Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 9
EVEN Alice had to admit that when Evelyn Dearie fell sick with measles and elected for her bed of pain the library table, life became well night unendurable. Tom told Sara sternly that Evelyn would have to go up to the nursery. Alice would take her up to the nursery, but all in vain. Evelyn would be back in the library again and with her Sara with her professional:
"Hush, you'll disturb Evelyn Dearie; she's very sick. They make too much noise up in the nursery," she explained to her father; "she can't ever get well up there." Indeed, during these last days William Travers Jenkins had been often to the house, and the chuff-chuffing noise was even more audible.
"I can't keep the boys quiet, they won't stay quiet," said Sara stamping her foot, "and Zotsby's horrid dog is all over the place." But she could keep visitors quiet. She hushed them alarmingly, and a report went over the town that Jamie was having surreptitious measles. When Tom went to business this report assailed him on all sides. He came home angry.
"This nonsense has got to stop," he told Alice and Sara. "Evelyn Dearie has got to stay in the nursery."
It was Alice with her own hands who took Evelyn there amid the sobs and protests of Sara. A loud chuff-chuffing came from the nursery. It was stilled on Alice's entrance.
"You boys have got to keep quiet," Alice told them. "Evelyn will be well in a day or two. Until then we've got to have quiet."
"I wasn't making any noise," said Robert.
"I wasn't," said William Travers.
"I heard you," said Alice, but here one of Sara's tropical tempests raged through the nursery. She stamped her feet.
"You take your old Uncle Zotsby away," she said, "him and his dog! I won't have him here with Evelyn Dearie. He's not my Uncle Zotsby, he's only your Uncle Zotsby! He's got steam engines inside him instead of real insides like us. He tells William and Robert how the world's made. Take him away." But here Robert cried in fury:
"You stop, you stop, you shut up!"
He might have even committed the crime of striking his sister had not his mother intervened. She knew what an outrage it was against his spiritual modesty. She knew that face to face and hostile stood her children's playmates from The Other Side. It was a critical moment.
Into the silence Robert said, "Now you'll never know the name of Uncle Zotsby's dog!"
"I'm going to take you out to walk with me," Alice said quietly to Sara.
"Who'll take care of Evelyn Dearie?" asked Sara.
"Your father," answered Alice brazenly. She paid no attention to Robert's scarlet face. She might not have heard anything of Uncle Zotsby or his dog, but just the same her heart was bleeding for Robert.
"We're going out," she told her husband, "and you'll have to take care of Evelyn while we're gone." Tom was so acquiescent as to arouse his wife's suspicions. But Sara was relieved. With father she felt that all was well. When they returned Tom met them with a long face.
"I'm sorry to tell you," he said, "that while you were gone Evelyn Dearie died. She died very quietly. There's no use crying about it, Sara, it couldn't be helped. You shouldn't have let her have the measles."