The Gay Cockade | Page 9

that Anthony and Nancy grew up
together, and at last became engaged.
As I have said, I am twenty years older than Nancy, and I am her
cousin. I live in the old Greer house on Orange Street, for it is mine by
inheritance, and was to have gone to Nancy at my death. But it will not
go to her now. Yet I sometimes wonder--will the ship which carried her
away ever sail back into the harbor? Some day, when she is old, will
she walk up the street and be sorry to find strangers in the house?
I remember distinctly the day when the yacht first anchored within the
Point. It was a Sunday morning and Nancy and I had climbed to the top
of the house to the Captain's Walk, the white-railed square on the roof
which gave a view of the harbor and of the sea.
Nancy was twenty-five, slim and graceful. She wore that morning a
short gray-velvet coat over white linen. Her thick brown hair was
gathered into a low knot and her fine white skin had a touch of artificial
color. Her eyes were a clear blue. She was really very lovely, but I felt
that the gray coat deadened her--that if she had not worn it she would
not have needed that touch of color in her cheeks.
She lighted a cigarette and stood looking off, with her hand on the rail.
"It is a heavenly morning, Ducky. And you are going to church?"
I smiled at her and said, "Yes."
Nancy did not go to church. She practiced an easy tolerance. Her
people had been, originally, Quakers. In later years they had turned to

Unitarianism. And now in this generation, Nancy, as well as Anthony
Peak, had thrown off the shackles of religious observance.
"But it is worth having the churches just for the bells," Nancy conceded
on Sunday mornings when their music rang out from belfry and tower.
It was worth having the churches for more than the bells. But it was
useless to argue with Nancy. Her morals and Anthony's were
irreproachable. That is, from the modern point of view. They played
cards for small stakes, drank when they pleased, and, as I have
indicated, Nancy smoked. She was, also, not unkissed when Anthony
asked her to marry him. These were not the ideals of my girlhood, but
Anthony and Nancy felt that such small vices as they cultivated saved
them from the narrow-mindedness of their forebears.
"Anthony and I are going for a walk," she said. "I will bring you some
flowers for your bowls, Elizabeth."
It was just then that the yacht steamed into the harbor--majestically,
like a slow-moving swan. I picked out the name with my sea-glasses,
_The Viking_.
I handed the glasses to Nancy. "Never heard of it," she said. "Did you?"
"No," I answered. Most of the craft which came in were familiar, and I
welcomed them each year.
"Some new-rich person probably," Nancy decided. "Ducky, I have a
feeling that the owner of The Viking bought it from the proceeds of
pills or headache powders."
"Or pork."
I am not sure that Nancy and I were justified in our disdain--whale-oil
has perhaps no greater claim to social distinction than bacon and ham
or--pills.
The church bells were ringing, and I had to go down. Nancy stayed on

the roof.
"Send Anthony up if he's there," she said; "we will sit here aloft like
two cherubs and look down on you, and you will wish that you were
with us."
But I knew that I should not wish it; that I should be glad to walk along
the shaded streets with my friends and neighbors, to pass the gardens
that were yellow with sunlight, and gay with larkspur and foxglove and
hollyhocks, and to sit in the pew which was mine by inheritance.
Anthony was down-stairs. He was a tall, perfectly turned out youth, and
he greeted me in his perfect manner.
"Nancy is on the roof," I told him, "and she wants you to come up."
"So you are going to church? Pray for me, Elizabeth."
Yet I knew he felt that he did not need my prayers. He had Nancy,
more money than he could spend, and life was before him. What more,
he would ask, could the gods give?
I issued final instructions to my maids about the dinner and put on my
hat. It was a rather superlative hat and had come from Fifth Avenue. I
spend the spring and fall in New York and buy my clothes at the
smartest places. The ladies of Nantucket have never been provincial in
their fashions. Our ancestors shopped in the marts of the world. When
our captains sailed the seas they brought home to