“Awfully good, aren’t they?”
“U‑umm, I s’pose so. Sort of contemptuous, I thought. As if he more or less despised everything and everybody.”
“I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he did. Still, he’s about earned the right to. Lived on the edges of nowhere in at least three continents. Been through every danger in all kinds of savage places. It’s no wonder he thinks the rest of us are a lazy self-pampering lot. Hugh’s a dear, though, generous as one of the twelve disciples; give you the shirt off his back. Bianca—that’s his wife—is nice too.”
“And he’s coming up here to your dance?”
Irene asked why not.
“It seems rather curious, a man like that, going to a Negro dance.”
This, Irene told her, was the year 1927 in the city of New York, and hundreds of white people of Hugh Wentworth’s type came to affairs in Harlem, more all the time. So many that Brian had said: “Pretty soon the coloured people won’t be allowed in at all, or will have to sit in Jim Crowed sections.”
“What do they come for?”
“Same reason you’re here, to see Negroes.”
“But why?”
“Various motives,” Irene explained. “A few purely and frankly to enjoy themselves. Others to get material to turn into shekels. More, to gaze on these great and near great while they gaze on the Negroes.”
Clare clapped her hand. “ ’Rene, suppose I come too! It sounds terribly interesting and amusing. And I don’t see why I shouldn’t.”
Irene, who was regarding her through narrowed eyelids, had the same thought that she had had two years ago on the roof of the Drayton, that Clare Kendry was just a shade too good-looking. Her tone was on the edge of irony as she said: “You mean because so many other white people go?”
A pale rose-colour came into Clare’s ivory cheeks. She lifted a hand in protest. “Don’t be silly! Certainly not! I mean that in a crowd of that kind I shouldn’t be noticed.”
On the contrary, was Irene’s opinion. It might be even doubly dangerous. Some friend or acquaintance of John Bellew or herself might see and recognize her.
At that, Clare laughed for a long time, little musical trills following one another in sequence after sequence. It was as if the thought of any friend of John Bellew’s going to a Negro dance was to her the most amusing thing in the world.
“I don’t think,” she said, when she had done laughing, “we need worry about that.”
Irene, however, wasn’t so sure. But all her efforts to dissuade Clare were useless. To her, “You never can tell whom you’re likely to meet there,” Clare’s rejoinder was: “I’ll take my chance on getting by.”
“Besides, you won’t know a soul and I shall be too busy to look after you. You’ll be bored stiff.”
“I won’t, I won’t. If nobody asks me to dance, not even Dr. Redfield, I’ll just sit and gaze on the great and the near great, too. Do, ’Rene, be polite and invite me.”
Irene turned away from the caress of Clare’s smile, saying promptly and positively: “I will not.”
“I mean to go anyway,” Clare retorted, and her voice was no less positive than Irene’s.
“Oh, no. You couldn’t possibly go there alone. It’s a public thing. All sorts of people go, anybody who can pay a dollar, even ladies of easy virtue looking for trade. If you were to go there alone, you might be mistaken for one of them, and that wouldn’t be too pleasant.”
Clare laughed again. “Thanks. I never have been. It might be amusing. I’m warning you, ’Rene, that if you’re not going to be nice and take me, I’ll still be among those present. I suppose, my dollar’s as good as anyone’s.”
“Oh, the dollar! Don’t be a fool, Claire. I don’t care where you go, or what you do. All I’m concerned with is the unpleasantness and possible danger which your going might incur, because of your situation. To put it frankly, I shouldn’t like to be mixed up in any row of the kind.” She had risen again as she spoke and was standing at the window lifting and spreading the small yellow chrysanthemums in the grey stone jar on the sill. Her hands shook slightly, for she was in a near rage of impatience and exasperation.
Claire’s face looked strange, as if she wanted to cry again. One of her satin-covered feet swung restlessly back and forth. She said vehemently, violently almost: “Damn Jack! He keeps me out of everything. Everything I want. I could kill him! I expect I shall, some day.”
“I wouldn’t,” Irene advised her, “you see, there’s still capital punishment, in this state at least. And really, Clare, after everything’s said, I can’t see that you’ve a right to put all the blame on him. You’ve got to admit that there’s his side to the thing. You didn’t tell him you were coloured, so he’s got no way of knowing about this hankering of yours after Negroes, or that it galls you to fury to hear them called niggers and black devils. As far as I can see, you’ll just have to endure some things and give up others. As we’ve said before, everything must be paid for. Do, please, be reasonable.”
But Clare, it was plain, had shut away reason as well as caution. She shook her head. “I can’t, I can’t,” she said. “I would if I could, but I can’t. You don’t know, you can’t realize how I want to see Negroes, to be with them again, to talk with them, to hear them laugh.”
And in the look she gave Irene, there was something groping, and hopeless, and yet so absolutely determined that it was like an image of the futile searching and the firm resolution in Irene’s own soul, and increased the feeling of doubt and compunction that had been growing within her about Clare Kendry.
She gave in.
“Oh, come if you want to. I s’pose you’re right. Once can’t do such a terrible lot of harm.”
Pushing aside Clare’s
