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 rosecoloured 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.”
“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 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 who find their way up here are fair specimens of white Terpsichorean art.”
“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 I 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. Dorothy was there. We got talking. In less than five minutes, I knew she was ‘fay.’ Not from anything she did or said or anything in her appearance. Justjust 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?”
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.