Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 20
IT is things like this that make the Distressing Doubt thrive. When Sara had been good she had been insufferable; bad she was adorable, for children are seldom willfully bad. They forget the foolish things which we tell them to do or not to do that are so apart from all their lives—strange muddlesome commands imposed upon them from without—and once in a while they disobey furtively or with gloomy defiance. They don't reason out what there is wrong about their conduct that it should bring such dark consequences.
When they are little their attitude is often too much like the attitude of a pious dog who always begs your pardon when you happen to step on him, being sure that you are right always and thinking that you have meant to punish him, since you have hurt him. But hardly ever has one a chance of seeing a child joyfully bad. Older people know that fine heady feeling of breaking the small "thou shalt nots" of their environments, and a child behaving like Sara was a beautiful spectacle.
The next day Sara came down to breakfast, her eyes gleaming impishly. "Do you remember what I said last night?" she inquired. "Do you remember how I wouldn't go to bed? Do you remember," her voice rose in a defiant note, "how I wouldn't do what my father told me? I'm just like that to-day; I am bad! Bad Sara has come back!"
It was true. Bad Sara had come back; she had come back charming, nerve-racking, willfully disobedient, fertile in mischief, but lovable. Toward noon, however, Alice was no longer in an admiring frame of mind; Sara's naughtiness had become obtrusive; it was degenerating from the legitimate drama to vaudeville, it was monotonous, and Alice found herself in no mood to listen to Robert with contentment when he protested about taking a bunch of sweet peas to Mrs. Painter.
"Why don't you want to take them?" she inquired.
"I am bad too," he answered.
Alice was shocked; it is a terrible thing when your obliging children turn on you this way. She voiced her emotion with an inadequate
"I am surprised at you, Robert. Come, come, take the flowers along."
He took them as he was told, he ran along a little ways, then he put them down.
"What does that mean?" cried Alice coldly.
"I am bad like Sara," he replied, an impish flicker in his eyes, and yet he looked anxious. Anger arose in Alice. Two in the family was too much. Next Jamie would be getting bad. They stood there facing each other.
"He's just stubborn," thought Alice, and here from around the house came Sara; she had forgotten to be naughty or anything else, the rage of an offended female was hers.
"Robert," she proclaimed, "is a bad boy. He is a bad, bad boy! He won't do what I say, he won't be as I like!" There it was! The most Distressing Doubt of all was born in Alice's mind. Sara knew what a bad boy was, and that was all there was to it—a bad boy was one who wouldn't do as one liked, or be as one liked.
When one comes down to it that is generally what a bad boy was. Alice's anger died, she put her arms around Robert's neck:
"Tell me," she urged, "why wouldn't you take them; you had some reason—I know you had some reason."
"It's because, it's because—" he answered, "when I go and ring door bells, when strange big women come, I get a shy feeling and my knees get sort of weak." Then with a still deeper embarrassment he clung to her hand.
"Twice," he said in the muffled voice of one facing a deeply buried sin, "twice I've just rung the door bell and left the flowers on the step, and run! If they had come quick to the door—I couldn't wait." His voice dropped off. "I didn't have shyness when I was littler," he said. He looked at her with candid eyes, asking for an explanation, but she, in the inexplicable way of grown-ups, only kissed him.