Nella Larsen (14 page)

She hung up and turned back to Clare, a little frown on her softly chiselled features. “It's the N. W. L. dance,” she explained, “the Negro Welfare League,
²
you know. I'm on the ticket committee, or, rather, I
am
the committee. Thank heaven it comes off tomorrow night and doesn't happen again for a year. I'm about crazy, and now I've got to persuade somebody to change boxes with me.”

“That wasn't,” Clare asked, “Hugh Wentworth? Not
the
Hugh Wentworth?”

Irene inclined her head. On her face was a tiny triumphant smile. “Yes,
the
Hugh Wentworth. D'you know him?”

“No. How should I? But I do know about him. And I've read a book or two of his.”

“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.
³
More, to gaze on these great and near great while they gaze on the Negroes.”

Clare clapped her hands. “ '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 extravagant thanks, for immediately she was sorry that she had consented, she said briskly: “Should you like to come up and see my boys?”

“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 for ever 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.

THREE

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-colored 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 a free half-hour when she had dropped into a chair in an emptied box and let her gaze wander over the bright crowd below.

Young men, old men, white men, black men; youthful women, older women, pink women, golden women; fat men, thin men, tall men, short men; stout women, slim women, stately women, small women moved by. An old nursery rhyme popped into her head. She turned to Wentworth, who had just taken a seat beside her, and recited it:

“Rich man, poor man,
Beggar man, thief,
Doctor, lawyer,
Indian chief.”
1

“Yes,” Wentworth said, “that's it. Everybody seems to be here and a few more. But what I'm trying to find out is the name, status, and race of the blonde beauty out of the fairy-tale. She's dancing with Ralph Hazelton at the moment. Nice study in contrasts, that.”

It was. Clare fair and golden, like a sunlit day. Hazelton dark, with gleaming eyes, like a moonlit night.

“She's a girl I used to know a long time ago in Chicago. And she wanted especially to meet you.”

“ 'S awfully good of her, I'm sure. And now, alas! the usual thing's happened. All these others, these— er—‘gentlemen of colour' have driven a mere Nordic
²
from her mind.”

“Stuff !”

“ 'S a fact, and what happens to all the ladies of my superior race who're lured up here. Look at Bianca. Have I laid eyes on her tonight except in spots, here and there, being twirled about by some Ethiopian? I have not.”

“But, Hugh, you've got to admit that the average coloured man is a better dancer than the average white man—that is, if the celebrities and ‘butter and egg' men
³
who find their way up here are fair specimens of white Terpsichorean art.”
⁴

“Not having tripped the light fantastic with any of the males, I'm not in a position to argue the point. But I don't think it's merely that. 'S something else, some other attraction. They're always raving about the good looks of some Negro, preferably an unusually dark one. Take Hazelton there, for example. Dozens of women have declared him to be fascinatingly handsome. How about you, Irene? Do you think he's—er—ravishingly beautiful?”

“I do not! And I don't think the others do either. Not honestly, I mean. I think that what they feel is— well, a kind of emotional excitement. You know, the sort of thing you feel in the presence of something strange, and even, perhaps, a bit repugnant to you; something so different that it's really at the opposite end of the pole from all your accustomed notions of beauty.”

“Damned if I don't think you're halfway right!”

“I'm sure I am. Completely. (Except, of course, when it's just patronizing kindness on their part.) And I know coloured girls who've experienced the same thing—the other way round, naturally.”

“And the men? You don't subscribe to the general opinion about their reason for coming up here. Purely predatory. Or, do you?”

“N-no. More curious, I should say.”

Wentworth, whose eyes were a clouded amber colour, had given her a long, searching look that was really a stare. He said: “All this is awfully interestin', Irene. We've got to have a long talk about it some time soon. There's your friend from Chicago, first time up here and all that. A case in point.”

Irene's smile had only just lifted the corners of her painted lips. A match blazed in Wentworth's broad hands as he lighted her cigarette and his own, and flickered out before he asked: “Or isn't she?”

Her smile changed to a laugh. “Oh, Hugh! You're so clever. You usually know everything. Even how to tell the sheep from the goats. What do you think? Is she?”

He blew a long contemplative wreath of smoke. “Damned if I know! I'll be as sure as anything that I've learned the trick. And then in the next minute I'll find I couldn't pick some of 'em if my life depended on it.”

“Well, don't let that worry you. Nobody can. Not by looking.”

“Not by looking, eh? Meaning?”

“I'm afraid I can't explain. Not clearly. There are ways. But they're not definite or tangible.”

“Feeling of kinship, or something like that?”

“Good heavens, no! Nobody has that, except for their in-laws.”

“Right again! But go on about the sheep and the goats.”

“Well, take my own experience with Dorothy Thompkins. I'd met her four or five times, in groups and crowds of people, before I knew she wasn't a Negro. One day I went to an awful tea, terribly dicty.
⁵
Dorothy was there. We got talking. In less than five minutes, I knew she was ‘fay.'
⁶
Not from anything she did or said or anything in her appearance. Just—just something. A thing that couldn't be registered.”

“Yes, I understand what you mean. Yet lots of people ‘pass' all the time.”

“Not on our side, Hugh. It's easy for a Negro to ‘pass' for white. But I don't think it would be so simple for a white person to ‘pass' for coloured.”

“Never thought of that.”

“No, you wouldn't. Why should you?”

He regarded her critically through mists of smoke. “Slippin' me, Irene?”
⁷

She said soberly: “Not you, Hugh. I'm too fond of you. And you're too sincere.”

And she remembered that towards the end of the dance Brian had come to her and said: “I'll drop you first and then run Clare down.” And that he had been doubtful of her discretion when she had explained to him that he wouldn't have to bother because she had asked Bianca Wentworth to take her down with them. Did she, he had asked, think it had been wise to tell them about Clare?

“I told them nothing,” she said sharply, for she was unbearably tired, “except that she was at the Walsingham. It's on their way. And, really, I haven't thought anything about the wisdom of it, but now that I do, I'd say it's much better for them to take her than you.”

“As you please. She's your friend, you know,” he had answered, with a disclaiming shrug of his shoulders.

Except for these few unconnected things the dance faded to a blurred memory, its outlines mingling with those of other dances of its kind that she had attended in the past and would attend in the future.