't understand something simply because I'm not Jewish,
then you put me in a position where I'm utterly helpless. It's like..."
She stopped and then said, "It's like tying me to a chair and then
blaming me because I can't get up and walk. I've got quite a lot of
imagination and I don't think I'm stupid or insensitive...."

Her grip on his hand tightened still more and she said, "Give me a
chance to understand and if I let you down, then--well, _then_ you can
shut me out. I guess I'll have deserved it. It's not my fault that I'm
not Jewish and I can't do anything about it, but surely..." She
stopped again, and with her eyes and her voice full of tears she said,
"Surely the fact that I love you so much makes up for it!"

He had not once taken his eyes from her face. He said roughly, "Eric,
for God's sake!" and took her in his arms again.

She said at last, "Darling, you've got a grip like a steel trap and
you're hurting me."

He relaxed a little, smoothed back a strand of fair hair which had
fallen over her forehead and smiled down at her. He was still somewhat
unnerved. "Are you all right?"

Erica nodded. "Are you?"

"Well, almost," said Marc. "You have an awful effect on me, Eric.
Whenever you say that you love me, I feel as though I'm being turned
inside out, only this time it was worse because of the build-up. Do you
know what we need?"

"No, what?"

"Some kind of insulation."

"Why?"

"I mean just to protect ourselves when we're together so we won't feel
so much."

"I don't think I want to be insulated," said Erica, after considering
it. "Probably it all goes together, so that if..."

"You have the most irritating habit of starting to say something
interesting and then stopping in the middle. However, I see what you
mean." He kissed her and then asked, "Do you still feel indecent?"

"No."

"All right, take that thing off again then."

He got up and went over to the window. "It's a marvelous night, Eric,"
he said, his eyes following the course of the Milky Way through the sky
until the stream of stars disappeared over the dark shoulder of the
mountain across the lake. The lake itself was full of moonlight and
there was a light breeze which had turned the water in the path of the
moon to frozen silver.

He came back and stood looking down at her face and her hair spread out
on the pillow.

"You belong to a museum," said Erica, for there was such perfection of
line and form in the molding of his body that he seemed unreal in the
dimly lit room, like a figure out of Greece two thousand years before.
"Except for your face," she added. "Your face doesn't go with the rest
of you. One of your ancestors must have got mixed up with a good
Austrian peasant...."

Her voice died away in the stillness of the room as he went on standing
there, and then suddenly took the top of the sheet with one hand and
pulled it down to her feet. "I want to remember the way you look," he
said, his voice so low that she could hardly hear it.

She lay motionless under his eyes and then turned over on her face and
began to cry again. He dropped down on the bed beside her and put his
arm around her and said, his voice shaking, "Don't, Eric, please, my
dearest, please don't. You can't cry again now, it's only Friday."

But it was not because there was so little time left that she was
crying, although that was part of it. There was something else which she
did not know how to explain, even to herself, except that in this one
night she seemed to have lost what little had remained of her
detachment; she had taken on his vulnerability without his endurance,
and she was crying for herself as well as for Marc.

She put both her arms around him and went on crying until there were no
more tears left, and after a while both of them had forgotten how it had
started or what it was all about. When the church clock struck five in
the village at the other end of the lake, neither of them heard it.




CHAPTER VIII


"Our Government is really wonderful," remarked Sylvia as the telephone
rang on Erica's desk at half past eleven on Monday morning.

"You take it, Bubbles," said Erica. The train from Ottawa where she had
spent Sunday night with Marc had been late arriving in Montreal; the
first edition had gone to press ten minutes after she had reached her
office and she was still struggling to catch up. "I won't talk to
anybody."

"The Consumer's Division of the Department of Agriculture," continued
Sylvia, although no one seemed to be listening, "has just produced
another masterpiece in the form of a cake which takes no butter, no
eggs, and no sugar. Now why not just no cake, and be done with it?"

"You might write and ask them," said Erica absently.

"It's for you, Eric," said Weathersby, adding as Erica was about to
protest, "I know, but it's someone who claims she's your sister. You'd
better investigate."

"Tell her to hold on a minute," said Erica, still typing. "Bubbles..."

"Yeah?"

"Have you got my cigarettes again?"

"What do you mean, 'again'?" he demanded, looking injured.

"Never mind. Hand them over."

"It probably _is_ her sister," Sylvia pointed out to him as he passed
her desk bearing Erica's cigarettes. "At your age, you've no reason to
be so suspicious. You ought to be in a good school somewhere," she added
vaguely, "learning about cricket, instead of learning about life in a
newspaper office. Where are those wedding pictures, Bubbles?"

"On Eric's desk. And I already know all about cricket, I finished school
last year. Eric..."

"Mm?"

"Do you want me to do the stuff on war-time canning?"

"I suppose you know all about canning too?" inquired Sylvia.

"I'll bet I know just as much about it as you do. Don't I, Eric?"

"Don't you what?"

"Don't I know as much about canning as Sylvia does?"

"Leave me out of it," said Erica. "I'm busy."

Weathersby returned to his desk, regarded Sylvia thoughtfully for a
while, and asked finally, "Now supposing you wanted to make jelly...
how would you go about it?"

"What kind of jelly?"

"Any kind."

"Couldn't we start with jam and work up to it gradually?"

"We did," said Weathersby patiently. "We did the jam yesterday. Today,
we are going to make jelly. So what would be the first step?"

"The first step would be to read the Government bulletin on war-time
canning, just like you," she added pointedly. "If you can understand it,
presumably anyone can. Give," she said, holding out her hand.

"I haven't read it yet," said Weathersby without moving.

"Oh? How did you get to be such an authority on making jelly, then?"

"Because I've watched my mother. The trick is to get it to set so it
doesn't come out all runny."

"Not really," said Sylvia. "Did you figure all that out for yourself?"

"And just how would _you_ get it to set?"

"I'll bite," said Sylvia. "How would I?"

"Well, if you knew anything about canning, which you obviously don't,
you'd mix it with wax."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You'd mix the fruit with melted wax--after you'd strained it, of
course."

"I see," said Sylvia. She regarded the long stringy figure of Weathersby
Canning with some admiration and then said at last, "Bubbles, how would
you like to have a column of your own? We could call it..." She
paused, her chin on her hand, and then suggested, "We could call it
'Canning on Canning.' If you were given a sufficiently free hand, the
results ought to be genuinely interesting."

"I don't know," said Weathersby doubtfully. "I don't think I know enough
about it to keep it up indefinitely." He picked up the Government
bulletin, glanced through a few pages and said, "Well, can I do it,
Eric?"

"Ask Sylvia."

"What is it?" said Sylvia. "A press release?"

Weathersby nodded.

"O.K., go ahead and rehash it but stick to what it says there and don't
put in any of your mother's bright ideas. We don't want all our readers
to be poisoned."

"Why not?" said Weathersby. "They wouldn't be poisoned all at once; a
lot of them wouldn't get around to eating the stuff till sometime next
spring. I mean, it would be so gradual that no one would notice."

"No one but the circulation department and they'd start noticing in a
couple of days. The circulation department is unusually sensitive."

"What's the matter with you two?" asked Erica, finally ripping the sheet
from her typewriter with one hand and reaching for her phone with the
other.

"I wouldn't know about Weathersby," said Sylvia dreamily, "but I'm
getting married."

Erica's hand dropped from the phone and she said, "Mike?" Sylvia nodded.
"Oh, darling, I'm so glad!"

"Thanks, Eric. I still feel sort of dizzy," she remarked apologetically.
"We're going to be married a week from Saturday. We're only inviting a
few people--just you and Marc and one or two others. Do you think Marc
will be able to make it?"

Erica shook her head. "He won't get any leave till the week after. I'll
come, though. That doesn't mean you've given up your job, does it?"

"No such luck. Mike's joined the Army. We'll have a week together
somewhere and then he's going to camp."

"He'll be here for months yet, anyhow," said Erica, her face changing.
"You're lucky."

"After all," said Weathersby, talking to himself out loud. "What
difference does it make? She's probably died of old age by this time, so
why bother?"

"Why bother what? Who are you talking about?" asked Erica.

"Why bother answering your telephone."

"Good heavens," said Erica, and grabbed her phone. "Hello, Mimi...
are you still there?"

"Hello, Eric. This seems to be a lousy time to call you...."

"No, it's all right. I was finishing up a job and then Sylvia suddenly
announced that she was getting married."

"Who to?"

"Mike O'Brien, one of the reporters."

"Wish her luck for me," said Miriam. "How are you, Eric?"

Erica looked blankly at Weathersby who was sitting with his feet on his
desk in the corner, engrossed in the Government bulletin on war-time
canning, and she said, "I guess I'm all right."

"When did you get in?"

"On the ten-thirty from Ottawa, only it was late. Marc's train left just
after mine so I didn't have to..." She stopped, and asked, "What do
you want, Mimi?"

"I wanted you to lunch with me."

"All right. I'll meet you at that Italian restaurant round the corner
from the cathedral at one. It's just off Place d'Armes..."

"I know where it is," said Miriam. "Thanks, Eric."

Erica rang off, sat for a moment, then straightened up, drawing in her
breath, and asked, "Where's the stuff on the Wrens?"

"On your desk underneath that pile of pictures," said Weathersby. "Are
you feeling all right, Eric?"

She stared at him and then said suddenly, "Shut up."

"O.K.," said Weathersby. "O.K." He glanced at Sylvia, raised one eyebrow
and demanded, "Why Mike, for God's sake?"

"And what's the matter with Mike?"

"He's got red hair. If I were a woman, I wouldn't marry a guy with red
hair who can't even afford to pay for his own lunch. Well, anyhow," said
Weathersby kindly, "congratulations. I hope you'll be happy on relief."

"Thank you, Weathersby," said Sylvia. "Just for that, I'll allow you to
write up my wedding. Eric..."

"Yes?"

"I'll do the Wren story for you."

"No, thanks, I'll do it. What's this?" she asked, referring to a pile of
photographs. "Don't tell me we had that many weddings left over!"

Erica started to work again. When the final edition was ready to go to
press, she began to line up her material for Tuesday's first edition.
The thing was to go on working and not to look up, for fear you might
see him standing there and hear the sound of his voice and feel the
touch of his hands, not to stop for a moment for fear you would be
caught. The thing to do was to go on working and not to think of the
future which contained forty-eight hours, one week-end, and probably
nothing more. Some women are lucky; they say good-by and knew exactly
what they're up against--the simple, straightforward, uncomplicated
all-or-nothing alternative of life or death. If he lives, he comes back;
if he's killed, he doesn't. But Marc may live or he may not, and if he
lives he may come back, or he may not.

Later, put it off until later. Get your mind on something else.

She looked down at the typewritten page in front of her which was headed
"Women's War Group Extends Work," and a moment later she heard her own
voice call out, "Sylvia!"

"Yes," said Sylvia, starting. "Yes, what is it?"

"I... I don't..." She put one hand to her forehead, wondering what
it was she had meant to say. Sylvia was looking at her in alarm, and it
was necessary to say something, so she asked, "Where's the syndicate
stuff?"

"On your desk, Eric." She got up, crossed the room and standing in front
of Erica she said, "Are you sure you're feeling all right?"

"Yes, I'm sorry."

She said, "He hasn't gone yet, Eric. Besides, they get postponements--my
brother was home three times after his embarkation leave."

"Was he?" Erica looked up at her for a moment, and then said, "It isn't
that."

"Why don't you go and get some lunch?"

"What time is it?"

"Five past one. Weren't you supposed to meet Miriam at one?"

Erica remembered Miriam then, and she said, "My gosh, I must be going
nuts."

She found Miriam sitting at a small table by the wall which was
decorated with a large colored photograph of the Bay of Naples. She was
wearing a white dress, and in spite of the heat which swept into the
half-shuttered restaurant from the blazing street outside, whenever the
door was opened, and seeped through cracks when it was closed, her face
was chalky and she looked cold.

She cut short Erica's apologies for once more keeping her waiting, with,
"Let's order and get it over with." When the waitress had come and gone
and Erica asked if there was something wrong, instead of answering she
asked, "How was your week-end, Eric?"

"It was almost perfect."

Her eyes left Miriam's face, followed a waiter as he made his way down
the stuffy little room and disappeared through the swing door leading to
the kitchen, and finally came to rest at a bad oil painting of Venice
hanging on the back wall. There was nothing, no typewriter, no story of
the Wrens, no weddings or meetings, not even two familiar voices
discussing the best method of making jelly on the other side of the
room--nothing to hold her to the present and keep her from slipping back
into the past. She gave up trying and let herself go, back to the
mountain lake, the little brightly painted houses like toys on the
hillside opposite the hotel, the terrace with orange and yellow
umbrellas, the light paneled bedroom with homespun curtains and a small
lamp on the bedside table which cast a long oval shadow across the
ceiling. Everywhere she looked she saw Marc again, lying on the float
beside her, sitting in the stern of a red canoe watching the water
dripping off the blade of his paddle, stretched out on a deck chair in a
pair of dark red bathing trunks, grinning because some woman had just
remarked very audibly to her companion that he ought to be in the Army.
"What does she want me to do--wear my uniform in swimming?"

"Why 'almost'?" asked Miriam.

Her eyes left the painting of Venice on the back wall and returned to
Miriam and she said, "Because I'm not going to win after all, Mimi. I'm
going to lose."

"Why?"

"I don't know why," said Erica, having failed to think of any way of
explaining it so that it made sense. Sometime during the past three days
she had realized that Marc was tired out, that was all, but added to
everything else, sooner or later that tiredness would prove to be fatal.
He had been up against it for seventeen years, ever since he had left
home, and he had already had more than enough; he was simply not fit to
take on another and far worse struggle involving another person, when he
needed all his resources for himself. He was due to go overseas in a few
weeks, and although he had somehow contrived to get through his
officer's training, one of a total of seven out of a class of five
hundred to finish with a Q-1 rating, and by the same will power he would
somehow contrive to get through the war just as creditably, at the same
time it was not going to be easy. Of all the men Erica had ever known,
he was by nature the least adapted to military life. There are limits to
the number of demands you can make on anyone's endurance, and to expect
Marc to take on his family, his wife's family and most of his own
friends as well as hers, at this time of all times, was really to expect
too much.

"Did he say anything in particular?" asked Miriam.

"No. It wasn't anything he said or did, it was just something I..."
she paused and then said hopelessly, "something I could feel."

"You're not imagining it, are you?"

Erica shook her head.

"Then how much longer do you give it?"

"Until he goes home for the last half of his embarkation leave."

"It's too bad it's not the other way round," said Miriam. "I'd rather
you had the last half."

"It wouldn't make any difference," said Erica, looking down at the plate
of food which had appeared in front of her. "I guess I'm just hopelessly
outnumbered."

"You think his family is going to work on him, is that it?"

"I don't think it, I know it. They'll say everything he knows my family
has been saying for the past three months, only they'll have to pack it
all into three days."

He had often talked to her about his home and his own people, but she
could not remember his ever having said anything to suggest that they
would not go to work on him, and in her confused, exhausted mind, there
was only the growing fear that his family and his environment would be
as inimical to her as hers were to him, and this new realization that he
was too tired, too discouraged, and too ridden with other problems not
to give in, particularly when he knew that he might never see his
parents again. Like Erica, he was greatly attached to his father and
mother, but unlike Erica, who had believed and who had never for a
moment ceased to believe, that her parents were wrong, his whole
experience of life would lay him open to the conviction that the Reisers
were right. His parents even had the Drakes on their side. They might
not know it at the beginning, but they would find out sooner or later,
and Erica could imagine what they would make of it when they did find
out.

She said, "I wonder who's going to take the case for the defense... I
can't very well take my own case when I'm five hundred miles away.
Anyhow, it would have to be someone who's Jewish. Nobody but a Jew can
help me now."

She picked up some coleslaw on her fork and then put it down again. She
laughed and said, "That's funny, isn't it, Mimi?"

"Not particularly," said Miriam, looking at her. "Eat some lunch."

After a brief silence she said, "I suppose it hasn't even occurred to
you that there just might be someone who's Jewish and who would back you
up?"

"Don't be silly."

A moment later she said suddenly, "Mimi, I'm going to tell you
something. Everybody else is wrong and I'm right. To the day I die, I'll
know that we should have got married and that our not marrying each
other was the worst mistake we ever made."

She laughed again and said, "Do me a favor, Mimi. When I'm dead, see
that they put on my tombstone, 'Everybody was out of step but our
Erica.' It's all right, I'm not getting hysterical."

"I wish you'd eat something," said Miriam miserably.

"It's a sort of drawing-room version of _Abie's Irish Rose_, without the
comedy relief, isn't it? Very high-class, of course, and brought up to
date with the background of World War II."

There was a fat man drinking soup a few tables away with a napkin tucked
under his chin and Erica watched him for a while. Then she said to
Miriam, "You know, all the way up the mountains in the car, I kept
wondering if the hotel people knew Marc was a Jew when they made the
reservations. I guess they usually go by the names, but 'Reiser' doesn't
sound Jewish, necessarily, and I didn't know if Marc had remembered to
volunteer the information. I looked up the hotel advertisement in the
paper but they didn't say whether their clientele was selected or not
and I didn't like to ask him about it so I just sat and worried. To be
thrown out of a hotel on arrival seemed a rather grim way of starting a
week-end. It was all right, though, so I guess he had remembered.
Incidentally, how do you suppose it's done?"

"What?"

"I mean how do they manage to work it in gracefully? Do they say, I
should like to reserve two rooms and a bath for three days beginning
Friday, the 27th, provided you have no objection to Jews,' or do they
just write an ordinary letter and stick 'By the way, I'm Jewish' in a
postscript?"

"Eric, for heaven's sake!"

"Sorry," said Erica. "But it all goes together, doesn't it?"

She tried to eat some coleslaw and then some cold salmon, but it was too
difficult to swallow and she pushed her plate away from her. After a
while she said suddenly in complete despair, "I never knew anyone who
seemed to be so alone--even with me, and I know I'm closer to him than
anyone else has ever been. But there's still something--something I
can't get through, except for a little while, and then he's on the other
side of it again, with--whatever it is--between us. He's so alone, that
I can't bear to think of it. I used to lie awake at night after he'd
gone to sleep and look at him, and just cry."

"Eric...."

"But Mimi, I want to know _why_. Marc's never done anything to
anybody...."

"It's going to get _better_, darling!" said Miriam in agony.

"Oh, sure. Sure, we're going to win the war so we can go on hanging out
our own 'Gentiles Only' signs instead of having the Nazis do it for us.
After all, that's what's known as democracy, isn't it?"

"You don't mean that, Eric." It seemed to Miriam that the most
intolerable aspect of this intolerable situation was what it was doing
to Erica and as her eyes filled with tears, she said, "Don't talk like
that. You mustn't change, Eric, you've got to go on being the same
person you've always been. You've got to, Eric...."

"Have I?" said Erica. "Why?" As Miriam did not seem to be able to think
of a reason she remarked, "You just want me to go on being a sucker.
Remember, you said there was one in every family."

"No," said Miriam almost inaudibly. "No, that's not what I mean." She
took a mouthful of food, then sipped some water and went on more
steadily, "If you don't pull yourself together, Eric, you'll go to
pieces."

"Not for a while," said Erica matter of factly. "Not till Marc says,
'Well, so long, Eric, see you after the war.'" She paused and then
observed, "What a relief that will be to Charles and Mother. If Marc
goes overseas by the end of September, they might still even have time
for a holiday." As she saw Miriam's expression, she said, "They bought
their share, Mimi, and provided I can arrange not to go to pieces in
front of them, they're not even going to have to pay for it. So stop
worrying. What are you crying for?"

"Oh, shut up," said Miriam. She found a handkerchief in her bag, a very
fine linen handkerchief with the initial "M" worked into an intricate
embroidered design in one corner and she glanced at it, remarking, "Max
gave me that," and dried her eyes. Looking first at Erica's plate and
then her own, she said, "Since neither of us seems to be much good at
eating today, we might have a drink."

"Yes, we might."

"What do you want?" asked Miriam, beckoning to the waitress.

"Rye and water."

"Two rye and water, please," Miriam said.

There was a family of Italians, mother, father and three children, all
eating spaghetti at the next table. Erica said, looking at them, "You've
got to put it behind you and forget about it." A moment later she was
rather surprised to hear herself adding suddenly, "And you've got to
marry John."

Miriam shook her head smiling, her face stiff, and said, "It's going to
be a bit too much this time, Eric, even for John."

At that moment the waitress appeared with two glasses on a tray,
explaining that they were out of rye and that she had brought Scotch,
which cost ten cents more. "That's all right," said Erica. When the
waitress had gone she asked, still rather surprised, "Do you _want_ to
marry him, Mimi?"

"I don't know," she said helplessly. "I'm so muddled, I don't know
anything any more. What difference does it make? It's too late anyhow."

"Well," said Erica. She straightened up and said, "Well, here's to you,
darling. Keep your chin up."

Ren had taken his sister to the hospital at noon and shortly before
midnight, Madeleine's son was born, the first Catholic Drake since the
time of Charles the Second.

"We might just as well never have bothered to leave England," observed
Madeleine's father-in-law somewhat gloomily when the excitement had worn
off, Madeleine was reported to be already peacefully asleep, and the
four Protestant Drakes were on their way upstairs to bed. "The Holy
Roman Church always catches up with you again, sooner or later, even if
it takes them three hundred years. When can we see Madeleine and the
baby?" he asked his wife.

"They might let you look at the baby through the nursery door--it's made
of glass," she added hastily, "but you won't be able to see Madeleine
for a few days."

"Why not?" demanded Charles.

"Don't be silly, Charles. Even if she is unusually well, they won't let
her have visitors for the first week."

"A week!" said Charles, exploding. "I'm not a visitor, damn it!" He
thought, and then asked suddenly, "They wouldn't make her father wait a
week, would they? Or her mother?"

"You're not her father and mother," Miriam pointed out.

"No? Well, I'm all the father she's got, and if the rest of you are
willing to let a bunch of bureaucratic nurses keep you hanging around
the outside of Madeleine's room for a week trying to see her through a
glass door..."

"It's the nursery that has a glass door, Charles," interrupted his wife
patiently.

"...while they unwind a lot of unnecessary and ridiculous red tape,"
continued Charles obliviously, "I'm not. And that goes for the baby
too."

"Charles, do be sensible for once! It's not red tape, it's a question of
taking the most ordinary precautions...."

"Precautions against what?"

"Against infection, of course."

"I'm not infectious." He thought some more and finally admitted
grudgingly, "Well, maybe you're right about the baby. If I have to look
at my grandson through a glass door, then I'll look at him through a
glass door, but I'm not going to have Madeleine lying there for a week
seeing nobody but that ass Ren and a lot of sour-faced nurses, and
that's final. _Final_," he repeated, giving it a bit more emphasis.
"She's probably lonely, lonely as the devil, with Tony..." He left
the sentence unfinished, shaking his head, and then announced, "I'll go
and see her on my way home from the office tomorrow."

"Don't you think someone should warn Royal Victoria Hospital that
Charles is impending?" Miriam asked her mother as Charles disappeared
into his study.

"What difference would it make?" asked Margaret Drake wearily. "He'll
get in anyhow, he always does."

His wife was right. Charles arrived at the hospital next day with a long
box of flowers, a bottle of his best brandy "for emergencies," two
baskets of fruit, his portable radio and a rather startling bright pink
marabou bed-jacket which he had noticed in a shop at noon-hour, when he
was on his way back to the office after lunching at his club. For the
baby he had brought a large pale blue teddy bear. In the corridor he
passed a room which was evidently the nursery, came to a dead stop and
discovered that a newcomer labeled "Drake" had been placed most
conveniently a few feet away on the other side of the glass door. He
shifted some of his packages and stood for a while, admiring what he
could see of the first Catholic Drake since the time of Charles the
Second, which wasn't much, and then advanced down the corridor to the
door of Madeleine's room where he knocked gently with one foot, informed
the nurse that he was Mr. Drake and would be staying ten minutes, and
walked straight in.

That afternoon Erica had withdrawn all her savings from the bank and
sold two of her three Victory bonds, having interviewed the doctor whose
name had been given her by Sylvia, who had got it from Mike, who had got
it from someone else. As she had said to Miriam, people who work on
newspapers know practically everything, and what they don't know they
can usually find out. To her astonishment, it was the name of a doctor
who was fairly well-known and the larger part of whose practice was
perfectly legitimate, so that up to the last moment, Erica was sure that
someone had blundered and that she had got into the wrong office. The
doctor seemed to understand her well enough, however, in spite of her
stammering and evasions, told her the price and made an appointment for
"her friend" for ten o'clock the following morning, which meant that for
most of the day, and except for Mary who would be busy downstairs,
Miriam and she would have the house to themselves.

It was not as bad as it might have been if she had not been able to pay
such a price, but it was still bad enough. It was worse than anything
Erica had imagined; she was appalled at the responsibility she had taken
on herself, although she knew that it was the only way out, and for
three days her mind rocked back and forth between her fear for Miriam on
the one hand and her fear for her mother and father on the other, if by
some ill chance or through her father's unpredictable intuitive
processes, they should fail to believe Miriam's story that she was
simply feeling under the weather, when they returned home at dinner-time
on Wednesday to find her in bed.

Except for a brief interval on Wednesday night after Charles and
Margaret Drake had gone to bed, having noticed nothing out of the
ordinary, when all in one moment of overwhelming relief, Erica realized
that it was over and done with and between the two of them, they had got
away with it, from beginning to end, she had almost no sense of reality.
It had started as a nightmare, it continued as a nightmare, and it
finished as a nightmare from which she gradually awoke over a period of
days. By the week-end, if it had not been for the effect on Miriam,
Erica would almost have been prepared to deny, even to herself, that it
had ever happened.

On Monday night she had dinner with Ren in the flat which he had been
sharing with his sister again since Anthony had been overseas. Until
late in the evening she found it difficult to keep her mind on what he
was saying; she was too tired, too lonely for Marc and too uneasy about
Miriam, who was looking as though the bottom had dropped out of her
world and as though she were feeling her way along, trying to find
something solid to put her feet on.

It was about eleven when Ren elected to tell her almost casually that
he was in love with her and still hoped to marry her, as he simply could
not believe that she would ever marry Marc. His reasons for not
believing it seemed to be much like those of Charles Drake and almost
everyone else, so she found herself once more in the position of having
to listen to the same arguments all over again. It never seemed to occur
to anyone that you might be deathly tired of simply listening.

She interrupted him at last and tried to give him some idea of what was
actually going on. Toward the end she said, "I can't do anything. I
can't convince Marc unless I can convince my family first, and nothing's
going to convince them. Marc won't be the cause of a final break between
us. He just won't, that's all, partly because he wouldn't do that to
anyone's father and mother, and partly because he thinks that if
marrying him means that I have to give up my parents along with--well,
whatever it is you have to give up when you marry a Jewish lawyer, and
for whatever it's worth, I don't know--then it's too much altogether."

She leaned over to put out her cigarette in the ash-tray on the coffee
table beside her, and then lying back on the sofa again with her head
resting on the arm, she said, "Marc knows perfectly well what's going on
at home. I guess, like Mother and Charles and the effect they have on
me, it isn't what I say when I'm with him, it's the way I look. I'm not
much of an actress, and I'm so scared and miserable most of the time
nowadays that I guess I can't help showing it, and of course when I do,
Marc thinks he's responsible for it, that if it weren't for him, my life
would still be just like a duck-pond, and he gets just that much more
discouraged."

She stopped again, wondering why she was saying all this to Ren, whose
point of view was essentially the same as her parents' only more so,
because he wanted to marry her himself. She smiled at him
apologetically, and said finally, "So you see, Ren, my family hold all
the cards. Provided they just go on doing nothing, they can't lose, and
I guess they know it. And if you put your money on the Drakes, probably
in the long run, you won't lose either."

When she got home shortly after one, Erica found a letter from Marc
saying that he would probably have his forty-eight hour leave the
following week-end and asking her to meet him in Ottawa on Saturday
morning, and a note from her father on the hall table, telling her to
call Operator 14 at Farnham, regardless of how late it was.

Anyone using the phone in the downstairs hall could be heard all over
the house. Her father always slept with his bedroom door open, and she
went into the kitchen and dialed long distance, wondering what it was
all about. She knew no one in Farnham.

Operator 14 said, "Is that Miss Drake? It's a personal call."

"Miss Drake speaking."

"Just a moment, please. I'll connect you."

She sat on the edge of the white-topped kitchen table listening to a
faint voice repeating, "Hello, New York--New York, please--hello, New
York..." and then suddenly a man's voice said in her ear, "47
Garrison, Captain Henderson speaking."

"On your call to Miss Drake in Montreal, Miss Drake is ready. Go ahead
please."

"Hello," said Erica.

"Hello, Miss Drake, this is Jim Henderson speaking. Sorry to bother you
so late but I've been trying to get in touch with you ever since around
ten. I don't know whether you remember me or not but I met you at the
Ritz a couple of weeks ago...."

She could not remember meeting anyone named Henderson at the Ritz, but
she said, "Yes, though I'm afraid I..."

"I'm a friend of Major Gardiner's. As a matter of fact, it's about him
that I'm phoning you...."

"About John?"

"Yes, you see he..."

Erica interrupted. "I'm afraid you've got the wrong Miss Drake...."

"Oh. I was hoping you might have some idea where he is," said Captain
Henderson, his voice dropping with disappointment.

Erica said, completely at sea, "Well, I know he has a flat here--I can
give you the number if you like. And you can usually get him through
Headquarters during the day...."

"Yes, Miss Drake," he said patiently, "I know that. But what I don't
know is where he is now. He's supposed to be here. He came down on
Monday, went up to Headquarters on Saturday afternoon, and hasn't been
heard of since."

"Do you mean John is missing?" said Erica incredulously.

"If it were anyone else, I'd say 'missing' isn't the word for it!"

She said, "Just a minute, please. I'll get my sister."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I've been trying to tell you, you've got the wrong Miss Drake. John is
a friend of my sister Miriam. If you'll hold on a minute, I'll go and
wake her and find out if she knows anything...."

"I'd like to talk to her myself, if you don't mind."

"No, certainly."

Erica ran up the back stairs, down the hall and into Miriam's room where
she shook her by one shoulder saying quietly, "Wake up, Mimi--wake up,
darling!"

"I'm awake." She turned over, opened her dark eyes and asked, "What's
the matter?"

"John's missing. He's been missing for two days, apparently. Someone's
just called from Farnham--someone named Captain Henderson. He got me by
mistake. I guess he must have called the first time, after you went to
bed and Charles didn't think of asking whether he meant you or not."

She stared at Erica, fully awake now, then suddenly got up. "Which phone
is it?"

"The kitchen. I didn't want to make a noise."

"Come down with me, Eric."

She did not stop to put on shoes or a dressing-gown but rushed ahead of
Erica down the back stairs.

Into the phone Erica heard her say, "This is Miriam Drake speaking--Yes,
Captain Henderson, I remember. What's this about John? No, not since
Saturday night, but wasn't he supposed to have leave over the week-end?
Oh, I see. What!" She put out one hand, feeling for the edge of the
table so that she could lean on it, and said dully, "I'm afraid not. I
don't know where he's likely to be, except the usual places. You know
all those. Yes," she said, her voice so heavy that Erica looked at her
in alarm, "yes, I think he had. All right. As soon as you hear anything,
would you let me know, please?"

She hung up and sat down on the table in her nightgown. Finally she
said, "He didn't go back on Saturday night, Eric."

"Why not?"

"I guess because of me," she answered after a pause.

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I said. Because of me."

Erica sat down on the edge of the cupboard facing her and asked, "Just
how much did you tell him?"

"Everything."

She added after another pause, "I told him everything for the last six
years."

"Miriam, you fool," said Erica softly, "you damn fool."

She said desperately, "Don't you see, Eric, I had to! I had to give it
to him straight. There wasn't any other way of doing it. Where do you
suppose he is?"

"Down in some joint on St. Antoine Street, though if he is, I don't know
why the M.P.s haven't picked him up by this time."

"John?" asked Miriam, horrified.

"Yes, John," repeated Erica impatiently.

"But people don't do that sort of thing, Eric!"

"People like John do. He probably started drinking and then eventually
passed out, and when he came to, the only thing he could think of was
you, so he got drunk all over again. Where do _you_ suppose he is?"

"I don't know," said Miriam frantically.

"You'd better go back to bed or you'll catch cold."

"Come and talk to me, Eric. Please."

They went back upstairs and Erica undressed, and with a satin negligee
which Marc had given her thrown over her shoulders, she went into
Miriam's room and sat down beside her on the bed. "What did Captain
Henderson say?"

"Just that he hadn't turned up when he was supposed to, on Saturday
night. He asked me if I knew whether John had had some kind of shock.
What will they do to him, Eric?"

"I don't know." She remembered suddenly that Miriam had been looking
worse since Saturday, instead of better, and she asked, "Why didn't you
tell me, Mimi?"

"I couldn't. I didn't realize how much he meant to me until I saw him
walk out for good. I knew he was going to, of course. I knew it all
along."

"What did you tell him exactly?"

"I didn't make it any worse than it was--rather difficult anyhow," she
added, smiling faintly in spite of the tears in her eyes. "I told him
about Peter; I told him that the reason he himself had never had a
chance was because he reminded me of Peter...."

"That was a nice touch," commented Erica. "Did you tell him _why_ he
reminded you of Peter?" Miriam nodded and Erica said, "A still nicer
touch. You couldn't have done much better than that if you'd tried."

She said quietly, "I did try. I thought I might just as well let him
know the whole truth while I was at it."

"Well, go on," asked Erica, after waiting for a while.

"Then he got up and walked out."

"Out of where?"

"Here--downstairs, in the drawing-room."

She sat up with a jerk a moment later, saying wildly, "We've got to go
and look for him, Eric! We can't just sit here...."

"Where do you suggest we start looking?" inquired Erica without moving.

"He must be somewhere--he might even be in his flat and not answering
the door or the phone because he was still..."

"They'll have looked in his flat long ago."

Again Miriam asked despairingly, "What will they do to him?"

"I don't know," said Erica hopelessly.




CHAPTER IX


On Friday night when Erica had already started to pack, in order to
catch the early train to Ottawa next day, Marc telephoned her long
distance to tell her that his forty-eight hour leave had been canceled,
and that a week from the following Monday, on September 14th, he was to
start his embarkation leave.

Erica had taken the call in her mother's room. She was alone on the
second floor; the rest of the family were downstairs having coffee in
the drawing-room, and in the intervals when neither Marc nor she was
talking, she could hear the clock ticking in her father's study. She was
sitting on the edge of her mother's bed, looking up unseeingly at the
water color of some calla lilies on the opposite wall. Everything was
the same as it had been the first time he had called her, the night
Miriam had come home; she was even wearing the same gray flannel suit.
But now it was September, instead of early in July; the summer was over,
and Marc was to start his embarkation leave a week from the following
Monday.

"How long have you got, Marc?"

"We're due in Halifax on the twenty-fourth."

"What day is the twenty-fourth?"

"Thursday. The Halifax train doesn't leave till seven-thirty at night so
I'll have most of Wednesday in Montreal. I can report any time up till
midnight."

"When are you going to Algoma?"

"If I leave on Friday I'll be there Saturday night, and that will give
me three days at home. Can you be at the hotel on Monday night, Eric?"

"Yes, don't worry, I'll be there."

"That means we'll have three days together too--a bit more as a matter
of fact, and then I'll be seeing you again on Wednesday on my way
through." He paused and then asked, "What is the _Post_ going to say,
Eric? Do you think they'll mind?"

She had no idea what the _Post_ would say and she did not care whether
they minded or not, but before she could answer, her mother called her
from downstairs.

"Just a minute, Mother, I'm telephoning."

"Your coffee's getting cold."

"I'll be right down."

"Are you still there?" asked Marc.

"Yes, darling."

"There won't be any hitches, will there, Eric?" he asked anxiously.

"No, darling. I told you, you're not to worry." Monday, September 14th
was ten days and two week-ends off, and she asked, "Isn't there any
chance of--of anything--in the meantime, Marc?"

"It doesn't look like it."

There was another flat silence. He said finally, "Well, I guess that's
about all, Eric."

"I guess so," said Erica, after making sure of her voice. She did not
want to start crying again.

"Somebody else wants the phone, darling. I'd better hang up."

Erica went downstairs, took her cup of coffee from the tray and carried
it over to the window-seat. Her mother and father were sitting at either
end of the sofa facing the empty fireplace, with Miriam curled up in a
near-by chair. Her father was reading the evening paper.

One of them asked, "What's the matter, Eric?"

"Nothing," said Erica.

There was a blue haze over the city and the lights were already lit in
some of the buildings. Off to the right, just above where the
Adirondacks ought to be, Erica thought, a new moon was rising and one
star was faintly visible. Sometimes you could see the Adirondacks when
the atmosphere was very clear.

Miriam came over and sat down beside her. She had been looking a little
better since Captain Henderson had reported that John had turned up at
Headquarters, somewhat the worse for wear, on Tuesday morning. He told
Miriam that there was nothing to be alarmed about; John's record was too
good for anything very drastic to happen to him just because he had gone
"temporarily nuts." As a matter of fact, his C.O. had covered up for
him, by simply giving him three days' leave, beginning the previous
Saturday. "That's the reason we were raising heaven and earth to find
him before it was too late and the C.O. would have to think up something
else."

Miriam glanced at the new moon and the first star and said, "I'm going
to wish on them both."

"Have you heard from John yet?"

Miriam shook her head. "That's what I'm wishing about."

"You'll get your wish, darling. He's sure to call you sooner or later."

"Is he?" asked Miriam. "Why?"

Erica did not know why she was so sure that he would call her. She said
at last, "I guess just because he's John."

"Was that Marc?" asked Miriam after a pause.

"Yes."

She waited for Erica to say something else, but nothing came. Her sister
was looking out the window and Miriam said, "Why don't you wish on it
too?"

"I can't think of anything I want."

"Erica," said her mother from the sofa.

"Yes, Mother?"

"Your father thinks he may be able to get away for a holiday after all,
though probably only for about ten days starting next Saturday--I think
it's the 19th. If we go up to the cabin is there any chance of your
being able to come with us?"

Why that week for their long overdue holiday? Why that week of all
weeks, unless there had been a special fate appointed to make certain
that everything which affected Marc and her should always go wrong?

She said, "I'm sorry, Mother. I can't manage it then."

"When are you going to take your holidays?" asked her father.

"It's not that." She waited a moment, gripping the edge of the
window-seat with both hands, and then said, "I'm going to the
Laurentians for a few days week after next...."

"Why?"

"Marc's going to be on embarkation leave. He starts on Monday but he has
to go to Algoma on Friday to spend the last three days with his family."

There was the usual silence, only this time it was more complete, if
possible, and lasted longer. Finally her father remarked, "Evidently
your friend's family matters slightly more to him than yours does to
you."

Miriam glanced at Erica quickly and then said rather acidly, "It's not
quite the same thing, is it, Charles?"

"This is the only holiday your father is going to have this year,
Miriam," said her mother.

"It's the only embarkation leave Marc is going to have too," said
Miriam.

"I think you'd better mind your own business, Miriam," said her father.

"Erica's business is my business." She glanced at Erica again and then
said with sudden fury, "You leave her alone for once! All she's got left
is three days, you've seen to that. She's not going to marry Marc
Reiser, she's not going to have the rest of her life with him...."

"Mimi," said Erica.

Her father had said something angrily which Miriam had not even
heard, but at the sound of Erica's voice she stopped and said,
"Yes, darling..."

"I don't want to have a row."

"It seems to be Miriam who's having it," said her mother. She turned to
Miriam, too worn and discouraged even to raise her voice, and said,
"Naturally your father and I don't expect Erica to alter any of her
plans on our account. We've given up expecting that. So far as Erica is
concerned, this isn't her home any longer...."

"Meeting Marc on street-corners wasn't Erica's idea, Mother."

"So long as your mother and I are living here, Miriam, I think we're
entitled to say who comes into our home and who doesn't. And I don't
think either of us is particularly interested in your opinions on the
subject."

"No," said Miriam more reasonably, "I guess there's no reason why you
should be."

Erica was still sitting motionless beside her, with her shoulders down,
and her eyes fixed on some point out in the middle of the light
broadloom rug which ran the full length of the room. With her long fair
hair and slender figure, she looked like a child waiting in a railway
station for someone to come and take her away.

Miriam gritted her teeth, her eyes following the bookcases down the
opposite wall, around the corner to the "Arlsienne" over the fireplace
and then finally back to her father and mother at either end of the
sofa. Evidently neither of them had anything further to say, and at last
she asked, "Couldn't you go without her?"

"We could, but we wouldn't get much fun out of it if we did," said her
mother.

"You overestimate us," said Charles.

"What?" He did not answer and she said, "I'm sorry, Charles, but what
has overestimating you got to do with it?"

"Well, you can hardly expect your mother and me to go off on a holiday
while Erica is having a holiday of her own with..."

Miriam thought, if he uses that word "friend" just once more I'm going
to lose my temper again. But he said "...with Mr. Reiser," after
another pause, and added, "we're not quite that detached, though
doubtless we should be by this time."

"I see," said Miriam.

"We should take a few lessons in detachment from Erica. She seems to
manage a great deal better than we do."

"Oh, leave her alone, Charles! You've got everything you wanted, except
for three days week after next. Why don't you take your
winnings--they're big enough!--and be sporting enough to call quits?"

"I don't want to have a row, Mimi," said Erica for the second time.

"As Mother has already pointed out, it's not your row, it's mine."

She got up suddenly, leaving Erica by herself on the window-seat,
crossed the room and standing in front of her mother and father with her
back to the fireplace, as though she wished to indicate that the row was
to be confined to the area immediately around the sofa and did not
include Erica, she said, "You brought us up to stick together--you
always said to Tony and Eric and me that we should stand up for each
other. I've listened to you going after Erica, Charles, and I've kept
out of it because she wanted me to..." Miriam paused and then added
deliberately, "I assure you that it was only because she wanted me to,
and _not_ because I agreed with you, but it's gone too far altogether
and I can't keep out of it any longer."

She began, "I told Erica at the very beginning..." and then broke
off, her eyes following Erica as her sister got up from the window-seat
and ran out of the room. She stared at the empty door through which
Erica had disappeared, listening to her footsteps on the stairs, and
then returning to her father she said, "I told her at the beginning that
she was going to have to choose between you and Marc because you would
make it impossible for her to do anything else. She wouldn't believe me.
She said that sooner or later you'd come round; if only she were quiet
and didn't say anything so there wouldn't be any rows, then she was sure
you'd come round. She was wrong about that, but I was wrong too--I
didn't realize how much you mattered to Marc. There was no choice; so
far as Marc was concerned it was either both of you, or he was out of
the picture."

"Evidently he has a few more scruples than we gave him credit for," said
her father.

"He has a lot more of what it takes to make a first-rate human being
than you've ever given him credit for, I know that!"

Her father shifted his position on the sofa, and with his steady dark
eyes fixed on her face and his expression still unchanged, he said,
"What you mean is that there was never any choice so far as Erica was
concerned either--she had chosen Mr. Reiser at the very start of this
infatuation of hers, and her mother and I could simply take it or leave
it, that was all. The way we felt about it was of course completely
unimportant."

Miriam surveyed him in silence for a moment, and said finally, "Listen
to me, Charles. Erica is in love with Marc. She's not infatuated with
him, she loves him. Her whole life is going to be different because of
what you've done. But it can't be undone now, and I'm not going to argue
about it. I'm only trying to warn you."

"Warn us?" repeated her mother, staring at her.

"In less than three weeks you're going to be rid of Marc Reiser for
good. That's enough, isn't it?" she asked both of them. "Surely you
don't want to get rid of Erica too...."

"Miriam!" gasped her mother.

"I know the way you feel about things," said Miriam, looking down at the
floor, "but you can't stop Eric from going away with Marc week after
next. If you try, she'll go anyhow, but she won't come back again." She
raised her eyes, looking from one to the other, and said desperately,
"Don't you see, if you try to stop her, you'll put her in a position
where she _has_ to choose between you and Marc. She can't come back
again, after you've told her not to go, and particularly after the kind
of row you'll have if you do. She's just about at the end of her rope
and she knows it. That's the reason she keeps saying 'I don't want any
rows, I don't want any rows.' You simply must not make an issue of it!"

"Do you realize what you're suggesting?" asked her father when at last
he had found his voice.

"It's a question of what matters most to you, Charles." She could not
bring herself even to glance at her mother, and with her eyes back at
the floor in front of her, she said, "I'm sorry for you, but I'm not
half as sorry for you as I am for Erica."

"That's quite obvious," She heard him draw in his breath, and then he
said, his voice shaking, "I suppose you'd go with her."

"You suppose wrong."

"Why?"

"Never mind me. There's no reason I can think of why a daughter should
have to explain to her mother and father why she is _not_ going to walk
out on them, anyhow. It's a silly question," she said dispassionately,
"and you know the answer as well as I do."

She said, her face strained, "Maybe I shouldn't have let you go on,
maybe I shouldn't have kept out of it, I don't know. I've never got on
with you as well as she has, and I haven't been awfully successful in
running my own life. I don't suppose you would have paid any attention
to what I thought. I've made the damnedest mistakes about people," she
added as though she were talking to herself, "so I couldn't really
expect you to be very interested in my opinion of Marc Reiser."

"Do you know him, Miriam?" asked her mother, looking straight ahead at
the empty fireplace.

"Yes, of course I know him."

"So you were encouraging her behind our backs," said her father.

She said immediately, "If you choose to turn your back, Charles, you can
hardly complain about what goes on behind it!"

"Miriam..." said her mother.

"Yes, darling?"

"I am interested in your opinion of Marc Reiser." All the life seemed to
have gone from her face, and her husband might just as well not have
been in the room. Still looking straight ahead of her, she said, "I want
to know what he's like, Miriam."

She knew that at last her mother was in a mood to listen and to believe
what she was told, and Miriam said quietly, "He's the opposite of
everything you thought. If he weren't, you wouldn't have been able to
get rid of him so easily, because he really cares about Eric. Maybe you
have to know him to realize what a difference it would have made if
you'd only been willing to give him a break, not for his sake, but for
Erica's...."

"I wish I had known him."

"Margaret..."

She glanced at her husband without really seeing him and then said to
Miriam, "Go on, please."

"I can't tell you what Marc's like, except that he's the same kind of
person as Erica, he's the other side of the same medal. They just seem
to belong together, that's all. I guess if you didn't know he was
Jewish, or if that didn't matter so much, you'd say that there couldn't
be anyone better for Erica than Marc."

Her mother went on staring at her for just a moment after Miriam had
finished, then turning away, she began to cry in her corner of the sofa
with her face hidden in her arms.

No one had ever seen Margaret Drake cry like that before. Watching her,
Miriam found herself thinking dully that whatever Charles Drake did or
said from now on, her mother was through. Miriam made a sudden movement
toward her, then drew back again. She said, "Well, it wasn't really your
fault anyhow, darling...."

"My fault!" she repeated, gasping.

"Margaret, for heaven's sake..."

She did not even hear him. With her face still hidden she said, "Of
course it's my fault! All the excuse I've got is that I didn't know him
and I didn't realize how much he means to her, and what kind of an
excuse is that?"

She could not stop crying, she had to wait again before she could make
herself intelligible, and then she said, "Mothers have no _right_ not to
know. It isn't as though Erica hadn't tried to tell me, she tried over
and over again--she even asked me to lunch with her and Marc and all
I... _I_..." she said incredulously, "all I, her own mother, could
think of to say was that I was too busy!"

"Margaret, stop that!"

"I can't stop." As she felt his hands she pushed him away, saying
despairingly, "Leave me alone, Charles. I don't blame you, I blame
myself."

He was thoroughly frightened and he did not know what to do; he watched
her helplessly for a while, his face working, and then he suddenly
rounded on Miriam. He said, raging, "Well, you wanted your row, and now
you've finished, I'd like to know exactly what you think you've
accomplished...."

Miriam did not answer. At that moment she had remembered a remark that
Erica had made to her weeks before when they were walking on the
mountain where Erica and Charles had once walked every Sunday afternoon
after the Philharmonic broadcast from New York. They had stopped to
watch the model yachts sailing back and forth on Beaver Pond, and out of
nothing, except perhaps that the place itself was so associated with her
father in her mind, Erica had said suddenly, "Charles doesn't want to go
on this way, but he got started on the wrong track at the very beginning
and he can't stop, he just has to keep on going."

It was in order to stop him before it was too late that Miriam, who
detested rows, had deliberately created this one, but as her father
turned away from her, back to his wife again, she knew that so far as
Charles Drake was concerned she had accomplished nothing. He had already
gone so far that no one else could stop him either.




CHAPTER X


The Managing Editor of the Montreal _Post_ was a slight, gray-haired man
in his early forties, with small, unusually white hands, a soft voice
and a fondness for light gray suits, gray ties and sude shoes. Nobody
liked him, but he was recognized as exceptionally capable, and by and
large, Erica reflected as she sat facing him across his desk, waiting
for the verdict, and compared to the other _Post_ employees of whom it
was generally said that they learned more in less time and were fired
faster than the employees of any other paper in the country, she herself
had had a fairly easy time of it, chiefly because she was a Drake and
Mr. Prescott was a snob.

This morning, however, Mr. Prescott was in one of his subtle moods. He
had said nothing so far, he had merely regarded her rather curiously
across the desk, listened to what she had to say, and then swung around
so that he could look out the window and watch some pigeons on a near-by
roof. She realized that she might have approached him more tactfully,
instead of having come straight to the point, but during the past three
years of war she had been gradually losing interest in the Woman's
Section of the _Post_, and during the past six years, she had become
thoroughly tired of being tactful with Mr. Prescott, who demanded the
utmost tact from his staff, and then invariably walked all over them
anyway.

He said at last, "You'd be away three days in the middle of next week,
then, wouldn't you?" and then remarked vaguely, "By the way, one or two
of the boys seem to think you're a member of the Guild...."

"Yes," said Erica. She had joined the Guild on the 20th of June, and
unless Mr. Prescott was slipping badly, he had found out within
something more like three hours than three months. Evidently he was
leading up to something.

"We're not much in favor of it, of course."

There was another pause, and finally Erica suggested that the three days
be counted as part of her holidays.

"Yes, we might do that," he said, and then added, "I'll just ask Miss
Munroe to come in and give Miss Arnold a hand while you're gone."

So it was Miss Munroe again. "I beg your pardon?" said Erica innocently.
"I'm afraid I don't quite remember who..."

"My niece," said Mr. Prescott coldly.

"Oh, yes, you said something about her in July, didn't you? It seems
hardly worth while to bring your niece in for just three days,
though...."

"No, it doesn't, does it?"

Erica said nothing. They had been over all this before, but she knew
that Mr. Prescott could not maneuver his niece into Sylvia's job without
her consent, and Mr. Prescott knew that she knew it. Although the
Managing Editor of the _Post_ went in for hiring relatives, the owner of
the Post did not, and furthermore, the owner of the _Post_ was a friend
of Charles Drake's. Although Erica had never yet made use of that
friendship, still it might come in handy as a last resort. Mr. Prescott
knew that too.

On the other hand, Erica thought, if she did go directly to the owner of
the paper in order to out-maneuver Mr. Prescott, the managing editor
would think up some reason for firing her in fairly short order, and the
Guild could do nothing about it, because most of the men on the _Post_,
which was supposed to be pro-Labor in its editorial policy, were too
frightened to join. But what difference does it make? Erica asked
herself wearily. She was not only tired of being tactful with Mr.
Prescott, she was tired of Mr. Prescott.

"There's a certain amount of give-and-take in any job," said Mr.
Prescott, in the same tone in which he reminded his staff from time to
time, that they should regard themselves simply as one big happy family.
"Have you any particular reason for wanting to go away next week?"

"Yes. My fianc is going overseas."

"I see."

After waiting for him to say something else, Erica got up. She said
coolly, "As I have no intention of resigning from the Guild or of
permitting Miss Arnold to be fired in order to make room for Miss
Munroe, I think the simplest thing for me to do is to resign from my own
job. Then Miss Arnold can take over from me, your niece can take over
from Miss Arnold--and I'll have my three days' holiday."

It was the first time that she had ever seen the managing editor really
startled. He looked up at her, obviously taken aback, and then finally
recovering himself, he said, "A rather expensive holiday, isn't it?"

"I don't think so."

Mr. Prescott was strong on clichs. Presumably in order to be able to
make the speech about watching her future career with considerable
interest, he asked, "Have you any other job in mind?"

"Not at the moment," said Erica, and then discovered when she was
halfway to the door that all the time she had been wondering how she was
going to manage after Marc left, she had had another job in mind without
fully realizing it. Now that she was finished with the _Post_, there was
nothing to stop her from joining up. In the Army, they don't give you
time to think, or at least not during the basic training period anyhow,
and by the time that was over, she would have had a chance to get used
to things.

Back in her office again, she sat down at her desk by the window and
opening the top drawer in which she had left a package of cigarettes,
she announced to Sylvia and Weathersby, "I've resigned."

"Congratulations," said Weathersby.

Sylvia stopped typing in the middle of a word and asked, "Are you
serious, Eric?"

"Yes, I'm leaving on Monday."

"But why?"

"I didn't feel like making a deal with Mr. Prescott." Opening another
drawer in which she was certain that she had not left her package of
cigarettes, she added, "It was sort of suggested that one good turn
deserves another, and that if I wanted three days off in the middle of
the week, I ought to be more reasonable on the subject of Mr. Prescott's
niece."

"Her again," said Weathersby, groaning. "Have you ever _seen_ her,
Eric?"

"No, what's she like?"

"Dumb," said Weathersby. "They don't come any dumber."

"Does that mean she's coming in here?" asked Sylvia incredulously.

"It means that she gets your job and you get mine."

"And what about you?"

"Oh, me," said Erica, abandoning the search through her desk drawers and
starting to look among the litter on her desk. "I'm going to join the
Canadian Women's Army Corps. Bubbles, have you taken my cigarettes
again?"

"They were going stale," said Weathersby defensively.

"I've only been gone a quarter of an hour. They couldn't go stale that
fast. Here, hand them over."

He recovered the package from underneath his typewriter and tossed it
across to her. It missed her desk and as she stooped over to pick it up
from the floor, she muttered resentfully, "And out of my desk drawer
too. You never used to snitch them unless they were lying on top. It's
about time I resigned, I can't afford to keep us both in cigarettes.
Have we got any matches, Sylvia?"

"No, but your lighter's working. I got it filled yesterday."

"Thanks, darling."

"Eric," said Sylvia after a pause.

"Yes?"

"What do they do about leaves if you're married to someone in the Army?"

"Who?"

"The CWAC."

"I think they arrange it so that you have your leaves together. Don't
they, Bubbles?"

Weathersby grunted.

"I suppose he means yes," said Erica, "and Bubbles knows everything,
even if he has no manners, and is under the peculiar delusion that it is
his duty to smoke other people's cigarettes in order to keep them from
going stale."

"Do you mind if I join up with you?"

"Mind!" repeated Erica in amazement. "Darling, would you?"

She had had one week of marriage which had ended three days before when
Mike had gone off to camp; they had been the longest and emptiest three
days that Sylvia had ever lived through, and she said, "Yes," adding
more definitely, "Yes, I would."

There was a kind of explosion from Weathersby who demanded, as soon as
he could talk again, "And who gets out the Woman's Section of the
_Post_, may I ask?"

"You do," said Erica and Sylvia together.

"You and Mr. Prescott's niece," said Sylvia.

"Are you really serious, Sylvia?" asked Erica.

"Why not?" She looked across at Erica and said, "I'd have joined up long
ago, I guess, if it hadn't been for leaving Mike. Besides, I didn't much
like the idea of doing it alone, but now he's left me and I won't be
doing it alone--so why not?" she asked again, shrugging. "We're sort of
used to each other and we get along awfully well...."

"My gosh, yes," said Erica.

"Then let's stick together."

"Leaving me holding the bag with Mr. Prescott's niece," said Weathersby,
brooding. "But I'll catch up with you," he said, pointing a finger at
them. "Six months and I'll be old enough for the Air Force. Did I ever
tell you that my brother got the D.F.C. and bar?"

"You've told us about the D.F.C. several times," said Sylvia, "but I
don't think you've ever mentioned the bar. Has he ever mentioned the
bar, Eric?"

"I don't think so," said Erica, after due reflection.

"You may now tell us about the bar, Bubbles," said Sylvia.

"Oh, shut up," said Weathersby. "Women," he said resentfully to
Weathersby. "Women. I've had enough women around here to last me the
rest of my life."

"Speaking of women," remarked Sylvia, returning to work. "How's your
mother's jelly?"

"She still sets it with wax!" said Weathersby hotly.

Erica and Sylvia started to laugh. They went on laughing for a while and
finally Erica said, "Well, it's almost over, Sylvia, but we've had an
awful lot of fun."

"Yes," said Sylvia. Glancing first at Erica, who was rolling a fresh
sheet of copy paper into her typewriter, with the light from the window
behind her falling on her long fair hair and around her tired, sensitive
face, and then at Weathersby in his corner, growling as he embarked on
still another account of a wedding, she said again, "Yes, we've had a
lot of fun."

Back at work herself, she asked absently after a pause, "What was the
bride wearing this time, Bubbles?"

"Mousseline de soie," said Weathersby. "If I'm ever dope enough to get
married, my wife is going to be 'radiant in her grandmother's
bathing-suit,' God damn it. Anything for a little variety."




CHAPTER XI


From the Friday evening when Erica had told her parents that she was
going to spend the first half of Marc's embarkation leave with him in
the Laurentians until a week from the following Monday, less than two
hours before her train was due to leave, Charles Drake did not mention
the subject again. During those ten days he scarcely spoke to her at
all; even the indirect references to Marc which had acted to some extent
as escape valves, had abruptly come to an end, and he said nothing in
Erica's hearing which could possibly be related to Marc by even the most
roundabout route.

Shortly before three o'clock on Monday afternoon, Erica went up to her
bedroom to pack, and a few minutes later she returned from her bathroom
with a handful of toilet articles to find her father standing against
the closed door leading to the hall.

Erica had not heard him come in and on first sight of him she started,
dropping one of her cosmetic jars on the soft carpet, although she had
known all along, and in spite of his silence, that some kind of
ultimatum was inevitable. He was simply not going to allow her to walk
out, on her way to spend three days with Marc, without making any effort
to stop her.

She picked up the jar and asked calmly, "What are you doing home at this
hour, Charles?"

"I wasn't getting any work done. I couldn't keep my mind on it." He
watched her for a moment in silence, while Erica went on with her
packing, and then said jerkily, "I came--to ask you--not to go."

"Why?"

"You know why."

He moved out of the shadow by the door into the light, a big,
dark-haired man with hands clenched at his sides, and said, "That other
week-end you were away was bad enough but I didn't know definitely..."

"There's nothing more to know now than there was then."

He went on as though he had not heard her, "I didn't know for certain
that he was going to be there, or whether you--whether you were
definitely..."

His voice trailed off; he left the sentence unfinished and fumbled in
his pocket with one hand, taking out his cigar case and a bunch of keys,
then putting them back again. He looked almost ill; the flesh around his
fine dark eyes was puffed and discolored and in the strong light from
the windows his skin had a yellowish tinge. He said, trying to keep his
voice level, "You can't expect your mother and me to sit here for three
days, from now till Thursday night, while you--while you..."

He swallowed, and then said with sudden violence, "We can't stand it. I
tell you, Erica, we can't stand it! We're too old; if you go through
with this thing, you'll leave a mark on us that will last the rest of
our lives."

"You sound as though I was going to commit murder."

She took two pairs of shoes from the cupboard, then sat down on her bed
with the shoes in her lap, remarking aimlessly, "It's a bit late, isn't
it? Marc left Petawawa two hours ago and it's less than two hours till
my train goes. Why didn't you get all this over with last night or even
this morning? You went off downtown after breakfast without saying a
word."

"I wasn't going to say anything. Your mother didn't..." He stopped
again.

"What made you change your mind?"

With his eyes fixed on her face, he tried to say something, but nothing
came. At last he answered only, "I told you, I can't go through with
it."

"I don't know what you want, Charles, except that you seem to want
everything."

"All I want you to do is to stay home and behave like any decent girl
who values her own self-respect!"

"You don't know what this is all about." She put one pair of shoes into
the suitcase lying on the bed beside her, and looking down at the other
pair in her lap, she said hopelessly, "Apparently you play the game on
the principle of 'Heads I win, tails you lose.' You haven't the remotest
idea what this is all about because you've never given me a chance to
tell you. Ever since the beginning, whenever I tried to tell you, _you
told me_. You knew. You knew without being told, just as you knew
exactly what Marc was like without ever having met him."

He said, staring at her, "I'll admit it hadn't even occurred to me that
you might try to justify yourself by putting the blame on me...."

"I'm not trying to justify myself! I don't give a damn about justifying
myself."

She began wrapping the second pair of shoes in tissue paper with her
hands shaking. She had no idea where this was going to end, but she knew
that if she lost her temper, it could only end in disaster. She had kept
her feelings dammed up for too long.

"Do you know what I've been doing for the past two months, Charles?" she
asked without looking at him. "I've been trying to out-balance
thirty-three years. It's been quite a job with only two months to do it
in, and now when all I've got left is three days, you..."

He said, cutting her short, "You've got the rest of your life!"

"...I've got to prove..." She stopped, glanced at him and said,
"No, I haven't got the rest of my life. It isn't even a question of
whether he comes back or not, but whether I'll ever see him again if he
does."

Evidently he did have at least a vague idea of what it was all about,
for he said, "Isn't it possible that instead of all these subtle reasons
you keep looking for, it may simply be that he's not really in love with
you?"

"Otherwise it would be a case of all for love and the world well lost,
is that it? I thought that was one of the notions you get over when you
grow up." She turned suddenly and said, facing him, "And supposing he
isn't in love with me, or not enough in love with me--then why?"

"Why what?"

"Why isn't he?"

He fumbled for his cigar case again, still standing in the middle of the
room a few feet from the foot of her bed, and answered finally through a
cloud of smoke, "You wouldn't be the first girl to find out that respect
is what matters most in the long run."

"Doesn't that depend somewhat on the individual?"

"No, it's just human nature."

"There's a generalization to take care of everything, isn't there?"
asked Erica, starting toward the chest of drawers behind him.

He said angrily, "Generalizations only exist because they represent the
accumulated experience of the human race right down through history!"

"And so whenever we find someone who doesn't fit, we go to work on him
and by the time we're finished, we've damn well-made him fit! Like
Procrustes and his bed--all you have to do is stretch him or chop him
down to the right size."

He scrutinized her in silence for a moment as she stood with her back to
the chest of drawers, and at last he said, "You haven't any idea how
much you've changed in the past three months...."

"It doesn't do to lose all your illusions at once, does it?"

"Eric, for heaven's sake!"

She could feel the anger mounting higher and higher inside her, but it
had not yet broken loose and she said almost conversationally, "You
know, Charles, I had illusions about practically everything. About you
and Mother and this precious country of ours, and the kind of world
we're supposed to be fighting for--I was so full of illusions that
really, I must have been quite a spectacle."

"I liked you better that way, Eric," he said under his breath.

"I liked you better too."

It was as though she had struck him. She took note of his reaction,
without reacting herself in any way. He might just as well have been
someone else, not her father.

He said, his voice trembling, "Listen, Eric. I don't know what's already
happened between you and Reiser, and neither your mother nor I want to
know...."

"Is Mother included in this?"

"No. She doesn't even know I'm home." He paused, and forcing himself to
speak more matter of factly, he said, "We'll forget about it--that's
fair enough, isn't it?"

"Go on," said Erica, watching him.

"Anyhow, we didn't ask you not to go last time, and it isn't as though
you went in spite of everything we could do to stop you. But this time,
we _are_ asking you...."

"Yes?" said Erica. "What right have you to ask me not to go?"

"What did you say?"

"Are you and Mother the only ones who have any rights?"

"I don't think I have to answer that."

"As you like," said Erica, shrugging. "Go on. I'd still like to know
what you're getting at."

"I told you. I don't want you to go. If you do go, you'll go
deliberately this time, knowing exactly how we feel about it and the
price we're paying for your three days of happiness or whatever you call
it, and as long as you live, you'll never be able to forget what you did
to us and to yourself, and neither will we. You'll never be quite the
same to us again."

"You don't mean that," she said incredulously.

"I do mean it." He looked straight at her. His face had become quite
colorless, and he said, "We'll go to our graves knowing that when it
came to a choice between your mother and father and a rotten..."

"Don't say anything about Marc," said Erica warningly.

"I'll say anything I like!" he burst out angrily.

"I don't think you'd better. I've had about enough from you on the
subject, Charles. I don't intend to listen to any more."

"If you'd listened to me in the first place, none of this would have
happened! I told you Reiser was just out for what he could get. I told
you that, didn't I? Well, he's got it evidently, and I was only wrong
about one thing--I'll admit I was wrong about that. I thought he really
intended to marry you."

Erica stared at him in silence and finally she said, her heart pounding,
"Charles, get out. Go away... please go away, because I--I..."

"No," said her father.

"All right," she said faintly. "I guess I can't make you." It was twenty
minutes to four and her train left at five, but she did not move. Still
standing with her back against the chest of drawers she said, "What you
want me to do is wire Marc to meet me at the drug store on the corner of
Peel and St. Catherine. That's your idea of a suitable way for Marc to
spend his last leave, isn't it? Meeting me on street-corners, going from
Charcot's to the Ritz bar and from the Ritz bar to a bench in Dominion
Square, looking for a place to sit down because his car's in storage and
we can't sit in it any more. Well, why not, you're probably asking
yourself. He must be used to it by this time." She took a step forward
and looking up at him she said, "I'll tell you why not, Charles. He's
had enough of that. For me to ask him to come here and do just what
we've been doing ever since we met, would be like saying, 'This is all
you get--this is all you're ever going to get if you stick with me,'
when the one thing I've been trying to get into his head from the very
beginning is that this is _not_ all he's ever going to get. Heaven help
me, I even promised him that you would not only change your mind but
that you'd like him and be really nice to him. You don't realize what a
difference it would have made if you'd given us a break...."

"Oh, yes I do," he said before he could stop himself.

"Yes," said Erica. "Yes, of course you realize. I forgot. And now you
want us to stay in town for your sake."

"Eric...."

Turning away from him she said, "You're just wasting your breath." She
went back to the chest of drawers and gathering up a few articles of
clothing, she carried them over to the bed and put them in her suitcase.
When she glanced at him again, she found that her father's expression
had changed, and she regarded him without interest, waiting for whatever
was coming next. She had an odd idea that it was something which he had
been holding in reserve until now, intending it to be used only as a
last resort. Finally he said with a visible effort, stumbling over the
words, "Erica--if your mother and I--if we agreed to have him here, the
way you said..."

"Good God!"

For a moment she could only gape at him in amazement. Then she thought
that she must have misunderstood him, for it could not be true, it was
so utterly outrageous that it could not possibly be true. She said,
"Wait a minute--I don't think I quite get it. You're not suggesting that
you're willing to make some kind of deal, are you?"

He said despairingly, "I guess I'm willing to make almost any kind of a
deal to keep you from going."

"Why?"

"_Why?_" Almost beside himself he said, "Good God, don't you realize
that after what he's done to me, having him in the house is really more
than I can stomach? The idea of you, my daughter, and that..."

"I see," said Erica, for now at last she did see all of it, including
the motive which had been largely hidden by all the other motives and
had remained unaccounted for. It was not what he was saying, or even the
rasping tone of his voice, but the way he looked.

Her father managed to get hold of himself again, for the time being at
any rate, and went on with a little less emotion, "You wanted us to
treat him like anyone else. That's what you said, isn't it? That's what
you've said all along. Well, he isn't 'anyone else,' now less than
ever," he said between his teeth. "But don't worry, we'll manage some
way or other. You needn't worry about that."

"I'm not worrying about that." She was lost now, and she knew it. She
was going down for the last time, but before she went down, she was
going to do the talking for once, she was going to make up for all the
times she had sat and simply listened, in order not to have a row. She
was finally going to tell her father what she thought of him.

She said, "Not for the sake of my soul or even out of common decency and
kindness, but for the sake of my virtue which you regard as your private
property, you're going to start treating Marc 'as though he were anyone
else.' You needn't look like that, Charles. You gave yourself away when
you said, 'After what he's done to me.' It would have sounded nicer if
you'd at least said 'After what he's done to you.' Better still if you'd
said, 'After what _I've_ done to you.'"

"So it's all my fault."

"Yes, it's your fault. Nobody has any right to be as stupid as you, and
no one can afford to be so muddled. Nothing matters to you compared to
your prejudices, _your_ opinions and _your_ theories as to what's 'best'
for other people and you'd see us all dead before you'd give them up and
admit you're wrong. You don't care what happens to me, you've proved
that over and over again. If you had cared, you would have stopped all
this long ago."

He was angry but not as angry as Erica. She moved a little nearer to
him, seeing his lips move but deaf to what he was trying to say and went
on, raging, "My, how cozy it would be, Charles--how frightfully cozy,
with just the four of us together on Marc's last leave, you and Mother
and Marc and me. I can't think of a more agreeable way for Marc to spend
his three days than sitting in the living-room downstairs listening to
you and Mother desperately making conversation in order to keep us from
going out and misbehaving ourselves. What would you talk about, Charles?
How would you keep him interested? Or hadn't you thought of that? And
are you so insane that you think all you have to do is crook your little
finger at Marc and he'll come running? What do you think he's been doing
for the past three months--skulking around your door waiting for you to
condescend to let him in?"

"I know what Mr. Reiser has been doing," he said at last between his
teeth. "All I have to do is to look at you and I know what Mr. Reiser
has been doing for the past three months."

"You ought to be grateful to him."

"Grateful!" he said hoarsely. "Grateful for taking my daughter away from
me and turning you into what you are now."

"Oh, no. For what I am now you can be grateful to yourself. You've got
something else to be grateful to Marc for--after all, it was very
thoughtful of him to turn out to be even more of a swine than you
expected--to settle for a couple of week-ends instead of marriage. He
would have been so much harder to get rid of then, if we'd actually got
married, and if I'd held out for a license and made sure of his
'respect' instead of selling myself cheap."

"Erica, for God's sake, stop it!"

"You got what you wanted," she said, paying no attention. "He isn't
going to marry a Drake. You fixed it." She went a little closer to him
and asked, "Would you like to know how you fixed it, Charles?"

"Erica, I warn you I'm not going to stand for much more of this...."

"Oh, now look," said Erica, "be reasonable. For almost three months
you've been saying exactly what you liked and writing it all off under
the heading of Father Knows Best. I'm not going to take three months,
I'll probably be finished in less than three minutes. That's fair
enough, isn't it?"

He said, catching his breath, "Erica, you don't _know_ what you're
saying!"

"Then there's more excuse for me than there ever was for you, because
you always knew, right from the start." She paused and then said softly,
"I'll tell you how you fixed it, Charles. You did precisely what Marc
expected you to do, right from the beginning. Remember, you said once
that you'd got his number as soon as you heard he was downstairs with
Ren? Well, you hadn't. You've never said one thing about him which was
true. But he had your number--yours and everybody else's."

She stopped. It sounded like someone else, someone else using her voice,
and after a moment she heard that person saying, "Listen to me, Charles.
Listen to me very carefully so that after I'm gone, you'll know at last
just how it all happened. Every time I told Marc he was wrong, wrong
about you and wrong about everyone else, you, my father, my ex-best
friend--you made a liar out of me."

He said, peering at her, his voice hardly more than a whisper, "You are
going, Eric?"

"Yes, I'm going," said Erica. "And I'm not coming back again."




CHAPTER XII


There was a clearing near the top of the mountain from which you could
look out over a semi-circle of valley with scattered lakes and villages,
and over fold upon fold of heavily wooded mountains growing more
indefinitely blue toward the northern horizon. The clearing was almost
level, fenced in on three sides by evergreens and a thick mass of
undergrowth, and open in front where the mountain shelved steeply away
from the edge in a small cliff. Below the cliff was a stretch of sloping
forest giving way suddenly to the hilly pastures and fields on the
uneven floor of the valley.

Marc and Erica had ridden up the steep trail under a blazing sun, and
after tethering their horses to a fallen pine at the back of the
clearing they had eaten their lunch in the shade, and then moved out
into the sun again.

Erica was lying with her head on one arm and her face turned toward
Marc, sitting with his back against a boulder overgrown with moss, so
that he could see out. It was Wednesday afternoon, two of their last
three days together already lay behind them, and neither of them had as
yet said anything that really mattered. They had simply stood still,
letting time rush by them, each of them apparently waiting for the other
to speak first. Something had gone wrong and they both knew it; they had
felt it the moment Erica had arrived from Montreal an hour after Marc
from Ottawa, and first on Monday and again on Tuesday, they had said
goodnight at the door of Erica's room. They were both haunted, Marc by a
sense of failure and Erica by the recollection of the scene with her
father on Monday afternoon, and whatever affected the one affected the
other, so that together, each of them carried a double burden.

Against the background of evergreens which were like a dark robe thrown
over the hills, there was an occasional splash of yellow and crimson;
the wind blowing lazily from the north-west was cool and dry, and the
sky was too deep a blue for summer.

"It's going to be a marvelous autumn, Eric. It's going to be the best
autumn for years. Write me about it, will you?"

"Yes, darling," she said under her breath.

"Tell me how everything looks. You might even send me a maple leaf, the
reddest you can find. It wouldn't wither by the time it got there, would
it?"

He leaned forward, reaching into the back pocket of his riding breeches
for cigarettes, and as he lit first one and then the other, she asked,
"What are you going to do after the war--go back to Maresch and
Aaronson?"

"Probably for a while, I don't know. I'd rather like to practice in a
small town in Ontario. When I was taking my C.O.T.C. at Brockville I got
to know the country around there pretty well, and I wouldn't mind
spending the rest of my life in one of those old towns along the river
or out on Presqu'Ile. Have you ever been to Presqu'Ile?"

"No, what's it like?"

"It's lovely country--rolling and green, and old and rich. The
farm-houses are great big old places with enormous barns. You know I've
always wanted to own a farm...."

"Yes, I remember," said Erica, "It was one of the first things you ever
said to me. If you go back to Ontario you'll have to write your exams
all over again before you can practice there, won't you?"

"Yes, but it doesn't matter. How would you like living in a small town?"
he asked lightly.

"I don't mind where I live," said Erica, turning her head suddenly so
that she was looking the other way, toward the two horses standing
together under the pines.

There was another silence, just like so many others during the past few
days, only this one was broken by Marc saying at last, "I think it's
about time we got started, don't you? We can't go on like this, or
rather we can't--we can't leave, like this, tomorrow..." He paused
and said, "You start, Eric. You're going to have to tell me sooner or
later anyhow."

"Tell you what?"

"Whatever it is that's been making you look the way you have ever since
you arrived--or like someone trying awfully hard not to look like that."

As she did not answer but kept her head turned away from him, he said,
"I finally got you into a real mess, didn't I?" as though he already
knew what had happened on Monday afternoon.

She had realized as soon as it was over, that the break with her father
would react on Marc to almost the same degree as it had reacted on
Charles and herself, unless she could somehow manage to keep Marc from
finding out about it. She had tried, she had not for a moment stopped
trying except when she was safely in her room at the hotel, and although
it had been rather like attempting to hide an object twice as big as
herself by standing in front of it, still she had thought that she was
getting away with it.

And all she had actually succeeded in doing was to look like someone
trying awfully hard not to look like that.

She said, "I had a row with Charles."

"About me," he said.

"Yes."

He was watching a bird circling in and out of the sun toward the west
and he said, "All your rows are about me, aren't they? You never had any
till I came along."

"It was just by accident that we didn't. I never happened to want to do
anything that Charles and Mother disapproved of until now, that's all.
They knew I didn't agree with them about a lot of things, of course, but
they didn't seem to mind, and it's taken me all this time to discover
that the only reason they didn't mind was because they thought it was
just so much talk and so naturally it didn't matter. The moment they
realized that it wasn't just so much talk, then all hell broke loose.
They were bound to realize it sooner or later."

He said after a long pause, "I wish it hadn't been me."

Erica sat up, as though the ground on which she had been lying had, in
fact, begun to slip out from under her, and moving back so that she was
sitting cross-legged facing him, she said desperately, "Darling, it
_isn't_ just you. Can't you get that into your head? It was you who
started it, but if it hadn't been you, it would have been something
else, and if I never saw you again after today, it wouldn't make any
difference to Charles and me." With her voice rigidly controlled she
said almost matter-of-factly, "We both know where we stand now, and
we'll never get back to where we both thought we stood before."

"All your father wants is to get rid of me."

"What my father wants is unconditional surrender to a set of prejudices
and a bunch of filthy conventions which are hopelessly out of date!"

The bird flew down, out of the path of the sun and disappeared among the
trees edging the trail, and as his eyes came back to her face he said
quietly, "They're not out of date, Eric. The moment you'd married me,
you'd find that out. The prejudices are still there, working overtime as
a result of war conditions," he added a little ironically.

"Not with us...."

"Us?" he repeated. "You mean people of our generation? Don't be silly. I
live and eat and sleep with people of our generation; I happen to be the
only Jewish officer in our particular outfit at the moment, and although
most of my brother officers are thoroughly decent and do their damnedest
to make me feel as though I belong, they have to make an effort, and I
know they have to make it, and I think it's probably just as difficult
for them to get used to the idea of always having a Jew in the room as
it was for their fathers in the last war. Even when people don't dislike
you, even when they really like you, you still make them feel slightly
self-conscious, I don't know why. Maybe it's just because they've been
brought up to regard Jews as 'different.' Do you want a biscuit?"

"Yes, please," said Erica. "One of the chocolate ones."

He handed her two chocolate biscuits and said, "Except for a very few
people, so few they hardly count, that self-consciousness so far as I'm
concerned would be about the best you could hope for. What you could
actually expect, as opposed to just hoping, is usually something a lot
worse."

He said, "You've _got_ to see it, Eric."

"Yes," said Erica. "Well, go on. We might just as well get it over
with."

"It's not your father and your friends, it's not even just us and what
we can take--if we were married, it would be our children--_your_
children--who'd have to take it. First you'd suffer through me and then
you'd start getting it through them, only what came to you through them
would hit you far harder because I'm grown up and more or less used to
it, and anyhow you didn't bring me into the world, you're not
responsible for me. But to have to watch your children go through school
tagged as 'Jews,' as outsiders--that's not so easy."

He broke off, and then remarked, looking out over the mountains again,
"I'll never forget the way my mother looked the first time I came
running home from school bawling my eyes out with a bunch of kids after
me, pelting me with snowballs and yelling, 'Marc's a dirty kike.' It
wasn't the snowballs that scared me," he added hastily. "It was the word
'kike.' I'd never heard it before and I didn't know what it meant--I
don't suppose the kids who were yelling it did either," he added. "It
just sounded awful. It sounded even worse to my mother and she's Jewish
herself."

"But that was twenty-five years ago," protested Erica.

"Yes," said Marc. "That was twenty-five years ago and Hitler was just a
corporal in the German Army. It will probably take us another
twenty-five years to get back to where we were in 1915." He said
incredulously, "You think after ten years of Nazism that things are
easier for us now than they were then?"

"I don't know," said Erica miserably.

"Well, I do," said Marc. "The outlook, my darling, is not very bright,
and just why you should be dragged into it when you don't have to be, I
can't quite see."

"Can't you? I should think it would be fairly obvious." Before he could
say anything she asked, "Isn't it easier for children who are
half-Jewish?"

"No. Most Gentiles regard half-Jews as Jews--look at the
refugees!--particularly if the father's Jewish, regardless of whether
they've been brought up as Christians or not, and if they have, then the
Jews won't accept them, so they end up by not really belonging
anywhere."

"Would you want our children to be brought up as Jews?"

"Yes, of course."

"Why?" asked Erica in amazement.

"Why?" he repeated, looking surprised. "Well, apart from the fact that
I'm Jewish, simply because it's easier for them in the long run. It's
much easier to grow up knowing you're Jewish from the time you're old
enough to know anything, than to have it suddenly thrown in your face
when you're twenty or twenty-five. That was what happened to God knows
how many people in Austria and Germany who'd gone through life under the
impression that they were Catholics or Protestants who'd been
'assimilated.' Assimilated," he said derisively, "I wonder who invented
that word."

"I don't see what Germany and Austria have to do with it. Naturally, the
Nazis..."

"Do you mean to say you've never heard a good Canadian Gentile say about
some refugee or other, 'Yes, I know he's supposed to be a Catholic but
he's really Jewish....'"

She could not deny it; she had heard plenty of good Canadian Gentiles
say that, sometimes even about refugees who were racially, or whatever
you could call it, even less than half Jewish.

Erica opened her mouth to say something else, and then thought better of
it. She knew now that unless there were a miracle, she would never marry
Marc, but sometimes miracles happened and there was still one day left.

"Aren't you going to argue about it?" asked Marc, looking still more
surprised.

"No," said Erica. The idea that if they were married, their children
would be brought up as Jews had come as a shock, the worst shock Marc
had given her so far, she realized. At the moment it did not seem to her
to make much sense, and it was certainly going to take some getting used
to, but to argue about it now struck her as just about as futile as
stopping a film in the middle and proceeding to quarrel over what took
place in the part neither of them had yet seen.

She said suddenly a moment later, "These children of ours would be
brought up as both anyhow."

"Why?"

"Because, darling," she said patiently, "whether we like it or not,
_we're_ both."

"Oh," said Marc. He grinned, remarking, "I guess that stops me."

"Temporarily," said Erica, carefully putting out her cigarette.

He glanced at her but she said nothing more. At the end of another
silence he asked, "What did you mean when you said that you and your
father were never going to get back to where you were before?"

"The whole basis of our relationship has gone. When I think of the way
Charles and I used to be, it seems to me we were like those characters
in cartoon comedies who run of! a cliff and keep on running until they
happen to look down and discover that the cliff isn't there any more,
and then start to fall."

With her eyes on a sumac flaming against the dark green of two young
pines on the other side of the clearing, she said, "Well, we had a good
run for our money, Charles and I. It took us longer than most people to
find out that there wasn't anything underneath us."

He was staring straight ahead of him with the rather bleak look which
she had seen in his face at odd times ever since she had known him, only
lately it had become much more frequent. It made him older, not younger
like his smile.

"My God, Eric, what a mess I've made of your life! I've taken you away
from your family--I've even taken you away from your job."

"Oh, damn my job," said Erica. "I was sick to death of it anyway."

"What are you going to do?"

"Join the Army, just like you."

"Oh," said Marc again. She knew that he still disliked the idea of women
in uniform, and that he must dislike the idea of Erica in uniform still
more, but all he said was, "Are you sure you want to?"

She nodded. He was silent a moment and then he said, "They'll cut your
hair, darling."

"I know," she said, amused, because she had been so certain that Marc's
first comment would be something about her hair.

"Is there any chance of your getting overseas?"

"I'm late for that. They take you in the order of enlistment...."

"When are you going to enlist?"

He was due to leave for Halifax at seven-thirty on Wednesday night and
she said, "Thursday morning."

"Is Miriam joining up too?"

"No, Sylvia is. Miriam's too busy trying to talk John into believing
that she really cares about him."

"I hope she succeeds," said Marc. "Your father has always liked John,
hasn't he?"

A flock of crows flew by, down toward the ragged autumn fields below,
and they listened to the cawing as it grew steadily fainter in the
distance, looking out over the valley and the mountains which were
slowly changing color in the afternoon light.

She knew that Marc was still thinking about her mother and father,
although all she had told him so far was that there had been a row, and
he still had no idea how bad things actually were.

"Eric, if I thought..."

"If you thought what?" she asked after waiting for him to go on.

"If I thought there was going to be someone else--someone like John,
someone who'd mean as much to you as I do..." He stopped again, his
face very strained, and then made himself finish the sentence. "...I
guess I'd call quits for good and never see you again. Life isn't a bed
of roses anyhow, without adding a lot of extra complications that you
can so easily avoid...."

"...by not marrying you," said Erica.

"Yes," he said hopelessly. "Just by not marrying me."

She was beginning to realize that nothing she could say would make any
real difference now, but for the sake of that one chance, that miracle
which might still happen sometime between now and tomorrow night, she
answered, "Maybe there will be someone else, I don't know. All I do know
is that it will be different, and I won't feel like this again. When I'm
with you, I feel--I feel safe. I feel safe all the way through. I know
that whatever you do, you'll never hurt me, and all the little things
that are so deep down and so vulnerable--they're safe too."

She smiled at him, although her throat and eyes were too dry and it was
hard to talk. "I know lots of people who are comfortably married, with
nothing much to worry about, no really serious problems of their own,
but they sit on opposite sides of the living-room at night and they
might just as well be sitting on opposite sides of the Atlantic, because
they're not two halves of a whole, they're two separate wholes, two
separate individuals who give you the feeling that they got married by
accident and might just as well have married--someone else," she said,
looking at him. "They're not fundamentally interested in each
other--they're interested in other things, in their children, their
house, their friends, and what keeps them together comes from outside,
rather than from any inner necessity."

She broke off and then said with difficulty, "That's something I've
always been afraid of. What matters most to me is not being lonely, and
what scares me most is not being poor, or ending up on the wrong side of
the local prejudices or even the local conventions, but ending up..."

"...on the wrong side of the living-room."

She said, her eyes searching his face, "I wish you'd believe me."

"I do believe you, darling."

"No," said Erica, "not quite."

After that there was another silence, and at last he said, "I keep
thinking of all the people who've started feeling the way you do now,
and then realized when it was too late, that one person couldn't make up
for so many disadvantages--no matter how hard that person tried, no
matter how hard they both tried--particularly when it was only that one
person who stood in the way."

She said again, "It depends on what matters most to you," wondering how
often, just how many times she had said that before, first to her father
and then to Marc. Ultimately every argument involving the ability of any
individual to make a valid choice comes down to that one question of
relative values. And your relative values depend on your experience of
living, which in turn forms the basis for your outlook on life as a
whole.

She herself belonged to the generation born during the last war, who
were still too young to be greatly influenced either by the
disillusionment of the immediate post-war years or by the blind optimism
of the late twenties. She had come to full consciousness when political
security had begun to go and economic security had already gone. Change
was to Erica the only permanent condition of life; she had no idea what
tomorrow would be like, except that it would be different from yesterday
and today. The more you could learn to do without, the safer you were;
security consisted in traveling light and staking your happiness on a
few fundamentals of a non-material nature which could not, or at least
were unlikely to be taken away from you.

Looking back now, she realized that long before Marc, this point of view
had shaped her existence; among other things, it had prevented her from
marrying any one of several different men who had been in love with her
in the past. She had recognized the fact that any individual looks quite
different when he is viewed in terms of a specific and familiar social
and economic structure from when he is viewed as an isolated human
being, solely in terms of his own inherent qualities. You might be
reasonably happy living with someone in Montreal and with that social
and economic structure to absorb the inevitable stresses and strains,
only to find that life on a desert island with that same person was
quite unendurable.

For Erica, the desert island was always more or less imminent, or if not
imminent, it was at least a possibility which loomed too large to be
ignored. Marc was the only man she had known with whom she was willing
to risk it, and so far as her own values were concerned, what she would
be giving up in marrying him was a handful of social, and if the worst
came to the worst, economic non-essentials which were not important to
her and in whose continued existence she did not put much faith in any
case. She had been born in 1914, so that the first twenty-eight years of
her life had begun with one world war and ended with another; she had
earned her living on a newspaper for the past six years, and she knew
beyond doubt that what mattered most to Erica Drake was Marc Reiser.

Marc, however, did not know it, and even if he had, the problem would
still have been only half-solved. It was not enough for him to believe
in her; he had also to believe in himself.

His eyes met hers and he said, "You should have known me ten years ago
when I was still full of illusions."

"And still trying," said Erica, looking away from him. "Instead of just
sitting around--or rather just lying around, you're too supine to be
described as 'sitting'!--agreeing with everybody." She jabbed the burned
match which she was still holding in her hand as far as it would go into
the earth which was covered with a thin carpet of pine needles, then
bringing her eyes back to his face she said in a different tone, "Most
people are born into a fixed social pattern and just travel along their
particular groove till they get to the other end and die, but once in a
while, somebody gets a chance to climb out of his groove and give the
whole thing a push from behind. Well, they either take that chance or
they don't. I know a couple of people who have and so do you. Look at
Max Rosenberg and Betty Innes...."

"Yes," said Marc. "Look, at them--or rather look at their families.
Their families kicked up such a row that Max and Betty ended up by
moving to Toronto, flat broke and starting all over again."

"Well, Toronto's better."

"Is it?"

"You know it is!" said Erica, exasperated.

"Go on about the groove, darling," he said, looking amused.

"Most people haven't got the Rosenbergs' guts. They just climb out for a
while, take a good look around, get scared and decide it's too tough and
climb down again. They play safe. But the people who play safe don't
change anything--they just sit tight and wait for someone else to change
it. Do you think that's what you and I are for--just to play safe and
wait?"

"I don't know," he said, looking down at the long cloud of smoke which
the afternoon train from Montreal had left behind on its way through the
valley a few minutes before. The smoke was drifting upwards against the
background of evergreens, so slowly that he knew the wind must have
dropped. He glanced upwards at the motionless trees overhead and said
hopelessly again, "I don't know, Eric. I wouldn't want you to look the
way Betty Rosenberg does now, anyhow."

"Why?"

"She looks as though she's washed too many dishes and scrubbed too many
floors and stayed awake too many nights worrying because they can't
afford to send the kids to a private school, where the fact that they're
Jews maybe wouldn't matter so much. She's even beginning to look as
though she's not sure now whether it was worth it or not."

"I don't believe you," said Erica involuntarily.

He shrugged and said, "Well, perhaps she just happened to look like that
the evening I was there."

They were silent for a while, and then he asked without warning, "Did
your father object to your coming up here?"

"Yes," said Erica after a pause. "I didn't think he'd make an issue of
it now, particularly when he only has to stand it a few more days."

For a moment Marc seemed merely surprised, then he said, "But you are
here. How did you manage it?"

"I just came."

"You couldn't 'just come.' You must have walked out."

She turned her head quickly to look at him and then asked with sudden
terror, "What do you think I should have done?"

"I can't answer that, Eric."

"Would you have come to Montreal?"

"I'm not sure," he said almost inaudibly.

She began to cry and he put his arm around her and drew her head down on
his shoulder without saying anything. She knew that he was still looking
straight ahead of him with that bleak look, and she went on crying with
her face partly hidden against his shirt.

Finally he said, "This must be about the last straw so far as your
family is concerned." He took out his handkerchief and dried her eyes
and put the handkerchief away again. Then he asked, "Exactly what did
happen on Monday?"

"Charles came into my room when I was packing and said that I was not to
go."

"Didn't you tell him beforehand that you were going?"

"Yes, I told them the night you phoned."

"Then why didn't he..."

"I guess it was because of Mother. She tried to make Charles promise not
to try to stop me from going, and when it was all over and she found out
what had happened, she came running down the hall and she kept saying,
'I told you, Charles, I _told_ you,' and she was so upset that she was
nearly out of her head. So was Charles, only he was angry too. I've
never seen him so angry. He just went into his study and shut the door.
I told Mother I'd behaved awfully badly and that it was just as much my
fault as it was his, only he'd put me in a position where either I had
to stay home, or if I went, then he made it clear that I'd be doing
something so wrong that there wouldn't be enough left for us to go on
with afterwards. He said I'd never be the same to them again."

At least she could leave Marc a few shreds of self-respect; there was no
unfairness to her father in leaving out the part in which he had offered
to have Marc to the house. It did not put Charles Drake in any better
light.

She went on, as Marc had said nothing, "I guess Mother knew what would
happen. She's just as uncompromising as Charles is, she was brought up
the same way and she feels the same way about things, and it was just as
hard for her as it was for Charles, but she cares far more for justice,
and she has a terrible sense of moral responsibility for this whole
situation. She said that it was mostly her fault because she's my
mother, and that they'd both let me down so badly that they no longer
had any right to interfere. I wouldn't have gone then if she'd asked me
not to, but she wouldn't. She said she wouldn't even ask me to come
back, because it was up to Charles now."

After a pause Erica added, trying to steady her voice, "It wasn't her
fault. That's what is so rotten about it."

"Yes," said Marc.

A little later she said, "You've got to understand why I couldn't give
in to Charles. It's not facts that hurt people, it's their attitude
toward facts. I'm not responsible for Charles' attitude toward you and
toward something that only concerns us. I can't make you pay for it,
because it's not fair. I can't help his attitude, I can't change it. He
invents half his own suffering, and I can't make you suffer instead,
simply because my father chooses to think that..."

"I know what he thinks I am."

She turned to him and put her arms around him and said with tears
running down her face again, "Marc, I love you so much!"

"Don't cry, darling. It doesn't help."

She knew now that there was no longer any chance, even for a miracle,
and she said, "I wanted these last three days to be perfect, so that
when you went away, you'd remember what it was like at the end, and
maybe the rest of it wouldn't be so important...."

"But you see, Eric, this is just the end of the rest of it."

He took out his handkerchief and wiped away her tears and smiled at her.
Then the smile faded from his oblique, greenish eyes and he asked, "What
else did you want, darling?"

"I wanted you to _believe_--to believe in us. I wanted you to go
overseas believing in us. I don't care how long I have to wait, that
isn't what matters."

Her throat was aching intolerably but she was no longer crying. She
managed to say quite evenly, "I don't think I matter much either. What
does matter is you. I can't bear the idea of your going overseas with
nothing to come back to at the end of it but a world in which there is
no place for you and me."

He said despairingly, "Eric, I can't... I can't...."

"It's all right, darling," she said quietly. "I know you can't."

When they, got back to the hotel, the church clock in the village down
at the other end of the lake was striking six. A telegram had come for
Erica some hours before; it was from her father and contained only the
four words, "Anthony is reported missing."




CHAPTER XIII


The town of Manchester lies sprawled along the shore of a lake and faces
outward over a few scattered granite islands toward an empty western
horizon. At the back of the town is a stretch of open country cleared
and farmed by French Canadian families, with fields and pastures which
become steadily poorer and rougher as they approach the bush. The bush
is a stony, tangled wilderness of trees and undergrowth cut by a few
roads, spotted with little blue lakes and crossed and recrossed by
innumerable small streams. Behind the bush are the Algoma Hills, rising
high, strong and magnificently colored against the clear northern sky.
This is the edge of the mining country; this is the beginning of
Canada's North.

Manchester itself is a tribute to the Canadian talent for choosing a
remarkably fine natural setting for a town, and then proceeding to ruin
it as far as possible. There is an interminably long, straight main
street running parallel with the shore, flanked by the inevitable
collection of two- and three-story office buildings, shops, gas
stations, beauty parlors, Chinese laundries, pool rooms, soda fountains,
cheap restaurants, movie houses, and the usual Protestant and Catholic
churches, apparently dedicated, like most of the buildings of English
Canada, to the Puritan proposition that even in architecture, beauty is
unnecessary and possibly even dangerous. Below the main street are
warehouses, run-down dwellings, a few factories, great piles of lumber,
a saw mill and the docks. The whole region smells slightly of stagnant
water and rotting wood. Above the main street is the residential
district, a series of tree-shaded streets intersecting at right-angles,
with houses set well back and surrounded by lawns, bushes and scattered
flower-beds.

In Austria the Reisers had been timber merchants for some generations,
and when Leopold Reiser came out to Canada in 1907, he bought a small
planing mill in Manchester and settled there with his wife and
four-year-old son, David. Marc was born two years later in the house in
which his parents were still living when he went home on his last leave
in September, 1942.

It was a comfortable house painted white with green shutters and a wide
front porch screened on three sides by lilac bushes. In the living-room
there was an upright piano which nobody ever played, some glassed-in
bookcases containing, among other works, a complete set of Schiller
which nobody ever read, a chesterfield suite upholstered in dark blue
plush but fortunately covered with chintz of an inoffensive pattern
during the summer months, a canary named Mike which never sang, and half
a dozen ferns in polished brass pots. Behind the living-room was the
dining-room which was fairly large, but still not quite large enough to
do justice to the fine, old, highly polished and somewhat massive
furniture which had been brought from Austria. The kitchen had windows
on two sides and took up most of the remaining space on the ground floor
except for cupboards and a sort of drawing-room opposite the living-room
which nobody ever used. Up the wide oak staircases there were four
bedrooms, a bathroom and sun-room, and on the top floor, one room well
furnished for the general servant of the moment, and three others full
of trunks, hockey sticks, skates, schoolbooks, fishing tackle and
everything else which Maria Reiser could not bear to throw out.

The town was about two thirds Protestant and one third Catholic, with
only a few Jewish families who were too small a community to afford the
upkeep of a temple or synagogue. For the two most important festivals of
the year, they were accustomed to hire the public hall down on the main
street, and one of the older German or Polish Jews would conduct the
services. The hall was a long, narrow building facing almost due north,
so that the small congregation had to sit at right-angles to the
platform at the other end, and with an expanse of bare floor on either
side of them, in order that the Ark might stand against the east wall.

In the third year of the war, the services of Yom Kippur were taken by a
young student rabbi who had arrived in Manchester a week before to visit
his cousins, the Rabinovitches, who owned the clothing store. Neither
Orthodox nor especially devout, the Reisers had come to Kol Nidre on the
eve of the Day of Atonement and then did not return until early the
following afternoon. It was Monday, September 21st, of the Jewish year
5703.

Although the rows of hard wooden chairs were divided by an aisle down
the middle, with most of the women on the left and the men on the right,
the Reisers were sitting together near the back, first Leopold Reiser,
then Marc and then his mother. The opening of the service made no
impression on Marc; after four days at home he was still unable to stop
thinking of Erica, and he got up and sat down as the rest of the
congregation got up and sat down, his eyes wandering from the little
pulpit to the high reading stand and the tired face of the young student
rabbi, and then to the Ark with the two seven-branched candle-sticks on
either side, fourteen points of light flickering in the rather dusty air
of the hall, and finally back to the student rabbi again. His leave was
almost up; by Tuesday night he would be on the train for Montreal, where
he would see Erica again for a few hours, and then take the seven-thirty
train to Halifax. Except for those few hours he might never see her
again, and he had not only failed her completely, he had also failed
himself. He did not know how it had happened or when it had begun to
happen, but he did know that it was he himself who had got off the
track, and that if he hadn't, in spite of Charles Drake and everyone
else, it would not have turned out like this.

A thick-set, middle-aged man had been summoned to the high reading-stand
and through some kind of break in his thoughts Marc became conscious of
a new voice, less fine and resonant, but fresher and stronger than the
voice of the tired young rabbi. He missed the first few sentences and
then heard the words,

_So the shipmaster came and said unto him, What meanest thou, O Sleeper?
Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us that we
perish not._

What meanest thou, O Sleeper?

If he could find out what he, Marc Reiser, actually meant, then he would
know what to do, if it were still possible to do anything, when all the
time he had left was the time between two trains. For some reason or
other he had expected the problem to clarify itself once he was home and
back in his own environment, but after four days he was still living in
two worlds and the world in which he had grown up was less real than the
world he had left on Wednesday night, after going with Erica as far as
the front door of the house up in Westmount and then returning to the
station to catch the westbound train for Manchester, on the
transcontinental line. He was not, in fact, back in his own environment
in any but a purely physical sense, and with only one more day to go,
his own existence was as meaningless as ever.

Someone coughed, and one of the women in the front row on the left was
wearing a taffeta blouse which rustled every time she moved, but the
profound silence which was heightened by the steady voice of the reader,
continued unbroken and undisturbed by the faint noises from the street
outside. You would not have thought that forty people could be so still
and make so little sound, when many of them were old enough to be stiff
with fatigue from twenty hours of fasting and many hours of prayer, and
some of them were very young. The dusty, commonplace, small town public
hall was pervaded with a spirit of unity and faith which went back to
the remote beginnings of this people in a country far away, and then
returned, steadily broadening out until it had encompassed the world and
made these men and women and children one with those who had died long
ago, and with those who had died only yesterday and those who were dying
today, and with those who would die tomorrow. There was no past and no
present; the interminable, timeless stream ebbed and flowed and from
synagogues and temples, houses and hired halls, barracks, concentration
camps, prisons, torture-chambers and pitiful, futile barricades, the
Jews of the world were drawn together across time and space on this Day
of Atonement and were made one with God.

_Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this
evil is upon us; what is thine occupation and whence comest thou? what
is thy country and of what people art thou? and he said unto them: I am
an Hebrew...._

Once a barrister and now a soldier about to go overseas, born and bred
in Canada, a Canadian of Jewish origin.

What is a Jew?

Now, if ever, with his eyes fixed on a seven-branched candlestick and
the words of the Yom Kippur service in his ears, surrounded by his own
people and only by his own people, he should be able to find the answer
to that riddle once and for all, and he waited, but the answer did not
come.

He realized that his sense of identity with the men and women around him
was more of race, of race suffering and race achievement, than of
religion, for his religious convictions involved only a simple belief in
one God, one God for everyone regardless of sect and regardless of the
form of worship. Nothing is so timeless as the atmosphere of a
synagogue, and whenever he had gone into one of the great synagogues of
Montreal or Toronto or London, his immediate reaction had been one of an
almost overwhelming sense of history and tradition so ancient and so
powerful that even if he had wanted to escape, it would have bound him
indissolubly and forever to his own people.

Yet even the word "race" was misleading, for even supposing there had
been such a thing as a specifically Jewish race, the racial force was
not by itself strong enough to survive and, from a sociological, much
less from an anthropological point of view, to identify a Jew whose
family had lived for centuries in England or Austria with a Jew whose
family had lived as long or longer in Poland. The English, Austrian and
Polish environments were too dissimilar.

Having been forced to rule out both race and religion on a logical
basis, he was still a Jew, however, and he could not conceive of being
anything else. He could feel his own Jewishness in his very bones and he
was proud to be what he was, partly because of that long, unbroken
continuity of history and tradition, that unending record of faith and
sheer guts, and partly because, in spite of everything which the
so-called Christian nations had done to them, his own people had
continued to give to the world such a disproportionately large number of
great men to whom humanity would be eternally indebted. As a Canadian
and a Jew, he had to admit that eleven million Canadians had so far
failed to produce one individual as outstanding as uncounted living
Jews, out of a total world population before Hitler of approximately
sixteen million--let alone the innumerable Jewish scientists,
philosophers and artists no longer living.

_Have mercy upon Zion for it is the home of our life._

He knew that his mother was looking at him again with that expression of
uncertainty and concern that he had seen so often in her face during the
past two days before she had caught his eyes and quickly looked away
again. She was worried about him. So was his father, who was staring
straight ahead with his prayer book open at the wrong page. What were
they worried about? What did they think he could do between trains? The
danger had been averted; they were safe now, the Drakes were safe,
everybody was safe except Erica and himself, and since they were bound
to get over it sooner or later, no one doubted that for a moment, then
presumably sooner or later he and Erica would be safe too.

So what does it all add up to? Apart from safety, of course. It adds up
to everybody going on forever playing the game according to the rules,
each on his own side of the fence. It adds up to precisely nothing.

_Blessed art thou, O Lord, the Shield of David._

The young student rabbi left the high reading stand and went to the Ark.
One of the readers pulled a cord and the doors of the Ark rolled back,
revealing the sacred Scrolls. And from one of them the rabbi read:

_Let them praise the Name of the Lord; for his name alone is exalted._

Then from the congregation Marc heard a low murmur of voices, and he
glanced hurriedly down at his mother's prayer book. She put her finger
on the place to show him where they were, and he repeated with the
others:

_His glory is above the earth and heaven. He also hath lifted up the
horn of his people, the praise of all his saints, even the children of
Israel, a people near unto him._

A people near unto him--in this year, 5703; in this year, 1942. Yet the
unbroken and unbreakable faith contained in those five words had finally
caught him up and carried him along with the others, through the psalm
"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof," and the replacing of
the Scroll. The doors of the Ark were closed again and the rabbi said:

_O Lord open thou my lips and my mouth shall declare thy praise._

_Blessed art thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of
Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob._

Soon after that his mind began to cloud over and he lost track again. He
found himself watching the people in the rows in front of him, thinking
that although Erica understood so much, she could never really
understand his feeling of having deserted them, in some way, by marrying
her. It would be like going over to the other side, or like deliberately
creating a breach in their own defenses--if not in his own mind, then in
the minds of other Jews. Now more than ever before, the ranks must be
closed to all outsiders.

His father had said something like that to him when he had told him
about Erica on Sunday night. Although he had arrived late on Thursday,
he had said nothing about her to either of his parents until he had been
home for three days. He had slept late on Friday morning, exhausted from
the strain of being with her for two days and yet not feeling as though
he were with her at all, then taking her back to Montreal after that
telegram about her brother, and finally, the interminable aching hours
in the train.

When he had come downstairs on Friday morning, his father had already
left for the mill on the edge of the town, but his mother was still
sitting in the dining-room waiting for him. They had talked for almost
two hours. She had asked him questions about himself and the Army and
about going overseas, and had given him news of various people, sitting
at the head of the big mahogany table with the sun coming through the
windows of the dining-room and lighting up her dark, graying hair and
her lovely dark eyes. She was almost sixty, but she looked younger, and
unlike his father, had never put on weight, in spite of the fact that
she was naturally serene and rather passive, while his father was
nervous and extremely active.

He had thought that she had noticed nothing; it was just like all the
other long and leisurely breakfasts on his first morning home, until she
asked suddenly as she was getting up, "Marc, what's the matter?"

"Nothing." As she went on looking down at him, he added, "I'll tell you
some other time. It's nothing to worry about."

It was characteristic of her that she had let it go at that, and left it
to him to bring up the subject again in his own time. It was
characteristic of both his parents. He had been brought up in a family
of four very different individuals who respected each other and would
argue passionately and at length on impersonal issues, but who said only
what was necessary and then usually only when they were asked for an
opinion, on questions which affected any one of them directly.

On Sunday night, after they'd got home from Kol Nidre, it had taken his
father less than a quarter of an hour to say all that he had to say
about Erica.

He had spent most of those three days wandering about the town where the
first seventeen years of his life lay spread out like the pieces in a
puzzle, simply waiting to be put together. Three blocks away from the
house was the public school where he had started in kindergarten. There
were some Jewish children in the upper classes and later a few behind
him, but he had gone through the next six years on his own. He didn't
mind it; small towns are more democratic than big cities, and apart from
a few peltings with snowballs and a couple of fights with an Irish
Catholic whose parents had become violently anti-Semitic after their
badly-run tailoring establishment had failed owing to competition with
the new and well-run firm of Rabinovitch and Son, he was never singled
out because he was Jewish. Protestants, Catholics and Marc Reiser skated
together in winter, played baseball and went fishing in the spring,
fished, swam and played more baseball in the summer, and switched to
football, rabbit-hunting, hiking and corn-roasts in the autumn. Marc was
popular, good at games, liked fishing and football best of all, and
didn't particularly like to work.

Surveying his own thoroughly undistinguished record from the age of six
to the age of twenty-one, he was inclined to agree that a high
proportion of Jewish brilliance is due to compensatory motivation. Once,
at the collegiate, he had headed his class, but only because his father
had bribed him with the offer of a small sailboat. Having got his
sailboat, he had promptly subsided to somewhere around eighth or tenth
place again.

At seventeen he had been ready for university and had started out for
the city two hundred miles away full of hope and illusions. Two weeks
later he was back in Manchester again, with some of the hope and most of
the illusions gone for good. For all but strictly academic purposes, the
university was divided into Gentiles and Jews; there was only a handful
of Jews registered for his course, and he had spent his first two weeks
away from home either alone in the great crowd, eating alone in
restaurants, or sitting alone in his room in the rooming house, to
which, it turned out on the thirteenth day, he had only been admitted
because the landlady had failed to realize that he was Jewish.

Home again on the fourteenth day, he had told his mother and father
everything that had happened, and after waiting for his mother to say
something instead of just looking at the wall, he had turned to his
father and asked, "Do I have to go back?"

"No," said his father. "But you have to go somewhere. Why don't you try
a small town university? Then when you're ready for law school, you'll
be older and you'll have had a chance to get used to it gradually."

So he had lived for another four years in a small town. At the
university he had averaged around tenth in his course, played football,
and spent a good many week-ends and holidays fishing and canoeing up in
the Gatineau country. He had made a lot of friends, some Gentile as well
as Jewish, though it was a lot tougher going than it had been at public
school and collegiate. Still, as his father had said, he was having a
chance to get used to it gradually, and had almost forgotten the two
weeks in that other university and everything he had been up against
there, when, at the very end of his fourth year, he had gone into the
Senior Common Room and found that someone had written in block capitals
on the notice board: "WE GAVE YOU BACK JERUSALEM; LEAVE US THE SENIOR
COMMON ROOM." There were two or three men from his class over by the
windows; he knew that they were watching him. He turned round and walked
out. It was the day before graduation.

He discovered, too late, that there was an unofficial Jewish quota for
students entering the law school, and with his thoroughly
undistinguished record, he almost failed to make it. He had wanted to be
a lawyer as long as he could remember, and he had come so close to not
being admitted that it gave him a bad fright. The fright did it; for the
first time in his life, he really began to work. He headed his course
all three years and working got to be a habit. If the other students
occasionally wondered why Reiser was always at the top, they probably
decided that being a Jew, he was just naturally clever.

_And thou has given us in love, O Lord our God, this Day of Atonement,
for pardon, forgiveness and atonement, that we may obtain pardon thereon
for all our iniquities; a holy convocation, a memorial of the departure
from Egypt._

He was suddenly aware of the rabbi's chant, of the slowly changing
atmosphere of the hall and the growing tension, as the service drew
nearer the long confession in which they would confess and make
supplication not only for themselves but for the whole House of Israel
and for all Jews, living and dead. He glanced at the faces around him
and was struck by their simplicity and the exaltation which had washed
away all the marks of ordinary, everyday living and left them
transfigured. And the wave which was mounting steadily higher toward the
climax of the service caught him up for the second time.

_Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts._

The past is not and the present is not; the House of Israel stands apart
from time and from place, one people, one brotherhood, one God.

_The whole earth is full of his glory._

He had been dreading the interminable list of sins which covered every
conceivable and sometimes inconceivable individual and collective act
and which were repeated phrase by phrase by the rabbi and repeated back
phrase by phrase by the congregation. Now he was unaware of the minutes
passing by.

_We have trespassed, we have dealt treacherously, we have robbed, we
have spoken slander, we have acted perversely and we have wrought
wickedness._

The minutes stretched out in a gradually lengthening path behind these
forty people gathered together in the public hall of Manchester,
Ontario.

_As it is written by the hand of thy prophet, "Who is a God like unto
thee, that pardoneth iniquity and passeth by the transgression of the
remnant of his heritage?" He retaineth not his anger forever because he
delighteth in mercy. He will turn again and have compassion upon
us...._

The wave carried him off to one side and left him there, going on
without him, and he found himself alone again, wishing violently that he
had not come, that like David, he had been honest enough to stay home.
He had come partly to please his mother and father and partly because it
was the last complete day of his last leave. Now it seemed to him that
he was like a man going to the bank in which he had left a small deposit
twenty years before, expecting to find himself rich. Since he had put
almost nothing into his religion at any time during his life, there was
no real reason why he should have expected, suddenly in an emergency, to
get something out of it.

He remembered having said once to Erica that marriage to a Jew would
mean living in a kind of no man's land, an undefined area out in the
middle distance somewhere between the majority from which she had come
and the minority on the other side who would never admit her. He could
tell her more about that now, for he was apparently drifting toward no
man's land himself, unable to become one even with his own people and at
this crucial moment.

It was his father who was looking at him this time, still worried.

Sunday, the day he had finally told them about Erica, he had spent
picking up the last pieces of the puzzle, a series of individual
portraits, each with a segment of background, until the first seventeen
years of his life were complete. There was old George Brophy, still
fishing off the end of the long dock by the warehouse, who had taught
him how to cast; Mac Tyrrel who had stored Marc's boat for him each
winter; old Isadore Rabinovitch who had made him his first pair of long
pants and stayed in his shop till midnight two days later mending a tear
eight inches long which Marc had got fishing back up the river. The mend
was so well done that his parents had never found out about it. They had
issued strict orders that he was not to wear his new trousers fishing.

Two blocks away from Rabinovitch and Son was O'Reilly's, where they sold
tobacco, candy, newspapers, magazines and soft drinks in front, with a
pool room and beer parlor behind. O'Reilly still had a vast assortment
of highly colored candies sold by the cent. Marc remembered particularly
some big round ones which you could get in either bright pink, orange,
purple or green, five for a cent, and which had been his favorites for
years. He did not know what they were made of; having been offered a
couple on Sunday afternoon for old time's sake, he still did not know
what they were made of.

The beer parlor behind had had no part in his past; he had never liked
beer and had been singularly free of the adolescent urge to do something
because the crowd is doing it. He had been just as immune to influence
where girls were concerned, until his third year in college when he had
fallen in love with a girl named Helen. It had lasted until they both
graduated and she went back to her home in Ottawa and he went on to law
school. His family had known about her; for a while they had been afraid
that he might marry her, and when he was home for his holidays, they had
talked all round the subject, letting him know what they thought of his
marrying a Gentile without actually saying it. That was fourteen years
ago, however, and he had forgotten all about it, until Sunday night when
they were in the living-room, his father sitting in one of the big
chairs and his mother and himself at opposite ends of the sofa, and he
had told them about Erica.

"You're not thinking of marrying her, are you?" his father had asked.

"I don't know."

There was a pause and then his father said, "That's the second time,
isn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"That other girl--the one you knew in college--she wasn't Jewish
either." He knocked his pipe against the heavy brass ash-tray standing
beside his chair and asked, "What's her family like?"

"They're--well, they're the Drakes, that's all. They're pretty
well-known."

"What do they think of you?"

He had known that he was going to be asked that question, he had known
it ever since he had realized that he was going to have to talk to his
mother and father about Erica. He said, "I've never met them."

"You..." his father began incredulously, and stopped.

His mother glanced at him quickly and said nothing at all.

He waited for a moment and then burst out, "I wish you could meet her!
You'd both like her, I know you would. She's so straight. She even knows
how to think straight. She knows exactly what matters...."

"Does she?" asked his father.

His mother said quietly, "Then she must know that her family matters,
Marc."

"Yes," said Marc hopelessly. "I guess she does."

In his cage in the corner, Mike, the canary that never sang, shifted
restlessly on his perch and then chirruped faintly.

"Hello, Mike," said Marc.

"He wants his cover on so that he can go to bed," said his mother.

"Where is it?"

"Over there on top of the piano."

He got up and put the cover around the cage and then went to the
mantelpiece for a cigarette. With his back to the empty fireplace, he
said, looking down at the worn spot in the middle of the carpet, "Nobody
else has ever meant as much to me as she does. I can't explain it."

"You aren't going to do her any good by marrying her," said his father.

"But she feels just the same about me...."

"Maybe she does now."

His father's rather heavy face was out of range of the light from the
lamp on the table behind the sofa, but even in the dimness and from the
fireplace some distance away, Marc could see his expression. His father
was not going to change his mind. Nothing would make him change his
mind. He said, "It won't work."

"Why can't we make it work?"

"Because you're too different, and because other people won't let you."

He turned to his mother and said, "You'd let us, wouldn't you?"

Her face changed and she said unhappily, "I don't know, Marc."

Then his father's voice cut across the room saying grimly, "We wouldn't
behave like the Drakes, if that's what you mean!"

He glanced at his wife and sank heavily back into his chair again,
muttering, "All right, Maria, all right," and then said in a different
tone, "You're a Jew, Marc. You ought to know we can't afford to lose
anyone we don't have to lose. There aren't so many of us now as there
were before Hitler and his friends got going on us."

"I'm not going to stop being a Jew."

"You wouldn't be able to help it. You'd be neither one thing nor
the other, and that goes for your wife and children too, particularly
your children. You'd just be..." he spread out his hands and said,
"...nothing. It's like mixing oil and water. You can't do it, it
doesn't work."

He paused again, looking up at Marc, and then with his voice still
pitched low but speaking with profound conviction, as though this were a
summing up of his sixty-five years of living experience, he went on,
"You think you could compromise and somehow you'd manage, but sooner or
later you'd find out that you can go just so far and no farther. You'd
get sick of compromising, and so would she, and some day you'd wake up
and realize that it wasn't a question of compromising on little things
any more, but of compromising yourself. And you couldn't do it, neither
of you could do it. Nobody can do it. You've got to be yourself,
otherwise you're better off dead." He said with a sudden undercurrent of
violence, "For God's sake, Marc, you're a Jew. You ought to know that!"

The violence died away again and he said, "It isn't just a question of
conventions; it's five thousand years which have made you and her
hopelessly different. You don't know how different you are yet."

"I've had a pretty good chance to find out, since I left home sixteen
years ago!"

"Find out," he repeated. "You haven't even begun to find out. Getting
yourself kicked out of a hotel is the worst thing that's ever happened
to you! You've had a pretty easy time of it, don't fool yourself. It
would probably be better for you if you hadn't. You don't yet know how
Jewish you are, otherwise you wouldn't be talking about marrying a
Gentile; you'd realize that no matter how much you have in common, it
doesn't make up for that one fundamental difference between you. Nothing
can make up for that. What counts in the long run isn't whether or not
you and your wife like the same books or like to do the same
things--it's whether or not, down underneath, you're the same kind of
person. Whether you have the same attitude toward things, the same
outlook on life--the same background, and heredity and the same
traditions."

He paused again and then finished it. He said, "And if there's one thing
that's dead certain, it is that no Jew and no Gentile that ever lived
have the same outlook on life."

That was all his father had had to say.

_Our Father, Our King, remember thy mercy and suppress thine anger, and
remove pestilence, sword and famine, destruction, captivity, iniquity
and plague, all evil occurrences, and every disease, every stumbling
block and contention, every kind of punishment, every evil decree and
all causeless enmity, from us and from all the children of thy
covenant...._

In this year Five Thousand, Seven Hundred and Three, in this year of
causeless enmity, One Thousand Nine Hundred and Forty-Two, remember thy
mercy.

One voice merged with another; it seemed to him that for weeks he had
had nothing to say for himself, even to Marc Reiser. He had only
listened:

To Erica saying, "Most people just travel along their particular groove
till they get to the end of it and die." And his father, "You aren't
going to do her any good by marrying her." And Erica again, "They just
climb out for a while, take a good look around, get scared and climb
down again."

That was what he had done. First of all, before he had gone away to
college, he had been unaware of a groove, he didn't know he was in one.
Or maybe the groove was wider in those days, so wide that it didn't
matter. Anyhow, for the next four years he had been aware of it, but had
succeeded pretty well in ignoring it, up to the day before graduation
when it had abruptly narrowed down to a point where it was no use even
trying to ignore it. He had just put up with it and had more or less
come to accept it as a permanent condition of life when he had heard
that voice for the first time. From just behind him she was saying,
"Hello, I'm Erica, one of the invisible Drakes."

Invisible was right, as it had turned out.

So then he had climbed out and stayed there on top for three months,
taking a good look round.

You can't do it, it doesn't work. You're a Jew, and you ought to know
that. But the people who play safe don't change anything, they just sit
tight and wait for someone else to change it. And that's not what you
and I are for, just to play safe and wait.

To wait--the whole history of our race is the history of a people whose
faith has never run out, whose faith has never wavered, and who are
never done with waiting.

_He who maketh peace in his high places, may he make peace for us and
for all Israel, and say ye, Amen...._

Peace for us and for all Israel--it was nothing but words, words
patiently repeated year after year, century after century, for a
thousand, two thousand years and all the way back to Jeremiah crying,
Peace, peace, when there is no peace.

He remembered that on Sunday night, or rather early Monday morning, his
mother had come into his room. He was lying in bed, still awake,
watching the shadows of the elm leaves on his ceiling. There was a
street lamp below the tree by his window, and ever since he could
remember those shadows had been there overhead for him to look at when
he was awake at night--the faint outlines of bare branches in winter,
slowly thickening and spreading out as spring drew into summer, until
the whole ceiling was covered with an intricate pattern which was seldom
still and usually in continuous flickering movement.

He saw the door opening and the widening strip of light on the carpet
which finally stopped at the large bluish spot in the corner where the
afternoon plane on the Moscow-Zagreb line had crashed somewhere in
Transylvania.

"Marc, are you awake?"

"Yes, Mother. Come in and sit down."

"I'll sit here," she said, motioning toward the chair by the dresser.
She was wearing a wrapper of some kind of printed material, and her hair
was hanging over her shoulders in two thick braids. She did not turn on
the light, but closed the door and sat down in the chair, with the
dresser behind her. The moon was full, shining in an oblique line across
his carpet. He could see her quite clearly.

"I wanted to talk to you."

"Yes, I thought you would," he said, for downstairs she had let his
father do almost all the talking. She had obviously agreed with him, but
he had sensed a faint inner reservation which was still unaccounted for.

She looked at the old battered desk across the room, then at the map
above it, which showed the world as it had been in 1922, and finally at
the bookcase in the corner, and remarked, "It's hard for me to realize
that you're grown up when I come in here, or that David is either.
Mothers are so silly--Good heavens, David's almost forty!"

A moment later she added, "And you're going overseas." After another
pause, looking down at her hands lying loosely in her lap, she said,
"I'm proud of you, Marc--not because of going overseas, though that's
part of it, but mostly just because you're a fine person. So is David.
I've been lucky, both my sons have turned out to be fine people. I'm
glad about your Captaincy too, darling."

"That doesn't mean anything, Mum. It's just a formality. Lieutenants of
my age aren't allowed to go overseas any more."

"I know, but still..."

He took a cigarette from the table beside his bed and she said, "You
smoke too much."

"I know."

"So does David. That pipe of his reminds me of those awful things you
used to keep in bottles!"

"That reminds me," said Marc with sudden interest, "what became of my
mud-puppy? I've always meant to ask you."

"I buried it."

"Oh, that explains it then," he said, adding without thinking, "Eric was
sure it wouldn't burn."

She stared at him, her expression changing completely, and suddenly she
said, her voice trembling, "Marc, I want you to be happy! I don't care
about anything else."

"I know you don't, Mother."

"I wish I could see that girl of yours. You're thirty-three, and you've
never really been in love with anyone else. I'm sure she must be fine
too, because you wouldn't be in love with her if she wasn't. And though
everything your father said tonight was true, there's no getting around
it, still I kept thinking all the time he was talking that she should
have been there to speak for herself."

"You're the first person who's thought that. I don't know whether even I
have, really...."

He stopped and she said, letting out her breath in a long sigh, "Of
course she doesn't know what it's like." In a different tone she added
after a pause, "And you don't really, either."

"Yes, I do."

"No."

She was still sitting in the same position but her hands were clasped
tightly together now, and her whole body had stiffened. She said, "You
don't know what happens to people when they live together year after
year. They get angry sometimes, and they say things that they couldn't
have imagined themselves saying before they were married, and that they
wouldn't dream of saying to anyone else. That's what I'm afraid of, and
I simply couldn't bear to have it happen to you."

"What are you afraid of?" he asked, after waiting for her to go on.

She had begun to rock in a slight back and forth movement. He never
forgot the way she looked or the tone of her voice as she said
despairingly, "I'm afraid that sometime when she was very angry, she
would round on you and blame you for being a Jew."

_Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us, and he
said unto them, I am an Hebrew._

The afternoon service for Yom Kippur was almost over. The scene in his
bedroom faded from his mind and he glanced at the congregation ahead of
him; then beside him, his mother touched his arm and turned her head
slightly, gesturing toward the back of the hall. His brother David had
come after all and was standing by the door, a short, almost stocky
figure in baggy gray flannels and an old leather windbreaker. He had
very thick black hair, a black mustache, a rather pronounced nose which
must have been a throwback to some fairly remote ancestor, for none of
the recent Reisers or Mendels, Maria Reiser's family, were particularly
Semitic in appearance; black eyes which gave you the feeling that he
never missed anything, and a manner which was so off-hand that it was
frequently mistaken for rudeness. He was almost seven years older than
Marc; his mind had been conditioned by twenty years of scientific
training and his range of interests lay almost entirely outside himself.
He had few personal problems; he lived a hard life as a bush doctor
attached to a nickel mine some distance north, and he lived it to the
best of his ability, indifferent to his own comfort and absorbed in his
work. He was passionately fond of poetry and occasionally wrote good
verse himself.

As he caught Marc's eye he waved casually with one hand but stayed where
he was, leaning against the back wall by the door.

They had come to the final Kaddish in the Afternoon Service.

_May the prayers and supplications of the whole house of Israel be
accepted in the presence of their Father who is in heaven; and say ye,
Amen._

_May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life for us and for all
Israel, and say ye, Amen._

_May he who maketh peace in his high places, make peace for us and for
all Israel, and say ye, Amen._

The tired congregation stirred a little, but there was still another
service before the Day of Atonement would end.

Marc turned to his mother and asked, "Do you mind if I go? Dave seems to
have something on his mind."

"No, go along, I'll see you back at the house."

Outside in the street David said to Marc, "Let's go for a walk before
dinner. I want to talk to you."

"And you, Brutus," said Marc wearily.

"Sorry. If you're hungry, I'll buy you a sandwich and a cup of coffee
first, though. That Greek joint is just up the street."

"All right," said Marc indifferently. He was wondering just how his
mother and father had managed to tell David about Erica, when his
brother had only arrived late the night before, had gone to bed when he
himself had gone, and had come downstairs for breakfast at approximately
the same moment. It could only have been while he, Marc, had been taking
a bath later on in the morning. His parents had certainly made the most
of that bath, for it was obvious that David knew all about it.

Whatever it was he had to say on the subject, however, he said nothing
while they were in the Greek restaurant or when they were walking
through the town toward the road which led back through the strip of
rough farm country to the bush, and eventually into the Algoma Hills.
When they had passed the last run-down cottage on the outskirts of the
town, he was still talking about Father LaFleur, the new priest in his
district, who was a great improvement on the old one, younger, more
adaptable, and far less fatalistic in his attitude toward the wretched
living conditions in his parish. He was already talking about
co-operatives, and on top of all of his other qualifications, he could
even play a good game of chess.

"We usually manage to get together for a game every week or so," David
remarked, his black eyes following a flock of crows which flew up from a
hay-stack near the road, high into the blue autumn air and off toward
the town behind them. "You have no idea what a difference a good priest
can make to the local doctor. I had a devil of a time with the other
one; he was as hard as nails, he'd put off calling me till the last
moment, and sometimes I used to wonder if he didn't actually prefer to
have his parishioners enter the Kingdom of Heaven right away, rather
than have their entry postponed by a Jewish doctor butting in and
interfering with the Will of God. He was very strong on the Will of
God."

"Does the new priest object to your being Jewish?"

"Well, he put out a few feelers when he first came, on the off chance of
converting me, but I told him that my attitude toward religion in
general, Judaism, Catholicism or any other, was chiefly scientific, and
after that he gave up. On the spiritual side, we have a strictly live
and let live attitude toward each other. Got a cigarette?"

They stopped in the middle of the road, and shielding a match with his
hands, David lit Marc's cigarette and his own, blew out the match and
said, "I've got a couple of things to tell you."

"You and everybody else," said Marc, starting to walk up the road again.
Straight ahead of them were the Algoma Hills, strung out like sentinels
guarding the deep mining country beyond; below the hills was the bush,
heavily splashed with color, and somewhere in there off to the left was
a certain maple tree overhanging some falls, a long narrow shaft of
water pouring down past the maple into an almost circular pool edged
with evergreens, poplars, white birch trees and sumac. The effect at
this time of year was always extraordinary, a kind of annual miracle,
for the maple turned to pure scarlet, the water of the pool to cobalt
blue, and the trees were a tangled mass of color ranging from deep
bluish green through rust and orange to a clear, translucent yellow. He
wished violently, so violently he felt almost sick, that Erica was with
him, that it was early morning and they were starting back toward the
hills with the whole day ahead of them, and instead of that, it was late
afternoon, the hills had a darkening, purplish cast, and he was with
David, about to listen to still another voice saying the same things all
over again, and about to answer a lot of silly questions, with Erica
five hundred miles away.

Eric, what are we doing? How are we going to live, you without me and I
without you?

"Would you like to know what I think?" asked David suddenly beside him.

He started and then answered shortly, "Not if it's what everybody else
thinks."

"It isn't. At least it's not what Mother and Dad seem to think. I told
them that if you decided you wanted to marry Erica Drake, I was going to
back you up."

"You're going to back _me_ up?" he said incredulously.

"Well," said David shrugging, "Erica anyhow. I don't know about you yet,
I want to hear your side of it first." He paused and then remarked, "I
gather the chief objection to her is the fact that she's not Jewish."

"Obviously. There aren't any other objections."

His brother glanced at him briefly and said, "I didn't realize that you
were so particular."

"It's not me, for God's sake," said Marc irritably. "I don't give a damn
whether she's Jewish or not. It's what will happen to her--what has
already happened to her, in less than three months. You don't know how
much she's changed. She's been getting it from every direction because
of me--because just by being what I am, I lay her open to it. And I
can't help it, I can't even do anything to make it easier for her. I
just go on making it harder."

He said, "I keep seeing her the way she was when I met her..." and
broke off, as the picture of Erica in his mind divided into two
impressions, one three months old and the other less than a week old,
two portraits to be labeled "Before" and "After," before and after Marc
Reiser, only reversing the usual order because After was always supposed
to be a great improvement over Before, instead of the other way round.

Two portraits side by side, of Erica as she had been the day he had met
her, with that look of having come to terms with life, and Erica as she
had been up at the clearing near the top of the mountain the day he had
left her, bewildered and beaten.

He said to the short, stocky figure marching along beside him, "You
haven't any idea how much she's changed--My God, how much she's changed!
She doesn't even look really young any more. If I'd deliberately set out
to see how much damage I could do, I couldn't have made a better job of
it. What kind of case have we got? I haven't given her anything compared
to what I've already taken away from her."

Not for years and perhaps never again would he walk this road as he had
walked it so many times with a fishing-rod and a basket slung over his
shoulder, this road which led back through the fields and the bush to
the hills, standing like sentinels against the sky, but he had forgotten
where he was; he might just as well have been walking down a city
street, he who had always loved Algoma and the bush and had always hated
cities.

He said to David, who was having a hard time keeping up with him, his
legs were so much shorter than Marc's, "The first week-end we went away,
she had a copy of _The Shropshire Lad_ with her, and when I picked it up
it fell open at those lines that begin:

 'Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle...
 Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.'"

"It's no use going on like that, Marc."

"Do you remember the rest of it?"

His brother did not answer.

Still walking blindly up the road, toward the bush which began abruptly
at the edge of the last stony field just ahead of them, Marc said:

     "'Think rather--call to thought if now you grieve a little,
     The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.'"

"All right," said David, exasperated. "You don't need to go on, I know
every word of it. So that's your idea of Erica now. All you have to do
is be noble, make your exit, and Erica will promptly forget all the
horror and scorn and fear and indignation and go back to sleep again. Is
that it?"

"I suppose so."

"She must be a nice, simple soul."

He glanced at Marc again and asked, "By the way, just what did you think
was going to happen while you were home this week-end?"

The road had entered the bush and narrowed down to a rough track which
looked as though it might end at every turn, but which actually
continued for miles, winding its way through the trees and undergrowth
and bracken and then through the hills and on into the heart of the
mining country. Staring at a flaming sumac a few yards ahead, Marc said,
"I suppose I thought there would be something that she couldn't..."

"Something you belonged to and she didn't?"

"Yes."

"And was there?"

Marc shook his head. "It was the opposite. Because she wasn't with me, I
felt as though I didn't belong either. I kept wishing she was here, so I
could take her around and show her things. I even felt that way about
the service this afternoon--how interested she would have been, and how
much it would have impressed her, because it is impressive, and how much
more it would have meant to me if she'd been beside me." He stopped,
embarrassed, and remarked, "I guess it sounds pretty silly, doesn't it?
After all, nothing could be much more exclusively Jewish than the Day of
Atonement."

"I don't see what that has to do with it. Does it sound silly to you?"

"No, but it probably would to everybody else."

"Oh? And what have they got to do with it?"

There was a bridge crossing a small, clear stream just ahead, and they
left the road and sat down beside the bridge at a place where the light
came filtering down through the trees from the west and shone on the
clean sand underneath the water.

As he felt through the pockets of his windbreaker for one of the several
pipes he always carried about with him, David asked, "Has Erica ever
said anything at all, to justify this theory of yours that you'd do less
damage in the long run, by just walking out on her?"

"No, but..."

"Isn't that something she's entitled to decide for herself? Or isn't
Erica entitled to decide anything for herself? I don't wonder she's
changed so much in the last three months, but I wouldn't blame it all on
her father if I were you."

"What do you mean?"

"You're enough to drive anybody nuts."

"Do you mean to say that you think it's all my fault?" asked Marc
incredulously.

He shrugged and said, "Well, not _all_ your fault. Say about
ninety-eight percent."

"Why?"

"Because you've let her down too. That makes it unanimous, doesn't it?
Only you were the one who mattered most to her, so that if you hadn't
let her down, it would have made all the difference. I suppose," David
went on conversationally, "that you've been doing it nice and gradually,
a bit of letting down here, and bit of letting down there, so that she
really had nothing to hang on to, while she was fighting her
family...."

"Shut up," said Marc suddenly.

"I thought you wanted to know why she's changed so much, and whether
what has been happening to her is quite as inevitable as you seem to
think it is. You said that you couldn't do anything to make things
easier for her; all you could do was just go on making it harder. I
don't agree."

He paused, looking across the stream at a pine which had fallen down the
bank and was lying with its upper branches in the water. "Must have been
a bad electric storm lately," he remarked. "The split's quite fresh."
Then he said deliberately, "You and I weren't brought up to play games
at other people's expense. You're old enough to know better, and you're
starting too late to be able to get away with it. Don't fool yourself,
laddie, you won't get away with it. You're going to find out that for
every person who's stepped out of line and lived to regret it, there are
two people who stayed in line because they got their values mixed and
lost their nerve, and who have lived to regret it still more. You don't
hear about those people because they're still in line where they don't
show. You only hear about the others."

"Do you believe that?" asked Marc, startled.

"I wouldn't say it if I didn't. From my own experience, that is, from
what the people themselves have told me, I'd say the proportion was
somewhat higher than two to one. In the old days, the difference in
religion was probably a real barrier to mixed marriages, but you don't
take your religion that seriously and I don't suppose Erica does either,
so what you'd be up against would come chiefly from outside. That makes
it a lot easier, and if you and Erica are really in love with each
other, then all you have to do is figure out what matters most to
you--whether you'd rather be out of line with Erica, or stay in line
without her. You can't have it both ways."

"I wish Eric could."

David said sharply, "She hasn't been getting it either way so far, has
she?"

"I guess not."

He saw Marc's expression and said, "Sorry, but sympathy is not what you
need at the moment. What you need is a good swift kick in the pants."

It seemed to Marc that what he needed most at the moment was time to
think, and he said, "I wish you'd shut up."

"All right," said David, settling back with his shoulders against a log.

He wanted to think about Erica, and with a shock he realized that in the
end, it had taken David to get him to listen to her. Only a few days
before, when she had been trying all over again to tell him what
mattered most to her, she had said, "I wish you'd believe me," and when
he had protested that he did believe her, she had answered hopelessly,
"No, not quite." Like her father, he had always assumed that Erica did
not know what she would be letting herself in for, and again like
Charles Drake, he had considered himself to be in some mysterious way
better qualified to decide what would be best for her in the long run
than Erica was herself.

In refusing to believe her, he had placed himself beyond her influence
and relegated her to a position where all she could do was to stand back
and watch him being influenced by other people and in effect, being
influenced against her. He had shut her out, although now he remembered
exactly the way she had said, "Give me a chance to understand, and if I
let you down, well then you can shut me out. I guess I'll have deserved
it. It's not my fault that I'm not Jewish and I can't do anything about
it, but surely, surely the fact that I love you so much makes up for
it!"

The day he had met her he had asked her what she wanted most and she had
said, "Just what every other woman wants; I'm afraid I'm not very
original," and the last day, three months later, he had asked her again,
for somewhat different reasons, and she had said, "I want you to
_believe_--to believe in us. I don't care how long I have to wait, that
isn't what matters. I don't think I matter much either. What does matter
is you, and what I can't bear is the idea of your going overseas with
nothing to come back to at the end of it but a world in which there is
no place for you and me."

"What's wrong?" asked David, watching him.

"Nothing," said Marc. "I was just thinking."

They were silent again and finally David asked, "Mind if I ask you a few
questions?"

"Go ahead," said Marc without interest.

"Is there anyone in this collection of people who are so dead against
your marrying Erica, or her marrying you, who happens to know both of
you?"

"No."

"Is there anyone who knows both of you who's in favor of it? I don't
mean people who just know you casually."

Marc thought for a moment and then answered, "Yes, there's one. Erica's
sister Miriam."

"Good," said David. "That makes two of us."

Marc almost missed it at first, and then he demanded, "What do you mean,
two of you?"

"Miriam and me."

"You don't know Eric...."

"Well," said David, "not intimately, but I did spend last Saturday night
with her from six o'clock till my train left at eleven."

"You did _what_?"

"I told you I was in Montreal for a three-day clinic."

"Yes, but..."

"You told me about her that night we ran into each other at the
Rosenbergs' in Toronto, and then when you wrote to say that you were on
draft and going to Petawawa, you sounded even more depressed about the
whole thing, so I figured that since I didn't have anything to do from
five until my train left at eleven, I might just as well have a look at
her and see what it was all about."

"How did you find her?"

"I just picked the Drake with the fanciest address. Got the right one
first shot," he added with a certain amount of pride. "Anyhow, I rang
up, and when I got her, I said I was your brother from the backwoods,
and would she care to have dinner with me. She sort of gasped and then
she said, 'You're David,' as though I'd suddenly dropped down from Mars.
I don't know whether she was crying or not, it sounded like it anyhow.
There was a longish silence, because I couldn't think of anything to
say, until finally I asked her if she'd mind if I called for her at six
so that we could have a couple of drinks...."

"You called for her?" repeated Marc.

"Naturally," said David. "I don't make it as easy for people to dictate
terms to me as you do."

"Go on," said Marc, staring at him.

"Well, she said she'd be ready at six, and I got a taxi so much sooner
than I expected that I arrived there promptly at a quarter to."

"Did you meet any of the family?"

"Yes," said David. "I met Drake." He picked up a flat stone and sent it
skimming out over the surface of the water upstream. "I was standing
with my back to the door looking at that picture over the fireplace when
someone said behind me, 'Mr. Reiser, I'm Erica's father.' As soon as I
turned round and he saw my face, it was obvious from his expression that
something was wrong somewhere...."

"I'll bet it was," said Marc grimly.

"No, not the way you mean," his brother answered immediately. "He was
just puzzled. I said that I was afraid he'd got me mixed up with you,
and that I was Dr. David Reiser, so we shook hands and he gave me a
cigarette and then asked if I'd like a drink. I said, 'Yes, thanks very
much,' so he got one for each of us and one for Erica when she came
down. He said he'd just heard the maid say the name Reiser, when she'd
gone up to tell Erica I was there, so naturally he thought I was you."

He paused and then added deliberately, "The next thing Drake said after
that was, 'I'm sorry to say that I've never met your brother.' And there
was no doubt he meant it."

"He said that?" asked Marc incredulously. "But why? Why after all this
time, for God's sake? I don't get it."

"I gathered from Erica, that her father's opposition had collapsed, the
day after he heard that his son was missing. I don't suppose he felt
much like going on with it after that. He looked pretty well shot when I
saw him. Anyhow, he asked me what I was doing in Montreal, and I told
him that I'd come down for a clinic. He wanted to know where I
practiced, and I told him that too, and he seemed genuinely interested
and kept on asking me questions, so I kept on talking. It may seem funny
to you but I liked him. And by the way, the last thing he said to me was
to tell you that he hoped he'd have a chance of meeting you when you
were in Montreal on Wednesday."

"That's day after tomorrow." He was still trying to believe it, when he
heard David asking abruptly why he had allowed Drake to get away with
it.

"Get away with it?" said Marc.

"Yes. Why didn't you go and see him at the very beginning, before this
whole mess had a chance to develop?"

"I couldn't do that."

"Why not?" asked his brother. "I know what happened, or at least I've
got a pretty good idea, because Erica told me the whole story. The point
is that it takes two to play the game Drake was playing, and he couldn't
have got away with it at all, if you'd behaved like an ordinary,
intelligent human being, instead of like a Jew with an inferiority
complex. I know," he said in a different tone, "it's easy to talk,
particularly at this distance."

In the intervals of silence they could hear the wind stirring in the
trees overhead, the sound of running water and sometimes the rustling of
an animal in the underbrush.

Staring unseeing at the tangle of trees, bushes and vines across the
little stream, Marc said at last, "I almost did see Drake once. I got as
far as his outer office."

"And what happened?"

"I guess I just lost my nerve."

A moment later he burst out violently, "O.K., go ahead and tell me I've
made a hell of a mess of it!"

"Give me time, laddie," said David imperturbably. "Don't you want to
know how Erica is?"

"I already know how she is," he said under his breath.

"I wrote her a prescription for some stuff to make her sleep--my idea,
not hers. I hope she got it filled. She didn't seem to be very
interested in herself, all she could talk about was you. She did say
that she was going to enlist this week, but she hasn't a hope of passing
her medical, till she's put on ten pounds and had a good rest."

David changed his position, sitting higher, with his back instead of his
shoulders against the log, and said dispassionately, "As I've already
remarked once, you're old enough to know better. This whole mess, as you
call it, is your fault from start to finish, only having started it, you
haven't got the guts to finish it; all you do is listen to a lot of
people yapping about a situation they don't know the first thing about,
and refusing to listen to the one person who does. And then you let
those other people finish it for you."

He said, "If you think God is going to hand you another Erica Drake on a
platter, only tailored to measure according to a lot of cockeyed
theories about 'Jews' and 'Gentiles' you're going to find that you're
wrong. There isn't going to be another one."

"I know that." He had already made up his mind, but he had more faith in
his brother's judgment than in the judgment of anyone else he knew, and
he said, "Go on."

"You're a queer mixture of a weak character and a strong one. I've
always thought you'd be up against something like this sooner or later,
so that you'd be forced to make a choice, and if you made the right one,
then you'd be somebody, and if you didn't, then afterwards you'd just
let yourself go, and say what's the use, and subside into complete
mediocrity. If you allow a lot of other people to talk you out of doing
something that you know is right _for you_, and talk you into letting
yourself and someone else down as badly as this, then you'll never
amount to even half the human being you ought to be. Maybe it's a
question of sticking by your own principles, I don't know, but you don't
think like they do. If you did, you might be able to get away with it,
but you don't, and neither does Erica. The difference between you is
that she seems to realize it and you don't...."

"I do realize it."

He glanced swiftly at Marc, and after scrutinizing him for a moment he
said, "Yes, I guess you do, but I'm going to finish my speech anyhow."
He paused and then went on, "People have been trying to type us ever
since we were born, Marc. I know it hasn't been easy, it's been tough as
the devil a lot of the time, but we've stuck it out this far, and
neither of us can afford to give up now." He paused again and said
finally, "You can't quit."

They both got up and started down the road toward the town. The sun was
setting over the bush and the Algoma Hills were slowly changing from
burnished gold to deep purple, but Marc did not look back. He did not
look back until they had passed the last farm-house and were nearing the
row of run-down cottages on the outskirts, and he heard the first
whippoorwill calling from the bush. He turned and his eyes swept over
the line of hills as they caught the last rays of light from the west,
and then he began to walk faster, looking straight ahead of him again.

****

The Reisers were at dinner, his father at one end of the table and his
mother at the other, and David sitting across from him, when the
telephone rang in the hall, and Marc, who was nearest the door, got up
to answer it.

It was the girl who worked in the telegraph office down on Main Street
and because she had known Marc all her life, instead of going through
the usual formalities, she said, "Marc, is that you?"

"Yes. Oh, hello..." he began, and then realized that he had forgotten
her name. "Hello," he said again, more firmly.

"Where have you been all afternoon, for goodness' sake?"

"Well, I..."

"There's a wire for you from Ottawa. You've got an extra week's leave."

"What!" gasped Marc. "What did you say?"

"Here, I'll read it to you. 'Captain M. L. Reiser, 32 Elm St.,
Manchester...'"

"All right, you can skip that part of it. Read me the rest."

She read him the rest and asked him if he would like a copy delivered.
"We're pretty short-handed now, but Tommy comes in after school, and he
should be back from dinner in a minute."

"All right," said Marc dazedly. "Send Tommy along with it."

He put down the phone and stared at the paneled wall above the telephone
where he had once carved his initials, M.L.R., Marc Leopold Reiser.

"What is it?" asked David from the doorway.

"I've got an extra week's leave." He said suddenly, "I'm going to phone
Eric and ask her to marry me."

He could hear his mother and father talking in the dining-room and
looking up at his brother he said, "Go and explain to them, Dave,
please."

"O.K.," said David.

"Tell them..."

"O.K.," said David again. "I'll do my best."

He disappeared, and into the phone Marc said to the long distance
operator, "Montreal, please...."

There was a wait while she was getting the number and he went on looking
at the initials M.L.R. until finally a woman's voice said, "Hello."

"Manchester calling, just a moment please."

"Hello," said Marc. "Hello, may I speak to Miss Drake, please--Miss
Erica Drake."

"Yes, I'll get her. Can you hold on a minute?"

"Is that you, Mrs. Drake?"

"Yes...."

"This is Marc Reiser speaking."

"Oh," she said. "I'm sorry, I didn't recognize your voice."

"Is Eric all right?"

"No, not exactly. She--she's badly overtired...." The voice dropped
into silence and then he heard her say, "I'm glad you telephoned, Mr.
Reiser. I hope--I hope there's nothing wrong?"

"No, I've just been given some extra leave...."

"I'm so glad! Just a minute, I'll get Erica."

He heard Miriam's voice somewhere near the phone asking, "Mother, is
that Marc?"

"Yes, thank goodness."

"Marc!" said Miriam into the phone.

"Hello, Mimi." He was beginning to be thoroughly frightened and he
asked, "What's the matter with Eric?"

"She seems to have cracked up. She came home on Saturday night, after
your brother left, and just sort of went to pieces. Mother's kept her in
bed ever since. You are coming tomorrow, aren't you?" she asked
anxiously.

"No, I think I'll probably leave tonight. Mimi," he said quickly, "is
there any news of Tony?"

"No," said Miriam.

"But there's still a chance, isn't there?"

"I don't think so," she answered after a pause.

"Where was it?"

"The Mediterranean. He'd been transferred to Malta." She said, "I'm glad
about your leave, Marc."

"Thanks, Mimi."

"Here's Eric...."

And then he heard Erica's voice saying, "Marc--Marc, is that you?"

"Hello, darling. Eric," he whispered, swallowing. "Eric, darling..."

"Is it true about your leave?"

"I've got another week."

"Marc!"

He said in agony, "Don't cry, darling--you mustn't cry any more."

"It's getting to be a habit, isn't it? I'm sorry." There was a brief
silence and then she said, "There, that's better. When are you coming?"

"I'm going to try to make the train tonight. It's the Vancouver train
and it's due in at Windsor Station at 11:15 tomorrow morning. Do you
think you can meet me?"

"Yes, of course...."

"Are you sure you're well enough?" he asked anxiously.

"There's nothing the matter with me, really, I just..." She stopped
and then said, "I'm just a fake."

"Eric..."

"Yes?"

"Eric," he said. He suddenly got to his feet, kicking away the telephone
stool, and gripping the phone with one hand and the frame of the door
leading into the back hall with the other, he said, "Eric, will you
marry me?"

Her voice was suddenly very faint as she asked, "Do you mean now or
afterwards?"

"I mean now--tomorrow, or the next day, as soon as we can get a
license." He drew in his breath and said with a great effort, "Of
course, if you like you can--well, you can think about it and tell me
when I..."

"I don't have to think about it, except that I guess--I guess I can't
quite believe it!"

"Neither can I," he said rather unsteadily.

After a pause he heard her asking, "Marc, are you..."

"Am I what?"

"Are you _sure_, darling?"

"Yes," said Marc. "I'm quite sure now."

There was a long silence and finally he said still more unsteadily, "I'm
going to hang up now because I..."

"It must be catching. Good-by, darling."

"Good-by, Eric."

"And give my love to David!"

He put down the phone and after a while he turned and found his mother
and father standing in the door leading to the dining-room. Whatever it
was they had intended to say to him, when they saw his face, they did
not say it.

He looked from one to the other and finally the words came out, wrung
from his heart, "Please... give us a break!"

His father was the first to answer. He said, "Don't worry, Marc. We'll
give you a break."

Later, as he was standing on the steps of the train looking down at the
three of them, his mother and father and brother, his father said, "Tell
Erica to come and see us sometime, Marc."

"I'll tell her," said Marc. "If it doesn't take us too long to get a
license, we might come and see you together, after we're married."

"No," said his mother, shaking her head. "We don't want you spending
most of your last week on trains."

The train began to move and David said, smiling up at him, "Good luck,
laddie."

His father raised one hand in a little gesture of farewell, and then his
mother cried out suddenly, "Marc, come back!"

"I'll come back, Mother."

And the last he saw of his family, they were still standing together
under a lamp and a sign on which was written the words, "Manchester,
Ont.," the sign which they had first seen thirty-five years before, when
the three of them, a mother and father and a little boy of five, had
come from Austria.

****

It is five hundred miles from the little town of Manchester, on the edge
of the mining country in northern Ontario, to the city of Montreal in
Quebec, but Marc had been over the line so often, since he had first
left home to go to university seventeen years before, that lying awake
in his berth he could call off the name of every town and every village
through which they passed, and he knew the look of every lake and river,
every forest and every stretch of field and pasture, invisible in the
darkness.

When the train crossed the river at St. Anne's, he was already standing
on the platform, looking out. Also standing on the platform was a
middle-aged naval officer who told Marc that he had not seen his home in
Montreal since the beginning of the war, and that the train was
twenty-six hours late.

"We're running on time now, aren't we?" asked Marc.

"Depends on what you call 'on time.' We're still twenty-six hours late
so far as I'm concerned. Got stuck in Alberta. Alberta," he repeated in
disgust. "What a place to be stuck." He took out his pipe, put it away
again, and went on staring out the window. He got off at Montreal West.

After Montreal West, Westmount, then six minutes to Windsor Station.

"What track are we on?" Marc asked the porter who was piling luggage on
the rear platform.

"I don't know, sir."

"Never mind, it doesn't matter."

They were in the railway yards now, passing a row of freight cars, then
a dining-car standing by itself, and finally they were there.

The porter opened the door and said, "Stand back, please sir."

"I'm not going to fall off," said Marc from the bottom step. Just before
the train stopped he jumped. The platform was clear for a few moments,
then people began streaming from all the cars ahead and he had to slow
down. Sleeping cars, coaches, two baggage cars, then the coal car, and
just as he came up to the engine, he saw Erica standing by the barrier
waiting for him. The moment he caught sight of her, he began to run.


THE END






[End of Earth and High Heaven, by Gwethalyn Graham]
