A dram of poison (9 page)

"Yet?" he said shrewdly.

His sister drew a sigh from her shoesoles. "Ken, I am sorry to say so, but you were so foolish . . ."

"Was I? But what I wanted to do . . ." he organized his thought painfully (he cast out the phrase "in the first place") "was to make her well," he finished.

"So you have, I'm sure," said Ethel, with kind eyes. "But did you never look ahead to afterward? Didn't you realize that Rosemary, well, would not be the same girl?"

"I know."

"She is young. At least, comparatively . . ."

"I know. I knew that."

"When she was so ill," said Ethel, "she felt old. But she is not old. Nor does she feel old any more."

Mr. Gibson resented the kindergarten simplicity of this. "I know," he repeated.

"But the foolish thing, my poor Ken . . . was to bring her here—next door to such a man. A man who even shares a hobby with her! You have practically arranged for this to happen, you know."

Mr. Gibson couldn't assimilate his new thoughts. Thoughts like this had come nowhere near his mind before. Rosemary and Paul! He said, "Then they . . . they .?" "They've been friendly. Now, Ken, Rosemary is a good girl and devoted to you. But she is younger . . ." ( I know, screamed Mr. Gibson inside his head.) "And he is just the right age for her and a most attractive man. I think I could have prophesied," Ethel said sadly.

Mr. Gibson sat still and contemplated folly. Folly to rent this little house? He could never have prophesied. Ideas like this had not entered his mind.

"Like all handsome men," Ethel went on, "he is a little bit spoiled, I suppose. Careless. He wouldn't have the self-discipline not to be charming. He can't help exuding that physical magnetism. Poor Rosemary. You mustn't blame her, either. There is no blame. She'd have no way of knowing how she would be drawn. The body dictates. These things are beyond one's control really. My dear, you ought to move away at once."

But Mr. Gibson contemplated his crime. He had cheated her after all. He had given lip-service to his foreboding of this. (Yes, he had prophesied! Now he remembered . . . although too easily, selfishly, and in such foolish delight, he had forgotten all about it.) Of course, he could not blame Rosemary. "I don't blame her," he said aloud. "There is no such thing as blame," said Ethel gently. "Once you understand. She simply could not have helped herself."

"She must be . . ." He could imagine Rosemary's pain. "But does Paul . . ."

"Frankly," said Ethel, as if she had been being anything else, "I don't know how much he is attracted to Rosemary. She's not beautiful, of course, but very nice-looking and quite a lady. She is also so near. Propinquity is such a force."

Rather drearily Mr. Gibson supposed to himself that it was. He had no doubt that Paul was attracted to her.

"From his point of view," said Ethel looking shrewd, "there will be, as I say, the difficulty about the daughter. Oh, I've seen Jeanie watching Rosemary."

So had Mr. Gibson, now that he thought of it. Jeanie was s(5 quiet, sat so still in a room, watching everyone.

"There's the old lady, too," Ethel went on. "Paul's in no position to dash gaily into . . . well, let's call it romance. . . . Move away. Ken. Rosemary is essentially loyal. It may not be too late."

"Yes, it is," said he. He had remembered something. He had been puzzled at the time. Rosemary, standing in the living room, saying with such brooding fervor ". . . never known it was possible to have so good a time. . . ." And the occasion—had it not been the first evening she and Paul Townsend had ever spent in each other's company? Wisps, he supposed, of attraction spinning between them, even then. Oh, how inevitable it had been! He saw himself—old—and now lame. '

"If you want to keep her," Ethel said, "I know you are very fond of her. And Rosemary is deeply . . "

"I'm fond of her," he said grimly, cutting ofT the detestable word "grateful" before it could offend his ears once more. "But I have no intention of . . . how shall I put it? . . . collecting for services rendered."

"You are very wise," said Ethel.

"Especially," he said rather primly, "since we discussed the possibility of divorce before the wedding."

"Ah then . . ." Ethel sighed and her face brightened. "I'm very glad. Then she knows she can be free if that seems best? Well . . . this puts a different light on the matter. You and I could make do," she added thoughtfully.

"Yes," he said.

"It's not a bad life. We'd have our work. We'd be rather cozy, out of the fray. One should plan one's old age. Ken. And neither of us with chick nor child. Perhaps we ought to stick together."

"Perhaps," he agreed.

"Not here, of course."

"No."

"If Rosemary and Paul Townsend were to marry . . ."

"No," he said conquering the shudder that threatened to destroy his poise completely, "certainly not here."

"I wouldn't be precipitous, however," Ethel warned. ' ' If Paul is not . . . That is, if the thing's one-sided. Rosemary might need us."

"She needs to be rid of her obligations," he said harshly. Or how can she know surely . . . ?"

"You are so right," said Ethel warmly. "And when you |are generous and Rosemary is honorable, as I'm sure she is, why, there's no problem."

(He knew there was a little problem all his own. But he'd take care of that.)

"She'll come to you, one day," said Ethel, "when she finds the courage. I can't tell you how relieved I am, old dear, to know that you went into this with your eyes open. I've been a little bit afraid for you. A late-blooming romance can be so devastating to a born bachelor. Now then, can you sleep a little?"

"I think so," lied Mr. Gibson valiantly.

He lay on the top of his bed. He couldn't bear to imagine, from Rosemary's point of view, her dilemma. He tried to contemplate his old age.

But on another level, his plan beat in his mind. First find out what troubles Rosemary. Then, see to it that it troubles her no more.

What is love? he thought at last with a sick descending and a thud of certainty. What is hers for me? Not my physical magnetism, heaven knows. A lame old crock. A limping horror. The fact is, I have her love, as much as I am going to get. She's fond of me. But my love for her must set her free.

He lay there half an hour or more before he remembered, with a tiny crash of dismay in his brain, that Paul Townsend was a practicing Catholic, and Mr. Gibson was not so sure that divorce would be enough.

Chapter XI

THREE DAYS WENT BY. Roscmary did not come to him. She had recovered herself. She was just the same.

He did not press her to come, or to tell him anything. He began to be afraid that she never would.

Next door, Paul Townsend worked in his garden, carelessly healthy and happy and strong and visible. Old Mrs. Pyne sat on the porch. Young Jeanie flitted in and out. The cottage ran on, exempt from life and change, in that spurious harmony.

Mr. Gibson spent much time alone with a book open. He contemplated his innocence.

Ethel was right. He did not know one-tenth of what went on. He was ignorant in most fields. Modem psychological theories were to him just theories, to play games with. He'd believed in the poetry. Honor. Courage. Sacrifice. Old-fashioned words. Labels, for nothing? Oh, long ago, he had hidden himself in books, in words, but not the harsh words of fact. Poetry! Why? Because he was too thin-skinned and not brave enough to bear realities. He had not faced facts. He did not even know what they were. He must lean on Ethel, ufi'til he learned more.

He had been strangely innocent, now he saw. . . . Socially innocent. .He had derived a good deal of innocent pleasure from the fact that students and teachers spoke to him on the campus paths, or in a corridor, or sometimes even on a street of the town. A nod, a greeting, a murmur of his name, had secured to him his identity. (I am not lost in eternity. I am Mr. Gibson of the English Department and there are those who know it.)

But he had had enough of people in the course of a day. His captive audiences, his classes, had permitted him the exercise of his voice. Then there were office hours during which he sometimes talked to students with kindness, with optimism for them, and only the most meager precautions against their guile and their flattery and their showing off had been enough. So he had felt a fullness in his days, and a shy trust in the near little world; and his privacy, his solitude, had seemed natural and pleasant and not limited. Actually he had lived a most narrow, a most sheltered, a most innocent life. He knew very little about "reality."

This must be how he had come to do, at the age of fifty-five, so stupid, so wicked, so foolish a thing. He had married a sick defenseless dependent trusting Rosemary. On the ridiculous premise that it would be an "arrangement." He now looked back upon the joyful early days with pity for his own blithe ignorance. The facts of flesh. The facts of propinquity. He had ignored all facts in a cloud of

x)mantic nonsense. Yes, the romantic sentimental silly lotion that he would be a healer! What ego! Then, worse, low could he have thought, ever, for one moment, that iiis quixotic marriage could turn into a love match? That lad been impossible from the beginning, and set forth in plain arithmetic. Thirty-two from fifty-five leaves twenty-three and ever would.

He was her father . . . emotionally. He was help, kindness, protection, and she loved him for all this, as he knew. What frightened him now was the possibility that Rosemary might go on with her bargain, until he was ancient, and never tell even herself how she wished that he would die. Rosemary might undertake to endure. She had endured eight years with the old professor.

She would not want to hurt him. Why, she had felt almost distracted with grief there in the hospital when she had blamed herself for so trivial a thing as his broken bones.

She would neither hurt him nor break her obligations. She would freeze in loyalty and cheat herself. It was possible she did not know (or let herself know) why she had gone so naturally into Paul's arms.

The more he thought about Paul and his virtues, which were many, the more Mr. Gibson felt sure that Ethel was right. Rosemary had fallen, or was going to fall, in love with him, who could not possibly represent her father, but was of her own generation, virile, charming, good and kind. She could not help it.

He perceived that Rosemary had better never know a thing about his foolishness, for what would be the good if she knew? Pity did not interest Mr. Gibson in the least. He wanted none of it. So he banished his love, exiled it forever from his heart. He would think no more about that.

He retreated deliberately. He seemed to absorb himself in reading and writing. He tried not to notice . . . which might help him not to care . . . where Rosemary was or what she was doing. If he felt depressed, he told himself this was nobody's fault but his own and it would pass.

One day he found a stanza:

The gentle word, the generous intent

The decent things that men can do or say

All these to gladdep her I freely spent

But could not touch her when she turned away.

He shut up the bcK>k. Catullus was also a fool. That was the only meaning of it. An4 a whiner, too. Mr. Gibson resolved to be no whiner. He read no more poetry.

His depression did not pass. It deepened. Night and day he lived with it and forgot how it felt to be without it. He began to assume that this was what one got used to, as one grew old.

But a change was coming. The day was coming upon which the women were going, as Mr. Gibson had once put it, into trade. They were going on the same morning, and Mr. Gibson, in his misery, did not bewail the coincidence, for he no longer yearned to be alone with Rosemary.

Ethel, accomplished secretary that she was, had gotten herself a plum of a job that let her off at four in the afternoons. This, she explained with satisfaction, would permit her to be the cook at dinner time.

Rosemary's hours were a little longer. She was going to assist the proprietor of a small dress shop, helping with the stock at first and looking forward to becoming a saleslady. It was an excellent beginning.

In further coincidence, the «me day would see the last of Mrs. Violette. Mr. Gibson was going to be alone.

On the eve of this day, the three of them sat in the living room according to habit. Music was playing low from the radio for a cultural background. Rosemary was basting white collar and cuffs upon a navy-blue dress against tomorrow. Ethel was knitting, a thing she did with uncanny skill. (Hours and hours she had sat knitting before her radio, listening to music, to political speeches, to educational programs. She preferred a radio to a record player. She'd never had a record player.)Mr. Gibson was turning the pages of a book sometimes two at a time. His face was calm and benign. The scene was domestic and harmonious, but his sense of it was not ... for this was the end of his experiment. And now all fell to dust. Rosemary was not only well, she was about to go forth and earn. She needed nothing he could give her, but much that he could not. So now he would let her go ... he agreed in his heart . . . the sooner the better.

Imagination had painted his future before him. He could see himself and his sister Ethel, mutually helpful and devoted, in some smallish apartment near the college, at work by day until they faltered, and every evening

ithel knitting, the radio on. He said to himself that he :ould make-do. He had done with much less than a demoted sister at his side. He really did not know why he should feel so disheartened, so desperately unhappy about

"It all ought to work out very nicely," said Ethel, "although I do dread the bus ride. To be at the mercy of those buses, thirty minutes each way. A waste, really. Mightn't it be wise to move a little nearer in to town?"

Rosemary's hands and head jerked. "Move?" she murmured.

"After all," said Ethel, "this is pleasant of course, but when you are working, Rosemary, you won't have the daylight hours . . . Did you prick your finger, dear?"

Rosemary said quietly, "No, Ethel. I did not."

"Ah . . . well." Ethel smiled indulgently. "We ought to think of Ken, too. Will it be wise for him to ride the buses in the fall—with that leg?"