He said to David, who was having a hard time keeping up with him, his legs were so much shorter than Marc’s, "The first week-end we went away, she had a copy of The Shropshire Lad with her, and when I picked it up it fell open at those lines that begin:
"It’s no use going on like that, Marc".
"Do you remember the rest of it?"
His brother did not answer.
Still walking blindly up the road, toward the bush which began abruptly at the edge of the last stony field just ahead of them, Marc said:
"All right", said David, exasperated. "You don’t need to go on, I know every word of it. So that’s your idea of Erica now. All you have to do is be noble, make your exit, and Erica will promptly forget all the horror and scorn and fear and indignation and go back to sleep again. Is that it?"
"I suppose so".
"She must be a nice, simple soul".
He glanced at Marc again and asked, "By the way, just what did you think was going to happen while you were home this week-end?"
The road had entered the bush and narrowed down to a rough track which looked as though it might end at every turn, but which actually continued for miles, winding its way through the trees and undergrowth and bracken and then through the hills and on into the heart of the mining country. Staring at a flaming sumac a few yards ahead, Marc said, "I suppose I thought there would be something that she couldn’t…"
"Something you belonged to and she didn’t?"
"Yes".
"And was there?"
Marc shook his head. "It was the opposite. Because she wasn’t with me, I felt as though I didn’t belong either. I kept wishing she was here, so I could take her around and show her things. I even felt that way about the service this afternoon-how interested she would have been, and how much it would have impressed her, because it is impressive, and how much more it would have meant to me if she’d been beside me". He stopped, embarrassed, and remarked, "I guess it sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it? After all, nothing could be much more exclusively Jewish than the Day of Atonement".
"I don’t see what that has to do with it. Does it sound silly to you?"
"No, but it probably would to everybody else".
"Oh? And what have they got to do with it?"
There was a bridge crossing a small, clear stream just ahead, and they left the road and sat down beside the bridge at a place where the light came filtering down through the trees from the west and shone on the clean sand underneath the water.
As he felt through the pockets of his windbreaker for one of the several pipes he always carried about with him, David asked, "Has Erica ever said anything at all, to justify this theory of yours that you’d do less damage in the long run, by just walking out on her?"
"No, but…"
"Isn’t that something she’s entitled to decide for herself? Or isn’t Erica entitled to decide anything for herself? I don’t wonder she’s changed so much in the last three months, but I wouldn’t blame it all on her father if I were you".
"What do you mean?"
"You’re enough to drive anybody nuts".
"Do you mean to say that you think it’s all my fault?" asked Marc incredulously.
He shrugged and said, "Well, not all your fault. Say about ninety-eight percent".
"Why?"
"Because you’ve let her down too. That makes it unanimous, doesn’t it? Only you were the one who mattered most to her, so that if you hadn’t let her down, it would have made all the difference. I suppose", David went on conversationally, "that you’ve been doing it nice and gradually, a bit of letting down here, and bit of letting down there, so that she really had nothing to hang on to, while she was fighting her family…".
"Shut up", said Marc suddenly.
"I thought you wanted to know why she’s changed so much, and whether what has been happening to her is quite as inevitable as you seem to think it is. You said that you couldn’t do anything to make things easier for her; all you could do was just go on making it harder. I don’t agree".
He paused, looking across the stream at a pine which had fallen down the bank and was lying with its upper branches in the water. "Must have been a bad electric storm lately", he remarked. "The split’s quite fresh". Then he said deliberately, "You and I weren’t brought up to play games at other people’s expense. You’re old enough to know better, and you’re starting too late to be able to get away with it. Don’t fool yourself, laddie, you won’t get away with it. You’re going to find out that for every person who’s stepped out of line and lived to regret it, there are two people who stayed in line because they got their values mixed and lost their nerve, and who have lived to regret it still more. You don’t hear about those people because they’re still in line where they don’t show. You only hear about the others".
"Do you believe that?" asked Marc, startled.
"I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t. From my own experience, that is, from what the people themselves have told me, I’d say the proportion was somewhat higher than two to one. In the old days, the difference in religion was probably a real barrier to mixed marriages, but you don’t take your religion that seriously and I don’t suppose Erica does either, so what you’d be up against would come chiefly from outside. That makes it a lot easier, and if you and Erica are really in love with each other, then all you have to do is figure out what matters most to you-whether you’d rather be out of line with Erica, or stay in line without her. You can’t have it both ways".
"I wish Eric could".
David said sharply, "She hasn’t been getting it either way so far, has she?"
"I guess not".
He saw Marc’s expression and said, "Sorry, but sympathy is not what you need at the moment. What you need is a good swift kick in the pants".
It seemed to Marc that what he needed most at the moment was time to think, and he said, "I wish you’d shut up".
"All right", said David, settling back with his shoulders against a log.
He wanted to think about Erica, and with a shock he realized that in the end, it had taken David to get him to listen to her. Only a few days before, when she had been trying all over again to tell him what mattered most to her, she had said, "I wish you’d believe me", and when he had protested that he did believe her, she had answered hopelessly, "No, not quite". Like her father, he had always assumed that Erica did not know what she would be letting herself in for, and again like Charles Drake, he had considered himself to be in some mysterious way better qualified to decide what would be best for her in the long run than Erica was herself.
In refusing to believe her, he had placed himself beyond her influence and relegated her to a position where all she could do was to stand back and watch him being influenced by other people and in effect, being influenced against her. He had shut her out, although now he remembered exactly the way she had said, "Give me a chance to understand, and if I let you down, well then you can shut me out. I guess I’ll have deserved it. It’s not my fault that I’m not Jewish and I can’t do anything about it, but surely, surely the fact that I love you so much makes up for it!"