Her arms clasped her knees. "Isn't it queer that he goes to church and
sings hymns?"
"Why queer? I go to church."
"Yes. But you are different. You belong to another generation,
Elizabeth, and he doesn't look it."
I knew what she meant. I had thought the same thing when I first saw him
walking up the aisle. "He has asked us to lunch with him to-morrow on
his boat."
It was the first time that I had mentioned it. Somehow I had not cared
to speak of it before Anthony.
She showed her surprise. "So soon? Doesn't that sound a
little--pushing?"
"It sounds as if he goes after a thing when he wants it."
"Yes, it does. I believe I should like to accept. But I can't to-morrow.
There's a clambake, and I have promised the crowd."
"He will ask you again."
"Will he? You can say 'yes' for Wednesday then. And I'll keep it."
"I am not sure that we had better accept."
"Why not?"
"Well, there's Anthony."
She slid from the bed and stood looking down at me. "You think he
wouldn't like it?"
"I am afraid he wouldn't. And, after all, you are engaged to him,
Nancy."
"Of course I am, but he is not my jailer. He does as he pleases and I do
as I please."
"In my day lovers pleased to do the same thing."
"Did they? I don't believe it. They just pretended, and there is no
pretense between Anthony and me"--she stooped and kissed me--"they just
pretended, Elizabeth, and the reason that I love Anthony is because we
don't pretend."
After that I felt that I need fear nothing. Nancy and Anthony--freedom
and self-confidence--why should I try to match their ideals with my own
of yesterday? Yet, as I laid my book aside, I resolved that Olaf should
know of Anthony.
I had my opportunity the next day. Olaf came over to sit in my garden
and again we had tea. He was much pleased when he knew that Nancy and I
would be his guests on Wednesday.
"Come early. Do you swim? We can run the launch to the beach--or, better
still, dive in the deeper water near my boat."
"Nancy swims," I told him. "I don't. And I am not sure that we can come
early. Nancy and Anthony usually play golf in the morning."
"Who is Anthony?"
"Anthony Peak. The man she is going to marry."
He hesitated a moment, then said, "Bring him, too." His direct gaze met
mine, and his direct question followed. "Does she love him?"
"Of course."
"It is not always 'of course.'" He stopped and talked of other things,
but in some subtle fashion I was aware that my news had been a shock to
him, and that he was trying to adjust himself to it, and to the
difference that it must make in his attitude toward Nancy.
* * * * *
When I told Nancy that Anthony had been invited, she demanded, "How did
Olaf Thoresen know about him?"
"I told him you were engaged."
"But why, Elizabeth? Why shout it from the housetops?"
"Well, I didn't want him to be hurt."
"You are taking a lot for granted."
I shrugged my shoulders. "We won't quarrel, and a party of four is much
nicer than three."
As it turned put, however, Anthony could not go. He was called back to
Boston on business. That was where Fate again stepped in. It was, I am
sure, those three days of Anthony's absence which turned the scale of
Nancy's destiny. If he had been with us that first morning on the boat
Olaf would not have dared....
Nancy wore her white linen and her gray-velvet coat, and a hat with a
gull's wing. She carried her bathing suit. "He intends, evidently, to
entertain us in his own way."
Olaf's yacht was modern, but there was a hint of the barbaric in its
furnishings. The cabin into which we were shown and in which Nancy was
to change was in strangely carved wood, and there was a wolfskin on the
floor in front of the low bed. The coverlet was of a fine-woven red-silk
cloth, weighed down by a border of gold and silver threads. On the wall
hung a square of tapestry which showed a strange old ship with sails of
blue and red and green, and with golden dragon-heads at stem and stern.
Nancy, crossing the threshold, said to Olaf, who had opened the door for
us, "It is like coming into another world; as if you had set the stage,
run up the curtain, and the play had begun."
"You like it? It was a fancy of mine to copy a description I found in
an old book. King Olaf, the Thick-set, furnished a room like this for
his bride."
Olaf, the Thick-set! The phrase fitted perfectly this strong, stocky,
blue-eyed man, who smiled radiantly upon us as he shut the door and left
us alone.
Nancy stood in the middle of the room looking about her. "I like it,"
she said, with a queer shake in her voice. "Don't you, Elizabeth?"
I liked it so much that I felt it wise to hide my pleasure in a pretense
of indifference. "Well, it is original to say the least."
But it was more than original, it was poetic. It was--Melisande in the
wood--one of Sinding's haunting melodies, an old Saga caught and fixed
in color and carving.
In this glowing room Nancy in her white and gray was a cold and
incongruous figure, and when at last she donned her dull cap, and the
dull cloak that she wore over her swimming costume, she seemed a ghostly
shadow of the bright bride whom that other Olaf had brought--a thousand
years before--to his strange old ship.
I realize that what comes hereafter in this record must seem to the
unimaginative overdrawn. Even now, as I look back upon it, it has a
dream quality, as if it might never have happened, or as if, as Nancy
had said, it was part of a play, which would be over when the curtain
was rung down and the actors had returned to the commonplace.
But the actors in this drama have never returned to the commonplace. Or
have they? Shall I ever know? I hope I may never know, if Nancy and Olaf
have lost the glamour of their dreams.
Well, we found Olaf on deck waiting for us. In a sea-blue tunic, with
strong white arms, and the dazzling fairness of his strong neck, he was
more than ever like the figurehead on the old ship that I had seen in my
childhood. He carried over his arm a cloak of the same sea-blue. It was
this cloak which afterward played an important part in the mystery of
Nancy's disappearance.
His quick glance swept Nancy--the ghostly Nancy in gray, with only the
blue of her eyes, and that touch of artificial pink in her cheeks to
redeem her from somberness. He shook his head with a gesture of
impatience.
"I don't like it," he said, abruptly. "Why do you deaden your beauty
with dull colors?"
Nancy's eyes challenged him. "If it is deadened, how do you know it is
beauty?"
"May I show you?" Again there was that tense excitement which I had
noticed in the garden.
"I don't know what you mean," yet in that moment the color ran up from
her neck to her chin, the fixed pink spots were lost in a rush of lovely
flaming blushes.
For with a sudden movement he had snatched off her cap, and had thrown
the cloak around her. The transformation was complete. It was as if he
had waved a wand. There she stood, the two long, thick braids, which she
had worn pinned close under her cap, falling heavily like molten metal
to her knees, the blue cloak covering her--heavenly in color, matching
her eyes, matching the sea, matching the sky, matching the eyes of Olaf.
I think I must have uttered some sharp exclamation, for Olaf turned to
me. "You see," he said, triumphantly, "I have known it all the time. I
knew it the first time that I saw her in the garden."
Nancy had recovered herself. "But I can't stalk around the streets in a
blue cloak with my hair down."
He laughed with her. "Oh, no, no. But the color is only a symbol. Modern
life has robbed you of vivid things. Even your emotions. You
are--afraid--" He caught himself up. "We can talk of that after our
swim. I think we shall have a thousand things to talk about."
Nancy held out her hand for her cap, but he would not give it to her.
"Why should you care if your hair gets wet? The wind and the sun will
dry it--"
I was amazed when I saw that she was letting him have his way. Never for
a moment had Anthony mastered her. For the first time in her life Nancy
was dominated by a will that was stronger than her own.
I sat on deck and watched them as they swam like two young sea gods,
Nancy's bronze hair bright under the sun. Olaf's red-gold crest....
The blue cloak lay across my knee. Nancy had cast it off as she had
descended into the launch. I had examined it and had found it of soft,
thick wool, with embroidery of a strange and primitive sort in faded
colors. Yet the material of the cloak had not faded, or, if it had,
there remained that clear azure, like the Virgin's cloak in old
pictures.
I knew now why Olaf had wanted Nancy on board, why he had wanted to swim
with her in the sea which was as blue as her eyes and his own. It was to
reveal her to himself as the match of the women of the Sagas. I found
this description later in one of the old books in the ship's library:
* * * * *
Then Hallgerd was sent for, and came with two women. She wore a blue
woven mantle ... her hair reached down to her waist on both sides, and
she tucked it under her belt.
And there was, too, this account of a housewife in her "kyrtil":
The dress-train was trailing,
The skirt had a blue tint;
Her brow was brighter,
Her neck was whiter
Than pure new fallen snow.
In other words, that one glance at Nancy in the garden, when he had
risen at her entrance, had disclosed to Olaf the fundamental in her. He
had known her as a sea-maiden. And she had not known it, nor I, nor
Anthony.
* * * * *
Luncheon was served on deck. We were waited on by fair-haired, but very
modern Norsemen. The crew on _The Viking_ were all Scandinavians. Most
of them spoke English, and there seemed nothing uncommon about any of
them. Yet, in the mood of the moment, I should have felt no surprise had
they served us in the skins of wild animals, or had set sail like
pirates with the two of us captive on board.
I will confess, also, to a feeling of exaltation which clouded my
judgment. I knew that Olaf was falling in love with Nancy, and I half
guessed that Nancy might be falling in love with Olaf, yet I sat there
and let them do it. If Anthony should ever know! Yet how can he know? As
I weigh it now, I am not sure that I have anything with which to
reproach myself, for the end, at times, justifies the means, and the
Jesuitical theory had its origin, perhaps, in the profound knowledge
that Fate does not always use fair methods in gaining her ends.
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?"