But the tide of democratic vulgarity is running into the country havens and stealing insidiously into the securest retreats. One’s own friends and neighbors are tainted with it. One’s own husband brings a whiff of it up from the city at the week-end. One’s own children, in spite of all segregation and antiseptic precautions, show a mild infection with it in their speech, in their manners, and even in their tastes. One doesn’t compromise with it. One “stands firm”; but one stands ever more and more alone.
I admire Cornelia’s ability to stand alone against the world, against her own times, and against the practice of the city and the tyrannies of fashion; and, when she is wholly right, as I think she often is, it is the pleasantest thing imaginable for me to stand with her. But I am beginning, at an advanced age, to develop skepticism, and to look with an uneasy skeptical eye upon a rectitude of taste which isolates one too sharply from one’s own flesh and blood—such “pure and eloquent blood” as speaks in the faces of Cornelia’s children. When she expects me to side instantaneously with her against the budding ferment of her own son and daughter, I hesitate. I reluct, like a man called from the roadside to leave the sweet intoxication of an orchard in May. I become curious and loath to close the windows of apprehension to the rumors and fragrance of another springtime.
On the morning—Friday it was—after our windy walk by the lake, Cornelia, contrary to my expectation, did not appear at mail time under the big elm which shades our little grove of R.F.D. boxes. This was a surprise, because she had virtually agreed to be there and she habitually performs with precision whatever she has agreed to do. Later in the day, however, I learned that her husband had unexpectedly arrived in a hydroplane, with an officer in the naval flying corps, and that he would stay over Sunday, which was Dorothy’s birthday. We seldom make calls in our summer community, except, as we say, “on intimation.” Accordingly I waited for an intimation. All day Saturday, to my increasing wonder, there was nothing but silence from His Excellency’s household, and, in the phrase which high usage has now made classic, “damned little of that.” But I quite anticipated a birthday party on Sunday—for Oliver Senior makes much of these occasions—and probably a fire on the beach in the evening, with the latest gossip and best stories of the city. There was no party, and there was no fire.
On Monday I went down my path to the mail boxes with acute curiosity. The carrier’s Ford had apparently broken down on the mountain, for he was nowhere in sight. I found Cornelia sitting alone on the bench under the elm; the other pilgrims, weary of waiting, had scattered along the marshy lakeside in search of lady’s-slippers, which were abundant this year. She was all in white, and she sat with her bronze-gold head leaning against the gray trunk, and with one hand, lying listlessly across her knee, holding her soft white hat. If I were not afraid of being called bookish and pedantic, I should admit that as I approached she reminded me of Ariadne in Naxos; as it is, I content myself with remarking that she seemed a little languid. She did not rise.
I observed the point, because listlessness is not her “note.”
“I hoped you would come,” she said.
“It’s a lovely morning, isn’t it,” I exclaimed, in a sudden awareness of the truth of what I was saying.
“No, it isn’t a lovely morning,” she replied. “It’s a horrid morning. Come and sit down. I want to be comforted.” Looking into her cool gray eyes, I saw that I had been mistaken. It wasn’t a lovely morning; there was a cloud in the sky.
“You, comforted?” I said incredulously, and seated myself at the other end of the bench, for I felt my hopeless inexperience with Ariadnes. “I thought you were always happy. Where is Oliver? I heard he came Friday night, but I haven’t seen hoof or horn of him.”
Cornelia looked out for a moment silently over the deep, still, intense blueness of our lake, mirroring the blueness of the morning sky. I suppose in that rapt moment—I haven’t seen her look more purely poetic in years—she was deciding whether it was her duty to tell me a loyal lie or whether she might relax and tell the simple truth. As she was in one of her rare moments of languor, she decided for the truth.