The Gay Cockade Part 7

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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 G.o.ds, 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 s.h.i.+p'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 Nors.e.m.e.n. 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-fas.h.i.+oned."

"No. I am perhaps so--new-fas.h.i.+oned 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 G.o.ddess--a woman of a new race--"

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

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

"All what?"

"G.o.ddess-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 s.h.i.+p. 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p on the tapestry in there--but it wasn't practical--we haven't manpower for the oars in these days."