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 René. "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 René 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 René. "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 René about Marc, but she did not know how René 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 René 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’épargne 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 René 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 René 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".
"René…"
"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, "René, 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 naïve as that".
"What’s being naïve got to do with it?"
"Isn’t it rather naïve 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 naïve".
"René, 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 René 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 René 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.