Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 43
THE cottage in which the Marceys lived was a quiet one; it was on the water, yet it seemed to Alice that the air was filled with distant clamor. Shouts and hoots pierced her consciousness, and across the field of her vision far out upon the sand flats there ran rollicking children. What meaning this had in her own life she did not realize until it was forced upon her by Robert, who was sitting a little way from her on the sand, instructing Sara. This in itself aroused suspicion, for Robert seldom taught Sara anything. He was teaching her to sing a song. Alice could not hear the words, but the air, vaguely familiar, called up to her mind something undesirable. Presently she heard Sara piping: "The high cost of living is only a joke, the high cost of loving"
"Where," she asked Robert, "where did you learn this song?"
"The people two houses down the beach," said Robert. "There are six of them, children I mean, and they've got a lovely phonograph. Every song they've got. I'm going to learn 'em all!"
Alice said nothing. It seemed as if, processionalwise, there trooped before her mind all the topical songs, songs about Little Girlie Coons, about My Filipino Baby, songs without exception, from a zealous mother's point of view, undesirable. Where did he get them? He seemed to absorb them through the pores. To Alice and to Tom Marcey they remained but vague hand-organ memories, never a word to them more than a bit of chorus, perhaps; but let a new song appear, and the words and music were Robert's as though by divination. And then Sara learned snips and odds and ends of these songs, and, presently Laurie would be shouting one. Like a menacing specter there came to Alice the vision of those six robust vulgar children two houses away, with their phonograph all ready to corrupt her children's taste, if not their morals, by spouting the vulgarest songs of the moment.
In the face of this menace the head of that saintly child, Gladys Grayson, became in Alice's eyes encircled with a halo. Her whine seemed a lovely thing when compared with the phonograph.
In a futile effort to stave off these evil communications, sure to corrupt whatever remnants of good manners remained to her children, Alice forbade them to go without an invitation to visit the house with the phonograph. Early the next morning, an ample, smiling-faced woman came toward her across the sand. Homely kindliness radiated from her; she spoke in a deep throaty voice, so that Alice reflected one would have known, had one met her in the middle of the night, that she was fat; it was a voice that could come only from a throat that was ornamented with three double chins, and neither her accent nor her grammar bore close scrutiny.
"I just come over to tell you to let your children come over whenever they want. I love children, and, laws, the quicker they get acquainted with the neighbors the less nuisance they is around the house! Let 'em come right along with me," she went on. "Come on with me, dearies, and I'll set the phonograph a-going!"
What could Alice do? She was no snob. Kindness and goodness illuminated her neighbor's fat face. Only a heart of stone could have looked at her without a feeling of liking. Her vast lap and her wide bosom were made for the comfortable pillowing of little children. While she was about, no harm, spiritual or physical, could come to any young thing, and if she and her children did make hash of grammar and manners, well, that could be remedied, Alice considered with stoicism.
So it was that Alice welcomed any diversion from Tobeys', which, it appeared, was her fat neighbor's name. The first diversion that offered was a little boy who with his mother was boarding in an adjoining cottage. He was an enviably neat little boy, a city-bred child of good manners. He hopped up promptly from chairs; he said, "Yes, Mrs. Marcey," and, "No, Mrs. Marcey," instead of bawling "Yep" and "Nope," after the manner of Tobeys. Nor did his cheeks, like the Tobey cheeks, bulge perpetually with "all day suckers."
Alice fondly imagined it was Robert's better nature which drew him to this well-behaved youngster.
Presently why it was that Robert found this child so fascinating came to Alice. She found out through Sara.
"Ah, ha!" Sara cried. "Ah, ha! Robert Marcey, I am going to tell Mother!"
"Go and tell," Robert returned. "Go and tell, be-a cause you can't."
"Oh, yes, I can," chirped Sara. "Oh, yes, I can, and I am going to tell, because you won't tell me, and that's why! An' I know why you won't tell me. Because it's bad things, that's why you won't tell me, Robert Marcey."
"Tittle-tattle, tittle-tattle," Robert retorted. He said this, his mother observed from behind the screening vines, on all fours, while with an imitation of a balking mule he flourished his heels at Sara, and for additional insult he went "he-haw, he-haw." This was another of the mysteries that crowded around Alice, for Robert had never heard a donkey bray as far as she knew, yet he emitted the most lifelike donkey noises in a peculiarly offensive way. As an afterthought he put on the secret look that meant the name of Uncle Zotsby's dog. Sara stamped her foot as per schedule.
"You tell me or I'll tell Mother," she threatened. "You gave him five cents for it," she wheedled. "I'll give you five cents."
"Nope," responded Robert.
"I'll give him five cents for it. I got five cents in my bank. I got seven cents," she asserted as she started forth.
"You come back here, Sara Marcey," screamed her brother. "You come back here and leave Ted Jennings alone. This ain't for girls to buy. This ain't for girls to know!" His face was red, deep excitement held him.
Sara, proud of having "gotten Robert's goat," as the Tobey children vulgarly phrased it, continued on her way. Robert dashed into the house.
"Mother!" he called. "Mother! Call her back, don't let her go! She's going after Ted Jennings, she's going to get something from him no little girl ought to know!"
"How do you know, Robert!" Alice inquired. He stubbed his toe on the floor.
"Oh, I know," he said darkly, and then he called, "You come back, Sara Marcey, Mother says so!"
At sight of her mother also leaning over the veranda and beckoning, Sara stopped and slowly retraced her way.
"What was it Sara was going to get?" questioned Alice the inquisitor.
"Something," replied Robert, flushing darkly.
"Was she going to buy it?"
"Yes."
"What was it?" Alice probed, now well started on the terrible domestic Third Degree.
"I don't want to tell."
"Did you buy it?"
"Yes."
"Tell Mother." Silence. "Tell Mother what it was." Alice's voice was gentle. She put a poisonously kind hand on Robert's shoulder. She was undermining his fortitude with affection.
"It was—it was," he said, very low, "a swear!"
"You bought a swear?"
In spite of his embarrassment and reluctance triumph flamed in Robert's face. "Yes," he said, "I bought the worst swear that Ted Jennings knows! I paid five cents!"
Alice waited. Pride in his new accomplishment struggled with his instinct for secrecy. His mother's eyes rested upon his, kind and encouraging: it was too much, the pressure upon him was more than a young soul could resist.
"This is the swear," he volunteered: "Golly! Gosh! Darn!" He hesitated just a moment, "Damn! Devil!" The wickedness of it rejoiced him. "But you see," he cried, suddenly becoming the austere brother, "Sara mustn't know it; girls can't say things like that. Sara mustn't never, never hear things like that!" Right before her eyes, full blown, Alice saw the dual standard of morality. "She might say it, she hasn't any sense."
"Take care you don't say it," Alice admonished. "And I think selling it was disgusting. Never sell a thing like that, Robert, and don't say it."
"Oh, no, ma'am!"
"Well, then," said Alice, "what use was it to you to buy something that you can't use?" She was carefully avoiding emphasizing any glory by being shocked. "Don't you think you were silly to buy something so useless as a silly swear?"
Robert raised his candid eyes to his mother; they twinkled with humor and with daring.
"'Tain't useless to me, 'tain't useless," he said. "I can think it just as often as I feel like. I'm thinking it now!"