“That,” Irene declared, getting out of bed, “is absolutely not true. He thinks ever so much better of himself than that, as you, who know and have read him, ought to be able to guess. If you remember what a low opinion he has of God, you won’t make such a silly mistake.”
She went into the closet for her things and, coming back, hung her frock over the back of a chair and placed her shoes on the floor beside it. Then she sat down before her dressing-table.
Brian didn’t speak. He continued to stand beside the bed, seeming to look at nothing in particular. Certainly not at her. True, his gaze was on her, but in it there was some quality that made her feel that at that moment she was no more to him than a pane of glass through which he stared. At what? She didn’t know, couldn’t guess. And this made her uncomfortable. Piqued her.
She said: “It just happens that Hugh prefers intelligent women.”
Plainly he was startled. “D’you mean that you think Clare is stupid?” he asked, regarding her with lifted eyebrows, which emphasized the disbelief of his voice.
She wiped the cold cream from her face, before she said: “No, I don’t. She isn’t stupid. She’s intelligent enough in a purely feminine way. Eighteenth-century France would have been a marvellous setting for her, or the old South if she hadn’t made the mistake of being born a Negro.”
“I see. Intelligent enough to wear a tight bodice and keep bowing swains whispering compliments and retrieving dropped fans. Rather a pretty picture. I take it, though, as slightly feline in its implication.”
“Well, then, all I can say is that you take it wrongly. Nobody admires Clare more than I do, for the kind of intelligence she has, as well as for her decorative qualities. But she’s not—She isn’t—She hasn’t—Oh, I can’t explain it. Take Bianca, for example, or, to keep to the race, Felise Freeland. Looks and brains. Real brains that can hold their own with anybody. Clare has got brains of a sort, the kind that are useful too. Acquisitive, you know. But she’d bore a man like Hugh to suicide. Still, I never thought that even Clare would come to a private party to which she hadn’t been asked. But, it’s like her.”
For a minute there was silence. She completed the bright red arch of her full lips. Brian moved towards the door. His hand was on the knob. He said: “I’m sorry, Irene. It’s my fault entirely. She seemed so hurt at being left out that I told her I was sure you’d forgotten and to just come along.”
Irene cried out: “But, Brian, I—” and stopped, amazed at the fierce anger that had blazed up in her.
Brian’s head came round with a jerk. His brows lifted in an odd surprise.
Her voice, she realized, had gone queer. But she had an instinctive feeling that it hadn’t been the whole cause of his attitude. And that little straightening motion of the shoulders. Hadn’t it been like that of a man drawing himself up to receive a blow? Her fright was like a scarlet spear of terror leaping at her heart.
Clare Kendry! So that was it! Impossible. It couldn’t be.
In the mirror before her she saw that he was still regarding her with that air of slight amazement. She dropped her eyes to the jars and bottles on the table and began to fumble among them with hands whose fingers shook slightly.
“Of course,” she said carefully, “I’m glad you did. And in spite of my recent remarks, Clare does add to any party. She’s so easy on the eyes.”
When she looked again, the surprise had gone from his face and the expectancy from his bearing.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Well, I guess I’ll run along. One of us ought to be down, I s’pose.”
“You’re right. One of us ought to.” She was surprised that it was in her normal tones she spoke, caught as she was by the heart since that dull indefinite fear had grown suddenly into sharp panic. “I’ll be down before you know it,” she promised.
“All right.” But he still lingered. “You’re quite certain. You don’t mind my asking her? Not awfully, I mean? I see now that I ought to have spoken to you. Trust women to have their reasons for everything.”
She made a little pretence at looking at him, managed a tiny smile, and turned away. Clare! How sickening!
“Yes, don’t they?” she said, striving to keep her voice casual. Within her she felt a hardness from feeling, not absent, but repressed. And that hardness was rising, swelling. Why didn’t he go? Why didn’t he?
He had opened the door at last. “You won’t be long?” he asked, admonished.
She shook her head, unable to speak, for there was a choking in her throat, and the confusion in her mind was like the beating of wings. Behind her she heard the gentle impact of the door as it closed behind him, and knew that he had gone. Down to Clare.
For a long minute she sat in strained stiffness. The face in the mirror vanished from her sight, blotted out by this thing which had so suddenly flashed across her groping mind. Impossible for her to put it immediately into words or give it outline, for, prompted by some impulse of self-protection, she recoiled from exact expression.
She closed her unseeing eyes and clenched her fists. She tried not to cry. But her lips tightened and no effort could check the hot tears of rage and shame that sprang into her eyes and flowed down her cheeks; so she laid her face in her arms and wept silently.
When she was sure that she had done crying, she wiped away the warm remaining tears and got up. After bathing her swollen face in cold, refreshing water and carefully applying a stinging splash of toilet water, she went back to the mirror and regarded herself gravely. Satisfied
