Читать книгу Earth and High Heaven - Gwethalyn Graham - Страница 3

Table of Contents

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 fiancé 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 René 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 René 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 canapés, René 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 René’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 René 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 René had phoned to ask him to the Drakes’ he had first refused, and then finally agreed to go, only because René 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 René 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 René 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 René’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 René, 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 René?”

“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’Arlésienne.’ ”

“It must be one of those German prints, it’s so clear.”

From the Arlésienne 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, René 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, René 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 René, 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, René 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 René 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 René 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 René 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 René cautiously, “I’ve met him a couple of times.”

“Don’t tell me you’re committing yourself to something....”

“Certainly not,” said René, 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 René, 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, René?”

“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 René 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 René phoned about. His name sounded foreign so I suppose he’s a refugee.”

“I don’t think René 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 René’s friend, he’s often talked about you.” She sat down on the window-seat and inquired, “Have you seen René 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 René 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 René 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 René 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.”

“René wouldn’t quarrel with you. He’s too good a politician.”

She could see René 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, “René’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 René, 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 René 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 Arlésienne. 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 Côte 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 René 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, René....”

“I was,” said René.

“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—ça 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 René.

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, René,” murmured Erica, smiling into her glass, and answered, “The right religion.”

“I have nothing against the King of England,” protested René.

“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 René.

“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 René 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.

René 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 René.

“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?”

“René’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 René 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, “René.”

“René! René’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 René.”

“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. “René 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 René 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 René’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 René’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 René 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 René, at any rate,” he added rather acidly.

“Don’t let’s get started on René again.”

“How in hell can I help it with my only son in the Air Force, making the world safe for René to sit at home playing politics?” he demanded angrily. “Not that René 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 René 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.

“René.”

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 René again at this particular time. Her father had always disliked René. 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 René 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 René 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 René’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 René 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 René’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 René 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 René 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, René,” cutting him short, then glanced at Marc without pausing and went on.