The Gay Cockade
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?"
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?"