Читать книгу Magic for Marigold - L. M. Montgomery - Страница 3

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Good fairies arrive—though late—for her christening

This story became Chapters 1 and 2 of Magic for Marigold.

They appeared in The Delineator, an American women’s magazine, in May 1926.

Illustrations by Charles R. Chickering (1891-1970) have been omitted, not yet in the public domain.

t was Old Grandmother’s birthday and all the Rexton members of the Lesley clan had assembled at Cloud of Pines to celebrate it as usual—also to name Lorraine’s baby. It was a crying shame, as Cousin Flora pathetically said, that the little darling had been in the world four months without a name. But what could you do, with poor Leander dying in that terribly sudden way just two weeks before his daughter was born, and poor Lorraine being so desperately ill for weeks and weeks afterward? Not very strong yet, for that matter. And there was tuberculosis in her family.

All the Lesleys adored Lorraine’s baby. It was ten years since there had been a little girl born in the connection. Too few babies of any sex were being born. Old Grandmother opined that the good old stock was running out. Even the last boy baby was five years old. So this small lady’s advent would have been hailed with delirious delight if it hadn’t been for Leander’s death and Lorraine’s long illness. Now that Old Grandmother’s birthday had come, the Lesleys had an excuse for their long-deferred jollification. As for the name, no Lesley baby was ever named until every relative had had his or her say about the matter. And how much more in the case of a fatherless baby whose mother was a sweet soul enough—but—you know——

Cloud of Pines, the old Lesley homestead, where Old Grandmother and Young Grandmother and Mrs. Leander and the baby lived, was on the harbor shore, far enough out of Rexton village to be in the real country—a cream brick house, so covered with vines that it looked more like a heap of ivy than a house. Before it, the beautiful Rexton harbor. Behind it, an orchard that climbed the slope. And about it, always the soft sighing of the big pine wood on the hill.

The birthday dinner was eaten in Old Grandmother’s room—a long, dim, green apartment running the whole length of the house, with a glass door opening right into the orchard. It had always been eaten there since Old Grandmother had finally taken to her bed, ten years before, when Leander’s first wife had died with her little unnamed daughter. Old Grandmother had been very fond of Leander’s first wife. At least Lorraine thought so.

Old Grandmother was a gnomish dame of ninety-seven who meant to live to be a hundred—a tiny, shrunken, wrinkled thing, with flashing black eyes. She ruled the whole Lesley clan and knew everything that was said and done in it. To-day she was propped up on pillows, with a fresh, frilled, white cap tied around her face, eating her dinner heartily and thinking things not lawful to be uttered about her daughters-in-law and her granddaughters-in-law and her great-granddaughters-in-law.

Young grandmother, a mere lass of sixty-five, sat at the head of the long table—a tall, handsome lady with bright, steel-blue eyes and white hair. There was nothing of the traditional grandmother of caps and knitting about her. She was like a stately old princess in her purple velvet gown with its wonderful lace collar. The gown had been made eight years before, but when Young Grandmother wore anything it was at once in the height of fashion.

Lorraine sat on her right, with the baby in her cradle beside her. Because of the baby she had a certain undeniable importance never conceded her before. All the Lesleys had been more or less opposed to Leander’s second choice. Only the fact that she was a minister’s daughter saved her. She was a shy, timid, pretty creature—quite insignificant except for her enormous masses of lustrous, pale-gold hair. Her small face was sweet and flowerlike and she had peculiarly soft, gray-blue eyes with long lashes. She looked very young and fragile in her black dress. But she was beginning to be a little happy again. The fields and hills around Cloud of Pines that had been so stark and bare and chill when her little lady came were green and golden now and the orchard was an exquisite bridal world by itself. One could not be altogether unhappy with such a wonderful, unbelievable baby.

The baby lay in the old heirloom Heppelwhite cradle where her father and her grandfather had lain before her—a quite adorable baby, with a saucy little chin, tiny hands as exquisite as apple-blossoms, eyes of fairy blue, and the arrogant, superior smile of babies before they have forgotten all the marvelous things they know at first. Lorraine could hardly eat her dinner for gazing at her baby—and wondering. Would this tiny thing ever be a dancing, starry-eyed girl—a white bride—a mother? Lorraine shivered. It did not do to look so far ahead. Aunt Anne got up, brought a shawl, and tenderly put it around Lorraine’s shoulders. Lorraine was nearly melted, for the June day was hot, but she wore the shawl all through dinner.

On Young Grandmother’s left sat Uncle Klondike, the one handsome, mysterious, unaccountable member of the Lesley clan. Uncle Klondike’s real name was Horace, but ever since he had come back from the Yukon with gold dropping out of his pockets he had been known as Klondike Lesley. His deity was the God of all Wanderers, and in his service Horace Lesley had spent wild, splendid, adventurous years. But finally he had come home, sated, to live the rest of his life a decent, home-abiding clansman.

Klondike Lesley was a woman-hater. He scoffed at all love, more especially the supreme absurdity of love at first sight. This did not prevent his clan from trying for years to marry him off. At first they were very obvious about it and, with the renowned Lesley frankness, recommended several excellent brides to him. But Klondike Lesley was very hard to please. Katherine Nichols? “But look at the thick ankles of her.” Rose Osborn? “I can’t stand a woman with pudgy hands.” Lottie Parks? “Such a fat voice.” Lucy Perkins? “I like her as a flavoring—not as a dish.” Dorothy Porter? “She’s pretty at night, but I don’t believe she’d be pretty when she woke up.” Olive Purdy? “Tongue—temper—and tears. Go sparingly, thank you.”

The Lesleys gave it up. No use trying to fit this exasperating relative with a wife. Perhaps it was just as well. His nephews and nieces might benefit, especially Lorraine’s baby, whom he evidently worshiped. So here he was, light-hearted and content, watching them with his amused smile.

The baby had to be talked all over again and Cousin William covered himself with indelible disgrace by saying dubiously:

“She is not—ahem—really a pretty child, do you think?”

“All the better for her future looks,” said Old Grandmother tartly. “You,” she added maliciously, “were a very pretty baby.”

“Beauty is a fatal gift. She will be better without it,” sighed Cousin Nina.

“Why do you cold-cream your face every night and dye your hair?” asked Old Grandmother, who knew everybody’s secrets.

“We are all as God made us,” said Cousin Ebenezer piously.

“Then God botched some of us,” snapped Old Grandmother, looking significantly at Cousin Ebenezer’s tremendous nose.

“She has a peculiarly shaped hand, hasn’t she?” persisted Cousin William.

Aunt Anne bent over and kissed one of the little hands.

“The hand of an artist,” she said. Lorraine looked at her gratefully and hated Cousin William bitterly for ten minutes under her golden hair.

“Well, we must give her a pretty name, anyhow,” said Aunt Florence briskly. “It’s simply a shame that it’s been left as long as this. Come, Granny, you ought to name her. What do you suggest?”

Old Grandmother affected the indifferent. She had three namesakes already, so she knew Leander’s baby wouldn’t be named after her.

“Call her what you like,” she said. “I’m too old to bother about it.”

“But we’d like your advice, Granny,” unfortunately said Cousin Leah, whom Granny detested.

“I have no advice to give. I have nothing but a little wisdom and I can not give you that.” Old Grandmother leaned back on her pillows disdainfully. She had insisted on having her dinner first, so that she might watch the others eating theirs. She knew it made them all more or less uncomfortable.

Lorraine sighed. She knew what she wanted to call her baby. But she knew she would never have the courage to say it. And if she did they would never consent to such a name. When you married into a family like the Lesleys, you had to take the consequences. It was very hard when you couldn’t name your own baby—when you were not even asked what you’d like it named. If Lee had only lived, it would have been different—Lee, who was not a bit like the other Lesleys—except Uncle Klon, a little—Lee, who loved wonder and beauty and laughter. Surely the jests of heaven must have more spite since he had joined in them. How he would have howled at this august conclave over the naming of his baby! How he would have brushed them aside! Lorraine felt sure he would have let her call her baby——

“I think,” said Mrs. Luther Lesley gravely and sadly, “that it would only be graceful and fitting that she should be called after Leander’s first wife.”

Mrs. Luther and Leander’s first wife had been chums. Leander’s first wife’s name had been Mehitable—never nicknamed. Lorraine shivered again and wished she hadn’t, for Aunt Anne’s eye looked like another shawl.

“Poor little Mehitable!” sighed Aunt Grace in a tone that made Lorraine feel she should never have taken poor little Mehitable’s place.

“She was such a sweet girl,” said Cousin Elizabeth.

“A sweet girl all right, but why condemn a sinless child to carry a name like that all her life?” said Uncle Klon. The clan with one exception felt grateful to him. The name simply wouldn’t have done, no matter how sweet Mehitable was.

“Will you have some more dressing, Alice?” inquired Young Grandmother graciously.

“No, thank you.” Mrs. Luther was not going to eat any more, by way of signifying displeasure.

“If Leander’s name had been almost anything else she might have been named for her father,” said Uncle Saul. “Roberta—Georgina—Johanna—Andrea—Wilhelmina—Stephanie—and so on. But you can’t make anything out of a name like Leander. Whatever did you call him that for, mother?”

“His grandfather named him after him who swam the Hellespont,” said Young Grandmother rebukingly.

“She might be called Hero,” suggested Uncle Klon.

“We had a dog called that once,” said Old Grandmother.

“Leander didn’t tell you before he died that he wanted any special name, did he, Lorraine?” inquired Second Cousin Laura.

“No,” faltered Lorraine. “He—he had so little time to tell me—anything.”

The clan frowned at Laura as a unit. They thought she was very tactless. But what could you expect of a woman who wrote poetry and peddled it about the country? Writing it might have been condoned—and concealed. After all, the Lesleys were not intolerant, and everybody has some faults. But selling it openly!

“I should like baby to be called Gabriella,” persisted Laura.

“There has never been such a name among the Lesleys,” said Old Grandmother. And that was that.

“I think it’s time we had some new names,” said the poetess rebelliously. But every one looked stony and Laura began to cry. She cried upon the slightest provocation. Lorraine remembered that Leander had always called her Mrs. Gummidge.

“I think,” began Uncle Klon, but Aunt Josephine took the road.

“I think——”

“Place aux dames,” murmured Uncle Klon. Aunt Josephine thought he was swearing but ignored him.

“I think the baby should be called after one of our missionaries. It is a shame that we have three foreign missionaries in the connection and not one of them has a namesake. I suggest we call her Louise after the first one.”

“But,” said Aunt Katherine, “that would be slighting Harriet and Ellen.”

“Well,” said Young Grandmother haughtily—Young Grandmother was haughty because nobody had suggested naming the baby after her—“call her the whole three names, Harriet Ellen Louise Lesley. Then no missionary will be slighted.”

The suggestion seemed to find favor. Lorraine caught her breath anxiously.

“Have you ever,” said Old Grandmother with a wicked chuckle, “thought what the initials spell?”

They hadn’t. They did. Nothing more was said about foreign missionaries.

It’s my opinion children shouldn’t be named at all,” said Uncle Klon. “They should be numbered until they’re grown up, then choose their own names.”

“But then you are not a mother, my dear Horace,” said Young Grandmother tolerantly.

“Sylvia is a beautiful name,” said Cousin Howard, whose first sweetheart had been a Sylvia.

“You couldn’t call her that,” said Aunt Madeline in a shocked tone. “Don’t you remember Great-Uncle Marshall’s Sylvia went insane? She died filling the air with shrieks. I think Bertha would be more suitable.”

“Why, there’s a Bertha in John C. Lesley’s family over the bay,” said Young Grandmother.

John C. was a distant relative who was “at outs” with his clan. So Bertha would never do.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to name her Adela?” said Aunt Anne. “You know Cousin Adela is the only really distinguished person our clan has ever produced. A famous authoress——”

“I should like the mystery of her husband’s death to be cleared up before any grandchild of mine is called after her,” said Young Grandmother austerely.

“Nonsense, mother! You surely don’t suspect Adela?”

“There was arsenic in the porridge,” said Young Grandmother darkly.

“I’ll tell you what the child should be called,” said Cousin Sybilla, who had been waiting for the psychic moment. “Theodora. It was revealed to me in a vision of the night. I was awakened by a feeling of icy coldness on my face and I heard a voice distinctly pronounce the name—Theodora. I wrote it down in my diary as soon as I arose.”

John Eddy Lesley laughed. Sybilla hated him for weeks for it.

“I wish,” said sweet old Great-Aunt Matilda, “that she could be called after my little girl who died.”

Aunt Matilda’s voice trembled. Her little girl had been dead for fifty years, but she was still unforgotten. Lorraine loved Aunt Matilda. She wanted to please her. But she couldn’t—she couldn’t—call her dear baby Emmalinza.

“It’s unlucky to name a child after a dead child,” said Aunt Josephine positively.

“Why not call the baby Jane?” said Aunt Josephine’s husband briskly. “My mother’s name—a good, plain, sensible name that’ll wear. Nickname it to suit any age—Jenny, Janie, Janet, Jeanette, Jean—and Jane for old age.”

“Oh, wait till I’m dead—please,” wailed Old Grandmother. “It would always make me think of Jane Puttkammer.”

Nobody knew who Jane Puttkammer was or why Old Grandmother didn’t want to think of her. But nothing more was said about Jane.

“We’re not really getting anywhere, you know,” said Uncle Paul desperately.

Uncle Klon uncoiled himself.

“Why not let Lorraine name her own baby?” he suddenly answered. “Have you any name you’d like her called, dear?”

Again Lorraine caught her breath. Oh, hadn’t she! She wanted to call her baby Marigold. Years before she had had a dear friend called Marigold. The only girl friend she ever had. Such a dear, wonderful, bewitching, lovable creature! She had filled Lorraine’s starved childhood with beauty and mystery and affection. And she had died. If only she might call her baby Marigold! But she knew the horror of the clan over such a silly, fanciful, outlandish name. Old Grandmother—Young Grandmother—no, they would never consent. She knew it. All her courage exhaled from her life in a sigh of surrender.

“No-o-o,” she said in a small, hopeless voice. Oh, if she were only not such a miserable coward!

“If it was only a boy it would be so easy to name it,” said Uncle Paul.

Then for ten minutes they wrangled over what they would have called it if it had been a boy. They were beginning to get quite warm when Cousin Myra took a throbbing in the back of her neck.

“I’m afraid one of my attacks is coming on,” she said faintly.

“Why can’t those attacks be cured?” said Uncle Paul. “Why don’t you try a new doctor? Old Doctor Bertram is getting too slow.”

“Who is there to try? You wouldn’t have me go to that woman, would you?” said Myra.

No, of course not. No Lesley would go to that woman doctor. Dr. M. Woodruff Richards had been practising in Rexton for two years, but no Lesley would have called in a woman doctor if he had been dying. A woman doctor was an outrageous portent. Not to be tolerated or recognized at all. One might as well commit suicide. Klondike Lesley was especially sarcastic about her. “An unsexed creature,” he called her. Klondike had no use for unfeminine women who aped men. But they talked of her through dessert and did not again revert to the subject of the baby’s name. They were all feeling a trifle sore about that. Things were rather edgy in the Lesley clan for two or three weeks. As Uncle Peter said, they had their tails up. Cousin Clara was reported to have gone on a hunger strike—which she called a fast—about it. Cousin Rose and Cousin Lily, two affectionate sisters, quarreled over it and wouldn’t speak. There was a connubial rupture between Cousin Edgar and his wife because she wanted to consult ouija about a name. Obadiah Lesley, who in thirty years had never spoken a cross word to his wife, rated her so bitterly for wanting to call the baby Juanita that she went home to her mother for three days. An engagement trembled in the balance. Cousin Myra’s throbbings in the neck became more frequent than ever. Uncle Peter vowed he wouldn’t play checkers until the child was named. Cousin Teresa was known to be praying about it at a particular hour every day. Laura cried almost ceaselessly over the matter. Young Grandmother preserved an offended silence. Everybody was more or less cool to Lorraine because she had not taken his or her choice. It really looked as if Lorraine’s baby was never going to get a name.

Then—the shadow fell. One day the little lady of Cloud of Pines seemed fretful and feverish. The next day more so. The third day Doctor Bertram was called. He was brisk and cheerful. Pooh-pooh! No need to worry—not the slightest. The child would be all right in a day or two.

She wasn’t. At the end of a week the Lesley clan were thoroughly alarmed. Doctor Bertram had ceased to pooh-pooh. He came every day anxiously. Day by day the shadow deepened. The baby was wasting away to skin and bone. Anguished Lorraine hung over the cradle with eyes that nobody could bear to look at. Everybody proposed a different remedy, but nobody was offended if it wasn’t used. Things were too serious for that. Only Cousin Laura was almost sent to Coventry because she asked Lorraine one day if infantile paralysis began like that, and Aunt Mildred was frozen out because she heard a dog howling one night. Also, when Cousin Flora said she had found a diamond-shaped crease in a clean tablecloth—a sure sign of death in the year—Uncle Klon insulted her. But Uncle Klon was forgiven because he was nearly beside himself over the baby’s condition.

A specialist was brought from Charlottetown who looked wise and said Doctor Bertram was doing all that could be done. It was at that juncture that Great-Uncle Bryan made a bargain with God that he would go to church if the child’s life was spared, and that Uncle Peter recklessly began playing checkers again. Better break a vow before a death than after it.

A terrible day came when Doctor Bertram told Lorraine gently that he could do nothing more. After he had gone, Young Grandmother looked at Old Grandmother.

“I suppose,” she said in a low voice, “we’d better take the cradle into the spare room.”

Lorraine gave a moan of anguish. This was equivalent to a death sentence. At Cloud of Pines it was a tradition that dying people must be taken into the spare room.

“You’ll do one thing before you take her to the spare room,” said Old Grandmother firmly. “Bertram has given up the case. Send for that woman doctor.”

Young Grandmother looked thunderstruck. She turned to Uncle Klon.

“Do you suppose—I’ve heard she was very clever—they say she was offered a splendid post in a children’s hospital in Montreal but preferred general practise——”

“Oh, get her, get her,” said Uncle Klon savagely. “Any port in a storm.”

“Will you go for her, Horace?” said Young Grandmother quite humbly.

Klondike Lesley went. He had never seen Doctor Richards before—save at a distance or spinning past him in her smart little runabout. She was in her office and came forward to meet him, gravely sweet.

She had a little, square, wide-lipped, straight-browed face like a boy’s. Not pretty but haunting. Wavy brown hair with one teasing unruly little curl that would fall down on her forehead, giving her a youthful look in spite of her thirty-five years. What a dear face! So wide at the cheek-bones—so deep-gray-eyed! With such a lovely, smiling, generous mouth! Some old text of Sunday-school days flitted through Klondike’s dazed brain:

“She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.”

For just a second their eyes met and looked—only a second. But it did the work of years. The irresistible woman had met the immovable man and the inevitable had happened.

“Will you come to see my little niece?” he heard himself pleading. “Our old family doctor has given her up. We are all very fond of her. Her mother will die if she can not be saved. Won’t you come?”

“Of course I will,” said Doctor Richards.

She came. She said little, but did some drastic things about diet and sleeping. Old and Young Grandmothers gasped when she ordered the child’s cradle moved out to the veranda. Every day for a week her light, steady footsteps came and went about Cloud of Pines. Klondike brought her and took her away. Her own car was laid up for repairs. But nobody paid much attention to Klondike those days.

At the end of a week it seemed to Lorraine that the shadow had ceased to deepen on the little wasted face. A few more days—was it not lifting—lightening? At the end of three weeks Doctor Richards told them that the baby was out of danger. Lorraine fainted and Klondike broke down and cried unashamedly like a schoolboy.

Two days later the clan had another conclave.

“This child must be named at once,” said Young Grandmother authoritatively. “Do you realize that she might have died without a name?”

The horror of this kept the Lesleys silent for a few minutes. Besides, every one dreaded starting up another argument so soon after those dreadful weeks. Who knew but what it had been a judgment on them for quarreling over it?

“But what shall we call her?” said Aunt Anne timidly.

“There is only one name you can give her,” said Old Grandmother, “and it would be the blackest ingratitude if you didn’t. Call her after the woman who saved her life, of course.”

The Lesleys looked at each other. A simple, graceful, natural solution of the problem—if only——

“But Woodruff,” sighed Aunt Anne.

“She’s got another name, hasn’t she?” snapped Old Grandmother. “Ask Horace there what M stands for.”

Every one looked at Klondike. In spite of the anxiety of the past weeks, nobody in the clan had been altogether blind to Klondike’s goings-on.

Klondike straightened his shoulders. It was as good a time as any to tell something that would soon have to be told.

“Her full name,” he said, “is now Marigold Woodruff Richards, but in two weeks’ time it will be Marigold Woodruff Lesley!”

Little baby Marigold is destined to grow up to be L. M. Montgomery’s most captivating heroine. A story about her later adventurings, complete in itself, will appear in the June Delineator. “Better than Anne herself! Better than Emily of New Moon!” you will say when you read it.