Part 4

I can't begin to tell you what we talked about. Nancy had dried her hair, and it was wound loosely, high on her head. The blue cloak was over her shoulders, and she was the loveliest thing that I ever hope to see. By the flame in her cheeks and the light in her eyes, I was made aware of an exaltation which matched my own. She, too, was caught up into the atmosphere of excitement which Olaf created. He could not take his eyes from her. I wondered what Anthony would have said could he have visioned for the moment this blue-and-gold enchantress.

When coffee was served there were no cigarettes or cigars. Nancy had her own silver case hanging at her belt. I knew that she would smoke, and I did not try to stop her. She always smoked after her meals and she was restless without it.

It was Olaf who stopped her. "You will hate my bad manners," he said, with his gaze holding hers, "but I wish you wouldn't."

She was lighting her own little wax taper and she looked her surprise.

"My cigarette?"

He nodded. "You are too lovely."

"But surely you are not so--old-fashioned."

"No. I am perhaps so--new-fashioned that my reason might take your breath away." He laughed but did not explain.

Nancy sat undecided while the taper burned out futilely. Then she said, "Of course you are my host--"

"Don't do it for that reason. Do it because"--he stopped, laughed again, and went on--"because you are a goddess--a woman of a new race--"

With parted lips she looked at him, then tried to wrench herself back to her attitude of light indifference.

"Oh, we've grown beyond all that."

"All what?"

"Goddess-women. We are just nice and human together."

"You are nice and human. But you are more than that."

Nancy put her unlighted cigarette back in its case. "I'll keep it for next time," she said, with a touch of defiance.

"There will be no next time," was his secure response, and his eyes held hers until, with an effort, she withdrew her gaze.

Then he rose, and his men placed deep chairs for us in a sheltered corner, where we could look out across the blue to the low hills of the moor. There was a fur rug over my chair, and I sank gratefully into the warmth of it.

"With a wind like this in the old days," Olaf said, as he stood beside me looking out over the sparkling water, "how the sails would have been spread, and now there is nothing but steam and gasoline and electricity."

"Why don't you have sails then," Nancy challenged him, "instead of steam?"

"I have a ship. Shall I show you the picture of it?"

He left to get it, and Nancy said to me, "Ducky, will you pinch me?"

"You mean that it doesn't seem real?"

She nodded.

"Well, maybe it isn't. He said he was a sort of Flying Dutchman."

"I should hate to think that he wasn't real, Elizabeth. He is as alive as a--burning coal."

Olaf came back with the pictures of his ship, a clean-cut, beautiful craft, very up-to-date, except for the dragon-heads at prow and stem.

"If I could have had my way," he told us, "I should have built it like the ship on the tapestry in there--but it wasn't practical--we haven't manpower for the oars in these days."

He had other pictures--of a strange house, or, rather, of a collection of buildings set in the form of a quadrangle, and inclosed by low walls. There were great gateways of carved wood with ironwork and views of the interior--a wide hall with fireplaces--a raised platform, with carved seats that gave a throne-like effect. The house stood on a sort of high peninsula with a forest back of it, and the sea spreading out beyond.

"The house looks old," Olaf said, "but I planned it."

He had, he explained, during one of his voyages, come upon a hidden harbor. "There is only a fishing village and a few small boats at the landing place, but the people claim to be descendants of the vikings. They are utterly isolated, but a God-fearing, hardy folk.

"It is strangely cut off from the rest of the world. I call it 'The Hidden Land.' It is not on any map. I have looked and have not found it."

"But why," was Nancy's demand, "did you build there?"

It was a question, I think, for which he had waited. "Some day I may tell you, but not now, except this--that I love the sea, and I shall end my days where, when I open my gates, my eyes may rest upon it ... where its storms may beat upon my roof, and where the men about me shall sail it, and get their living from it.

"I have told your cousin," he went on, "something of the life of my grandfather and of my father. With all of their sea-blood, they were shut away for two generations from the sea. Can you grasp the meaning of that to me?--the heritage of suppressed longings? I think my father must have felt it as I did, for he drank heavily before he died. My grandfather sought an outlet in founding the family fortunes. But when I came, there was not the compelling force of poverty to make me work, and I had before me the warning of my father's excesses. But this sea-madness! It has driven me on and on, and at last it has driven me here." He stopped, then took up the theme again in his tense, excited fashion, "It will drive me on again."

"Why should it drive you on?"

When Nancy asked that question, I knew what had happened. The thrill of her voice was the answer of a bird to its mate. When I think of her, I see her always as she was then, the blue cloak falling about her, her hair blowing, her cheeks flaming with lovely color.

I saw his fingers clench the arm of his chair as if in an effort of self-control. Then he said: "Perhaps I shall tell you that, too. But not now." He rose abruptly. "It is warmer inside, and we can have some music. I am sure you must be tired of hearing me talk about myself."

He played for us, in masterly fashion, the Peer Gynt suite, and after that a composition of his own. At last he sang, with all the swing of the sea in voice and accompaniment, and the song drew our hearts out of us.

Nancy was very quiet as we drove from the pier, and it was while I was dressing for dinner that she came into my room.

"Elizabeth," she said, "I am not sure whether we have been to a Methodist revival or to a Wagner music-drama--"

"Neither," I told her. "There's nothing artificial about him. You asked me back there if he was real. I believe that he is utterly real, Nancy. It is not a pose. I am convinced that it is not a pose."

"Yes," she said, "that's the queer thing. He's not--putting it on--and he makes everybody else seem--stale and shallow--like ghosts--or--shadow-shapes--"

* * * * *

I read _Vanity Fair_ late into the night, and the morning was coming on before I tried to sleep. I waked to find Nancy standing by my bed.

"His boat is gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes. It went an hour ago. I saw it from the roof."

"From the roof?"

"Yes. I got up--early. I--I could not sleep. And when I looked--it was gone--your glasses showed it almost out of sight."

She was wrapped in the blue cloak. Olaf had made her bring it with her. She had protested. But he had been insistent.

"I found this in the pocket," Nancy said, and held out a card on which Olaf had written, "When she lifted her arms, opening the door, a light shone on them from the sea, and the air and all the world were brightened for her."

"What does it mean, Elizabeth?"

"I think you know, my dear."

"That he cares?"

"What do you think?"

Her eyes were like stars. "But how can he? He has seen me--twice--"

"Some men are like that."

"If you only hadn't told him about Anthony."

"I am glad that I told him."

"Oh, but he might have stayed."

"Well?"

"And I might have loved him." She was still glowing with the fires that Olaf had lighted in her.

"But you are going to marry Anthony."

"Yes," she said, "I am going to marry Anthony. I am going to flirt and smoke cigarettes and let him--flirt--when I might have been a--goddess."

It was after breakfast on the same day that a letter came to me, delivered into my own hands by messenger. It was from Olaf, and he left it to me whether Nancy should see it. It covered many pages and it shook my soul, but I did not show it to Nancy.

There were nights after that when I found it hard to sleep, nights in which I thought of Olaf sailing toward the hidden land, holding in his heart a hope which it was in my power to crown with realization or dash to the ground. Yet I had Nancy's happiness to think of, and, in a sense, Anthony's. It seemed almost incredible that I must carry, too, on my heart, the burden of the happiness of Olaf Thoresen.

When Anthony came back, he and Nancy were caught in a net of engagements, and I saw very little of them. Of course they romped in now and then with their own particular crowd, and treated me, as it were, to a cross-section of modern life. Except for two things, I should have judged that Nancy had put away all thoughts of Olaf, but these two things were significant. She had stopped smoking, and she no longer touched her cheeks with artificial bloom.

Anthony's amazement, when he offered her a cigarette and she refused, had in it a touch of irritation. "But, my dear girl, why not?"

"Well, I have to think of my complexion, Tony."

I think he knew it was not that and was puzzled. "I never saw you looking better in my life."

She was wearing a girdle of blue with her clear, crisp white, and her fairness was charming. She had, indeed, the look which belongs to young Catholic girls dedicated to the Virgin who wear her colors.

It was not, however, until Anthony had been home for a week that he saw the blue cloak. We were all on the beach--Mimi Sears and Bob Needham and the Drakes, myself and Anthony. Nancy was late, having a foursome to finish on the golf grounds. She came at last, threading her way gayly through the crowd of bathers. She was without her cap, and her hair was wound in a thick braid about her head. I saw people turning to look at her as they had never turned to look when she had worn her shadowy gray.

"Great guns!" said a man back of me. "What a beauty!"

A deep flush stained Anthony's face, and I knew at once that he did not like it. It was as if, having attuned his taste to the refinement of a Japanese print, he had been called upon to admire a Fra Angelico. He hated the obvious, and Nancy's loveliness at this moment was as definite as the loveliness of the sky, the sea, the moon, the stars. Later I was to learn that Anthony's taste was for a sophisticated Nancy, a mocking Nancy, a slim, mysterious creature, with charms which were caviar to the mob.

But Bob Needham spoke from the depths of his honest and undiscriminating soul. "Heavens! Nancy. Where did you get it?"

"Get what?"

"That cloak."

"Do you like it?"

"Like it--! I wish Tony would run away while I tell you."

Anthony, forcing a smile, asked, "Where did you get it, Nan?"

"It was given to me." She sat down on the sand and smiled at him.

Mrs. Drake, feeling the thickness and softness, exclaiming over the embroidery, said finally: "It is a splendid thing. Like a queen's robe."

"You haven't told us yet," Anthony persisted, "where you got it."

"No? Well, Elizabeth will tell you. It's rather a long story. I am going into the water. Come on, Bob."

She left the cloak with me. Anthony followed her and the others. I sat alone under a great orange umbrella and wondered if Anthony would ask me about the cloak.

He did not, and when Nancy came back finally with her hair down and blowing in the wind to dry, Anthony was with her. The cloud was gone from his face, in the battle with the wares he had forgotten his vexation.

But he remembered when he saw the cloak. "Tell me about it, Nancy."

"I got it from Elizabeth's viking."

That was the calm way in which she put it.

"He isn't my viking," I told her.

"Well, you were responsible for him."

"Do you mean to say," Anthony demanded, "that you accepted a gift like that from a man you didn't know?"

Nancy, hugging herself in the cloak, said, "I felt that I knew him very well."

"How long was he here?"

"Three days. I saw him twice."

"I don't think I quite like the--idea--" Anthony began, then broke off. "Of course you have a right to do as you please."

"Of course," said Nancy, with a flame in her cheek.

"But it would please me very much if you would send it back to him."

"If I wanted to," she told him, "I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"Can you mail parcel post packages to the--Flying Dutchman? Or express things to--to Odin?"

"I don't in the least know what you are talking about, Nancy."

"Well, he sailed in and he sailed out. He didn't leave any address. He left the cloak--and a rather intriguing memory, Anthony."

That was all the satisfaction she would give him. And I am not sure that he deserved more at her hands. The agreement between them had been--absolute freedom.

I am convinced that if it had not been for the garden party I should never have shown Olaf's letter to Nancy. The garden party is an annual event. We always hold it in August, when the "off-islanders" crowd the hotels, and when money is more plentiful than at any other time during the year.

Nancy had charge of the fish pond. I had helped her to make the fish, which were gay objects of painted paper, numbered to indicate a corresponding prize package, and to be caught with a dangling line from a lily-wreathed artificial pool.

The day of the garden party was a glorious one--with the air so clear that the flying pennants of the decorated booths, and the gowns of the women, gained brilliancy and beauty from the shining atmosphere.

Nancy wore a broad blue hat which matched her eyes, one of her clear white dresses, and a silken scarf of the same blue as her hat. She loved children, and as she stood in a circle of them all the afternoon, untiring, eager--bending down to them, hooking the fish on the dangling line--handing out the prizes, smiling into the flushed eager faces, helping the very littlest ones to achieve a catch, I sat in a chair not far away from her and watched. I saw Anthony come and go, urging her to let some one else take her place, pressing a dozen reasons upon her for desertion of her task, and coming back, when she refused, to complain to me:

"Such things are a deadly bore."

"Not to Nancy."

"But they used to be. She's changed, Elizabeth."

"Beautifully changed."

"I am not sure. She was always such, a good sport."

"And isn't she now?"

"She is different," he caught himself up, "but of course--adorable."

Mimi Sears joined us, and she and Anthony went off together. Bob Needham hung around Nancy until she sent him away. At last the hour arrived for the open-air play which was a special attraction, and the crowds surged toward the inclosure. The booths were deserted, and only one rapturous child remained by the fish pond.

Nancy sat down and lifted the baby to her lap. She had taken off her hat, and her blue scarf fell about her. Something tugged at my heart as I looked at her. With that little head in the hollow of her arm she was the eternal mother.

I saw Anthony approaching. He stopped, and I caught his words. "You must come now, Nancy. I am saving a seat for you."

She shook her head, and looked down at the child. "I told his nurse to go and he is almost asleep."

He flung himself away from her and came over to me. "I have good seats for both of you in the enclosure. But Nancy won't go."

I rose and went with him, although I should have been content to sit there by the fish pond and feast my eyes on Nancy.

"It is perfectly silly of her to stay," Anthony fumed as we walked on together.

"But she loves the children."

"I hate children."

I am sure that he did not mean it. What he hated was the fact that the child had for the moment held Nancy from him. It was as if, looking forward into the future, he could see like moments, and set himself against the thought of any interruption of what might be otherwise an untrammeled and independent partnership. He had, I think, little jealousy where men were concerned. He was willing to give Nancy the reins and let her go, believing that she would inevitably come back to him. He was not, perhaps, so willing to trust her with ties which might prove more absorbing than himself.

If I had not had Olaf's letter, I might not have weighed Anthony's attitude so carefully, but against those burning words and their comprehension of the divinity and beauty of my Nancy's nature, Anthony's querulous complaint struck cold.

I think it was then, as we walked toward the inclosure, that I made up my mind to let Nancy hear what Olaf had to say to her.

She stayed out late that night--there was a dinner and a dance--and Anthony brought her home. I confess that I felt like a traitor as I heard the murmur of his voice in the hall.

But when he had gone, and Nancy passed my door on her way to her room, I called her, and she came in.

I was in bed, and I had the letter in my hand. "I want you to read it," I said. "It is from Olaf Thoresen."

She looked at it, and asked, "When did it come?"

"Two months ago. The day that he left."

"Why haven't you shown it to me?"

"I couldn't make up my mind. I do not know even now that I am right in letting you see it. But I feel that you have a right to see it. It is you who must answer it. Not I."

When she had gone, I turned to the chapter in my book where Becky weeps crocodile tears over poor Rawdon Crawley on the night before Waterloo. There is no scene in modern literature to match it. But I couldn't get my mind on it. Nancy was reading Olaf's letter!

I kept a copy of it, and here it is:

"I knew when I first saw her in the garden that she was the One Woman. I had wanted sea-blood, and when she came, ready for a dip in the sea, it seemed a sign. One knows these things somehow, and I knew. I shan't attempt to explain it.

"When you told me of her lover, I felt that Fate had played a trick on me. I could not now with honor pursue the woman who was promised to another. Yet I permitted myself that one day--the day on my boat.

"I learned in those hours that I spent with her that she had been molded by the man she is to marry and that in the years to come she will shrink to the measure of his demands upon her. She is feminine enough to be swayed by masculine will. That is at once her strength and her weakness. Loving a man who will love her for the wonder of her womanhood, she will fulfill her greatest destiny. Loving, on the other hand, one who aspires only to fit her into some attenuated social scheme, she will wither and fade. I think you know that this is true, that you will not accuse me of being unfair to any one.

"And now may I tell you what my dreams have been for her?

"I am not young. I mean I am past those hot and early years when men play--Romeo. The dream that is mine is one which has come to a man of thirty, who, having seen the world, has weighed it and wants--something more.

"I have told you of my house in that hidden land which is washed by the sea. I want to spend the rest of my days there, and I had hoped that some woman might be found whose love of life, whose love of adventure, whose love of me, might be so strong that she would see nothing strange in my demand that she forsake all others and cleave only to me.

"By forsaking all others, I mean, literally, what I say. I should want to cut her off entirely from all former ties. To let any one into our secret, to reveal that hidden land to a gaping world, would be to destroy it. We should be followed, tracked by the newspapers, written up, judged eccentric--mad. And I do not wish to be judged at all. My separation from my kind would have in it more than a selfish whim, an obsession for solitude. I want to get back to primitive civilization. I want my children to face a simpler world than the one I faced. Do you know what it means for a man to inherit money, with nothing back of it for two generations but hard work, although back of that there were, perhaps, kings? It means that I had, unaided, to fit myself into a social scheme so complex that I have not yet mastered its intricacies. I do not want to master them. I do not want my sons to master them. I want them to find life a thing of the day's work, the day's worship, the day's out-of-door delights. I want them to have time to think and to dream. And then some day they shall come back if they wish to challenge civilization--young prophets, perhaps, out of the wilderness--seeing a new vision of God and man because of their detachment from all that might have blinded them.

"I have a feeling that your Nancy might, if she knew this, dream with me of a new race, rising to the level of the needs of a new world. She might see herself as the mother of such a race--sheltered in my hidden land, sailing the seas with me, held close to my heart. I think I am a masterful man, but I should be masterful only to keep her to her best. If she faltered I should strengthen her. And I should make her happy. I know that I could make her happy. And for me there will never be another.