A dram of poison (7 page)

"Ethel has told me so much about you," said his wife. "How you always have helped people—"

"Oh, now . . ." he sputtered. He disliked this kind of pious judgment. Like everybody, he had only and ever tried to be comfortable.

"Just the same," said Rosemary resolutely, "Ethel and I are going to take care of you, for a change."

(Mr. Gibson didn't like the sound of this, one bit. But, he thought, perhaps she needed to get rid of the burden of gratitude and if this was her way, he would have to bear it.) So he told her, willing his eyes to twinkle, that he fancied this would be delightful.

After she had gone he gave the back of his head to his curious neighbor, and mused on this meeting. Rosemary's vigor and resolution, he perceived, was a strain upon her. She was pressing herself to be something she had never been. But perhaps now needed to be? Well, if she needed to feel useful to him and this was her way, why, he must acquire the grace to receive.

He would just have to shuck off his §ense of dismay, the illogical notion that he had been receiving, formerly, and now lost something precious. If Rosemary saw duty, why, he should understand this. He had seen duty and enjoyed the doing of it, often enough. He must oblierate this baseless feeling that something . . . some hidden thing ... was very wrong within Rosemary. After all, he mused in sad whimsicality', if man cannot live by bread alone, neither can woman be satisfied by cream and strawberries.

He tried to keep from his old habit of quoting in his mind. Too many poems were about love. Maybe all of them. . . .

Mr. Gibson had a bit of a shock one day, when he discovered that some badly smashed bones in his thigh had grown back together somewhat awkwardly. Unless he wished to go through a series of attempts at bone-breaking and repairing that would be expensive (and no results guaranteed) he would be lame.

He said, to Ethel, to Rosemary, this was not important. It did not really matter if he limped a little.

But when he tried to walk, when he realized how he must limp, henceforth ... it mattered some.

At last he went home. Ethel came to fetch him in a taxi. Rosemary kept the hearth: she met him at the cottage door. Still on crutches, Mr. Gibson swung himself into the living room, eager for the sense of home upon his heart.

It did not come. The colors looked a bit on the cute side. The furniture was obviously "furnished" furniture. What he remembered so fondly must have been totally

subjective. Surely there were also subtle displacements. Chairs stood at other angles. He sat down, feeling pain.

Jeanie Townsend came to the door bearing flowers and greetings, and everyone had to pretend that the little house was not already bestrewn to capacity with flowers. But the child was welcome. She helped, with her presence and her good manners, this moment to go over all their heads and pass.

Then, her father ambled in after her, wearing his leisure clothes. The white T-shirt tight to his fine muscular torso set off the deep tan of his arms and neck. After the hospital ward, he was almost offiensively healthy and powerful.

"Dam shame," said he, as he had already said twice before in the hospital, "a thing like this has to happen. Guess we never know, do we? Oh thanks, Rosie."

Rosemary was serving tea with trembling hands.

"I guess you'll be well taken care of, like me," grinned Paul, "by a regular flock of females." His big brown hands were startling upon a frail cup and saucer.

"Waited on hand and foot," said Mr. Gibson, accepting with his pale claw a slab of pound cake from Ethel. (She had always considered this a great delicacy, but Mr. Gibson rather enjoyed, although of course it wasn't wise, some frosting on a cake.)

"That reminds me," said Ethel, "speaking of waiting on . . . About Mrs. Violette, Ken. She isn't worth what she is costing."

"If both of you are going into trade," said Mr. Gibson mildly, "who is going to wait on me, hand-and-foot, then, pray tell?"

"But we aren't going yet," said Rosemary quickly. "Not imtil you are perfectly well again." She was sitting on the edge of a chair and her attitude was like that of a new servant in a new situation, too anxious to find her place, and to please. He longed to say to her, "Sit back, Rosemary. This is your house."

Ethel was speaking. "Even so, when we do go off to work, Ken ... I don't like the idea of a foreigner left to her own devices. They all need supervision. They have little extravagances, you know. Things disappear from the icebox." Her somewhat craggy face was rather amused by human frailty.

Jeanie said, "We've had Mrs. Violette for more than a year. She keeps everything so clean . . ,"

"Ah," said Ethel, "but there's only you, dear. Your poor grandmother—whereas, here . . . why, there is nothing to keeping a house like this. I've kept my apartment and held a job for years. And with two of us to share off . . . both grown and able-bodied. Be a cinch." Paul said, "Rosie's fine, now."

Jeanie's eyes glistened. "I like Mrs. Violette," she said. "A waste," said Ethel. "I prefer doing for myself." Mr. Gibson, munching pound cake, knew with a pang that it would be impossible for him even to ask his sister Ethel how long she proposed to live in his house. After she had come so promptly, so generously, giving up all she had been doing for his and Rosemary's sake? He could not ever suggest that she had better go. Mrs. Violette would go, instead.

So the chairs would stand at angles that subtly annoyed him. The menu would include pound cake and certain other dishes. Rosemary wouldn't be mistress of her own house, not quite. Ethel would sleep in the second bed in Rosemary's room.

He was ashamed. He wrenched at his thoughts. How mean he was! How petty, selfish! (What a fool he was, too!) Thirty-two from fifty-five leaves twenty-three, and no matter how many times he tried the arithmetic, he never got a better answer.) He had his place, his own bed he had made, cozy among his books.

Ingrate! Here in this pleasant cottage, with two devoted women, both anxious to "take care" of him, why could he not count his blessings and give over, forever . . . wipe out and forget a foolish notion that he, Kenneth Gibson, was destined to love a woman and be loved, on any but the present terms? Which were fine ... he shouted at himself inside his head. Admirable! His days would be sunny with kindness and good will and mutual gratitude.

Paul Townsend got up and stretched. He couldn't seem to help exuding excess health. He said he had to go, he'd left off in the middle of trimming his ivy. "And by the way, Rosie," he said with his warm smile, "if you really want some cuttings there are going to be millions of them." Rosemary said, "Thanks so much, Paul, but I don't suppose I'll have the time . . ."

"Of course you'll have the time!" cried Mr. Gibson, shocked. "Don't let me be in the way ..."

She only smiled and Paul said he'd save a few dozen in water anyhow, and Jeanie, who had been seen but not heard most of this time, as she got up to go, said sweetly, "I'm awfully glad you are home again, Mr. Gibson."

By the tail of his eye, Mr. Gibson perceived on Ethel's face a look he knew very well. It was the look she wore when she was not going to say what she was thinking. This was fleetingly disturbing. In just that moment, Mr. Gibson felt quite out of touch.

"Forgot," said Paul in the doorway. "Mama sends regards and all that. Say, why don't you hob—come on over and sit with her sometimes. Gibson? She'd love it."

"I may do so, some day," said Mr. Gibson as cordially as he could, and Rosemary let the Townsends out.

"They have been so nice," she said returning. "More tea, Kenneth?"

"No, thank you." Mr. Gibson dug about in his head for a topic to mention aloud. "Jeanie is a quiet one, isn't she? Nice child."

"I don't suppose she's especially quiet with her contemporaries," Ethel said. "Although she certainly does sit like a cat watching the mouse. . . . Deeply attached to her father. Unconsciously, of course, she's scared to death he might marry again."

"Why do you say that?" inquired Mr. Gibson.

"She's bound to be," said Ethel. "And of course, he will. That's inevitable. Man in his prime and a very attractive man to women, or so I imagine. And well off, too. I doubt if he can help himself. Some blonde will catch him." Ethel took up the last piece of pound cake. "I presume he is actually only waiting for the old lady to die. Although until he gets Jeanie launched off to school or into a romance of her own, he may sense there would be trouble from that quarter."

"Trouble?" said Rosemary politely.

"The inevitable jealousy," said Ethel. "A teenager, especially, can be so bitter against a step-parent."

"I don't know Jeanie very well," murmured Rosemary rather unhappily.

"They don't intend to be known, these teen-agers," Ethel said. "They like to think they are pretty deep." She hooted.

They weren't too deep for her, the quality of its tone implied.

Mr. Gibson had known quantities of young people as they filtered through his classrooms. But the relationship, there, he reminded himself, was an arbitrary thing. They were supposed to respect him, on the surface at least. He had had many bright chattering sessions listening to the tumble of their inquiring thoughts. They'd show off to teacher. He would be the last to know them in a private or social capacity. He said rebelliously, nevertheless, "They feel deep."

"Don't we all?" said Ethel with one of her wise glances. "Shall I tell you whom I am sorry for?" she continued. "That's old Mrs. Pyne, poor soul."

"I don't feel as if I know her well enough to be sorry or otherwise," continued Mr. Gibson, for tliis was at least talk.

"Isn't it obvious?" said Ethel. "That to be old and ill and dependent upon, of all things, a son-in-law, is a pretty dismal fate? I see them wheel her out on that front porch of theirs every day and there she sits in the sun. Poor old thing. She must know, whether she lets herself admit it or not, that she is a nuisance. She must know it'll be a relief to all concerned when she dies. If ever I get old and helpless," said Ethel forcefully, "me for an institution. Remember that."

"I'll make a note of it," said Mr. Gibson with a touch of asperity. But he was doing anguished sums in his head. Take twenty years. Rosemary would be fifty-two, not many years older than Ethel was right now, and no one could be more the picture of strength than Ethel. But then he, Kenneth Gibson, would be seventy-five . . . ancient, decrepit, possibly ill . . . possibly—oh, Lord forbid!—another Professor James. Then would Rosemary be waiting for him to die?

He said wearily, "I'm afraid I had better lie down for 2l while. I'm sorry."

They sprang to assist him to his own place, where, on his own couch, among his books—his long beloveds—he tried to rest and remember without pain the bleak, the stricken pity on Rosemary's face.

One of his legs simply was not the same length as the other one. He could never conquer that little lurch in his body. He was lame. Old. Done for. So he was.

Chapter IX

LIFE IN THE COTTAGE fell quickly into a pattern. Some weeks later Mr. Gibson mused upon this. One should, he perceived, kick like a steer (if steers really do kick) in the first hour of any regime, because habit is so easily powerful and it is so soon too late.

Surely his sister Ethel had not meant to dominate. She was too fair and reasonable a person. But she had long been used to independence, to making decisions. He supposed he had been too physically weak (and too emotionally preoccupied) to notice what was happening. Of course Rosemary did not seem to think it her place to assert herself, for she was so abysmally grateful. Grateful to him. Grateful to Ethel.

However it had come about, the hours they kept were Ethel's hours. They ate on an early schedule, which made the mornings too short and too full of petty detail. Afternoons were consecrated to naps and too soon thereafter to the preparation of their early dinner. The menus reflected Ethel's preferences if only because she had them and both the Gibsons were too amiable and too flexible.

Evenings they spent a trois. These were long and dedicated to music, Ethel's choice—all severely classical, and sometimes listened to in learned solemnity. Or they conversed, about the music, Ethel leading. Ethel had many opinions and it was difficult not to listen and agree. Mr. Gibson hated arguments.

Then, Ethel liked a game of chess. Rosemary did not play. Once Mr. Gibson tried reading aloud for half an hour, but when Ethel capped the reading with a sharp and knowledgeable sketch of Mr. Browning as a Victorian lady's man, while he couldn't dispute the truth of all she said it yet made such a ridiculous picture in Mr. Gibson's mind that he put the book back upon the shelf with apologies to an old friend..

In fact he now lived with his sister Ethel.

Ethel in her long years in New York had got out of the habit of expecting social gatherings. Ethel reveled in being

one of three. For her, this was a crowd. They had few callers. Paul Townsend, or Jeanie, -dropped in once and again. Their visits were not especially stimulating. Paul was casual. Jeanie was all manners.

Mr. Gibson's old acquaintances did not drop in. He seemed divorced from the college completely, so far out in this little house, and all the work going on without him.

So he lived with Ethel, and Rosemary was there in the same house. For instance, it was, quite properly, his sister, Ethel, and not the comparatively new, the stranger female, who attended to what nursing Mr. Gibson needed, for she, of course, was better able to cope with certain physical indecencies. . . .

Mr. Gibson had begun to feel that he was in a soft but inescapable trap. He was unable to fight out of it. He didn't know that he ought to try. Rosemary deferred to Ethel in all things. Rosemary did not seem to want to be alone with him. He sometimes wondered whether anything was amiss with Rosemary. Oh, she was well and busy, willing and agreeable . . . but he and she seemed locked away from communication and he, covering his seething doubts, wore the same armor of perfect courtesy.

Mr. Gibson sat in the sunny living room one morning, which was where he tended to sit. He did not often sit out of doors, where Mrs. Pyne was to be seen a lonely figure in her wheel chair on the Townsends' porch. He had found he did not enjoy it. Perhaps the light was too cruel, and fell too harshly from the sky. Perhaps he had become used to a more cloistered effect and in physical weakness preferred it. At any rate, he sat indoors and thought to himself, this morning, that he had never met anything so grueling, so nearly maddening, as this adult atmosphere of mutual forebearance and perfect meaningless harmony.