I had been having a curiously disquieting premonition—primarily the result of Oliver’s indiscreet betrayal of intimate family matters—that Cornelia must have been gravely altered by the shocks and strains of the preceding seven months. She might seem almost a stranger, I thought; and as we plunged into the walnut grove and I caught a glimpse in the distance of the broad yellowish-white front of the villa, and knew that in a few seconds I should see her, I was conscious of a caved-in feeling, together with a tension of the nerves, such as Enoch Arden experienced on turning into his garden walk after a protracted absence. But so far as the eye could see, there was absolutely nothing in my premonition.
As we drew up before the door of Santo Espiritu, she waved to us from an open window and flew out to meet us, with her incredible, indescribable air of a young girl, and in a certain very simple blue gown, or the replica of a blue gown in which I had remarked last summer that she looked like a bluebird. Cornelia, as I had known her, had at least three principal moods: her winter mood, in which she was His Excellency’s hostess, and the note was a quite mature graciousness; her summer mood, in which she was the children’s mother, and the note was high ethical solicitude; and her country walking mood, in which she reverted to the appearance of seventeen, and the note approached caprice. When I saw the blue gown,—maybe it was a ‘frock,’—I said to myself, “She is in her country walking-mood!”
She greeted me with bright gayety, untinged, so far as I could perceive, by suppressed feeling. Then she led me through a spacious hall and across a magnificent area of Navajo rugs into a pleasant dusky living-room, where I made the acquaintance of her sister Alice, an agreeably quiet woman with peaceful eyes, and the children’s tutor, Mr. Blakewell, a young fellow with extraordinarily courteous manner and easy conversation, but with the ascetic pallor and the faded iris which one associates with “spirituality.”
I shall not dwell on these minor figures in the scene. They interested me only as notes of the background in which Cornelia had developed a fourth mood, which was new to me.
As soon as the travelers had removed their dust, we all met for an early dinner. This was served in the suave air under the sky canopy of the patio or inner court—a delightful place, equipped with a fireplace against chilly evenings, and partly tiled and spread with Indian rugs; on three sides there was a narrow strip of lawn fringed with roses and sweet-smelling shrubs; wistaria and myrtle and some flaming-blossomed vine tapestried the walls and rambled over the roof and festooned the wide archway on the west, which opened into a walled garden, green beneath a spraying fountain—the removal of the fountain from the patio to the garden being one of the “American improvements.”
“Father” Blakewell murmured a Latin grace upon the repast and, in the course of the meal, quoted us some of the rules of an English Benedictine monastery in which he had sojourned. This, I assume, was less to asperse us with the odor of sanctity than with the elements of Latin, which the young people maintained was an unnecessary burden. “Every man,” said Oliver, “should know American; then, if he feels the need of a ‘second language,’ let him study English.” But the children rather took the lead in the conversation announcing that, in honor of Saint Mary of the Sea, the family had adopted a fish diet, and that they had made a penitential hymn, which they at once proceeded to chant. It ran something like this:—
To-day’s Monday,
To-day’s Monday,
Monday, barracuda,
Tuesday, mackerel,