by Nella Larsen
More songs, old, all of them old, but new and strange to that audience. And how the singers danced, pounding their thighs, slapping their hands together, twisting their legs, waving their abnormally long arms, throwing their bodies about with a loose ease! And how the enchanted spectators clapped and howled and shouted for more!
Helga Crane was not amused. Instead she was filled with a fierce hatred for the cavorting Negroes on the stage. She felt shamed, betrayed, as if these pale pink and white people among whom she lived had suddenly been invited to look upon something in her which she had hidden away and wanted to forget. And she was shocked at the avidity at which Olsen beside her drank it in.
But later, when she was alone, it became quite clear to her that all along they had divined its presence, had known that in her was something, some characteristic, different from any that they themselves possessed. Else why had they decked her out as they had? Why subtly indicated that she was different? And they hadn’t despised it. No, they had admired it, rated it as a precious thing, a thing to be enhanced, preserved. Why? She, Helga Crane, didn’t admire it. She suspected that no Negroes, no Americans, did. Else why their constant slavish imitation of traits not their own? Why their constant begging to be considered as exact copies of other people? Even the enlightened, the intelligent ones demanded nothing more. They were all beggars like the motley crowd in the old nursery-rhyme:
Hark! Hark!
The dogs do bark.
The beggars are coming to town.
Some in rags,
Some in tags,
And some in velvet gowns.
The incident left her profoundly disquieted. Her old unhappy questioning mood came again upon her, insidiously stealing away more of the contentment from her transformed existence.
But she returned again and again to the Circus, always alone, gazing intently and solemnly at the gesticulating black figures, an ironical and silently speculative spectator. For she knew that into her plan for her life had thrust itself a suspensive conflict in which were fused doubts, rebellion, expediency, and urgent longings.
It was at this time that Axel Olsen asked her to marry him. And now Helga Crane was surprised. It was a thing that at one time she had much wanted, had tried to bring about, and had at last relinquished as impossible of achievement. Not so much because of its apparent hopelessness as because of a feeling, intangible almost, that, excited and pleased as he was with her, her origin a little repelled him, and that, prompted by some impulse of racial antagonism, he had retreated into the fastness of a protecting habit of self-ridicule. A mordantly personal pride and sensitiveness deterred Helga from further efforts at incitation.
True, he had made, one morning, while holding his brush poised for a last, a very last stroke on the portrait, one admirably draped suggestion, speaking seemingly to the pictured face. Had he insinuated marriage, or something less—and easier? Or had he paid her only a rather florid compliment, in somewhat dubious taste? Helga, who had not at the time been quite sure, had remained silent, striving to appear unhearing.
Later, having thought it over, she flayed herself for a fool. It wasn’t, she should have known, in the manner of Axel Olsen to pay florid compliments in questionable taste. And had it been marriage that he had meant, he would, of course, have done the proper thing. He wouldn’t have stopped—or, rather, have begun—by making his wishes known to her when there was Uncle Poul to be formally consulted. She had been, she told herself, insulted. And a goodly measure of contempt and wariness was added to her interest in the man. She was able, however, to feel a gratifying sense of elation in the remembrance that she had been silent, ostensibly unaware of his utterance, and therefore, as far as he knew, not affronted.
This simplified things. It did away with the quandary in which the confession to the Dahls of such a happening would have involved her, for she couldn’t be sure that they, too, might not put it down to the difference of her ancestry. And she could still go attended by him, and envied by others, to openings in Kongen’s Nytorv, to showings at the Royal Academy or Char-lottenborg’s Palace. He could still call for her and Aunt Katrina of an afternoon or go with her to Magasin du Nord to select a scarf or a length of silk, of which Uncle Poul could say casually in the presence of interested acquaintances: “Um, pretty scarf”—or “frock”—“you’re wearing, Helga. Is that the new one Olsen helped you with?”
Her outward manner toward him changed not at all, save that gradually she became, perhaps, a little more detached and indifferent. But definitely Helga Crane had ceased, even remotely, to consider him other than as someone amusing, desirable, and convenient to have about—if one was careful. She intended, presently, to turn her attention to one of the others. The decorative Captain of the Hussars, perhaps. But in the ache of her growing nostalgia, which, try as she might, she could not curb, she no longer thought with any seriousness on either Olsen or Captain Skaargaard. She must, she felt, see America again first. When she returned—
Therefore, where before she would have been pleased and proud at Olsen’s proposal, she was now truly surprised. Strangely, she was aware also of a curious feeling of repugnance, as her eyes slid over his face, as smiling, assured, with just the right note of fervor, he made his declaration and request. She was astonished. Was it possible? Was it really this man that she had thought, even wished, she could marry?
He was, it was plain, certain of being accepted, as he was always certain of acceptance, of adulation, in any and every place that he deigned to honor with his presence. Well, Helga was thinking, that wasn’t as much his fault as her own, her aunt’s, everyone’s. He was spoiled, childish almost.
To his words, once she had caught their content and recovered from her surprise, Helga paid not much attention. They would, she knew, be absolutely appropriate ones, and they didn’t at all matter. They meant nothing to her—now. She was too amazed to discover suddenly how intensely she disliked him, disliked the shape of his head, the mop of his hair, the line of his nose, the tones of his voice, the nervous grace of his long fingers; disliked even the very look of his irreproachable clothes. And for some inexplicable reason, she was a little frightened and embarrassed, so that when he had finished speaking, for a short space there was only stillness in the small room, into which Aunt Katrina had tactfully had him shown. Even Thor, the enormous Persian, curled on the window ledge in the feeble late afternoon sun, had rested for the moment from his incessant purring under Helga’s idly stroking fingers.
Helga, her slight agitation vanished, told him that she was surprised. His offer was, she said, unexpected. Quite.
A little sardonically, Olsen interrupted her. He smiled too. “But of course I expected surprise. It is, is it not, the proper thing? And always you are proper, Frøkken Helga, always.”
Helga, who had a stripped, naked feeling under his direct glance, drew herself up stiffly. Herr Olsen needn’t, she told him, be sarcastic. She was surprised. He must understand that she was being quite sincere, quite truthful about that. Really, she hadn’t expected him to do her so great an honor.
He made a little impatient gesture. Why, then, had she refused, ignored, his other, earlier suggestion?
At that Helga Crane took a deep indignant breath and was again, this time for an almost imperceptible second, silent. She had, then, been correct in her deduction. Her sensuous, petulant mouth hardened. That he should so frankly—so insolently, it seemed to her—admit his outrageous meaning was too much. She said, coldly: “Because, Herr Olsen, in my country the men, of my race, at least, don’t make such suggestions to decent girls. And thinking that you were a gentleman, introduced to me by my aunt, I chose to think myself mistaken, to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Very commendable, my Helga—and wise. Now you have your reward. Now I offer you marriage.”
“Thanks,” she answered, “thanks, awfully.”
“Yes,” and he reached for her slim cream hand, now lying quiet on Thor’s broad orange and black back
. Helga let it lie in his large pink one, noting their contrast. “Yes, because I, poor artist that I am, cannot hold out against the deliberate lure of you. You disturb me. The longing for you does harm to my work. You creep into my brain and madden me,” and he kissed the small ivory hand. Quite decorously, Helga thought, for one so maddened that he was driven, against his inclination, to offer her marriage. But immediately, in extenuation, her mind leapt to the admirable casualness of Aunt Katrina’s expressed desire for this very thing, and recalled the unruffled calm of Uncle Poul under any and all circumstances. It was, as she had long ago decided, security. Balance.
“But,” the man before her was saying, “for me it will be an experience. It may be that with you, Helga, for wife, I will become great. Immortal. Who knows? I didn’t want to love you, but I had to. That is the truth. I make of myself a present to you. For love.” His voice held a theatrical note. At the same time he moved forward putting out his arms. His hands touched air. For Helga had moved back. Instantly he dropped his arms and took a step away, repelled by something suddenly wild in her face and manner. Sitting down, he passed a hand over his face with a quick, graceful gesture.
Tameness returned to Helga Crane. Her ironic gaze rested on the face of Axel Olsen, his leonine head, his broad nose—“broader than my own”—his bushy eyebrows, surmounting thick, drooping lids, which hid, she knew, sullen blue eyes. He stirred sharply, shaking off his momentary disconcertion.
In his assured, despotic way he went on: “You know, Helga, you are a contradiction. You have been, I suspect, corrupted by the good Fru Dahl, which is perhaps as well. Who knows? You have the warm impulsive nature of the women of Africa, but, my lovely, you have, I fear, the soul of a prostitute. You sell yourself to the highest buyer. I should of course be happy that it is I. And I am.” He stopped, contemplating her, lost apparently, for the second, in pleasant thoughts of the future.
To Helga he seemed to be the most distant, the most unreal figure in the world. She suppressed a ridiculous impulse to laugh. The effort sobered her. Abruptly she was aware that in the end, in some way, she would pay for this hour. A quick brief fear ran through her, leaving in its wake a sense of impending calamity. She wondered if for this she would pay all that she’d had.
And, suddenly, she didn’t at all care. She said, lightly, but firmly: “But you see, Herr Olsen, I’m not for sale. Not to you. Not to any white man. I don’t at all care to be owned. Even by you.”
The drooping lids lifted. The look in the blue eyes was, Helga thought, like the surprised stare of a puzzled baby. He hadn’t at all grasped her meaning.
She proceeded, deliberately: “I think you don’t understand me. What I’m trying to say is this, I don’t want you. I wouldn’t under any circumstances marry you,” and since she was, as she put it, being brutally frank, she added: “Now.”
He turned a little away from her, his face white but composed, and looked down into the gathering shadows in the little park before the house. At last he spoke, in a queer frozen voice: “You refuse me?”
“Yes,” Helga repeated with intentional carelessness. “I refuse you.”
The man’s full upper lip trembled. He wiped his forehead, where the gold hair was now lying flat and pale and lusterless. His eyes still avoided the girl in the high-backed chair before him. Helga felt a shiver of compunction. For an instant she regretted that she had not been a little kinder. But wasn’t it after all the greatest kindness to be cruel? But more gently, less indifferently, she said: “You see, I couldn’t marry a white man. I simply couldn’t. It isn’t just you, not just personal, you understand. It’s deeper, broader than that. It’s racial. Some day maybe you’ll be glad. We can’t tell, you know; if we were married, you might come to be ashamed of me, to hate me, to hate all dark people. My mother did that.”
“I have offered you marriage, Helga Crane, and you answer me with some strange talk of race and shame. What nonsense is this?”
Helga let that pass because she couldn’t, she felt, explain. It would be too difficult, too mortifying. She had no words which could adequately, and without laceration to her pride, convey to him the pitfalls into which very easily they might step. “I might,” she said, “have considered it once—when I first came. But you, hoping for a more informal arrangement, waited too long. You missed the moment. I had time to think. Now I couldn’t. Nothing is worth the risk. We might come to hate each other. I’ve been through it, or something like it. I know. I couldn’t do it. And I’m glad.”
Rising, she held out her hand, relieved that he was still silent. “Good afternoon,” she said formally. “It has been a great honor—”
“A tragedy,” he corrected, barely touching her hand with his moist finger-tips.
“Why?” Helga countered, and for an instant felt as if something sinister and internecine flew back and forth between them like poison.
“I mean,” he said, and quite solemnly, “that though I don’t entirely understand you, yet in a way I do too. And—” He hesitated. Went on. “I think that my picture of you is, after all, the true Helga Crane. Therefore—a tragedy. For someone. For me? Perhaps.”
“Oh, the picture!” Helga lifted her shoulders in a little impatient motion.
Ceremoniously Axel Olsen bowed himself out, leaving her grateful for the urbanity which permitted them to part without too much awkwardness. No other man, she thought, of her acquaintance could have managed it so well—except, perhaps, Robert Anderson.
“I’m glad,” she declared to herself in another moment, “that I refused him. And,” she added honestly, “I’m glad that I had the chance. He took it awfully well, though—for a tragedy.” And she made a tiny frown.
The picture—she had never quite, in spite of her deep interest in him, and her desire for his admiration and approval, forgiven Olsen for that portrait. It wasn’t, she contended, herself at all, but some disgusting sensual creature with her features. Herr and Fru Dahl had not exactly liked it either, although collectors, artists, and critics had been unanimous in their praise and it had been hung on the line at an annual exhibition, where it had attracted much flattering attention and many tempting offers.
Now Helga went in and stood for a long time before it, with its creator’s parting words in mind: “. . . a tragedy . . . my picture is, after all, the true Helga Crane.” Vehemently she shook her head. “It isn’t, it isn’t at all,” she said aloud. Bosh! Pure artistic bosh and conceit. Nothing else. Anyone with half an eye could see that it wasn’t, at all, like her.
“Marie,” she called to the maid passing in the hall, “do you think this is a good picture of me?”
Marie blushed. Hesitated. “Of course, Frøkken, I know Herr Olsen is a great artist, but no, I don’t like that picture. It looks bad, wicked. Begging your pardon, Frøkken.”
“Thanks, Marie, I don’t like it either.”
Yes, anyone with half an eye could see that it wasn’t she.
SIXTEEN
Glad though the Dahls may have been that their niece had had the chance of refusing the hand of Axel Olsen, they were anything but glad that she had taken that chance. Very plainly they said so, and quite firmly they pointed out to her the advisability of retrieving the opportunity, if, indeed, such a thing were possible. But it wasn’t, even had Helga been so inclined, for, they were to learn from the columns of Politikken, Axel Olsen had gone off suddenly to some queer place in the Balkans. To rest, the newspapers said. To get Frøkken Crane out of his mind, the gossips said.
Life in the Dahl ménage went on, smoothly as before, but not so pleasantly. The combined disappointment and sense of guilt of the Dahls and Helga colored everything. Though she had resolved not to think that they felt that she had, as it were, “let them down,” Helga knew that they did. They had not so much expected as hoped that she would bring down Olsen, and so secure the link between the merely fashionable set to which they belonged and the artistic one after which they hankered. It was of course true that there were other
s, plenty of them. But there was only one Olsen. And Helga, for some idiotic reason connected with race, had refused him. Certainly there was no use in thinking, even, of the others. If she had refused him, she would refuse any and all for the same reason. It was, it seemed, all-embracing.
“It isn’t,” Uncle Poul had tried to point out to her, “as if there were hundreds of mulattoes here. That, I can understand, might make it a little different. But there’s only you. You’re unique here, don’t you see? Besides, Olsen has money and enviable position. Nobody’d dare to say, or even to think anything odd or unkind of you or him. Come now, Helga, it isn’t this foolishness about race. Not here in Denmark. You’ve never spoken of it before. It can’t be just that. You’re too sensible. It must be something else. I wish you’d try to explain. You don’t perhaps like Olsen?”
Helga had been silent, thinking what a severe wrench to Herr Dahl’s ideas of decency was this conversation. For he had an almost fanatic regard for reticence, and a peculiar shrinking from what he looked upon as indecent exposure of the emotions.
“Just what is it, Helga?” he asked again, because the pause had grown awkward, for him.
“I can’t explain any better than I have,” she had begun tremulously, “it’s just something—something deep down inside of me,” and had turned away to hide a face convulsed by threatening tears.
But that, Uncle Poul had remarked with a reasonableness that was wasted on the miserable girl before him, was nonsense, pure nonsense.
With a shaking sigh and a frantic dab at her eyes, in which had come a despairing look, she had agreed that perhaps it was foolish, but she couldn’t help it. “Can’t you, won’t you understand, Uncle Poul?” she begged, with a pleading look at the kindly worldly man who at that moment had been thinking that this strange exotic niece of his wife’s was indeed charming. He didn’t blame Olsen for taking it rather hard.