XI
THE CHRISTENING
The christening of Enid’s baby, delayed until David’s return from Washington, was to be at our house because Enid and her little son had already come to us, but we, being past seventy, could not so easily go up in Connecticut to Enid. At all events that was what they told us, though Pelleas and I smiled somewhat sadly as we permitted our age to bear the burden of our indolence. Besides, I would always be hostess rather than guest, for the hostess seems essentially creative and the guest pathetically the commodity.
Therefore on a day in May we rose early and found our shabby drawing-room a kind of temple of hyacinths, and every one in the room—by whom I mean its permanent inhabitants—rejoicing. The marble Ariadne, on a pedestal in a dark corner, guided her panther on a field of jonquils which they two must have preferred to asphodel; the Lady Hamilton who lived over the low shelves folded her hands above a very home of Spring; and once, having for a moment turned away, I could have been certain that the blindfold Hope above the mantel smote her harp softly, just loud enough, say, for a daffodil to hear.
“Ah, Pelleas,” I cried, “one would almost say that this is The Day—you know, the day that one is expecting all one’s life and that never comes precisely as one planned.”
“Only,” Pelleas supplemented positively, “this is much nicer than that day.”
“Much,” I agreed, and we both laughed like children waiting to be christened ourselves.
Pelleas was to be godfather—I said by virtue of his age, but Enid, whose words said backward I prefer to those of many others in their proper order, insisted that it was by office of his virtue. There were to be present only the Chartres’ and the Cleatams, Miss Lillieblade and Lisa and Hobart Eddy and a handful besides—all our nearest and dearest and no one else; although, “Ah, me,” cried Madame Sally Chartres while we waited, “haven’t you invited every one who has lately invited you to a christening?” And on, so to speak, our positive negative, she added: “Really, I would have said that in these social days no one is even asked to a funeral who has not very recently had a sumptuous funeral of her own.”
“Who was my godfather?” Pelleas asked morosely. “I don’t think I ever had a godfather. I don’t know that I ever was christened. Have I any proof that I was named what I was named? I only know it by hearsay. And how glaringly unscientific.”
“You are only wanting,” cried Madame Polly Cleatam, shaking her curls, “to be fashionably doubtful!”