# Quicksand (Larsen)/Part 10

Ten
With the waning summer the acute sensitiveness of Helga Crane’s frayed nerves grew keener. There were days when the mere sight of the serene tan and brown faces about her stung her like a personal insult. The care-free quality of their laughter roused in her the desire to scream at them: “Fools, fools! Stupid fools!” This passionate and unreasoning protest gained in intensity, swallowing up all else like some dense fog. Life became for her only a hateful place where one lived in intimacy with people one would not have chosen had one been given choice. It was, too, an excruciating agony. She was continually out of temper. Anne, thank the gods! was away, but her nearing return filled Helga with dismay.
Arriving at work one sultry day, hot and dispirited, she found waiting a letter, a letter ​from Uncle Peter. It had originally been sent to Naxos, and from there it had made the journey back to Chicago to the Young Women‘s Christian Association, and then to Mrs. Hayes-Rore. That busy woman had at last found time between conventions and lectures to readdress it and had sent it on to New York. Four months, at least, it had been on its travels. Helga felt no curiosity as to its contents, only annoyance at the long delay, as she ripped open the thin edge of the envelope, and for a space sat staring at the peculiar foreign script of her uncle.
715 Sheridan Road Chicago, Ill.
Dear Helga: It is now over a year since you made your unfortunate call here. It was unfortunate for us all, you, Mrs. Nilssen, and myself. But of course you couldn‘t know. I blame myself. I should have written you of my marriage.
​I have looked for a letter, or some word from you; evidently, with your usual penetration, you understood thoroughly that I must terminate my outward relation with you. You were always a keen one.
Of course I am sorry, but it can‘t be helped. My wife must be considered, and she feels very strongly about this.
You know, of course, that I wish you the best of luck. But take an old man‘s advice and don‘t do as your mother did. Why don‘t you run over and visit your Aunt Katrina? She always wanted you. Maria Kirkeplads, No. 2, will find her.
I enclose what I intended to leave you at my death. It is better and more convenient that you get it now. I wish it were more, but even this little may come in handy for a rainy day.
Best wishes for your luck.
Peter Nilssen
​Beside the brief, friendly, but none the less final, letter there was a check for five thousand dollars. Helga Crane‘s first feeling was one of unreality. This changed almost immediately into one of relief, of liberation. It was stronger than the mere security from present financial worry which the check promised. Money as money was still not very important to Helga. But later, while on an errand in the big general office of the society, her puzzled bewilderment fled. Here the inscrutability of the ¡dozen or more brown faces, all cast from the same indefinite mold, and so like her own, seemed pressing forward against her. Abruptly it flashed upon her that the harrowing irritation of the past weeks was a smoldering hatred. Then, she was overcome by another, so actual, so sharp, so horribly painful, that forever afterwards she preferred to forget it. It was as if she were shut up, boxed up, with hundreds of her race, closed up with that something in the racial character which had always ​been, to her, inexplicable, alien. Why, she demanded in fierce rebellion, should she be yoked to these despised black folk?
Back in the privacy of her own cubicle, self-loathing came upon her. “They‘re my own people, my own people,” she kept repeating over and over to herself. It was no good. The feeling would not be routed. “I can‘t go on like this,” she said to herself. ”I simply can‘t.”
There were footsteps. Panic seized her. She‘d have to get out. She terribly needed to. Snatching hat and purse, she hurried to the narrow door, saying in a forced, steady voice, as it opened to reveal her employer: “Mr. Darling, I‘m sorry, but I‘ve got to go out. Please, may I be excused?”
At his courteous “Certainly, certainly. And don‘t hurry. It‘s much too hot,” Helga Crane had the grace to feel ashamed, but there was no softening of her determination. The necessity for being alone was too urgent. She hated him and all the others too much.
​Outside, rain had begun to fall. She walked bare-headed, bitter with self-reproach. But she rejoiced too. She didn‘t, in spite of her racial markings, belong to these dark segregated people. She was different. She felt it. It wasn‘t merely a matter of color. It was something broader, deeper, that made folk kin.
And now she was free. She would take Uncle Peter‘s money and advice and revisit her aunt in Copenhagen. Fleeting pleasant memories of her childhood visit there flew through her excited mind. She had been only eight, yet she had enjoyed the interest and the admiration which her unfamiliar color and dark curly hair, strange to those pink, white, and gold people, had evoked. Quite clearly now she recalled that her Aunt Katrina had begged for her to be allowed to remain. Why, she wondered, hadn‘t her mother consented? To Helga it seemed that it would have been the solution to all their problems, her mother‘s, her stepfather‘s, her own.
​At home in the cool dimness of the big chintz-hung living-room, clad only in a fluttering thing of green chiffon, she gave herself up to day-dreams of a happy future in Copenhagen, where there were no Negroes, no problems, no prejudice, until she remembered with perturbation that this was the day of Anne‘s return from her vacation at the sea-shore. Worse. There was a dinner-party in her honor that very night. Helga sighed. She‘d have to go. She couldn‘t possibly get out of a dinner-party for Anne, even though she felt that such an event on a hot night was little short of an outrage. Nothing but a sense of obligation to Anne kept her from pleading a splitting headache as an excuse for remaining quietly at home.
Her mind trailed off to the highly important matter of clothes. What should she wear? White? No, everybody would, because it was hot. Green? She shook her head, Anne would be sure to. The blue thing. Reluctantly she decided against it; she loved it, but she had ​worn it too often. There was that cobwebby black net touched with orange, which she had bought last spring in a fit of extravagance and never worn, because on getting it home both she and Anne had considered it too ‘‘décolleté‘‘, and too ‘‘outré‘‘. Anne‘s words: “There‘s not enough of it, and what there is gives you the air of something about to fly,” came back to her, and she smiled as she decided that she would certainly wear the black net. For her it would be a symbol. She was about to fly.
She busied herself with some absurdly expensive roses which she had ordered sent in, spending an interminable time in their arrangement. At last she was satisfied with their appropriateness in some blue Chinese jars of great age. Anne did have such lovely things, she thought, as she began conscientiously to prepare for her return, although there was really little to do; Lillie seemed to have done everything. But Helga dusted the tops of the books, placed the magazines in ordered carelessness, ​redressed Anne‘s bed in fresh-smelling sheets of cool linen, and laid out her best pale-yellow pajamas of crêpe de Chine. Finally she set out two tall green glasses and made a great pitcher of lemonade, leaving only the ginger-ale and claret to be added on Anne‘s arrival. She was a little conscience-stricken, so she wanted to be particularly nice to Anne, who had been so kind to her when first she came to New York, a forlorn friendless creature. Yes, she was grateful to Anne; but, just the same, she meant to go. At once.
Her preparations over, she went back to the carved chair from which the thought of Anne‘s home-coming had drawn her. Characteristically she writhed at the idea of telling Anne of her impending departure and shirked the problem of evolving a plausible and inoffensive excuse for its suddenness. “That,” she decided lazily, “will have to look out for itself; I can‘t be bothered just now. It‘s too hot.”
She began to make plans and to dream ​delightful dreams of change, of life somewhere else. Some place where at last she would be permanently satisfied. Her anticipatory thoughts waltzed and eddied about to the sweet silent music of change. With rapture almost, she let herself drop into the blissful sensation of visualizing herself in different, strange places, among approving and admiring people, where she would be appreciated, and understood.