The Gay Cockade Part 8

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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.d-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 fas.h.i.+on, "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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 gla.s.ses 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--G.o.ddess."

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 Th.o.r.esen.

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 j.a.panese 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?"