Quicksand

Helga Crane sat alone in her room, which at that hour, eight in the evening, was in soft gloom. Only a single reading lamp, dimmed by a great black and red shade, made a pool of light on the blue Chinese carpet, on the bright covers of the books which she had taken down from their long shelves, on the white pages of the opened one selected, on the shining brass bowl crowded with many-colored nasturtiums beside her on the low table, and on the oriental silk which covered the stool at her slim feet. It was a comfortable room, furnished with rare and intensely personal taste, flooded with Southern sun in the day, but shadowy just then with the drawn curtains and single shaded light. Large, too. So large that the spot where Helga sat was a small oasis in a desert of darkness. And eerily quiet. But that was what she liked after her taxing day’s work, after the hard classes, in which she gave willingly and unsparingly of herself with no apparent return. She loved this tranquillity, this quiet, following the fret and strain of the long hours spent among fellow members of a carelessly unkind and gossiping faculty, following the strenuous rigidity of conduct required in this huge educational community of which she was an insignificant part. This was her rest, this intentional isolation for a short while in the evening, this little time in her own attractive room with her own books.

She rose, followed, and was ushered into the guarded sanctum, without having decided just what she was to say. For a moment she felt behind her the open doorway and then the gentle impact of its closing. Before her at a great desk her eyes picked out the figure of a man, at first blurred slightly in outline in that dimmer light. At his “Miss Crane?” her lips formed for speech, but no sound came. She was aware of inward confusion. For her the situation seemed charged, unaccountably, with strangeness and something very like hysteria. An almost overpowering desire to laugh seized her. Then, miraculously, a complete ease, such as she had never known in Naxos, possessed her. She smiled, nodded in answer to his questioning salutation, and with a gracious “Thank you” dropped into the chair which he indicated. She looked at him frankly now, this man still young, thirty-five perhaps, and found it easy to go on in the vein of a simple statement.

“Dr. Anderson, I’m sorry to have to confess that I’ve failed in my job here. I’ve made up my mind to leave. Today.”

A short, almost imperceptible silence, then a deep voice of peculiarly pleasing resonance, asking gently: “You don’t like Naxos, Miss Crane?”

She evaded. “Naxos, the place? Yes, I like it. Who wouldn’t like it? It’s so beautiful. But I⁠—well⁠—I don’t seem to fit here.”

The man smiled, just a little. “The school? You don’t like the school?”

The words burst from her. “No, I don’t like it. I hate it!”

“Why?” The question was detached, too detached.

There was no escape. She stood in the large reception hall, and was annoyed to find herself actually trembling. A woman, tall, exquisitely gowned, with shining gray hair piled high, came forward murmuring in a puzzled voice: “His niece, did you say?”

“Yes, Helga Crane. My mother was his sister, Karen Nilssen. I’ve been away. I didn’t know Uncle Peter had married.” Sensitive to atmosphere, Helga had felt at once the latent antagonism in the woman’s manner.

“Oh, yes! I remember about you now. I’d forgotten for a moment. Well, he isn’t exactly your uncle, is he? Your mother wasn’t married, was she? I mean, to your father?”

“I⁠—I don’t know,” stammered the girl, feeling pushed down to the uttermost depths of ignominy.

“Of course she wasn’t.” The clear, low voice held a positive note. “Mr. Nilssen has been very kind to you, supported you, sent you to school. But you mustn’t expect anything else. And you mustn’t come here any more. It⁠—well, frankly, it isn’t convenient. I’m sure an intelligent girl like yourself can understand that.”

“Of course,” Helga agreed, coldly, freezingly, but her lips quivered. She wanted to get away as quickly as possible. She reached the door. There was a second of complete silence, then Mrs. Nilssen’s voice, a little agitated: “And please remember that my husband is not your uncle. No indeed! Why, that, that would make me your aunt! He’s not⁠—”

But at last the knob had turned in Helga’s fumbling hand. She gave a little unpremeditated laugh and slipped out. When she was in the street, she ran.

It was night. The dinner-party was over, but no one wanted to go home. Half-past eleven was, it seemed, much too early to tumble into bed on a Saturday night. It was a sulky, humid night, a thick furry night, through which the electric torches shone like silver fuzz⁠—an atrocious night for cabareting, Helga insisted, but the others wanted to go, so she went with them, though half unwillingly. After much consultation and chatter they decided upon a place and climbed into two patiently waiting taxis, rattling things which jerked, wiggled, and groaned, and threatened every minute to collide with others of their kind, or with inattentive pedestrians. Soon they pulled up before a tawdry doorway in a narrow crosstown street and stepped out. The night was far from quiet, the streets far from empty. Clanging trolley bells, quarreling cats, cackling phonographs, raucous laughter, complaining motor-horns, low singing, mingled in the familiar medley that is Harlem. Black figures, white figures, little forms, big forms, small groups, large groups, sauntered, or hurried by. It was gay, grotesque, and a little weird. Helga Crane felt singularly apart from it all. Entering the waiting doorway, they descended through a furtive, narrow passage, into a vast subterranean room. Helga smiled, thinking that this was one of those places characterized by the righteous as a hell.

A glare of light struck her eyes, a blare of jazz split her ears. For a moment everything seemed to be spinning round; even she felt that she was circling aimlessly, as she followed with the others the black giant who led them to a small table, where, when they were seated, their knees and elbows touched.