Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 57
AS Alice went to work sounds came to her ears that left her no doubt that Tom had reverted to type. From being a modern and enlightened parent he had gone back to that which Alice often thought he was meant to be, by temperament, that is, the old-fashioned and dictatorial type of parent. Tom was a simple-minded and uncompromising sort of man from whose lips the simple orders "Do" and "Don't" fell more easily than the careful setting to work of forces which later might help his children's character. Temperamentally he wanted results, and wanted them right away, as evidenced by the tone of voice in which he was saying:
"Now, you kids, Sara and Robert, listen to me. I'm here, and there isn't going to be a sound in this house this afternoon. You hear me?"
At this statement Alice smiled. Her heart was lightened. She felt there were more unworthy parents than herself. If Tom's only solution was the eternal and unfruitful negative, the antiquated "Thou shalt not," then her experiment in bribery—tried, after everything else had failed—did not convict her of being the only peccable parent in that household.
Presently from below came a bellow which would have done credit to the Bull of Bashan.
"Stop that!" said the Voice.
Alice jumped. She had heard nothing down-stairs besides the ordinary runnings to and fro, the chirp of a pleasant voice.
There was silence, the disheartening silence in which one might imagine discouraged children roaming about in preternatural quiet. Then presently into the silence broke the Awful Voice.
"I-told-you-I-didn't-even-want-to-hear-you, not one of you!"
It was a terrible voice, the voice of the outraged Superman who has witnessed the weaklings disobey his dread command.
Again the Voice; this time not raised in commanding anger, but offended and dignified.
"Don't be foolish," said the Voice. "Of course you can move. But"—here it rose grave and menacing like a slowly rising tempest—"if I hear any noise!"
Again the Silence. Again the Voice, this time blaring out the menace of a trumpeting elephant.
"Be still!"
Silence of the grave. Into this silence came Sara's little piping treble. Alice's strained ears could not hear what it said, but she could infer by the trumpeting answer:
"Because I say so!"
Alice's first thought was, brave little Sara, to dare to face the formidable creature who was doubtless glommering at her. Then into Alice's mind shot a thought unendurable, a maddening thought, and that thought was, "He likes to do this. He's enjoying his authority."
Alice had long been a suffragist; it was at this moment she became a feminist. Those potent words, "a Man-Made World," she had passed over almost with flippancy. Now she realized what women and children had had to bear all these years; now she realized what at rock bottom was the character of her husband, Tom Marcey. Brutal authoritarianism, enjoyment of just sheer force—was what it was!
And as the Voice came up again, grave with its own self-importance, menacing with all the weight of his superior physical strength behind it,
"He's wallowing in it," thought Alice in anger, "just wallowing in the bullying of women and little children." At this moment she felt herself one with her offspring. "Nothing but an accident in time has kept him from bullying me." Her fists clenched themselves involuntarily at this thought. "Let us both have been born a few years ago and he would have bullied me, and I What could I have done? I'd have done anything to prevent my ears being split by noises like that."
She listened to him in amazement—she listened to him with wrath, with indignation, with ever-growing rebellion. That was what all his fine phrases about modern means of education and the responsibility of parenthood amounted to! Just give him a chance, and that's what he was really like, and that's what he would be like to his wife. At that moment Tom Marcey was not far removed from a wife-beater in Alice's eyes. She reflected that if her parents had ever spoken to her like that, just once—just once—she could never have had the same feeling toward them again. Even now the thought of the superior tone her father used when she was supposed to have been naughty, enraged her.
"Poor things!" she thought. "We're making them do all of a sudden, from one moment to another, what the poor suffocated little children of past ages were taught to do from their cradles—adapt themselves entirely to grown-up ways. And this ghastly, awful day there's Tom enjoying himself, having a perfectly beautiful time suppressing and bullying his own flesh and blood."
Two paragraphs ornamented Alice's paper. The ink was drying in her pen. She sat, listening to the drama that was going on down-stairs—the tiny, tiny, piteous little noises that seemed no bigger than those of a mouse, followed by awful explosions.
"You—you Juggernaut!" thought Alice.
The Voice was heard again, and after the Voice there arose to Alice's ears a sound that made her spring to her feet. It was Robert crying—and Robert never cried for nothing, he never had from babyhood.
"If you're going to be a cry-baby," said the Voice, and then she heard footsteps and the sound of Robert's suppressed weeping growing fainter.
"What," she thought, "is he going to do with him?"
Perhaps he was going to spank him—and Robert was far beyond the spankable age. It was too much. Alice dashed down the stairs. She intended to see it through. To Woman and Civics she had not given a thought. She was sitting up there finding out what men-were-like-when-they-had-the-chance-to-be.
She came down to find Jamie awestruck, round-mouthed, sitting perfectly quiet. Sara, too, was sitting, quiet, on the opposite side of the room. At sight of her mother she jumped up and whispered to her loudly:
"Robert's scared of him! Jamie's scared of him! But I'm not scared of him. He makes me laugh. Not outside—oh, no, not outside," Sara hastened to assure her mother, "but inside I laugh, and I make believe he's a nogre!"
At this speech Alice looked at her daughter with comprehension. Insight into the nature of man came to her. Thus it was that Woman from all time had met the senseless and unimportant roarings of Man—with a smile inside. Sara, whose name, Alice reflected, should have been Eve, was taking her father with that immemorial indulgence that women have shown men since time began. He could impose on his sons, but to his daughter he was "sweet father," and no amount of bug-a-boo words could make her believe anything else. If she had to sit still, she could pleasantly while away the time by pretending he was a "nogre."
These thoughts flashed through Alice's mind as Tom returned. He swung along with the stride of a man who has accomplished much.
"Just taken Robert away where you can't hear him making a baby of himself," he announced, "but they have not peeped. This house has been quiet as a church!" He looked at her with eyes full of smiles. "Any time you want a quiet afternoon just call on me, and I'll keep 'em quiet."
He was all good nature, beaming over his work well accomplished. The deep simplicity of man touched Alice to her heart. She kissed Tom tenderly and thanked him for his contribution to her peace.