“They are animals,” the Frenchman said. “And you treat them like animals.”
The girl stirred, as if she were about to say something. Both men turned toward her expectantly.
“I prefer a nigger to a Jew,” she said.
AT THE END OF THE MEAL, the guests at the large table pushed their chairs back. Barbara Rhodes, turning away from the young man who had bored her so with his handsome empty face, his shallow eyes that did not have the thing she looked for in people’s eyes but only vanity, glanced toward the little table in the alcove. She saw Harold rise, still talking (what could they have found to talk about so animatedly all through dinner?) and draw the little table toward him so that the girl could get up.… Oh no! she cried as the table started to tilt alarmingly. She saw the Frenchman with a quick movement try to stop it but he was on the wrong side of the table and it was too late. There was an appalling crash.
“Une table pliante,” a voice said coolly beside her.
Unable to go on looking, she turned away, but not before she had seen the red stain, like blood, on the beautiful Aubusson carpet, and Harold, pale as death, standing with his hands at his side, looking at what he had done.
“THESE IDEAS OF YOURS are foolish and will not work,” Jean Allegret said an hour later.
“Perhaps not,” Harold said.
They were sitting on a bench on the lawn, facing the lighted windows but in the dark. On another bench, directly in front of them, Barbara and Sabine and another girl whose name Harold didn’t know were sitting and talking quietly. There were five or six more people here and there, on the steps, in chairs, or on other benches, talking and watching the moon rise. The others were inside, in the library, dancing to the music of a portable record player.
“Perhaps they are foolish,” he said, “but I prefer them, for my own sake. If it is foolish to think that all men are brothers, it is at least more civilized—and more agreeable—than thinking that all men—you and I, for instance—are enemies, waiting for a chance to run a bayonet through each other’s back.”
The wine had made him garrulous and extravagant in speech; also, he had done much less than the usual amount of talking since they had landed in France, and it gave him the feeling of being in arrears, of having a great deal backed up that he urgently needed to say.
“If it is really a question of that,” he went on, “then I will get up and turn around and—since I like you too much to put a bayonet in your back—offer you my back instead. Hoping that you won’t call my bluff, you understand. Or that something will distract your attention long enough for me to—”
“Very dear, your theories. Very gentle and sweet and impossible to put into practice. Nevertheless, you interest me. You are not the American type. I didn’t know there were Americans like that.”
“But that’s what I keep telling you. Exactly what I am is the American type.”
“You have got everything all wrong, but your ideas interest me.”
“They are not my ideas. I have not said one original thing all evening.”
“I like you,” Jean Allégret said. “And if it were possible, if there was the slightest chance of changing human nature for the better, I would be on your side. But it does not change. Force is what counts. Idealism cannot survive a firing squad.… But in another way, another world, maybe, what you say is true. And in spite of all I have said, I believe it too. I am an artist. I paint.”
“Seriously?”
“Excuse me,” the Frenchman said. “I neglect my duties as a host. I will be back in a moment.” He got up and went across the lawn and into the house.
The moon was above the marshes now, round and yellow and enormous. The whole sky was gilded by it. The house was no longer ugly. By this light you could see what the Victorian architect had had in mind. Harold stood behind Barbara, with his hand on her shoulder, listening to the girls’ conversation. Then, drawn by curiosity, he went up the steps and into the house, as far as the drawing-room door. The fruitwood furniture was of a kind he had little taste for, but around the room were portraits and ivory miniatures he would have liked to look at. But would it (since the French were said to be so reluctant to ask people into their homes) be considered an act of rudeness for him to go around looking at things all by himself?
He turned back toward the front door and met Jean Allégret in the hall. “Oh there you are,” the Frenchman said. “I was looking for you.”
They went and sat down where they had been before, but turned the bench around so that they could watch the moon rising through the night sky.
“I do not like the painting of our time,” Jean Allégret said. “It is sterile and it has nothing to do with life. What I paint is action. I stand and watch a man cutting a tree down, a farmer in the field, and I love the way he swings the ax blade, I see every motion, and it’s that motion that interests me—not color or design. It’s life I want to paint.”
“You are painting now?”
“I have not painted since the war. I am rebuilding what was destroyed, you understand. I cannot do that and also paint. The painting is my personal life, which has to give way to the responsibilities I have inherited.”
“You are not married?”
The Frenchman shook his head. “When the house is rebuilt and the farms are under cultivation again, then I will find a wife who understands what I expect of her, and there will be children.”
“And she must expect nothing of you? There can be no alteration of your ideas to fit hers?”
“None whatever. I do not approve of American ideas of how to treat women. They are gallant only on the surface. You lose control over your women. And you have no authority over your children or your home. You continually divorce and remarry and make a further mess of it.”
“Modern marriage is very complicated.”
“It need not be.”
Harold saw Eugène stop in front of Barbara and say something. After a moment he walked away. He did not appear to be having a good time. The tweed coat, Harold thought.
Turning to Jean Allégret, he said: “You do not know my name, do you?”
The Frenchman shook his head.
“Very good,” Harold said. “I have a suggestion to make. Suppose I do not tell you my name. Some day you may find that you cannot go on carrying the burden of family responsibilities, or that you were wrong in laying aside your personal life. And you may have to drop everything and start searching for what you once had. Or for something. Everybody at one time or another has to go on a search, and if I do not tell you my name, or where I live, then you will have an object to search for, an excuse. America is a large country, it may take years and years to find me, but while you are searching you will be discovering all sorts of things, you will be talking to people, having experiences, and even if you never find me— You don’t like my idea?”
“It’s completely impractical. Romantic and charming and impractical—a thoroughly American idea.”
“I suppose it is,” Harold said. He took his financial diary out of his pocket and wrote his name and forwarding address in Paris and their address in America. Then he tore the page out and handed it to the Frenchman, and went over to the bench where the three girls were sitting. They looked up as he approached.
“Do you want to come and join us?” he asked.
“Are you having a pleasant conversation?” Barbara asked.
“Very.”
“Then I think I’ll stay here. We’re talking about America.”
“When you come back to Paris in September,” Jean Allégret said as Harold sat down, “I’d like very much to have you come and stay with me in the country. At my own place, I mean. This is my uncle’s house, you understand.”