Passing

by Nella Larsen

concordance

Were all her efforts, all her labors, to make up to him that one loss, all her silent striving to prove to him that her way had been best, all her ministrations to him, all her outward sinking of self, to count for nothing in some unperceived sudden moment?

before Irene could greet her, had dropped a kiss on her dark curls.

had a sudden inexplicable onrush of affectionate feeling.

“You mean you don’t want me, ‘Rene?” Irene hadn’t supposed that anyone could look so hurt.

Her own resentment was swept aside and her voice held an accent of pity as she exclaimed:

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.

You didn’t tell him you were colored, 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.”

She didn’t want him ruffled, not just then, not while he was possessed of that unreasonable restless feeling.

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.

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.

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.”

“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.