Clare handed her husband his tea and laid her hand on his arm with an affectionate little gesture. Speaking with confidence as well as with amusement, she said: “My goodness, Jack! What difference would it make if, after all these years, you were to find out that I was one or two percent coloured?”
Bellew put out his hand in a repudiating fling, definite and final. “Oh, no, Nig,” he declared, “nothing like that with me. I know you’re no nigger, so it’s all right. You can get as black as you please as far as I’m concerned, since I know you’re no nigger. I draw the line at that. No niggers in my family. Never have been and never will be.”
Irene’s lips trembled almost uncontrollably, but she made a desperate effort to fight back her disastrous desire to laugh again, and succeeded. Carefully selecting a cigarette from the lacquered box on the tea-table before her, she turned an oblique look on Clare and encountered her peculiar eyes fixed on her with an expression so dark and deep and unfathomable that she had for a short moment the sensation of gazing into the eyes of some creature utterly strange and apart. A faint sense of danger brushed her, like the breath of a cold fog. Absurd, her reason told her, as she accepted Bellew’s proffered light for her cigarette. Another glance at Clare showed her smiling. So, as one always ready to oblige, was Gertrude.
An onlooker, Irene reflected, would have thought it a most congenial tea-party, all smiles and jokes and hilarious laughter. She said humorously: “So you dislike Negroes, Mr. Bellew?” But her amusement was at her thought, rather than her words.
John Bellew gave a short denying laugh. “You got me wrong there, Mrs. Redfield. Nothing like that at all. I don’t dislike them, I hate them. And so does Nig, for all she’s trying to turn into one. She wouldn’t have a nigger maid around her for love nor money. Not that I’d want her to. They give me the creeps. The black scrimy devils.”
This wasn’t funny. Had Bellew, Irene inquired, ever known any Negroes? The defensive tone of her voice brought another start from the uncomfortable Gertrude, and, for all her appearance of serenity, a quick apprehensive look from Clare.
Bellew answered: “Thank the Lord, no! And never expect to! But I know people who’ve known them, better than they know their black selves. And I read in the papers about them. Always robbing and killing people. And,” he added darkly, “worse.”
From Gertrude’s direction came a queer little suppressed sound, a snort or a giggle. Irene couldn’t tell which. There was a brief silence, during which she feared that her self-control was about to prove too frail a bridge to support her mounting anger and indignation. She had a leaping desire to shout at the man beside her: “And you’re sitting here surrounded by three black devils, drinking tea.”
The impulse passed, obliterated by her consciousness of the danger in which such rashness would involve Clare, who remarked with a gentle reprovingness: “Jack dear, I’m sure ’Rene doesn’t care to hear all about your pet aversions. Nor Gertrude either. Maybe they read the papers too, you know.” She smiled on him, and her smile seemed to transform him, to soften and mellow him, as the rays of the sun does a fruit.
“All right, Nig, old girl. I’m sorry,” he apologized. Reaching over, he playfully touched his wife’s pale hands, then turned back to Irene. “Didn’t mean to bore you, Mrs. Redfield. Hope you’ll excuse me,” he said sheepishly. “Clare tells me you’re living in New York. Great city, New York. The city of the future.”
In Irene, rage had not retreated, but was held by some dam of caution and allegiance to Clare. So, in the best casual voice she could muster, she agreed with Bellew. Though, she reminded him, it was exactly what Chicagoans were apt to say of their city. And all the while she was speaking, she was thinking how amazing it was that her voice did not tremble, that outwardly she was calm. Only her hands shook slightly. She drew them inward from their rest in her lap and pressed the tips of her fingers together to still them.
“Husband’s a doctor, I understand. Manhattan, or one of the other boroughs?”
Manhattan, Irene informed him, and explained the need for Brian to be within easy reach of certain hospitals and clinics.
“Interesting life, a doctor’s.”
“Ye‑es. Hard, though. And, in a way, monotonous. Nerve-racking too.”
“Hard on the wife’s nerves at least, eh? So many lady patients.” He laughed, enjoying, with a boyish heartiness, the hoary joke.
Irene managed a momentary smile, but her voice was sober as she said: “Brian doesn’t care for ladies, especially sick ones. I sometimes wish he did. It’s South America that attracts him.”
“Coming place, South America, if they ever get the niggers out of it. It’s run over—”
“Really, Jack!” Clare’s voice was on the edge of temper.
“Honestly, Nig, I forgot.” To the others he said: “You see how henpecked I am.” And to Gertrude: “You’re still in Chicago, Mrs.—er—Mrs. Martin?”
He was, it was plain, doing his best to be agreeable to these old friends of Clare’s. Irene had to concede that under other conditions she might have liked him. A fairly good-looking man of amiable disposition, evidently, and in easy circumstances. Plain and with no nonsense about him.
Gertrude replied that Chicago was good enough for her. She’d never been out of it and didn’t think she ever should.
