The Gay Cockade
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.