The chagrin which she had felt at her first failure to subvert this latest manifestation of his discontent had receded, leaving in its wake an uneasy depression. Were all her efforts, all her labours, to make up to him that one loss, all her silent striving to prove to him that her way had been best, all her ministrations to him, all her outward sinking of self, to count for nothing in some unperceived sudden moment? And if so, what, then, would be the consequences to the boys? To her? To Brian himself? Endless searching had brought no answer to these questions. There was only an intense weariness from their shuttle-like procession in her brain.
The noise and commotion from above grew increasingly louder. Irene was about to go to the stairway and request the boys to be quieter in their play when she heard the doorbell ringing.
Now, who was that likely to be? She listened to Zulena’s heels, faintly tapping on their way to the door, then to the shifting sound of her feet on the steps, then to her light knock on the bedroom door.
“Yes. Come in,” Irene told her.
Zulena stood in the doorway. She said: “Someone to see you, Mrs. Redfield.” Her tone was discreetly regretful, as if to convey that she was reluctant to disturb her mistress at that hour, and for a stranger. “A Mrs. Bellew.”
Clare!
“Oh dear! Tell her, Zulena,” Irene began, “that I can’t—No. I’ll see her. Please bring her up here.”
She heard Zulena pass down the hall, down the stairs, then stood up, smoothing out the tumbled green and ivory draperies of her dress with light stroking pats. At the mirror she dusted a little powder on her nose and brushed out her hair.
She meant to tell Clare Kendry at once, and definitely, that it was of no use, her coming, that she couldn’t be responsible, that she’d talked it over with Brian, who had agreed with her that it was wiser, for Clare’s own sake, to refrain—
But that was as far as she got in her rehearsal. For Clare had come softly into the room without knocking, and before Irene could greet her, had dropped a kiss on her dark curls.
Looking at the woman before her, Irene Redfield had a sudden inexplicable onrush of affectionate feeling. Reaching out, she grasped Clare’s two hands in her own and cried with something like awe in her voice: “Dear God! But aren’t you lovely, Clare!”
Clare tossed that aside. Like the furs and small blue hat which she threw on the bed before seating herself slantwise in Irene’s favourite chair, with one foot curled under her.
“Didn’t you mean to answer my letter, ’Rene?” she asked gravely.
Irene looked away. She had that uncomfortable feeling that one has when one has not been wholly kind or wholly true.
Clare went on: “Every day I went to that nasty little post-office place. I’m sure they were all beginning to think that I’d been carrying on an illicit love-affair and that the man had thrown me over. Every morning the same answer: ‘Nothing for you.’ I got into an awful fright, thinking that something might have happened to your letter, or to mine. And half the nights I would lie awake looking out at the watery stars—hopeless things, the stars—worrying and wondering. But at last it soaked in, that you hadn’t written and didn’t intend to. And then—well, as soon as ever I’d seen Jack off for Florida, I came straight here. And now, ’Rene, please tell me quite frankly why you didn’t answer my letter.”
“Because, you see—” Irene broke off and kept Clare waiting while she lit a cigarette, blew out the match, and dropped it into a tray. She was trying to collect her arguments, for some sixth sense warned her that it was going to be harder than she thought to convince Clare Kendry of the folly of Harlem for her. Finally she proceeded: “I can’t help thinking that you ought not to come up here, ought not to run the risk of knowing Negroes.”
“You mean you don’t want me, ’Rene?”
Irene hadn’t supposed that anyone could look so hurt. She said, quite gently, “No, Clare, it’s not that. But even you must see that it’s terribly foolish, and not just the right thing.”
The tinkle of Clare’s laugh rang out, while she passed her hands over the bright sweep of her hair. “Oh, ’Rene!” she cried, “you’re priceless! And you haven’t changed a bit. The right thing!” Leaning forward, she looked curiously into Irene’s disapproving brown eyes. “You don’t, you really can’t mean exactly that! Nobody could. It’s simply unbelievable.”
Irene was on her feet before she realized that she had risen. “What I really mean,” she retorted, “is that it’s dangerous and that you ought not to run such silly risks. No one ought to. You least of all.”
Her voice was brittle. For into her mind had come a thought, strange and irrelevant, a suspicion, that had surprised and shocked her and driven her to her feet. It was that in spite of her determined selfishness the woman before her was yet capable of heights and depths of feeling that she, Irene Redfield, had never known. Indeed, never cared to know. The thought, the suspicion, was gone as quickly as it had come.
Clare said: “Oh, me!”
Irene touched her arm caressingly, as if in contrition for that flashing thought. “Yes, Clare, you. It’s not safe. Not safe at all.”
“Safe!”
It seemed to Irene that Clare had snapped her teeth down on the word and then flung it from her. And for another flying second she had that suspicion of Clare’s ability for a quality of feeling that was to her
