Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 23
THE modest wish of Alice's was not to be fulfilled.
The portly figure of Tom's mother came around the corner of the house, stately as a ship in full sail. She adjusted her eye-glasses and surveyed her grandchild.
"Whatever," she cried, "has that child got on? Why, it can't be, and yet it is, your Great Aunt Pamela's basque! I should think, my dear, that you'd prefer to keep family relics like that."
"That relic," replied Alice with firmness, "will never wear out! When we were little, Ethel and I played with it, and Mother said it had been used for charades by her." Sara's grandmother stared at her grandchild. The conclusion that she came to was:
"I don't believe in letting children make frights of themselves. What sense is there in allowing a child to deform itself, Alice, at an impressionable age like this? It must be bad for their tender little souls. What on earth has that child got on?"
"A bustle," murmured Alice faintly.
"A child shouldn't gaze on a monstrosity like a bustle, without having the full significance of such a preposterous piece of apparel explained to her." And, as Sara approached Mrs. Marcey espied the adornments of her grandchild's face.
"What has she on her face?" she inquired coldly.
"A little water-color paint," Alice admitted.
"I have no patience with you, Alice," remarked Mrs. Marcey. "Come and speak to Grandma, darling. Come and show Grandma what you're wearing. Grandma would love to kiss that sweet, dear little mouth if it wasn't all painted up, and that little cheek too if it wasn't all painted up with nasty paint. Don't you want to run and wash your face like a good little girl?"
"No," replied Sara.
"Suppose," said her Grandmother, "that it should stick all the time and that you could never wash it off."
"But it doesn't," said Sara, "it comes off as easy, as easy. You let me paint you a mustache and then you wash your face, and you'll see how it comes off."
"I wouldn't paint my face like that," said Mrs. Marcey. "I wouldn't like to look horrid. Do wash your face to please Grandma."
Sara put her head on one side and looked at her Grandmother with coquettish eyes and shook her head. Her Grandmother felt for her pocketbook.
"I'll give you five"
Here Alice put out a protesting hand. "Please, Mother," she begged, "Tom and I don't believe in bribing children with money to do things."
"Hoighty-toighty!" replied the older lady. Here Sara leaned against her Grandmother's knee with affection.
"Say it again," she begged, "Say it again, please."
"Say what again, child? Mercy, Alice, she's a fright!"
"Just what you said to Mama," pleaded Sara, ignoring her Grandmother's remark.
"She means 'Hoighty-toighty,'" said Alice.
"That's a funny word," cried Sara. "Hoighty-toighty! Hoighty-toighty!" She hopped up and down, clapping her hands. "When Robert is a bad boy and when he makes me stick out my tongue at him I sha'n't stick out my tongue, I'll say that. How was it, Grandma? I can't 'member it." Sara by herself never committed a wrong act. Wrong acts were always drawn from her reluctantly through the wrongdoing and unkindness of others.
"I've often," pursued the grandmother, "seen Robert with five- and even ten-cent pieces which he had gotten for being good."
"Which he had gotten by doing work," Alice insisted mildly but firmly.
"Whether it's face-washing or doing any other task, it's being paid for something one doesn't care to do. Whoever heard of a boy being paid for doing work that he liked? Won't you wash your face, Sara darling?"
"I'm going to stay like this so that Robert can see me when he comes back from school; then I'm going to stay this way so my papa can see me when he comes back, and I'm going to go to bed like this, and Laurie she won't know me. She'll wake up in the morning—" One could see that if Sara were permitted to go on, weeks and months would elapse before she would wash her face. Hurriedly Grandma changed the subject to bustles.
"I shouldn't think you'd want to wear this, Sara. It isn't pretty."
"Aunt Caroline used to wear 'em. She wore 'em behind, Aunt Caroline did."
"A great many queer things have been worn," responded Mrs. Marcey, "these and hoop skirts. People have deformed themselves in many ways. Savages also put rings in their noses."
This was the first part of her grandmother's message of good taste that Sara had heard.
"It isn't good to put things in your nose," she assented with an air of dramatic gloom. "Nellie Kennedy put a bean in her nose. Oh, it hurt! Oh, she cried! I never put things in my nose; but Robert, he's a bad boy, he puts things in his mouth. He swallowed a penny one day."
"That child," said Tom's mother, "can't concentrate. You ought to give her some lessons in concentration, Alice."
When Mrs. Marcey went it wasn't the end of her for the day. Her visit had a deep influence on her grandchild and a sinister one. When it came time for Alice to say:
"Sara, dear, go wash your face before supper,"
"I want to keep it on," Sara asserted. "I want to keep it on to show my papa. I'm going to keep it on to go to bed; I'm going to keep it on all night." There was argument. It ended by Alice remarking, and not at all in the tone that one expects of a modern mother:
"You're going to do no such foolish thing. You're going to wash your face right now."
It's so easy for a mother to make such statements and so hard to make good at them. It's always so humiliating for a right-minded parent to use force on a child—though not as humiliating as it ought to be. What are you going to do when your little child sits down, braces her legs against the door, and says she's going to keep on her mustache and imperial all night, to say nothing of a bright red spot on each cheek, and then adds menacingly as Sara did, "and all to-morrow too!" You do what Alice did—pick her up under your arm, making a pretense to yourself and to her that you're cheerful and debonair about it and you resentfully wash off the two red spots and the mustache and imperial, adding as Alice did:
"If there's ever any more trouble like this, you can't use your paint box any more."