Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 51
ALL was peaceful until supper time, when Laurie came in carrying a glass dish filled with stones.
"Mis' Marcey," she announced, "look at this. This is my dish for the apple sauce, and see what I find in it! And in more places than this do I find 'em! In beds, under tables, in vases! Glory be! 'Tis few places you can go without finding pebbles left about as if the Little People had left 'em, and me knowing all the time it's nothing but that Robert Marcey."
"You leave those alone," cried Robert. "I didn't have any good place to put 'em in my own room. If I had dishes the right kind in my own room I wouldn't have to put 'em in the apple sauce dish."
"Yes, but what are they?" his father now asked.
"I'll tell you what they are!" cried Sara.
"Look out! You'll break the luck!" Robert muttered.
"It won't break my luck!"
"You'll break the luck," he repeated sullenly, "and if you break my luck, there's The Attic Fairy!" he whispered.
A curious frightened look flashed across Sara's face. She said no more. Suddenly she clapped her hands and cried out: "But I burned 'em! I burned 'em! They're lucky stones. That's what they are. They're all black, and. they have white spots or rings. They're lucky stones!"
"Lucky or unlucky," said Alice, "I can't have stones all over the place."
"You know every child has got to go through this phase," said Tom. "You can no more escape this phase or the tree-climbing and cave-building age in your children than the human race has been able to escape it. If you are modern, as you pretend to be, you can't suppress things like lucky stones."
All through supper Tom skirted the subject. His curiosity had been piqued by the phenomenon of the Witch of Endor, the burning of the "three gray ones," the lucky stones, and the form of Robert's obscure threat. But nothing more was to be got from the children. They exchanged knowing looks from time to time which showed a wisdom and knowledge shared by them beyond their elders.
Alice watched them with attention. It seemed as though her children were living in some fourth dimension of the spirit which she could sense but not enter, and which would continually tease her imagination until she too could step within it.
Tom arose from the table and with the evening paper in his hand started for the library. His toe stubbed against some heavy object.
"What the dickens is this?" he cried, and, stooping, raised in his hand what was apparently a black cobblestone of the largest size, encircled with white.
The day of philosophy was over. Interest in folklore had fled. He threw open the window and flung the stone far out into the night. From Sara burst a terrible cry.
"My lucky stone!" she wailed. "Oh, my lucky stone! Oh, my luck has gone!"
At this, with an impish gleam in his eye, Robert leaned over and whispered:
"The Attic Fairy!"
Later Alice observed Robert crouched close to the open fireplace, sibilantly talking up it, while Sara, whose fear was partly theatrical and partly real, shrank into the window and looked at him with great eyes.
"I thought you didn't believe in fairies," his mother said to him. Robert smiled a cryptic smile at his mother. There burst from Sara a wail.
"He believes in 'em, and he's got 'em. Fairies and fairies—all sorts—just because Mrs. Painter told me I was a little fairy and the fairy queen of all her canary birds he goes out, and gets fairies himself. He's got an attic fairy up the attic who gives him gods!"
"She flew her nose so high over being a fairy queen that I had to do something," growled Robert. "Now I've got the king and queen of the fairies."
"You haven't! You haven't!" screamed Sara. "Mrs. Painter gave me all the leprechauns. She told me about the three hairs and the Witch of Endor. And she'll get me things yet your fairy can't get you." But Robert resumed his mumbling up the chimney.
It was here Jamie piped up:
"I want fairies."
"You can have some of mine, darling," cried Sara. She shot a glance full of suspicion at Robert. "But if I give him mine, Robert's got to give him some of his. Make him give the attic one!"
"Oh, no, you don't," said Robert craftily, "and I won't give him any, because Sara'll make Jamie use them for her."
They went to bed in an unsatisfactory state of mind. Later Laurie called Alice to come upstairs.
"Sara's whispering and whispering to Them until you'd think 'there they are!' And Jamie's eyes is popping from his head."
Next morning Alice was awakened by a piercing cry. "You sha'n't have the big gods of Egypt!" It was Sara's voice which screamed with its full volume of rage. "You sha'n't have 'em! I don't want only just the little, mean, rat-faced god from Egypt. I want the big ones—and I'm going to have 'em!"
Tom looked at his wife.
"Insanity is the only thing that ails those children," he remarked with calm.
As they dressed they could hear the high names of ancient gods thrown about with abandon. From the back stairs came Laurie's voice soothingly:
"Never mind, darlin', about them haythen gods of Robert's—bad luck to the ugly ole faces of 'em! Just you tell him Laurie'll give you the Banshee—that'll fix him! An all the fairies from the Pinwell in the Vales of Antrim!"
"Now they're all insane!" said Tom. "You won't have to send any one away. All we need is to get a keeper to come here."
Presently Alice saw him get a heavy book of reference. As he read a smile spread over his face. He whispered to Sara. As they came in to the breakfast table Robert said:
"All the Greek gods and all the Roman ones."
"I've got all the Indian ones!" Sara countered, "and there's more of them than any other kind!" She looked toward her father for affirmation, but Tom was entrenched behind his morning paper.
Later Robert left the house, informing Alice that he was going to change his library book. Sara peered after him out of the window.
"I know where he's gone," she announced. "He's gone to get more gods. More fairies and things he's gone for." For in Sara's mind the august deities of ancient civilization and the fairies were precisely upon the same footing. In retaliation she went to Mrs. Painter's, and returned triumphant with the Three Fates.
During the days that followed it seemed to Alice that there were marshaled in invisible array all the gods of antiquity—the elephant-faced god of India and the rat-faced god of Egypt. The Witch of Endor, helped by the Irish fairies—in which Sara had a "corner,"—would rout the Aztec deities of which Robert had possessed himself. They marshaled them from the north and from the east. A motley company stalked ceaselessly through the children's conversation, while Robert encouraged Sara to brood over the loss of her lucky stone.
Nor did it comfort Alice at all that Tom explained to her that this was fine training in mythology. With this her Mother-in-law disagreed.
"Even if the gods of which the children talk," she proclaimed, "are heathen and obsolete, this kind of goings-on will make them too familiar with the Deity. Moreover, this house is getting positively spooky."