FullReads

* * * * *

Dinner was at one o’clock. It seems an impossible hour to people who always dine at night. But on the Sabbath we Nantucketers eat our principal meal when we come home from church.

Nancy and Anthony protested as usual. “Of course you can’t expect us to dress.”

Nancy sat down at the table with her hat on, and minus the velvet coat. She was a bit disheveled and warm from her walk. She had brought in a great bunch of blue vetch and pale mustard, and we had put it in the center of the table in a bowl of gray pottery. My dining-room is in gray and white and old mahogany, and Nancy had had an eye to its coloring when she picked the flowers. They would not have fitted in with the decorative scheme of my library, which is keyed up, or down, to an antique vase of turquoise glaze, or to the drawing-room, which is in English Chippendale with mulberry brocade.

We had an excellent dinner, served by my little Portuguese maid. Nancy praised the lobster bisque and Anthony asked for a second helping of roast duck. They had their cigarettes with their coffee.

Long before we came to the coffee, however, Anthony had asked in his pleasant way of the morning service.

“Tell us about the sermon, Elizabeth.”

“And the text,” said Nancy.

I am apt to forget the text, and they knew it. It was always a sort of game between us at Sunday dinner, in which they tried to prove that my attention had strayed, and that I might much better have stayed at home, and thus have escaped the bondage of dogma and of dressing up.

I remembered the text, and then I told them about Olaf Thoresen.

Nancy lifted her eyebrows. “The pills man? Or was it–pork?”

“It was probably neither. Don’t be a snob, Nancy.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “It was you who said ‘pork,’ Elizabeth.”

“He is coming to tea.”

“To-day?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry,” said Nancy. “I’d like to see him, but I have promised to drive Bob Needham to ‘Sconset for a swim.”

Anthony had made the initial engagement–to play tennis with Mimi Sears, “Provided, of course, that you have no other plans for me,” he had told Nancy, politely.

She had no plans, nor would she, under the circumstances, have urged them. That was their code–absolute freedom. “We’ll be a lot happier if we don’t tie each other up.”

It was to me an amazing attitude. In my young days lovers walked out on Sunday afternoons to the old cemetery, or on the moor, or along the beach, and came back at twilight together, and sat together after supper, holding hands.

I haven’t the slightest doubt that Anthony held Nancy’s hands, but there was nothing fixed about the occasions. They had done away with billing and cooing in the old sense, and what they had substituted seemed to satisfy them.

Anthony left about three, and I went up to get into something thin and cool, and to rest a bit before receiving my guest. I heard Nancy at the telephone making final arrangements with the Drakes. After that I fell asleep, and knew nothing more until Anita came up to announce that Mr. Thoresen was down-stairs.

Tea was served in the garden at the back of the house, where there were some deep wicker chairs, and roses in a riot of bloom.

“This is–enchanting–” said Olaf. He did not sit down at once. He stood looking about him, at the sun-dial, and the whale’s jaw lying bleached on a granite pedestal, and at the fine old houses rising up around us. “It is enchanting. Do you know, I have been thinking myself very fortunate since you spoke to me in church this morning.”

After that it was all very easy. He asked and I answered. “You see,” he explained, finally, “I am hungry for anything that tells me about the sea. Three generations back we were all sailors–my great-grandfather and his fathers before him in Norway–and far back of that–the vikings.” He drew a long breath. “Then my grandfather came to America. He settled in the West–in Dakota, and planted grain. He made money, but he was a thousand miles away from the sea. He starved for it, but he wanted money, and, as I have said, he made it. And my father made more money. Then I came. The money took me to school in the East–to college. My mother died and my father. And now the money is my own. I bought a yacht, and I have lived on the water. I can’t get enough of it. I think that I am making up for all that my father and my grandfather denied themselves.”