Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 50
MUMPS cannot last forever. As soon as the children were well, their Grandmother proposed taking the children to town to see "this fairy play" as a sort of reward. Alice was doubtful.
"There'll be nothing but bumps," was what she opined. "If Sara goes, nothing on earth will keep her from trying to fly afterward." To this Mrs. Marcey replied loftily:
"I shall explain everything to Sara. You wouldn't be such a silly little girl, would you, Sara, as to think you could fly?"
Sara's eyes widened. New horizons were evidently before her, but her mouth replied dutifully:
"Oh, no, Grandma."
It was the day after the children had been to "Peter Pan" that Tom's peace was disturbed by thumping sounds upstairs. When he inquired, "What's that?" Robert replied scornfully:
"That's Sara flying, of course! She's flying from your chiffonier. She tried the bed and she tried the bureau, and she said they were all too low to get started from, so now she's on your chiffonier, flying."
Sara had always had a taste for fairies, but the play of "Peter Pan" had the effect of a forcing-house. Fairies became with her a savage passion. There was no one in the house who did not have to read fairy stories to her. She even showed symptoms of learning to read. But it was Mrs. Painter who put into her head the idea of being a fairy herself.
Mrs. Painter, who lived three doors from the Marceys, was an amiable and extraordinarily voluminous widow. She had innocent hobbies, which included a large number of tame canary birds which flew at large around her drawing-room and perched upon her shoulder, and she had a garden in which she cultivated the most fragile flowers. For the rest, she was very blonde, with eyes more innocent than Sara's, and she knew more fairy tales than any one in the world. She also had a great fancy for little girls.
It was from Mrs. Painter then that Sara returned walking as though on air, a little crown of flowers around her head and a wand in her hand. When Robert would have scoffed, he found her imperturbable. She even had the audacity to reply:
"I've just as much right to fairies and stars and things as you've got to spiders and pollywogs, Robert Marcey! Mrs. Painter says so!"
After that it was a familiar spectacle to see Sara in a flowery crown and with a fairy wand, dancing about the garden. It is true, when asked what she was doing, she replied, "Conjuring." But things did not stop there.
Underneath the comparatively peaceful domestic exterior Alice felt things brewing. There are times, as mothers know, when the domestic kettle can brew as sullenly and darkly as any witch's caldron. Alice came to the conclusion that there must be some special fire which was setting it bubbling in so sinister a fashion beyond that which Tom Marcey called the "temperamental incompatibility" of Sara and Robert. Robert was behaving in a dark and mysterious fashion, and he frequented the public library as never before. Whenever he departed for this worthy spot Sara would run to Mrs. Painter's.
Alice was looking over these facts one after the other, and trying to fit them into some coherent design, when Tom's mother came in, leading by the hand a loudly weeping Sara. She ran to her mother, tears glistening in her eyes.
"You know Robert? You know him?" she sobbed. "Well, Robert, he—he" Her face quivered with emotion. "He made me lose all my manners right in company, he" Her voice broke again, and she paused to sob luxuriously. "Grandma," her accusing finger pointed at her Grandma, "brang me home."
Grandma had sat down ponderously upon a chair, and now explained the situation thus:
"Robert certainly does pester his sister to death, but that is no reason why a little lady should dart out her tongue at her brother like a serpent, and then slap him in the face. What they fight about, I can't tell you!"
"Oh, yes, you can, Grandma!" said Sara with more definiteness than politeness. "Oh, yes, you can! He's mean to my fairies! You heard him being mean to my fairies. He says because I got three gray hairs out of your hairbrush and burned 'em it don't make me any more powerful! But it does!"
"Ah-ha!" said her Grandmother. "That's where my hairbrush went to, is it?"
A dimple that had in it triumph, deceit and shyness flickered for a second at the corner of Sara's mouth.
"Honest," she said, "honest, Grandma, I meant to put your hairbrush back."
"Now I understand," her Grandmother went on, "why this child has been so attentive to me for the last few days, coming to visit me and then buzzing around and darting up-stairs every few moments like a piece of thistledown. Just for a chance at my hairbrush!"
"Well," demanded Sara, "where else was gray hairs? Mother hasn't any; Father hasn't any; Laurie hasn't any; Jamie hasn't any. Nobody's got none but you! I had to have 'em!"
Grandma waved a majestic hand.
"You heard her say it yourself. If any one had told me that my granddaughter would come to my house under cover of wishing to see her grandma, for the strange reason of getting three gray hairs from her hairbrush to burn, I wouldn't have believed it. It would have seemed too fantastic and too morbid. Nor is it what you can call a laughing matter," for a smile was beginning to lurk around Alice's mouth.
"Why did you want to do it?" Tom inquired. To which Sara made this cryptic reply.
"How was I to get the Witch of Endor and the three White Sibyls if I didn't get three gray hairs to burn?"
And when Tom asked, "What do you mean?" Sara only answered:
"My face is tired with talking."
"Her face is tired with talking—nothing!" said Robert. "What her face is tired with doing, Mother, is chewing gum."
To this the three adults in various keys responded:
"Chewing gum?"
"Why, chewing gum's forbidden!"
"My little granddaughter wouldn't chew gum, would she?"
"She'd chew anything," said Robert. "She'd chew candle wax; she'd chew gum off trees; she'd chew gum off gum shoes if it chewed right. That's what makes me sick about Sara. I won't take her out any more. I can't take her out any place without her begging gum off boys. Sometimes when Sara begs gum off boys it makes me just want to sink right through the floor."
Sara looked at her brother with an astute eye.
"What for made you give me gum, then, to shut up?" she inquired. Robert blushed a dark red. "He's mad with me, but he's not mad with me about gum." She turned a maddening glance on Robert. "He's mad because I get his goat!"
At this Robert flounced out of the room and Sara ran after him calling loudly:
"Robert—Robert! I didn't mean it. Honest, I didn't mean it!"
Mrs. Marcey had let a heavy and portentous silence fall in the room, and then said, with the air of one making the remark for the first time:
"Steps have got to be taken. Sara's character is becoming disintegrated. When a child of Sara's age darts out her tongue at her brother as naturally as a serpent, chews gum and lurks around her Grandma's house for the purpose of acquiring three gray hairs to burn, and later explains it's because she wants the Witch of Endor—whatever she may mean by that—and then says vulgar things about goats, I should think you could see for yourself that it is time for a tighter rein or at least a proper governess."