Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 55
ALICE went to work. Quiet, not too tense to be disturbing, reigned below. This was the way it should have been done in the first place, Alice reflected, writing busily.
Suddenly her mind was diverted by a little noise—such an ambiguous noise that it had the effect on her nerves of being more disturbing than thunder. This rustle continued, hesitated, continued again. When you analyzed it, it was only the squeaking of a board or a faint rustle that you could hardly call a footfall, but it cried in the loudest tones to Alice, "This means you!"
The noise halted, and then its cause came into view. It was Sara, who, with the greatest consideration in the world, had spent five nerve-racking minutes in her progress down the hall to Alice's room. She walked to her mother in the same careful way. She might have been walking over the thinnest of ice, she might have been walking on the tips of her toes across egg shells, so deliberate was she and so careful not to disturb her dear mother.
Finally she arrived before Alice. Her eyes were swimming with affection, her lips with cruel inaudibility formed the words:
"Sweet Mother!"
Her soul was a pool of sunshine, reflecting on its surface only love. In this heavenly pool Alice flung the rough stone of an irritable:
"Well, Sara?"
Doubt was now reflected in the pool. Sara looked at her mother's face and saw there only a suppressed irritation. Her smile wilted.
"Well, Sara, what is it?" said Alice, calmly, still showing no pleasure at the sight of her daughter. "Why did you interrupt me?"
"I didn't mean to interrupt," quavered Sara, "I only came to tell you—I love you!" The sentence ended in the whisper of a little sob. She bowed her head, and as slowly as any funeral procession, and as sadly, started for the door.
Sara with head down and heartbroken was a spectacle no human mother could have witnessed unmoved. Alice called her back—they were in each other's arms. It was an emotional and disturbing moment.
Again she took Sara into her confidence. Again Sara went away. Again Alice applied herself to writing.
From below came the noise of conflict. Alice dashed down the stairs. Sara pointed a tragic finger at Robert.
"He threw a book at me," she announced.
"It didn't hit you," said Robert.
"It hit me in the feelings," said Sara, "and hurt 'em awful! It hurts feelings to have books thrown at 'em, Robert Marcey! Yes, and why did he throw a book at me, Mother? Because I tried to kiss him—that's all! Just because I tried to kiss him, he throws books at me!" Here Sara's wrongs overwhelmed her, and she wept.
"And why—why do I have to throw books?" Robert planted himself before his mother. "I told her I didn't want to be kissed. I told her to leave me alone. I told her I wanted to read. She came in and kissed me, and I told her not to. She came in and kissed me a third time, and I told her I'd throw a book at her if she kissed me again, and she came right on top of that and kissed me some more. So I threw the book. I could have hit her, if I'd wanted to, but I just threw it to warn her. Next time, though, I'll hit her. I was being quiet, wasn't I? Why can't she let me be?"
Why, indeed! Why women can't let man be has been one of the questions that neither sage nor philosopher has ever solved.
It was here that Alice wearily again took her children into her confidence, and went back to work.
Again she heard the little rustle. Again it floated to her room. At her door it paused. By the reflection in a mirror Alice could see Sara had seated herself just at the threshhold, seated herself with love and smiling patience. By straining her ears—for what Sara was saying was just below the point where one could comfortably hear it, but loud enough to make all writing impossible—Alice could hear Sara saying to herself:
"I won't disturb my darling mother. I won't go into her room and tell her how I love her. I'll let her write. I'll help my mother, my sweet, darling mother."
At this moment a lively rough-house broke out between the two boys down-stairs. One could hear Jamie's clear treble laughing happily. One could hear Robert thump-thumping around with the slap-stick humor irresistible to babies of Jamie's age. It was a lovely sound if one were not doing anything, but a noise impossible to enjoy if one were trying to write. In a pause Sara whispered virtuously:
"I don't disturb my sweet mother like the boys!"
Alice was through for the day. She was also through taking her children into her confidence. She knew, moreover, that Sara being naughty might perhaps be reckoned with, but that Sara striving to please was more implacable than the Judgment Day.