“‘He travels the fastest who travels alone,’” was all she could get out of Klondike.
“Very clever of you,” said Old Grandmother, “if traveling fast is all there is to life.”
“Not clever of me. Don’t you know your Kipling, Grandmother?”
“What is a Kipling?” said Old Grandmother.
Uncle Klondike did not tell her. He merely said he was doomed to die a bachelor—and could not escape his kismet.
Old Grandmother was not a stupid woman even if she didn’t know what a Kipling was.
“You’ve waited too long—you’ve lost your appetite,” she said shrewdly.
The Lesleys gave it up. No use trying to fit this exasperating relative with a wife. A bachelor Klon remained, with an awful habit of wiring “sincere sympathy” when any of his friends got married. Perhaps it was just as well. His nephews and nieces might benefit, especially Lorraine’s baby whom he evidently worshipped. So here he was, un-wedded, light-hearted and content, watching them all with his amused smile.
Lucifer had leaped on his knee as soon as he had sat down. Lucifer condescended to very few but, as he told the Witch of Endor, Klondike Lesley had a way with him. Uncle Klon fed Lucifer with bits from his own plate and Salome, who ate with the family because she was a fourth cousin of Jane Lyle, who had married the stepbrother of a Lesley, thought it ghastly.
3
The baby had to be talked all over again and Uncle William-over-the-bay 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. She had been biding her moment, like a watchful cat, to give a timely dig. “You,” she added maliciously, “were a very pretty baby—though you did not have any more hair on your head than you have now.”
“Beauty is a fatal gift. She will be better without it,” sighed Aunt Nina.
“Then why do you cold-cream your face every night and eat raw carrots for your complexion and dye your hair?” asked Old Grandmother.
Aunt Nina couldn’t imagine how Old Grandmother knew about the carrots. She had no cat to tattle to Lucifer.
“We are all as God made us,” said Uncle Ebenezer piously.
“Then God botched some of us,” snapped Old Grandmother, looking significantly at Uncle Ebenezer’s enormous ears and the frill of white whisker around his throat that made him look oddly like a sheep. But then, reflected Old Grandmother, whoever might be responsible for the nose, it was hardly fair to blame God for Ebenezer’s whiskers.
“She has a peculiarly shaped hand, hasn’t she?” persisted Uncle William-over-the-bay.
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 Uncle William-over-the-bay bitterly for ten minutes under her golden hair.
“Handsome is as handsome does,” said Uncle Archibald, who rarely opened his mouth save to emit a proverb.
“Would you mind telling me, Archibald,” said Old Grandmother pleasantly, “if you really look that solemn when you’re asleep.”
No one answered her. Aunt Mary Martha-over-the-bay, the only one who could have answered, had been dead for ten years.
“Whether she’s pretty or not, she’s going to have very long lashes,” said Aunt Anne, reverting to the baby as a safer subject of conversation. There was no sense in letting Old Grandmother start a family row for her own amusement so soon after poor Leander’s passing away.
“God help the men then,” said Uncle Klon gravely.
Aunt Anne wondered why Old Grandmother was laughing to herself until the bed shook. Aunt Anne reflected that it would have been just as well if Klondike with his untimely sense of humor had not been present in a serious assemblage like this.
“Well, we must give her a pretty name, anyhow,” said Aunt Flora briskly. “It’s simply a shame that it’s been left as long as this. No Lesley ever was before. Come, Grandmother, 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 it what you like,” she said. “I’m too old to bother about it. Fight it out among yourselves.”
“But we’d like your advice, Grandmother,” unfortunately said Aunt Leah, whom Old Grandmother was just detesting because she had noticed the minute Leah shook hands with her that she had had her nails manicured.
“I have no advice to give. I have nothing but a little wisdom and I cannot give you that. Neither can I help it if a woman has a bargain-counter nose.”
“Are you referring to my nose,” inquired Aunt Leah with spirit. She often said she was the only one in the clan who wasn’t afraid of Old Grandmother.
“The pig that’s bit squeals,” retorted Old Grandmother. She leaned back on her pillows disdainfully and sipped her tea with a vengeance. She had got square with Leah for manicuring her nails.
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. Oh, but it was fine to be able to be disagreeable again. She had had to be so good and considerate for four months. Four months was long enough to mourn for anybody. Four months of not daring to give anybody a wigging. They had seemed like four centuries.
Lorraine sighed. She knew what she wanted to call her baby. But she knew that she would never have the courage to say it. And if she did she knew they would never consent to it. 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—laughter that had been hushed so suddenly. Surely the jests of Heaven must have had more spice 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. David Lesley, throwing her bombshell gravely and sadly, “that it would only be graceful and fitting that she should be called after Leander’s first wife.”
Mrs. David and Clementine had been very intimate friends. But Clementine! Lorraine shivered again and wished she hadn’t, for Aunt Anne’s eye looked like another shawl.
Everybody looked at Clementine’s picture.
“Poor little Clementine,” sighed Aunt Stasia in a tone that made Lorraine feel she should never have taken poor little Clementine’s place.
“Do you remember what lovely jet black hair she had?” asked Aunt Marcia.
“And what lovely hands?” said Great-Aunt Matilda.
“She was so young to die,” sighed Aunt Josephine.
“She was such a sweet girl,” said Great-Aunt Elizabeth.
“A sweet girl all right,” agreed Uncle Klon, “but why condemn an innocent child to carry a name like that all her life? That would really be a sin.”
The clan, with the exception of Mrs. David, felt grateful to him and looked it, especially Young Grandmother. The name simply wouldn’t have done, no matter how sweet Clementine was. That horrid old song, for instance—Oh, my darling Clementine, that boys used to howl along the road at nights. No, no, not for a Lesley. But Mrs. David was furious. Not only because Klondike disagreed with her but because he was imitating her old lisp, so long outgrown that it really was mean of him to drag it up again like this.
“Will you have some more dressing?” inquired Young Grandmother graciously.
“No, thank you.” Mrs. David was not going to have any more, by way of signif
ying displeasure. Later on she took a still more terrible revenge by leaving two-thirds of her pudding uneaten, knowing that Young Grandmother had concocted it. Young Grandmother woke up in the night and wondered if anything could really have been the matter with the pudding. The others might have eaten it out of politeness.
“If Leander’s name had been almost anything else she might have been named for her father,” said Great-Uncle Walter. “Roberta—Georgina—Johanna—Andrea—Stephanie—Wilhelmina—”
“Or Davidena,” said Uncle Klon. But Great-Uncle Walter ignored him.
“You can’t make anything out of a name like Leander. Whatever did you call him that for, Marian?”
“His grandfather named him after him who swam the Hellespont,” said Young Grandmother as rebukingly as if she had not, thirty-five years before, cried all one night because Old Grandfather had given her baby such a horrid name.
“She might be called Hero,” said 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 Aunt Nina.
“No,” faltered Lorraine. “He—he had so little time to tell me—anything.”
The clan frowned at Nina 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 had some shortcomings. But selling it openly!
“I should like baby to be called Gabriella,” persisted Nina.
“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 everyone looked stony, and Nina began to cry. She cried upon the slightest provocation. Lorraine remembered that Leander had always called her Mrs. Gummidge.
“Come, come,” said Old Grandmother, “surely we can name this baby as well comfortably as uncomfortably. Don’t make the mistake, Nina, of thinking that you are helping things along by making a martyr of yourself.”
“What do you think, Miss Silversides?” inquired Uncle Charlie, who thought Salome was being entirely ignored and didn’t like it.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter what I think. I am of no consequence,” said Salome, ostentatiously helping herself to the pickles.
“Come, come, now, you’re one of the family,” coaxed Uncle Charlie, who knew—so he said—how to handle women.
“Well”—Salome relaxed because she was really dying to have her say in it—“I’ve always thought names that ended in ‘ine’ were so elegant. My choice would be Rosaline.”
“Or Evangeline,” said Great-Uncle Walter.
“Or Eglantine,” said Aunt Marcia eagerly.
“Or Gelatine,” said Uncle Klon.
There was a pause.
“Juno would be such a nice name,” said Cousin Teresa.
“But we are Presbyterians,” said Old Grandmother.
“Or Robinette,” suggested Uncle Charlie.
“We are English,” said Young Grandmother.
“I think Yvonne is such a romantic name,” said Aunt Flora.
“Names have really nothing to do with romance,” said Uncle Klon. “The most thrilling and tragic love affair I ever knew was between a man named Silas Twingletoe and a woman named Kezia Birtwhistle. It’s my opinion children shouldn’t be named at all. 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.
“Besides, there’s an Yvonne Clubine keeping a lingerie shop in Charlottetown,” said Aunt Josephine.
“Lingerie? If you mean underclothes for heaven’s sake say so,” snapped Old Grandmother.
“Juanita is a rather nice uncommon name,” suggested John Eddy Lesley-over-the-bay. “J-u-a-n-i-t-a.”
“Nobody would know how to spell it or pronounce it,” said Aunt Marcia.
“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’s a shame that we have three foreign missionaries in the connection and not one of them has a namesake—even if they are only fourth cousins. I suggest we call her Harriet after the oldest one.”
“But,” said Aunt Anne, “that would be slighting Ellen and Louise.”
“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 fourth cousin need feel slighted.”
The suggestion seemed to find favor. Lorraine caught her breath anxiously and looked at Uncle Klon. But rescue came from another quarter.
“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 missionaries.
4
“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.”