“I’d love to.”
They went up, Irene thinking that Brian would consider that she’d behaved like a spineless fool. And he would be right. She certainly had.
Clare was smiling. She stood in the doorway of the boys’ playroom, her shadowy eyes looking down on Junior and Ted, who had sprung apart from their tusselling. Junior’s face had a funny little look of resentment. Ted’s was blank.
Clare said: “Please don’t be cross. Of course, I know I’ve gone and spoiled everything. But maybe, if I promise not to get too much in the way, you’ll let me come in, just the same.”
“Sure, come in if you want to,” Ted told her. “We can’t stop you, you know.” He smiled and made her a little bow and then turned away to a shelf that held his favourite books. Taking one down, he settled himself in a chair and began to read.
Junior said nothing, did nothing, merely stood there waiting.
“Get up, Ted! That’s rude. This is Theodore, Mrs. Bellew. Please excuse his bad manners. He does know better. And this is Brian junior. Mrs. Bellew is an old friend of mother’s. We used to play together when we were little girls.”
Clare had gone and Brian had telephoned that he’d been detained and would have his dinner downtown. Irene was a little glad for that. She was going out later herself, and that meant she wouldn’t, probably, see Brian until morning and so could put off for a few more hours speaking of Clare and the N.W.L. dance.
She was angry with herself and with Clare. But more with herself, for having permitted Clare to tease her into doing something that Brian had, all but expressly, asked her not to do. She didn’t want him ruffled, not just then, not while he was possessed of that unreasonable restless feeling.
She was annoyed, too, because she was aware that she had consented to something which, if it went beyond the dance, would involve her in numerous petty inconveniences and evasions. And not only at home with Brian, but outside with friends and acquaintances. The disagreeable possibilities in connection with Clare Kendry’s coming among them loomed before her in endless irritating array.
Clare, it seemed, still retained her ability to secure the thing that she wanted in the face of any opposition, and in utter disregard of the convenience and desire of others. About her there was some quality, hard and persistent, with the strength and endurance of rock, that would not be beaten or ignored. She couldn’t, Irene thought, have had an entirely serene life. Not with that dark secret forever crouching in the background of her consciousness. And yet she hadn’t the air of a woman whose life had been touched by uncertainty or suffering. Pain, fear, and grief were things that left their mark on people. Even love, that exquisite torturing emotion, left its subtle traces on the countenance.
But Clare—she had remained almost what she had always been, an attractive, somewhat lonely child—selfish, wilful, and disturbing.
III
The things which Irene Redfield remembered afterward about the Negro Welfare League dance seemed, to her, unimportant and unrelated.
She remembered the not quite derisive smile with which Brian had cloaked his vexation when she informed him—oh, so apologetically—that she had promised to take Clare, and related the conversation of her visit.
She remembered her own little choked exclamation of admiration, when, on coming downstairs a few minutes later than she had intended, she had rushed into the living-room where Brian was waiting and had found Clare there too. Clare, exquisite, golden, fragrant, flaunting, in a stately gown of shining black taffeta, whose long, full skirt lay in graceful folds about her slim golden feet; her glistening hair drawn smoothly back into a small twist at the nape of her neck; her eyes sparkling like dark jewels. Irene, with her new rose-coloured chiffon frock ending at the knees, and her cropped curls, felt dowdy and commonplace. She regretted that she hadn’t counselled Clare to wear something ordinary and inconspicuous. What on earth would Brian think of deliberate courting of attention? But if Clare Kendry’s appearance had in it anything that was, to Brian Redfield, annoying or displeasing, the fact was not discernible to his wife as, with an uneasy feeling of guilt, she stood there looking into his face while Clare explained that she and he had made their own introductions, accompanying her words with a little deferential smile for Brian, and receiving in return one of his amused, slightly mocking smiles.
She remembered Clare’s saying, as they sped northward: “You know, I feel exactly as I used to on the Sunday we went to the Christmas-tree celebration. I knew there was to be a surprise for me and couldn’t quite guess what it was to be. I am so excited. You can’t possibly imagine! It’s marvellous to be really on the way! I can hardly believe it!”
At her words and tone a chilly wave of scorn had crept through Irene. All those superlatives! She said, taking care to speak indifferently: “Well, maybe in some ways you will be surprised, more, probably, than you anticipate.”
Brian, at the wheel, had thrown back: “And then again, she won’t be so very surprised after all, for it’ll no doubt be about what she expects. Like the Christmas-tree.”
She remembered rushing around here and there, consulting with this person and that one, and now and then snatching a part of a dance with some man whose dancing she particularly liked.
She remembered catching glimpses of Clare in the whirling crowd, dancing, sometimes with a white man, more often with a Negro, frequently with Brian. Irene was glad that he was being nice to Clare, and glad that Clare was having the opportunity to discover that some coloured men were superior to some white men.
She remembered a conversation she had with Hugh Wentworth in
