“U‑mm, I don’t know. But it seems to me,” he pointed out, “that you, my dear, had all the advantage. You knew what his opinion of you was, while he—Well, ’twas ever thus. We know, always have. They don’t. Not quite. It has, you will admit, its humorous side, and, sometimes, its conveniences.”
She poured the coffee.
“I can’t see it. I’m going to write Clare. Today, if I can find a minute. It’s a thing we might as well settle definitely, and immediately. Curious, isn’t it, that knowing, as she does, his unqualified attitude, she still—”
Brian interrupted: “It’s always that way. Never known it to fail. Remember Albert Hammond, how he used to be forever haunting Seventh Avenue, and Lenox Avenue, and the dancing-places, until some ‘shine’ took a shot at him for casting an eye towards his ‘sheba?’ They always come back. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.”
“But why?” Irene wanted to know. “Why?”
“If I knew that, I’d know what race is.”
“But wouldn’t you think that having got the thing, or things, they were after, and at such risk, they’d be satisfied? Or afraid?”
“Yes,” Brian agreed, “you certainly would think so. But, the fact remains, they aren’t. Not satisfied, I mean. I think they’re scared enough most of the time, when they give way to the urge and slip back. Not scared enough to stop them, though. Why, the good God only knows.”
Irene leaned forward, speaking, she was aware, with a vehemence absolutely unnecessary, but which she could not control.
“Well, Clare can just count me out. I’ve no intention of being the link between her and her poorer darker brethren. After that scene in Chicago too! To calmly expect me—” She stopped short, suddenly too wrathful for words.
“Quite right. The only sensible thing to do. Let her miss you. It’s an unhealthy business, the whole affair. Always is.”
Irene nodded. “More coffee,” she offered.
“Thanks, no.” He took up his paper again, spreading it open with a little rattling noise.
Zulena came in bringing more toast. Brian took a slice and bit into it with that audible crunching sound that Irene disliked so intensely, and turned back to his paper.
She said: “It’s funny about ‘passing.’ We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it.”
“Instinct of the race to survive and expand.”
“Rot! Everything can’t be explained by some general biological phrase.”
“Absolutely everything can. Look at the so-called whites, who’ve left bastards all over the known earth. Same thing in them. Instinct of the race to survive and expand.”
With that Irene didn’t at all agree, but many arguments in the past had taught her the futility of attempting to combat Brian on ground where he was more nearly at home than she. Ignoring his unqualified assertion, she slid away from the subject entirely.
“I wonder,” she asked, “if you’ll have time to run me down to the printing-office. It’s on a Hundred and Sixteenth Street. I’ve got to see about some handbills and some more tickets for the dance.”
“Yes, of course. How’s it going? Everything all set?”
“Ye‑es. I guess so. The boxes are all sold and nearly all the first batch of tickets. And we expect to take in almost as much again at the door. Then, there’s all that cake to sell. It’s a terrible lot of work, though.”
“I’ll bet it is. Uplifting the brother’s no easy job. I’m as busy as a cat with fleas, myself.” And over his face there came a shadow. “Lord! how I hate sick people, and their stupid, meddling families, and smelly, dirty rooms, and climbing filthy steps in dark hallways.”
“Surely,” Irene began, fighting back the fear and irritation that she felt, “surely—”
Her husband silenced her, saying sharply: “Let’s not talk about it, please.” And immediately, in his usual, slightly mocking tone he asked: “Are you ready to go now? I haven’t a great deal of time to wait.”
He got up. She followed him out into the hall without replying. He picked up his soft brown hat from the small table and stood a moment whirling it round on his long tea-coloured fingers.
Irene, watching him, was thinking: “It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair.” After all these years to still blame her like this. Hadn’t his success proved that she’d been right in insisting that he stick to his profession right there in New York? Couldn’t he see, even now, that it had been best? Not for her, oh no, not for her—she had never really considered herself—but for him and the boys. Was she never to be free of it, that fear which crouched, always, deep down within her, stealing away the sense of security, the feeling of permanence, from the life which she had so admirably arranged for them all, and desired so ardently to have remain as it was? That strange, and to her fantastic, notion of Brian’s of going off to Brazil, which, though unmentioned, yet lived within him; how it frightened her, and—yes, angered her!
“Well?” he asked lightly.
“I’ll just get my things. One minute,” she promised and turned upstairs.
Her voice had been even and her step was firm, but in her there was no slackening of the agitation, of the alarms, which Brian’s expression of discontent had raised. He had never spoken of his desire since that long-ago time of storm and strain, of hateful and nearly disastrous quarrelling, when she had so firmly opposed him, so sensibly pointed out its utter impossibility and its probable consequences to her and the boys, and had even hinted at a dissolution of their marriage in the event of his persistence in his idea. No, there had been, in all the years that they had lived together since then, no other
