Читать книгу Magic for Marigold - L. M. Montgomery - Страница 6

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“Sylvia is a beautiful name,” ventured Uncle Howard, whose first sweetheart had been a Sylvia.

“You couldn’t call her that,” said Aunt Millicent 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 Adela is the only really distinguished person the connection 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 Aunt 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. I came all out in goose flesh. 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-over-the-bay 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 call a child after a dead person,” said Aunt Anne positively.

“Why not call the baby Jane,” said Uncle Peter briskly. “My mother’s name—a good, plain, sensible name that’ll wear. Nickname it to suit any age. Jenny—Janie—Janet—Jeannette—Jean—and Jane for the seventies.”

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

Nobody knew who Jane Putkammer was or why Old Grandmother didn’t want to think of her. As nobody asked why—the dessert having just been begun—Old Grandmother told them.

“When my husband died she sent me a letter of condolence written in red ink. Jane, indeed!”

So the baby escaped being Jane. Lorraine felt really grateful to Old Grandmother. She had been afraid Jane might carry the day. And how fortunate there was such a thing as red ink in the world.

“Funny about nicknames,” said Uncle Klon. “I wonder did they have nicknames in Biblical times. Was Jonathan ever shortened into Jo? Was King David ever called Dave? And fancy Melchizedek’s mother always calling him that.”

“Melchizedek hadn’t a mother,” said Mrs. David triumphantly—and forgave Uncle Klon. But not Young Grandmother. The pudding remained uneaten.

“Twenty years ago Jonathan Lesley gave me a book on ‘The Hereafter,’ ” said Old Grandmother reminiscently. “And he’s been in the Hereafter eighteen years and I am still in the Here.”

“Any one would think you expected to live forever,” said Uncle Jarvis, speaking for the first time. He had been sitting in silence, hoping gloomily that Leander’s baby was an elect infant. What mattered a name compared to that?

“I do,” said Old Grandmother, chuckling. That was one for Jarvis, the solemn old ass.

“We’re not really getting anywhere about the baby’s name, you know,” said Uncle Paul desperately.

“Why not let Lorraine name her own baby?” said Uncle Klon suddenly. “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. In her girlhood she had had a dear friend named 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 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.

And that terrible Old Grandmother knew it.

“She’s fibbing,” she thought. “She has a name but she’s too scared to tell it. Clementine, now—she would have stood on her own feet and told them what was what.”

Old Grandmother looked at Clementine, forever gazing at her lily, and forgot that the said Clementine’s ability to stand on her own feet and tell people—even Old Grandmother—what was what had not especially commended her to Old Grandmother at one time. But Old Grandmother liked people with a mind of their own—when they were dead.

Old Grandmother was beginning to feel bored with the whole matter. What a fuss over a name. As if it really mattered what that mite in the cradle, with the golden fuzz on her head, was called. Old Grandmother looked at the tiny sleeping face curiously. Lorraine’s hair but Leander’s chin and brow and nose. A fatherless baby with only that foolish Winthrop girl for a mother.

“I must live long enough for her to remember me,” thought Old Grandmother. “It’s only a question of keeping on at it. Marian has no imagination and Lorraine has too much. Somebody must give that child a few hints to live by, whether she’s to be minx or madonna.”

“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 over it when Aunt Myra took a throbbing in the back of her neck.

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

“What would women do if headaches had never been invented?” asked Old Grandmother. “It’s the most convenient disease in the world. It can come on so suddenly—go so conveniently. And nobody can prove we haven’t got it.”

“I’m sure no one has ever suffered as I do,” sighed Myra.

“We all think that,” said Old Grandmother, seeing a chance to shoot another poisoned arrow. “I’ll tell you what’s the matter with you. Eye strain. You should really wear glasses at your age, Myra.”

“Why can’t those headaches be cured?” said Uncle Paul. “Why don’t you try a new doctor?”

“Who is there to try now that poor Leander is in his grave?” wailed Myra. “I don’t know what we Lesleys are ever going to do without him. We’ll just have to die. Dr. Moorhouse drinks and Dr. Stackley is an evolutionist. And you wouldn’t have me go to that woman-doctor, would you?”

No, of course not. No Lesley would go to that woman-doctor. Dr. M. Woodruff Richards had been practising in Harmony for two years, but no Lesley would have called in a woman-doctor if he had been dying. One might as well commit suicide. Besides, a woman-doctor was an outrageous portent, not to be tolerated or recognised at all. As Great-Uncle Robert said indignantly, “The weemen are gittin’ entirely too intelligent.”

Klondike Lesley was especially sarcastic about her. “An unsexed creature,” he called her. Klondike had no use for unfeminine women who aped men. “Neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring,” as Young Grandfather had been wont to say. But they talked of her through their coffee and did not again revert to the subject of the baby’s name. They were all feeling a trifle sore over that. It seemed to them all that neither Old Grandmother nor Young Grandmother nor Lorraine had backed them up properly. With the result that all the guests went home with the great question yet unsettled.

“Just as I expected. All squawks—nothing but squawks as usual,” said Old Grandmother.

“We might have known what would happen when we had this on Friday,” said Salome, as she washed up the dishes.

“Well, the great affair is over,” said Lucifer to the Witch of Endor as they discussed a plate of chicken bones and Pope’s noses on the back veranda, “and that baby hasn’t got a name yet. But these celebrations are red-letter days for us. Listen to me purr.”