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 René? 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.