A dram of poison (3 page)

She had her hair pulled back today and tied in a hank at the back of her neck with a faded red ribbon. This did not make her look girlish. She looked haggard.

She said, as piimly as if she'd memorized it, "I feel so much better. The medicine is doing me good, I'm sure. And to know what the trouble is, that's been comforting." She dragged her eyelids up. "Mr. Gibson, I want you to go away . . . not come any more."

"Why?" he said wih a pang.

"Because I am nobody of yours. You shouldn't worry about me. You weren't even a friend of ours."

Mr. Gibson did not misunderstand. "Surely, I am a friend now," he chided gently.

"You are," she admitted with a dry gasp, "and the only one. . . . But you have helped me. It is enough. Congratulate yourself. Please."

He got up and walked about. He admired her spunk. He approved of it. But he felt upset. "What will you do on the first of May?"

"If nothing else . . . I'll go to the country," she said.

"I see. You feel distressed about me? You don't want me to try to help you any more?"

She shook her head dumbly. She looked as if she had spent her very last ounce of energy.

"They tell me," mused Mr. Gibson aloud, looking at the horrible wallpaper, "that it is more blessed to give than to receive. But it does seem to me, in that case, somebody has to be willing to receive. And do it graciously," he added rather sternly. She winced as if he had slapped her. "Oh, I know it isn't easy," he assured her quickly.

Then he hesitated. But not for long.

The trouble was, his imagination had been working. He ought to have known that if a thing can be vividly imagined, it can be done. It probably will be done. He sat down and leaned forward earnestly.

"Rosemary, suppose there was something you could do for me?"

"Anything I could ever do for you," she choked, "I'd be bound to do."

"Good. Now let's take it for granted, shall we, that you are grateful and stop repeating that? It's a terrible bore for both of us. And I do not enjoy seeing you cry, you know. I don't enjoy it at all."

She squeezed her lids together.

"I am fifty-five years old," he said. Her damp lids opened in surprise. "I don't look it?" He smiled. "Well,

as I always say, I've been pickled in poetry. I earn seven thousand a year. I wanted you to know these . . . er . . . statistics before I asked you to marry me."

She clapped both hands over her face and eyes.

"Listen a minute," he went on gently. "I've never married. I've never had a home made for me by a woman. Perhaps I have been missing something ... in that alone. Now there's a skill you have, Rosemary. You know how to keep a house. You've done it for years. You can do it, and very nicely, I'm sure, once you feel strong again. So I was thinking . . ."

She did not move nor even look between her fingers.

"It might be a good bargain between us," he went on. "We are friends, whatever you say. I think we are not incompatible. We've had some pleasant hours, even in all this difficulty. We might make good companions. Can you look at it as if it were to be an experiment? A venture? Let us not say its forever. Suppose we found we didn't enjoy being together? Why, in these days, you know, divorce is quite acceptable. Especially ... Rosemary, are you a religious woman?"

"I don't know," she said pitifully behind her hands.

"Well, I thought," he continued, "if instead of a holy pledge ... we made a bargain . . ." He began to speak louder. "My dear, I am not in love with you," he stated bluntly. "I don't speak of love or romance. At my age, it would be a little silly. I neither expect romantic love nor intend to give it. I am thinking of an arrangement. I am trying to be frank. Will you let me know if you understand me?"

"I do," she said brokenly. "I understand what you mean. But it's no real bargain at all, Mr. Gibson. I am no use to anybody . . ."

"No, you are not, not at the moment," he agreed cheerfully. "I wouldn't expect you to do the wash next Monday, you know. But I am thinking, and please think seriously too. . . . Although there is one point I'd like to make quickly. I don't want to cheat you."

"Cheat me?" she said hoarsely.

"You are only thirty-two. Be frank with me."

She took her hands down. "How can I say I'd rather go on the county?" she said with sudden, asperity.

"You could say it if it is •so," he told her grinning. The

air in the room lightened. Everything seemed gayer. "Did you ever have a hobby, Rosemary?" he asked her.

"A hobby? Yes, I . . . once or twice. I had a garden. For a while I . . . liked to try to paint." She looked dazed.

"Let me confess, then. I am presently enchanted by the idea of making you well again. Of getting you up, Rosemary, and yourself, again. As a matter of fact, it is exactly as if to do so was a hobby of mine. Now then. Now, thafs honest." He settled back. "How I'd like to!" he said wistfully. "I really would. I'd like to put you in a bright pleasant place and feed you up and see you get fat and sassy. I can't think," he sighed, "of anything that would be more fun."

She put her hands over her face and rocked her body.

"No?" he said quietly. "If the idea repels you, why of course it's not feasible. But what will you do, Rosemary? What will become of you? Don't you see that I can't stop worrying? How can you stop me if I can't stop myself? I wish you would let me lend you money, at least." He fidgeted.

"I can cook, Mr. Gibson," she said in a low voice.

He said in a moment, "Then, I'm afraid you will have to begin to call me Kenneth."

She said, "Yes, Kenneth, I will."

They were married on the 20th of April by a justice of the peace.

One of the witnesses was Paul Townsend. This came about because, in the five-day flurry and excitement, when Mr. Gibson was house-hunting as hard as he could, he bumped into Paul Townsend, confided his problem, and Paul solved it.

"Say!" His handsome genial face lit up. "I've got just the place for you! It'd be perfect! My tenant left a week ago. The painters will be gone tomorrow What a coincidence! Gibson, you're in!''

"Where am I in?"

"In my cottage on the lot adjoining my own place. A regular honeymoon cottage."

"Furnished?"

"Of course, furnished. It's a little far out."

"How far?"

"Thirty minutes on the bus. You don't drive a car?"

"Rosemary has a car of sorts. An old monster. Not evep worth selling."

"Well, then! There's a garage for it. How does this sound? Living room, bedroom, bath, big den—lots of bookshelves in there—dinette, kitchen. There's a fireplace . . ."

"Bookshelves?" said Mr. Gibson. "Fireplace?"

"And a garden."

"Garden?" said Mr. Gibson in a trance.

"I'm a nut on gardening myself. You come and see."

Mr. Gibson went and saw, and succumbed.

The wedding took place at three in the afternoon in a drab office with no fanfare and not much odor of sanctity. The justice was a matter-of-fact type who mumbled drearily. No one was present except the necessary witnesses. Mr. Gibson had thought it best to ask none of his colleagues to watch him being married, in this manner, to this white-faced woman in her old blue suit who could scarcely stand up, whose gaunt finger shook so that he could scarcely force the ring over the knucklebone.

Then of course Rosemary had no people. And Mr. Gibson's only sister Ethel, although asked, for auld lang syne, could not come. She wrote that she supposed he would know what he was doing at his age, and she was happy for him if he was happy—that she would try to come to visit one day, perhaps during the summer, and then meet the bride. To whom she sent love.

It was an ugly dreary wedding. It made Mr. Gibson wince in his soul, but it was quick, soon over. He was able to take it as just necessary, like a disagreeable pill.

Chapter IV

PUL TowNSEND lived, together with his teenage daughter and his elderly mother-in-law, in a low stucco house of some size on a fair piece of land. Beside his driveway lay the driveway pertaining to the cottage. The cottage was built of brick and redwood and upon it vines really did grow. Mr. Gibson's books and papers (although

Still in boxes), and his neat day-bed, were already there in the large square shelf-lined room off the living room, and the lumbering old car that Professor James had bought years ago was already standing in the neat little garage when Mr. Gibson brought his bride home in a taxi. He opened the front door and led her in, making no attempt at the threshold gesture. He sat her down in a bright blue easy chair. She looked as if she were going to die.

But Mr. Gibson had his own ideas of healing and he plunged in, heart and soul. He had wangled a week away from his classes. He proposed to use it to settle. But the cottage had aroused in his own breast some instincts he'd never known about. He also proposed to make a home.

So, during that first hour, he bustled. He poured out his enthusiasms, all going forward. He made her look at color. Did she like the primrose yellow in the drapries? (He thought privately that the clean, fresh colors in this charming sun-drenched room would be health-giving in themselves.) Where would he put his record player? he wondered aloud, forcing her to consider the promise of music. Then he officiated in the kitchen. He was not a bad cook, himself, but he begged her advice. He did all he could to interest and tempt her.

Rosemary could not eat any supper. She was not ready for a future. She was collapsing after an escape from the past. There would be a hiatus. He feared she'd die of it.

So he insisted that she go at once to bed, in the soft-hued bedroom that would be hers alone. When he judged she was settled,, he brought her the medicine. He touched the dry straw of her sad hair. He said, "Rest now." Her head turned weakly.

He spent the evening unpacking books and listening . . . sometimes toptoeing to her door to listen.

The next day she lay abed, unable to move, as good as dead. Only her eyes asked for mercy and patience.

Mr. Gibson had lots of patience. He was undaunted and took pains to make some very silly puns each time he brought her a snack to eat. He hooked up the record player and let music penetrate the whole little house. He believed in humor and in beauty and in color and in music and he mined the deepest faiths he had . . . for he knew he could heal her.

On the second morning, he went in to remove her breakfast tray and saw that she was lying against the

pillow with her face turned to the window. Between the dainty white margins of the curtains there was visible a patch of ground planted with roses. On her face, for the first time in his knowledge of her, lay a look of peace.

"I used to love to sit on the ground with my hands in the dirt," she said to him. "There is something about earth on your hands . . ."

"Yes, there is. And something about light. And something about running water, too. Don't you think so?"

"Yes," she said stirring.

He thought this particular "yes" had a most pK>sitive sound to it. He went softly, however. He took care not to nag at her, not to bother.

On the third day Rosemary got up and dressed in a cotton frock. She began to make a brave effort to eat, as if she owed this to him. In the evening, he built a fire (for there is something about a fire, too) and he read to her. He read some poetry. It gave him such pleasure to realize that she was going to be the best pupil he had ever had. She listened so intently. It was lively to listen so. It was a spark of life which he would fan.

Once she said to him, during that evening, with a look of pain, "You are so sane." It made him wince to understand how eight years of her life had been spent alone with that which could not have been called sane. No wonder, he said to himself. No wonder it has nearly killed her.

Now his week off began to go leaping by. She helped dust some books. She couldn't, of course, dust many. Mr. Gibson had to go back to work on the Monday, so on Friday Mrs. Violette came in.

Mrs. Violette was produced for them by Paul Town-send. She was a cleaning woman; she worked for the Townsends in the afternoons. But she was a young person, very slim and quick, with shining black hair and skin of a soft peach color and a countenance of a smoothness and design that was foreign. At least there was something odd, and not plain American, about her looks—Near Eastern perhaps. One couldn't place her.

Mrs. Violette didn't concern herself with being placed. She was cool and detached, taciturn and competent. One knew that she could keep this little house clean with the back of one of her slim strong buff-colored hands. Mr. Gibson thought she would do admirably. She was not,

thank heaven, some garrulous woe-loving old creature reduced to drudgery by adversities. She was fresh and self-respecting. She would be fine. Rosemary agreed, but wondered if it wouldn't cost too much.

"Until you are perfectly well," he told her, "Mrs. Violette is an economy. Now that's just sensible."

"At least you make it sound sensible," Rosemary said with a touch of life and opinion.

So Mr. Gibson went back to his classes on the Monday, convinced that Rosemary wasn't going to die.

He rode the buses. He wasn't much of a driver, for an automobile was a thing he had known, all his life, how to do without. So he left the ancient car in the garage until such time as Rosemary might wish to use it. She understood it, which was more than he did, and he rode his thirty minutes, brooding and half-smiling to himself over little schemes. For he was possessed by the joy of nurture which is closely akin, if not identical with, the deep joy of creation. He had never known this in his Ufe before. It absolutely absorbed him.

Rosemary was eating well. She was stuffing herself to please him. (Ah, so it did!) When he came home, the little house would be shining from the administrations of Mrs. Violette, and Rosemary would recount to him how many eggs she'd had, how many glasses of milk, what toast. . . . And he'd say she'd be fat as a pig pretty soon and feel a sting behind his eyes.

One afternoon he came walking home, the two blocks from the bus stop, to see her sitting on the ground at the far side of the house, near the roses. He altered his course and stepped softly toward her on the grass. She looked up and her face was dirty where she had swipetl an earthy hand across her nose. She was patting and combing the earth around one rose bush with hef bare fingers.