Later, when she examined her feeling of annoyance, Irene admitted, a shade reluctantly, that it arose from a feeling of being outnumbered, a sense of aloneness, in her adherence to her own class and kind; not merely in the great thing of marriage, but in the whole pattern of her life as well.
Clare spoke again, this time at length. Her talk was of the change that Chicago presented to her after her long absence in European cities. Yes, she said in reply to some question from Gertrude, she’d been back to America a time or two, but only as far as New York and Philadelphia, and once she had spent a few days in Washington. John Bellew, who, it appeared, was some sort of international banking agent, hadn’t particularly wanted her to come with him on this trip, but as soon as she had learned that it would probably take him as far as Chicago, she made up her mind to come anyway.
“I simply had to. And after I once got here, I was determined to see someone I knew and find out what had happened to everybody. I didn’t quite see how I was going to manage it, but I meant to. Somehow. I’d just about decided to take a chance and go out to your house, ’Rene, or call up and arrange a meeting, when I ran into you. What luck!”
Irene agreed that it was luck. “It’s the first time I’ve been home for five years, and now I’m about to leave. A week later and I’d have been gone. And how in the world did you find Gertrude?”
“In the book. I remembered about Fred. His father still has the meat market.”
“Oh, yes,” said Irene, who had only remembered it as Clare had spoken, “on Cottage Grove near—”
Gertrude broke in. “No. It’s moved. We’re on Maryland Avenue—used to be Jackson—now. Near Sixty-third Street. And the market’s Fred’s. His name’s the same as his father’s.”
Gertrude, Irene thought, looked as if her husband might be a butcher. There was left of her youthful prettiness, which had been so much admired in their high-school days, no trace. She had grown broad, fat almost, and though there were no lines on her large white face, its very smoothness was somehow prematurely ageing. Her black hair was clipt, and by some unfortunate means all the live curliness had gone from it. Her over-trimmed Georgette crêpe dress was too short and showed an appalling amount of leg, stout legs in sleazy stockings of a vivid rose-beige shade. Her plump hands were newly and not too competently manicured—for the occasion, probably. And she wasn’t smoking.
Clare said—and Irene fancied that her husky voice held a slight edge—“Before you came, Irene, Gertrude was telling me about her two boys. Twins. Think of it! Isn’t it too marvellous for words?”
Irene felt a warmness creeping into her cheeks. Uncanny, the way Clare could divine what one was thinking. She was a little put out, but her manner was entirely easy as she said: “That is nice. I’ve two boys myself, Gertrude. Not twins, though. It seems that Clare’s rather behind, doesn’t it?”
Gertrude, however, wasn’t sure that Clare hadn’t the best of it. “She’s got a girl. I wanted a girl. So did Fred.”
“Isn’t that a bit unusual?” Irene asked. “Most men want sons. Egotism, I suppose.”
“Well, Fred didn’t.”
The tea-things had been placed on a low table at Clare’s side. She gave them her attention now, pouring the rich amber fluid from the tall glass pitcher into stately slim glasses, which she handed to her guests, and then offered them lemon or cream and tiny sandwiches or cakes.
After taking up her own glass she informed them: “No, I have no boys and I don’t think I’ll ever have any. I’m afraid. I nearly died of terror the whole nine months before Margery was born for fear that she might be dark. Thank goodness, she turned out all right. But I’ll never risk it again. Never! The strain is simply too—too hellish.”
Gertrude Martin nodded in complete comprehension.
This time it was Irene who said nothing.
“You don’t have to tell me!” Gertrude said fervently. “I know what it is all right. Maybe you don’t think I wasn’t scared to death too. Fred said I was silly, and so did his mother. But, of course, they thought it was just a notion I’d gotten into my head and they blamed it on my condition. They don’t know like we do, how it might go way back, and turn out dark no matter what colour the father and mother are.”
Perspiration stood out on her forehead. Her narrow eyes rolled first in Clare’s, then in Irene’s direction. As she talked she waved her heavy hands about.
“No,” she went on, “no more for me either. Not even a girl. It’s awful the way it skips generations and then pops out. Why, he actually said he didn’t care what colour it turned out, if I would only stop worrying about it. But, of course, nobody wants a dark child.” Her voice was earnest and she took for granted that her audience was in entire agreement with her.
Irene, whose head had gone up with a quick little jerk, now said in a voice of whose even tones she was proud: “One of my boys is dark.”
Gertrude jumped as if she had been shot at. Her eyes goggled. Her mouth flew open. She tried to speak, but could not immediately get the words out. Finally she managed to stammer: “Oh! And your husband, is he—is he—er—dark, too?”
Irene, who was struggling with a flood of feelings, resentment, anger, and contempt, was, however, still able to answer as coolly as if she had not that sense of not belonging to and of despising
