"Yes", said Erica. "Well, you thought wrong. If you’ll sit down, I’ll try and explain it to you".
He sat down beside her on the window-seat and after a pause she went on, "You see, the trouble with me is that I’m just like everybody else-I don’t realize what something really means until it suddenly walks up and hits me between the eyes. I can be quite convinced intellectually that a situation is wrong, but it’s still an academic question which doesn’t really affect me personally, until, for some reason or other, it starts coming at me through my emotions as well. It isn’t enough to think, you have to feel…".
"I see", said Marc, as Erica stopped abruptly, somewhat embarrassed. He took her hand without thinking and held it for a moment, then remembered where he was and quickly let it go again, remarking, also embarrassed, "That makes us even".
Erica laughed and said, "You’re very tactful, anyhow".
"I wasn’t being tactful".
"How long have we known each other?" asked Erica, after a pause.
"What difference does it make?" He glanced at his watch and remarked, "Three quarters of an hour. You’re very honest, aren’t you?"
"It seems to me my honesty is rather belated. Anyhow", she said, smiling at him, "if I never meet you again, Mr. Reiser, you’ll still have done me a lot of good".
"You can’t call me Mr. Reiser when I’ve just been holding your hand. And what makes you think you’re not going to see me again? You’ve already invited me to come and listen to your father’s records", he pointed out, and then asked, "What do you do on the Post?"
"I’m the Woman’s Editor-you know, social stuff, fashions, women’s interests, meetings, charities, and now all the rules, regulations and hand-outs from the Wartime Prices and Trade Board that have to do with clothes, house furnishings, food, conservation of materials-that sort of thing".
"How many pages?"
"Three or four, usually. Depends on which edition it is. I have an awfully good assistant, a girl named Sylvia Arnold from Ottawa, and an office boy named Weathersby Canning, known as ’Bubbles’."
"Is he any relation to the stock-broking Cannings?"
"Yes, he’s one of their sons-younger brother of the one who got the D.F.C. in April. ’Bubbles’ is waiting to get into the Air Force too; he’s got another year to go before he’s old enough".
"Do you like your job?"
Erica paused, and said finally, "Yes. I like working on a newspaper because I like people, particularly newspaper people, but I’m not a career woman, if that’s what you mean".
She broke off as René appeared, sauntering toward them with a glass in either hand. He asked, "Is there room for me to sit down?" and then remarked, glancing from one to the other, "I see you’ve met each other. Do I have to give him my drink?" he asked Erica as he lowered himself to the window-seat beside her.
"It’s about time you did something for him besides leave him alone. I thought you were drinking Martinis, René…".
"I was", said René.
"Then stick to them", advised Erica, removing the glasses and handing one to Marc. "How do you like Mrs. Oppenheim?"
"I would like her considerably more if she didn’t insist on speaking French. She has the most atrocious accent-ça vient du ventre", he explained, gesturing. "She told me I was the first French Canadian she’d met who didn’t speak a kind of patois, and with that graceful compliment she passed on to politics. She’s a Monarchist".
"My God", said Marc, "another one".
"Well, why not?" said René.
Marc regarded him, evidently amused, and finally inquired: "Just what has Otto of Hapsburg got that the King of England hasn’t got?"
"I think he has you there, René", murmured Erica, smiling into her glass, and answered, "The right religion".
"I have nothing against the King of England", protested René.
"No?" said Marc. "But you don’t see any reason why our Liberal Government at Ottawa shouldn’t go on issuing official pamphlets and placards with ’For King and Country’ in the English version and simply ’Pour la Patrie’ in the French".
"I haven’t your English Canadian passion for England", said René.
"I don’t give a damn about England", said Marc impatiently. "It hasn’t anything to do with England, as such. It’s the British Commonwealth of Nations. We’re living in a period where the tendency is toward greater international units, and for us as a country to resign from the Commonwealth is to move in the opposite direction, backwards toward a pure nationalism that’s already out of date. I don’t see why our Liberal politicians should make such an effort to avoid reminding the people of Quebec that they are a part of an organization which, whatever its faults, is still the only concrete example of the kind of international federation which we want to see existing all over the world. What’s the use of talking about ’federating Europe’ in one breath and un-federating Canada in the next? It doesn’t make any sense".
"One of them is a geographical and economic unit and the other isn’t", said René mildly. He turned to Erica and said, "And the Hapsburg question hasn’t anything to do with religion either. Mrs. Oppenheim appears to be Jewish".
"That just makes it worse", said Marc. He took a drink and added, "Much worse".
"I didn’t say that it had anything to do with religion so far as Mrs. Oppenheim is concerned", said Erica.
René smiled back at her, remarking, "I don’t know why I put up with you. Speaking of ventres, where’s your father?"
"You’re about the tenth person that’s asked me that. If we ever give another party, which", said Erica, "I must say is unlikely, I’m going to hang a sign in the front hall saying ’Mr. Drake welcomes you all and hopes you will have a good time, but wishes to be left strictly alone’. He’s upstairs in the study", she told René.
"Your mother seems to be waving at you", said Marc.
She got up with a sigh, saying, "I’ll probably be back sooner or later", and went over to the doorway where her mother was talking to two young Army officers and their wives. Erica smiled at them but kept in the background. As soon as they were on their way down the hall to the front door, her mother said, "I was wondering if you could persuade Charles to come down, at least for long enough to say good-by to Scotty and the others. I know they’re more my friends than his but I don’t think Charles realizes that they’re on draft and he probably won’t have a chance to see them again".
"I’ll try", said Erica. "And do talk to Marc Reiser if you get a chance".
"Which one is he?"
"René’s refugee friend I was suppose to rescue, only he isn’t a refugee, he comes from Ontario. He’s over there by the window with René now, and he’s awfully nice. You’ll like him".
Upstairs, she found her father sitting in the corner of the study with the evening newspaper on the floor at his feet and the ash-tray beside him heaped with dead matches. He was very tall and heavily built with dark eyes and black hair streaked with gray, an unusually warm and pleasant voice, and a personality which was both magnetic and charming, so that quite involuntarily he fooled most of the people he met into thinking that he was far more interested in them than he actually was.
The air was full of pipe smoke and the scent of blossoms from the garden next door; her father had his head against the back of the leather-covered chair and his long legs stretched straight out in front of him. He was listening to the short-wave English-language broadcast from Berlin. His custom-built radio-phonograph-with two loud-speakers-was a miracle of construction; the announcer’s voice sounded as though it were coming from the next room.
"Hello, Charles".