Chapter XIX

MR. GIBSON sat holding his wife in his lap, and this was bitter-sweet. “Rosemary,” he said softly in a moment, almost whispering, “why did you say you hadn’t run the needle into your finger … when you had?”

“Why do I think I said it?” But her face softened and she discarded the bitterness. “I just didn’t care to have Ethel know …” Her breath was on his forehead.

“Know what, mouse?”

“How much,” said Rosemary. She drew a little away to look down into his eyes. “I loved our cottage,” she said. “My—sentiments. She hasn’t any sympathy with sentiment. I suppose it was sentimental, but I didn’t want to go away.”

Mr. Gibson squeezed his own eyes shut.

“But you went away, Kenneth. Ever since the accident,” she whispered into his hair. “What did Ethel say to you?” He hid his face against where her heart was beating. “I thought maybe you agreed,” she said, “with her that I tried to be rid of my bargain. You would have been kind to me, even so. I couldn’t tell.”

“That was an accident,” he murmured. “Mouse, I told you …”

“I told you things … you didn’t seem to believe,” she said. “She is your sister, you do respect her. I thought you believed her, and you said you couldn’t remember—I was afraid.… She had me so confused.”

Paul said loudly, “Turn right, here. That’s it. The third driveway.” Paul, who was single-minded now. Paul, who said “Don’t worry” when everyone did. But who urged them to worry when they seemed not to. Paul—who was so young—under whose genial good manners lurked a rather sulky boy.

“Ethel will be there now, I guess,” said Rosemary, sucking in breath.

She moved, increasing the distance between them. The car stopped. Mr. Gibson opened his eyes. He saw the little cottage’s roof on his left with its vines. It looked like home. But home was not for him … not any more. He had been confused and in hopeless confusion, he sadly surmised, he had doomed himself.

He limped badly, getting up on Paul’s front terrace.

Jeanie Townsend, alive and strong, opened the door and cried eagerly, “Oh, did you find it?”

“She’s not the one,” croaked Theo Marsh. “I didn’t think so.”

Paul grabbed her in both his arms. “I was so scared, baby,” he panted. “I thought maybe you’d got on the same bus … I thought maybe you had that poison.”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sakes, Daddy!” Jeanie wiggled indignantly to get away from him. “How dumb do you think I am?”

“How’s Mama?” Paul let her go and rushed past her.

Obviously, there was no poison here.

Jeanie looked at the crew of them … half a dozen suddenly drooping people on the doorstep. “Won’t you come in?” she snapped, the polite child struggling with the angry one.

“Did Lavinia call?” asked Lee Coffey. “Hey, Jeanie?” He had exactly the same air with the young girl as he had with the elders.

“Somebody called. Was that Lavinia? We knew already. It was on the radio.” Jeanie tossed her cropped head. She had on a red skirt and white blouse and a little red latticework on her bare feet for shoes. “When I went down to the mailbox—oh, a long time ago—I heard it on Miss Gibson’s radio. So I turned on ours.” She looked very haughty as if of course she would know what was going on in the world.

Mr. Gibson looked at Rosemary and she at him. “Then Ethel knows,” he murmured. He could not see an inch into the future. Rosemary moved until their shoulders touched.

“Well, I guess she mightn’t know it was you,” said Jeanie, backing inward, “because it didn’t give your name on the radio. Grandma guessed that part of it.”

“And you didn’t run over and tell this Ethel or hash it out with her, neighborly? Hey?” asked the bus driver curiously.

“No,” said Jeanie. She looked a little troubled about this but she didn’t rationalize an excuse. Obviously she hadn’t felt like hashing things out with Ethel Gibson. “Aren’t you all coming in?”

They all came in.

Paul was in the living room and down on his knees beside old Mrs. Pyne’s chair, and his handsome head was bowed. It was a strange position for him … theatrical, corny.

Mrs. Pyne was saying, as to a child, “But Paul, dear, you needn’t have had a moment’s worry about Jeanie or me …”

Paul said, “You’ll never know …” He sounded like a big ham.

Jeanie’s eyes flashed. “What makes you think I’d eat any old food I found lying around or feed it to Grandma? Don’t you think I know better? Honestly, Daddy!”

But Paul knelt there.

Now Mrs. Pyne smile around at them all, and her smile plucked out Mr. Gibson. “I’m so glad to see you,” said the old lady. “I’ve been praying for you constantly since last I saw you.”

Mr. Gibson moved toward her and took her frail dry hand. It had strength in it. He wanted to thank her for her prayers, but it seemed awkward, like applauding in church. She was a perfect stranger to him, anyhow, now that he saw her as the core of this house.

“Say, excuse me,” said Theo Marsh, in a businesslike way, “are you interested in modeling?” Mrs. Pyne looked astonished.

“My name is Helen Pyne,” said the old lady with spunk in her voice. “Who are you, sir?”

“Theodore Marsh, a humble painter.” This Theo was part clown. He made a leg. “Always looking for good faces.”

“Humble, hey?” murmured the bus driver comically. “I’m Lee Coffey. I drive the bus.”

“I’m Virginia Severson. I was a passenger.”

“I am Mrs. Walter Boatright,” said that lady, as if this sufficed. She stood, like the speaker of the evening, thoughtfully organizing her notes in her mind.

But it was Rosemary who burst out to Theo Marsh … “If it wasn’t Jeanie you saw … then we don’t know …”

“It wasn’t Jeanie,” said the artist. He had cocked his head as if to see Mrs. Pyne upside down. Mr. Gibson suffered an enlargement. He, too, saw the old lady’s face, the sweetness around the eyes, the firmness of her dainty chin. Mrs. Pyne was not only more beautiful, she was even prettier than Jeanie.

“Then who? Then who?” Rosemary implored.

“I have great confidence in the police department,” said Mrs. Boatright decisively, and took a throne. Rosemary stared at her and ran for the telephone.

Paul came out of his trance or prayer or whatever it was. “How did you know so much about what was going on?” he asked his mother-in-law adoringly.

“I knew it was bad, of course,” the old lady said soberly, “when I heard Rosemary call. When Jean turned on the radio, I knew at once who had left the bottle on the bus. I had just seen such trouble in his face, you know. Although there was nothing I could do.”

“Mrs. Pyne,” said Mr. Gibson impulsively, “what you said made it impossible. I don’t think I would have done it. But, of course, by then the trouble was different. I had already lost the poison.”

“And haven’t found it,” she said sadly.

“No.” He met her eyes. He accepted his guilt and her mercy.

“We must all pray,” said Mrs. Pyne.

“Trouble?” said the bus driver. His eyes slewed around to Virginia. “Trouble and logic … how do they jibe? I don’t think we got to the bot—”

Virginia seemed to shush him.

Rosemary wailed on the phone, “Nothing? Nothing at all?” She hung it up. She walked back toward them. “Nothing. No news of it at all,” she said and twisted her hands.

“No news is good news,” said Paul.

But they all looked around at each other.

“A dead end, hey?” said the bus driver. “Ring around a rosy and no place to go from here.” Fumes of energy boiled out of him and curled back with no place to go.

“Think!” said Virginia fiercely. “I’m trying to think. Think, Mrs. Boatright.” The little nurse shut her eyes.

Mrs. Boatright shut her eyes but her lips moved. Mr. Gibson realized that Mrs. Walter Boatright was importuning a superior in heaven, on his account.

But they had come to an end. There was no place else to go.

He had rocked to his own feet now. It was time he took over. He said vigorously, “You have all done so much. You have done wonders. You must all go about your business, now, with my grat—my love,” he said loudly. “It’s on God’s knees … I guess, after all.” (Was this the same as doom, he wondered?) “Rosemary and I must go across to Ethel.” This was his duty.

“Yes,” Rosemary agreed somberly.

“Ethel’s hard by here?” said Theo Marsh with a wicked gleam in his eye.

“Theo,” said Mrs. Boatright warningly.

Paul Townsend was himself again, and host in this house. “How about a drink first?” he said cordially. “I think we need one. Don’t worry, Gibson …” He stopped himself cold.

“Wurra, wurra,” said the bus driver. “Each for his own. That’s what makes the mare go.” He took a gloomy bite of his thumbnail.

Paul said, “I guess I dragged you all here for nothing.” He looked boyishly penitent.

“A little drink won’t do me any harm,” said Lee. “Virginia would like one, too.”

Theo Marsh perched like a restless bird on the edge of a table. “Thirsty as the desert in August, myself,” he admitted. “What’s to do now?” He cracked a knuckle.

Mrs. Boatright said, “We don’t seem to have any clear course of procedure.” She assembled her will. “I will call home and have a car sent, to take any of you wherever you wish. But first I would enjoy a rather weak drink, Paul. Thank you. Meantime, we may think of something.” Mrs. Boatright was not accustomed to being beaten by circumstance.

Jeanie said, “I’ll help you tend bar, Dad.” And the bus driver began to tell Mrs. Pyne the saga of their search.

It was curiously like a party, and a party of loosened tongues, at that, well past the polite preliminaries. Mr. Gibson sat beside Rosemary on a sofa and tried to remember that he was a criminal. Somebody, somewhere, could be dead, or now dying, by his hand.

Young Jeanie seemed to have caught on to the wide-open atmosphere. Holding the tray, she said to the Gibsons, “I’m sorry I got so mad, but Dad should have trusted me. My goodness, most of the time he leans on me too much.”

“He’s so fond of you, dear,” said Rosemary, “and of your grandmother, too.”

“He’s absolutely tied to Grandma’s apron strings,” said Jeanie impatiently. “I wish he’d get married.”

“Do you?” said Rosemary sharply.

“Of course, we both do. Don’t we, Grandma?”

“Wish Paul would marry?” Mrs. Pyne sighed. “We’ve not been very successful matchmakers.”

“Look, I’m happy,” said Paul, passing drinks.

Rosemary leaned forward and said deliberately, “But Mrs. Pyne, wouldn’t Jeanie be terribly jealous of a stepmother? Isn’t a teen-age daughter bound to be?”

“Subconsciously?” said Virginia, her clean-cut little mouth forming the word with distaste.

Mr. Gibson felt very queer. He kept his face a blank. He had a conviction that Lee Coffey, Theo Marsh, all of them, could see right through his skin.

“Here comes Ethel, hey?” said Lee. “Oh boy, this Ethel—”

“Jeanie,” said Mrs. Pyne gently, “is truly fond of Paul.”

“Honestly!” burst Jeanie. “How can she think that about me? She doesn’t even know me. And I know the facts of life! I’ve been trying to marry Dad off for four years now. Pretty consciously,” she flared.

“Ethel though,” said the bus driver comfortably, “she knows better. Hey, Rosemary?” He winked.

“I don’t think she knows much about teen-agers,” said Jeanie. “We’re a pretty bright bunch.”

“Quite so,” said Mrs. Boatright. “One should make a practice of listening to young people. Go on, my dear.”

“We’ve even heard of Oedipus,” Jeanie rushed on—flashing Mrs. Boatright a look of fierce response. “We’re not stupid. I ask you, what’s going to happen to Dad when I go off? And I’m going, some day.”

“And I,” said Mrs. Pyne, nodding calmly.

“If he hasn’t got somebody, he’s going to be just lost,” said Jeanie. “He’s an awful comfort-loving man.”

Paul said, “These women … they nag me …” He lifted his glass. His eyes were suddenly inscrutable.

Mr. Gibson sipped his own drink, in automatic imitation. It was cold and tasteless, and then suddenly delicious.

“Well, of course,” said Rosemary wickedly, “Ethel has her own ideas about crippled old ladies, too, Mrs. Pyne.”

Paul looked very angry.

Mrs. Pyne lifted her hand, as if to forestall his anger and she smiled. “Poor Ethel,” she said. “Well, she must live as best she can and think what will comfort her, I suppose. Never married. No children. Such a limited experience of life.”

Mr. Gibson murmured his astonishment. “Ethel? Limited?” He had never thought of this.

“I don’t think she has many connections with real people,” said Mrs. Pyne. “That is to say, individuals. Or how could she judge them in such lumps?”

“She doesn’t look—can’t see,” said Theo Marsh.

“They’re a wild and wonderful lot,” said the bus driver, patting Virginia’s hand, “if you take them one by one. And that’s the way I like them.” Virginia blushed and shushed him.

“Still,” said Mr. Gibson, clearing his throat, “Ethel has had quite a successful business career. She has faced up to facts all her life.” (His tongue felt loose. He was almost enjoying this party.) “Whereas I,” he went on, “am the one who has had the limited existence. A little poetry. Some academic backwaters. Even in the war, I …”

“How can you read poetry and not notice the universe?” said Lee indignantly. “You know who is limited? Fella who reads nothing but the newspaper, watches nothing but his own p’s and q’s, plus TV in the evening, works for nothing but money, buys nothing with the money but a car or a steak, does what he thinks the neighbors do and don’t notice the universe. Actually,” he sank back and slipped his fingers on his glass, “I never met anybody like that, myself.”

“You read about him in the newspaper,” said Theo Marsh.

“What war, Mr. Gibson?” asked Virginia.

“Oh … both wars. I was too old for Korea …”

“Oh yes,” said Rosemary with charming sarcasm. “He has had so little experience. Only two wars, you see. Then there was the depression, the years when he took care of his mother, when he paid for Ethel’s education. And that was weak and drifting of him, wasn’t it? The years he has taught … who counts those? Ethel doesn’t. I don’t see why not,” she added in a low voice. “Or why, when a man has led a useful life for fifty-five years and is kind and generous and good … why Ethel seems to assume he is so naïve and so …”

“Innocent?” supplied Mr. Gibson, his eyes crinkling. (He was having a lovely time.)

“Backwaters?” snapped Theo Marsh. “What d’ya mean? What does she think life is made of? Your name in the metropolitan newspapers? Cafè society?”

“No, no. Facts,” said Mr. Gibson. “Mean-ness. People who run knives in your back. Egos and burglars …”

“Please.” The painter stopped him with a loud groaning. “Why is everything loathsome and unpleasant called a fact? Thought fact was another name for truth. And evil truths may be … but truth does not equal evil. I’ll tell you, you can’t paint a decent picture without the truth in it.”

“Or write a decent poem, either,” said the bus driver, “or teach a decent lesson. Or earn an honest penny. You know, I think he is innocent.” He looked around belligerently.

“I think he’s a dear,” said Virginia warmly.

Mrs. Boatright was nodding judiciously. “Theo,” said she, “I believe the Tuesday Club would listen to you on this subject …”

“For a hundred and fifty lousy bucks?” said Theo. “Bah! Those cheapskates!”

Mr. Gibson tried very hard not to be having so much fun. Here, beside Rosemary, in this clean and comfortable and charming room where the dainty gentlewoman in her wheel chair was theïr true hostess, where all these lively people spoke their minds … No, no—he must remember that he had to face the music.

Sometimes, however, he thought with a boom of pleasure that would not be denied, there is music. That’s the funny thing! This group of people, the way they talked to him, the way they argued with him, contradicted him, tried to buck him up, liked him and worried for him, and fought with him against fate, and gave him of their own faiths … this touched him and made music in his heart. He thought no man had ever had so delightful an experience as he had had this day of his suicide.

But such pleasure was only stolen. He must go. He must face whatever would come, nor would it be music, altogether.