“Thank you, Zulena.”
The day dragged on to its end.
At dinner Brian spoke bitterly of a lynching that he had been reading about in the evening paper.
“Dad, why is it that they only lynch coloured people?” Ted asked.
“Because they hate ’em, son.”
“Brian!” Irene’s voice was a plea and a rebuke.
Ted said: “Oh! And why do they hate ’em?”
“Because they are afraid of them.”
“But what makes them afraid of ’em?”
“Because—”
“Brian!”
“It seems, son, that is a subject we can’t go into at the moment without distressing the ladies of our family,” he told the boy with mock seriousness, “but we’ll take it up some time when we’re alone together.”
Ted nodded in his engaging grave way. “I see. Maybe we can talk about it tomorrow on the way to school.”
“That’ll be fine.”
“Brian!”
“Mother,” Junior remarked, “that’s the third time you’ve said ‘Brian’ like that.”
“But not the last, Junior, never you fear,” his father told him.
After the boys had gone up to their own floor, Irene said suavely: “I do wish, Brian, that you wouldn’t talk about lynching before Ted and Junior. It was really inexcusable for you to bring up a thing like that at dinner. There’ll be time enough for them to learn about such horrible things when they’re older.”
“You’re absolutely wrong! If, as you’re so determined, they’ve got to live in this damned country, they’d better find out what sort of thing they’re up against as soon as possible. The earlier they learn it, the better prepared they’ll be.”
“I don’t agree. I want their childhood to be happy and as free from the knowledge of such things as it possibly can be.”
“Very laudable,” was Brian’s sarcastic answer. “Very laudable indeed, all things considered. But can it?”
“Certainly it can. If you’ll only do your part.”
“Stuff! You know as well as I do, Irene, that it can’t. What was the use of our trying to keep them from learning the word ‘nigger’ and its connotation? They found out, didn’t they? And how? Because somebody called Junior a dirty nigger.”
“Just the same you’re not to talk to them about the race problem. I won’t have it.”
They glared at each other.
“I tell you, Irene, they’ve got to know these things, and it might as well be now as later.”
“They do not!” she insisted, forcing back the tears of anger that were threatening to fall.
Brian growled: “I can’t understand how anybody as intelligent as you like to think you are can show evidences of such stupidity.” He looked at her in a puzzled harassed way.
“Stupid!” she cried. “Is it stupid to want my children to be happy?” Her lips were quivering.
“At the expense of proper preparation for life and their future happiness, yes. And I’d feel I hadn’t done my duty by them if I didn’t give them some inkling of what’s before them. It’s the least I can do. I wanted to get them out of this hellish place years ago. You wouldn’t let me. I gave up the idea, because you objected. Don’t expect me to give up everything.”
Under the lash of his words she was silent. Before any answer came to her, he had turned and gone from the room.
Sitting there alone in the forsaken dining-room, unconsciously pressing the hands lying in her lap, tightly together, she was seized by a convulsion of shivering. For, to her, there had been something ominous in the scene that she had just had with her husband. Over and over in her mind his last words: “Don’t expect me to give up everything,” repeated themselves. What had they meant? What could they mean? Clare Kendry?
Surely, she was going mad with fear and suspicion. She must not work herself up. She must not! Where were all the self-control, the common sense, that she was so proud of? Now, if ever, was the time for it.
Clare would soon be there. She must hurry or she would be late again, and those two would wait for her downstairs together, as they had done so often since that first time, which now seemed so long ago. Had it been really only last October? Why, she felt years, not months, older.
Drearily she rose from her chair and went upstairs to set about the business of dressing to go out when she would far rather have remained at home. During the process she wondered, for the hundredth time, why she hadn’t told Brian about herself and Felise running into Bellew the day before, and for the hundredth time she turned away from acknowledging to herself the real reason for keeping back the information.
When Clare arrived, radiant in a shining red gown, Irene had not finished dressing. But her smile scarcely hesitated as she greeted her, saying: “I always seem to keep C.P. time, don’t I? We hardly expected you to be able to come. Felise will be pleased. How nice you look.”
Clare kissed a bare shoulder, seeming not to notice a slight shrinking.
“I hadn’t an idea in the world, myself, that I’d be able to make it; but Jack had to run down to Philadelphia unexpectedly. So here I am.”
Irene looked up, a flood of speech on her lips. “Philadelphia. That’s not very far, is it? Clare, I—?”
She stopped, one of her hands clutching the side of her stool, the other lying clenched on the dressing-table. Why didn’t she go on and tell Clare about meeting Bellew? Why couldn’t she?
But Clare didn’t notice the unfinished sentence. She laughed and said lightly: “It’s far enough for me. Anywhere, away from me, is far enough. I’m not particular.”
Irene passed a hand over her eyes to shut out the accusing face in the glass before her. With one corner of her mind she wondered how long she had looked like that, drawn and haggard and—yes, frightened. Or was it only imagination?
“Clare,” she asked, “have you ever seriously thought what it would mean if he should find you out?”
Yes!
“Oh! You have! And what you’d do in that case?”
“Yes.” And having said it,
