Irene asked these questions, felt them. They were, however, merely rhetorical, as she herself was well aware. She knew their answers, every one, and it was the same for them all. The sardony of it! She couldn’t betray Clare, couldn’t even run the risk of appearing to defend a people that were being maligned, for fear that that defence might in some infinitesimal degree lead the way to final discovery of her secret. She had to Clare Kendry a duty. She was bound to her by those very ties of race, which, for all her repudiation of them, Clare had been unable to completely sever.
And it wasn’t, as Irene knew, that Clare cared at all about the race or what was to become of it. She didn’t. Or that she had for any of its members great, or even real, affection, though she professed undying gratitude for the small kindnesses which the Westover family had shown her when she was a child. Irene doubted the genuineness of it, seeing herself only as a means to an end where Clare was concerned. Nor could it be said that she had even the slight artistic or sociological interest in the race that some members of other races displayed. She hadn’t. No, Clare Kendry cared nothing for the race. She only belonged to it.
“Not another damned thing!” Irene declared aloud as she drew a fragile stocking over a pale beige-coloured foot.
“Aha! Swearing again, are you, madam? Caught you in the act that time.”
Brian Redfield had come into the room in that noiseless way which, in spite, of the years of their life together, still had the power to disconcert her. He stood looking down on her with that amused smile of his, which was just the faintest bit supercilious and yet was somehow very becoming to him.
Hastily Irene pulled on the other stocking and slipped her feet into the slippers beside her chair.
“And what brought on this particular outburst of profanity? That is, if an indulgent but perturbed husband may inquire. The mother of sons too! The times, alas, the times!”
“I’ve had this letter,” Irene told him. “And I’m sure that anybody’ll admit it’s enough to make a saint swear. The nerve of her!”
She passed the letter to him, and in the act made a little mental frown. For, with a nicety of perception, she saw that she was doing it instead of answering his question with words, so that he might be occupied while she hurried through her dressing. For she was late again, and Brian, she well knew, detested that. Why, oh why, couldn’t she ever manage to be on time? Brian had been up for ages, had made some calls for all she knew, besides having taken the boys downtown to school. And she wasn’t dressed yet; had only begun. Damn Clare! This morning it was her fault.
Brian sat down and bent his head over the letter, puckering his brows slightly in his effort to make out Clare’s scrawl.
Irene, who had risen and was standing before the mirror, ran a comb through her black hair, then tossed her head with a light characteristic gesture, in order to disarrange a little the set locks. She touched a powder-puff to her warm olive skin, and then put on her frock with a motion so hasty that it was with some difficulty properly adjusted. At last she was ready, though she didn’t immediately say so, but stood, instead, looking with a sort of curious detachment at her husband across the room.
Brian, she was thinking, was extremely good-looking. Not, of course, pretty or effeminate; the slight irregularity of his nose saved him from the prettiness, and the rather marked heaviness of his chin saved him from the effeminacy. But he was, in a pleasant masculine way, rather handsome. And yet, wouldn’t he, perhaps, have been merely ordinarily good-looking but for the richness, the beauty of his skin, which was of an exquisitely fine texture and deep copper colour.
He looked up and said: “Clare? That must be the girl you told me about meeting the last time you were out home. The one you went to tea with?”
Irene’s answer to that was an inclination of the head.
“I’m ready,” she said.
They were going downstairs, Brian deftly, unnecessarily, piloting her round the two short curved steps, just before the centre landing.
“You’re not,” he asked, “going to see her?”
His words, however, were in reality not a question, but, as Irene was aware, an admonition.
Her front teeth just touched. She spoke through them, and her tones held a thin sarcasm. “Brian, darling, I’m really not such an idiot that I don’t realize that if a man calls me a nigger, it’s his fault the first time, but mine if he has the opportunity to do it again.”
They went into the dining-room. He drew back her chair and she sat down behind the fat-bellied German coffeepot, which sent out its morning fragrance, mingled with the smell of crisp toast and savoury bacon, in the distance. With his long, nervous fingers he picked up the morning paper from his own chair and sat down.
Zulena, a small mahogany-coloured creature, brought in the grapefruit.
They took up their spoons.
Out of the silence Brian spoke. Blandly. “My dear, you misunderstand me entirely. I simply meant that I hope you’re not going to let her pester you. She will, you know, if you give her half a chance and she’s anything at all like your description of her. Anyway, they always do. Besides,” he corrected, “the man, her husband, didn’t call you a nigger. There’s a difference, you know.”
“No, certainly he didn’t.
