"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".