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.
I was in bed, and I had the letter in my hand. "I want you to read it," I said. "It is from Olaf Thoresen."
She looked at it, and asked, "When did it come?"
"Two months ago. The day that he left."
"Why haven't you shown it to me?"
"I couldn't make up my mind. I do not know even now that I am right in letting you see it. But I feel that you have a right to see it. It is you who must answer it. Not I."
When she had gone, I turned to the chapter in my book where Becky weeps crocodile tears over poor Rawdon Crawley on the night before Waterloo. There is no scene in modern literature to match it. But I couldn't get my mind on it. Nancy was reading Olaf's letter!
I kept a copy of it, and here it is:
"I knew when I first saw her in the garden that she was the One Woman. I had wanted sea-blood, and when she came, ready for a dip in the sea, it seemed a sign. One knows these things somehow, and I knew. I shan't attempt to explain it.
"When you told me of her lover, I felt that Fate had played a trick on me. I could not now with honor pursue the woman who was promised to another. Yet I permitted myself that one day--the day on my boat.
"I learned in those hours that I spent with her that she had been molded by the man she is to marry and that in the years to come she will shrink to the measure of his demands upon her. She is feminine enough to be swayed by masculine will. That is at once her strength and her weakness. Loving a man who will love her for the wonder of her womanhood, she will fulfill her greatest destiny. Loving, on the other hand, one who aspires only to fit her into some attenuated social scheme, she will wither and fade. I think you know that this is true, that you will not accuse me of being unfair to any one.