The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen

by Nella Larsen

  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 favorite 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, willful, 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 counseled 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 marvelous 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 colored 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 blond 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 color’ 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 colored 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 colored girls who’ve experienced the same thing—the other way round, naturally.”

  “And the men? You don’t subscrib
e 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 color, 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 sometime 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. 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. 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 colored.”

  “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.

  Four

  But undistinctive as the dance had seemed, it was, nevertheless, important. For it marked the beginning of a new factor in Irene Redfield’s life, something that left its trace on all the future years of her existence. It was the beginning of a new friendship with Clare Kendry.

  She came to them frequently after that. Always with a touching gladness that welled up and overflowed on all the Redfield household. Yet Irene could never be sure whether her comings were a joy or a vexation.

  Certainly she was no trouble. She had not to be entertained, or even noticed—if anyone could ever avoid noticing Clare. If Irene happened to be out or occupied, Clare could very happily amuse herself with Ted and Junior, who had conceived for her an admiration that verged on adoration, especially Ted. Or, lacking the boys, she would descend to the kitchen and with—to Irene—an exasperating childlike lack of perception spend her visit in talk and merriment with Zulena and Sadie.

  Irene, while secretly resenting these visits to the playroom and kitchen, for some obscure reason which she shied away from putting into words, never requested that Clare make an end of them, or hinted that she wouldn’t have spoiled her own Margery so outrageously, nor been so friendly with white servants.

  Brian looked on these things with the same tolerant amusement that marked his entire attitude toward Clare. Never since his faintly derisive surprise at Irene’s information that she was to go with them the night of the dance had he shown any disapproval of Clare’s presence. On the other hand, it couldn’t be said that her presence seemed to please him. It didn’t annoy or disturb him, so far as Irene could judge. That was all.

  Didn’t he, she once asked him, think Clare was extraordinarily beautiful?

  “No,” he had answered. “That is, not particularly.”

  “Brian, you’re fooling!”

  “No, honestly. Maybe I’m fussy. I s’pose she’d be an unusually good-looking white woman. I like my ladies darker. Beside an A-number-one sheba, she simply hasn’t got ’em.”

  Clare went, sometimes with Irene and Brian, to parties and dances, and on a few occasions when Irene hadn’t been able or inclined to go out, she had gone alone with Brian to some bridge party or benefit dance.

  Once in a while she came formally to dine with them. She wasn’t, however, in spite of her poise and air of worldliness, the ideal dinner-party guest. Beyond the aesthetic pleasure one got from watching her, she contributed little, sitting for the most part silent, an odd dreaming look in her hypnotic eyes. Though she could for some purpose of her own—the desire to be included in some party being made up to go cabareting, or an invitation to a dance or a tea—talk fluently and entertainingly.

  She was generally liked. She was so friendly and responsive, and so ready to press the sweet food of flattery on all. Nor did she object to appearing a bit pathetic and ill used, so that people could feel sorry for her. And, no matter how often she came among them, she still remained someone apart, a little mysterious and strange, someone to wonder about and to admire and to pity.

  Her visits were undecided and uncertain, being, as they were, dependent on the presence or absence of John Bellew in the city. But she did, once in a while, manage to steal uptown for an afternoon even when he was not away. As time went on without any apparent danger of discovery, even Irene ceased to be perturbed about the possibility of Clare’s husband’s stumbling on her racial identity.

  The daughter, Margery, had been left in Switzerland in school, for Clare and Bellew would be going back in the early spring. In March, Clare thought. “And how I do hate to think of it!” she would say, always with a suggestion of leashed rebellion. “But I can’t see how I’m going to get out of it. Jack won’t hear of my staying behind. If I could have just a couple of months more in New York, alone, I mean, I’d be the happiest thing in the world.”

  “I imagine you’ll be happy enough, once you get away,” Irene told her one day when she was bewailing her approaching departure. “Remember, there’s Margery. Think how glad you’ll be to see her after all this time.”

  “Children aren’t everything,” was Clare Kendry’s answer to that. “There are other things in the world, though I admit some people don’t seem to suspect it.” And she laughed, more, it seemed, at some secret joke of her own than at her words.

  Irene replied: “You know you don’t mean that, Clare. You’re only trying to tease me. I know very well that I take being a mother rather seriously. I am wrapped up in my boys and the running of my house. I can’t help it. And, really, I don’t think it’s anything to laugh at.” And though she was aware of the slight primness in her words and attitude, she had
neither power nor wish to efface it.

  Clare, suddenly very sober and sweet, said: “You’re right. It’s no laughing matter. It’s shameful of me to tease you, ’Rene. You are so good.” And she reached out and gave Irene’s hand an affectionate little squeeze. “Don’t think,” she added, “whatever happens, that I’ll ever forget how good you’ve been to me.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “Oh, but you have, you have. It’s just that I haven’t any proper morals or sense of duty, as you have, that makes me act as I do.”

  “Now you are talking nonsense.”

  “But it’s true, ’Rene. Can’t you realize that I’m not like you a bit? Why, to get the things I want badly enough, I’d do anything, hurt anybody, throw anything away. Really, ’Rene, I’m not safe.” Her voice as well as the look on her face had a beseeching earnestness that made Irene vaguely uncomfortable.

  She said: “I don’t believe it. In the first place what you’re saying is so utterly, so wickedly wrong. And as for your giving up things—” She stopped, at a loss for an acceptable term to express her opinion of Clare’s “having” nature.

  But Clare Kendry had begun to cry, audibly, with no effort at restraint, and for no reason that Irene could discover.

  Part Three

  Finale

  One

  The year was getting on towards its end. October, November had gone. December had come and brought with it a little snow and then a freeze and after that a thaw and some soft pleasant days that had in them a feeling of spring.

  It wasn’t, this mild weather, a bit Christmasy, Irene Redfield was thinking as she turned out of Seventh Avenue into her own street. She didn’t like it to be warm and springy when it should have been cold and crisp, or grey and cloudy as if snow was about to fall. The weather, like people, ought to enter into the spirit of the season. Here the holidays were almost upon them, and the streets through which she had come were streaked with rills of muddy water and the sun shone so warmly that children had taken off their hats and scarfs. It was all as soft, as like April, as possible. The kind of weather for Easter. Certainly not for Christmas.