A dram of poison (10 page)

"I hadn't thought . . ." said Rosemary in a rush, and her face came up.

"I should think I could ride on a bus," said Mr. Gibson, "without . . ." His voice caught, because he could see very plainly the red smear of Rosemary's blood on the white of the collar in her hands.

"You did run that needle into your finger, dear," said Ethel chidingly. '.'Just look at the stain. On your business clothes, too . . ."

"It will wash," said Rosemary faintly, and rose; and, walking stiffly, she bore her work toward the kitchen.

Mr. Gibson wondered what it meant. "I suppose," he said, staring at the cold grate and feeling frozen, "she pricked her finger and stained the collar because she doesn't want to go to business tomorrow."

He waited timidly for Ethel to agree.

But Ethel smiled. "I don't think so," she said, "for why should she tell a lie about that?" (Mr. Gibson faced it. Rosemary had lied.) "It happened, of course," said Ethel lowering her voice, "when I spoke of leaving here"

"Leaving—?"

"Leaving him, I imagine," said Ethel, sotto. "How she gives herself away!"

He heard her sigh, but inside himself he was collapsing and shrinking with distaste. Given that nothing is what it seems; even so, he couldn't guess what it really was. In

the old poems, man was captain of his soul, and he, so steeped in them, would never learn. How could he learn? He was old. His heart sank. Mr. Gibson felt solid, felt treason, too—he couldn't help it—and he hated it. He turned his eyes back into the book and did not look up as Rosemary returned.

"Did you use cold water?" Ethel fussed.

"Of course," said Rosemary softly. "It's nothing." She was taking up her needle, as Mr. Gibson could see through his temple somehow out of the side of his averted face. Did Rosemary know why she had run a needle into her flesh? It made him sad to think, Not necessarily.

"Now, Ken, you will be all right tomorrow?" his sister asked fussily. "Mrs. Violette will be in to finish up your shirts, you know, and she could stay and fix your lunch."

"No, no," he said. He didn't want Mrs. Violette. He looked forward to being alone.

"You do feel all right?" said Rosemary timidly anxious. "Nothing's bothering you, Kenneth, is it? You don't look as well as you did, somehow. Do you think so, Ethel?"

"I wonder if I'm not missing my work," he said resettling his shoulders. "I'm used to working . . ."

Rosemary's head bent over her sewing. He wrenched his gaze from her hair.

"You mustn't give me a thought," he said. "In the first place, I have lived alone a matter of nearly half a century, in my day . . . and secondly, the Townsends are right next door, and Paul is around." He despised himself for throwing out Paul's name.

"That's so," said Ethel. "Their new cleaning woman won't be in 'til Friday, and of course Mrs. Violette will be gone. Paul, unless he can shift the load onto Jeanie, is going to be stuck right here with old Mrs. Pyne." She seemed to take a faint malicious satisfaction from this.

"Paul is very good to the old lady," said Mr. Gibson (for jealousy he would not descend to, generous and just he would be). "I think it's extraordinary."

Rosemary looked up with a flashing smile. "I think so too," she said warmly.

Mr. Gibson turned a page, which was ridiculous. He had not even seemed to read it.

"I've wondered," said Ethel with that shrewd little frown of hers. "Are you sure that this property isn't Mrs. Pyne' s property? I suppose Paul is her heir."

Rosemary said, smiling, "Sometimes you sound terribly cynical, Ethel."

"Not at all. I am only a realist," said Ethel smugly. "At least I like to think I can face a fact."

"But can't a man be simply good and kind?" Rosemary inquired. "Really?'-'

Mr. Gibson's heart seemed to swoon. "And also good-looking?" said Ethel with a grin. "I suppose it's possible. Perhaps he is as good as he is beautiful." She cocked her head and counted stitches.

"But Paul has a prosperous business, hasn't he, Kenneth?" insisted Rosemary. "He makes money."

"He is a chemical engineer," said Mr. Gibson. "Yes . . ," (All of a sudden he saw Paul's laboratory like a vision before him and a row of bottles in a cupboard. The vision flickered and went away.)

"So he doesn't need Mrs. Pyne's money—if she has any," said Rosemary. "I just don't think he's mercenary." "Nor do I," said Mr. Gibson, valiantly. Ethel said, "Of course he isn't, as far as he knows. Lots of people never admit the most basic facts. However, almost everyone will do an awful lot for material advantage. . '. . Oh, we can kid ourselves, can't we, that it's for some fancy other reason. But whether you eat, whether you're comfortable, whether you feel secure, counts. Indeed it does. And all the time."

"I suppose it does," said Rosemary flushing. She bent over her handiwork. She seemed defeated.

Mr. Gibson found himself fearing what might be in her mind. Rosemary had come to him for material comfort, for security. . . Oh, she could not have helped herself— but she knew this now. And so did he. He had urged it. He had meant it to be so.

"Naturally it counts," he said aloud gently. "Quite naturally so. . . ." He turned a page.

Ethel said with a little snort, "What do you think a baby yells for? He yells to be warm and fed, and that is all. Let me turn to the weather. I wonder if it will be hot tomorrow."

Mr. Gibson thought to himself. To be warm. To be fed, for me to be comfortable. ... Is that what's in the iceberg? All of our iceber!B:s? Do none of us know why we do anything? Because we won't admit that we are animals? Ah, but what are we here for, then? Are we

compelled, always, and every time? In all this fluid busyness, has each of us his private doom?

He disliked the idea. He tried to face it. Ethel faced it. She was strong enough. He wouldn't hide from a fact either . . . not any more. Was it this fact that depressed him so? He seized upon it.

On the air they were talking about a bomb test, with pious hope that the terrible power would never be unleashed against fellow men.

Ethel listened and Ethel said, "Of course they'll unleash it."

"The bomb?" Rosemary was startled.

"Do you think they won't?" j

"I . . . hope they won't," said Rosemary with wide | eyes.

Ethel shook her graying head. "Be sure they will."

"How can you . . . ?" Rosemary gasped.

"It's just a question of noticing," said Ethel, "that human beings are what they are. And believe me, a weapon in the hand is as good as thrown. Don't you know—in cold fact—that anything could cause it to fall? Human beings are so primitive . . . essentially. They don't mean to be. You can't call it their fault, but their nature. For which none of us are to blame. But they get angry; once angry, they begin to call the other side a monster. There seems no reason why it is not fine and honorable and brave and good to slaughter a monster. They do not wait and try to understand or to reason differences away. They simply do not. And even if they were to try—human reason is so pitifully new and such a minor factor. . . . People will always act from the blood and the animal residue."

"How do you face a fact like that?" asked Mr. Gibson quietly.

"The bomb falling?" she said, misunderstanding. "As far as I am concerned, I'll stay put and be blown up with the world I know. I don't even want to survive. Don't tell me you do!" She looked as if he could not possibly be so childish, could he?

"No," said Mr. Gibson thoughtfully. "No ... not especially. But then, I am old.''

Doom, he thought. Well, then, we are doomed. He wasn't thinking about the bomb.

"I don't see," said Rosemary to Ethel, "how you have the courage to think the way you do."

"Courage," said Ethel, "is about the only useful trait. The best we can do is hang onto our nerves and try to understand.

What good is it to understand, thought Mr. Gibson, if we are doomed anyhow? "Then all our pretty intellectual toys . . ." he said, seeing the words he had lived by go sliding into limbo.

" 'Toys' is good," said Ethel appreciatively. "Enjoy your poetry while you may. Ken. When or if anyone survives," she shrugged, "be sure there won't be much time for poetry. Now, it hasn't fallen yet," she nodded as if to reassure them, "and I'd like to live out my allotted time just as you would. We have a built-in wish to survive that operates, this side of catastrophe." She smiled. "So let us hope," she said.

"You have no children," said Rosemary in a low voice.

"Neither have you, and let us thank God," said Ethel.

But Mr. Gibson thought, It is true. We are doomed. And the doom is in the iceberg, ' the undersea part of it. None of us have ever known why we do what we do. We only have the illusion of knowing, the illusion of choice. We are really at the mercy of dark things, unknown propulsions. We are blind dupes. That's what Ethel means by reality. Oh yes, and it is true. Mrs. Violette had to break the vase. Paul must marry someone. Rosemary must fall in love with Paul. And I made a fool of myself. But I had to. It wasn't my fault. My choices were all made by the genes I got from my mother. Ethel took more from Pa and so is different . . . but she is clearheaded, she at least can see.

My whole life has been an illusion. Everyone's life is an illusion. We are at the mercy of what's unknown and cannot be known either. One day we will blow it all up, knock the earth off its orbit, possibly, as surely as Rosemary will go to Paul, as I will send her. . . .

He sunk his head upon his breast, Paul, who was a widower, a chemist, a Catholic . . . Paul was doomed, too. Doomed to be happy and make Rosemary happy, for a little while, before the world blew up.

While he, Kenneth Gibson, woulci live with his sister and grow older . . . limp out fifteen or twenty years. Not so!

There was one rebellious act he could think of. Just

I

one. He received a tremendous heartening lift of his spirits. A little spunk—he could escape.

And he could remember the number on the bottle.

He slept a little toward morning. When he woke he knew this was the day. He would be alone.

Chapter XII

THE MORNING was bustlc. Rosemary, neat and excited, J- in the navy frock with the white, went first away.

Mr. Gibson followed her to the door. He was wearing his robe of small-figured silk, and in it, he felt the same small neat and decent man he had ever been. He did not know how white and ill he looked.

"Goodbye," she said. "Oh, please, Kenneth, take care . . . ! You worry me. I almost wish . . ."

"No, no, you must not worry." His eyes devoured her. "Goodbye, Rosemary. You must remember . . . this was what I wanted for you."

"To see me well? she asked, "and able? Is that what you mean?"

He didn't answer. He was looking at her face very carefully, since it would be the last time he would see it. He was so very fond of her. She was his, in a way.

"Is that all?" she said suddenly.

Mr. Gibson tried to remember what he had just said. "By no means," he answered steadily. "I want you to be happy, too." He smiled.

"Yes, well . . . I . . ." Her eyes fled and came back. "What can I do to make you happier?" she cried. "I'm so—I love you, Kenneth. You know that, don't you?"

It was odd that in this last moment they seemed closer, as he recognized her old familiar passion of gratitude. "I know," he told her gently, "dear girl. I am as happy as I can be," he said with reassuring accents.

Rosemary shook herself and jerked away. He watched her, so straight, so lithe, so healthy—so youthful—down the drive.

Paul Townsend was on the porch sniffing the mom-

ing. He waved, but Rosemary didn't see him there. Mr. Gibson was just as glad.

Her loyal nature would doom her to endure.

Ethel went next. "Ken, when you walk to market, pick up a head of lettuce, too? There's a good man."

"I will," he promised.

"And pay Mrs. Violette off . . ."

''Yes."

"And I'll be back, four-ish ..."

''Yes, Ethel. Goodbye, dear. Good luck. You have been--perfectly fine."

"Pish tush," said Ethel. "Of course. Well, I'm off."

Mr. Gibson closed the door.

He went into the living room and sat down. Mrs. Violette was ironing. He would not, of course, kill himself i until she had gone.

He was a fastidious and thoughtful man. (He could not help it.) There would be no mess about this. Nothing distressing for anyone to clean up. Nothing horrible. He . knew where he would go and what he would take. It was quick and surely neat. He would be found lying in full decorum on his bed, in all peace. They would think, for a while, that he slept. The shock would thus be graduated and as gentle as he could make it.

But he must leave a letter. The letter must be just so. It must set everything as free as could be.

His blood felt cold. He must try not to be sentimental. This was a choice he was making, icy and clear. He didn't fear the dying. He tried to look beyond.

He had no insurance to be affected by a suicide. Rosemary would have his few bonds, his bank account. Yes, a letter to that effect, too. She'd be all right. Paul would stand by. (She would be free.) Ethel of course was self-sufficient. Ethel would help Rosemary to understand— what he chose they should understand. There was absolutely nothing to worry about.

Except the bomb which would blow up their world one day, but this he could not help.

Everyone's doom was his own.

Mr. Gibson sat in a dream.

At twelve o'clock he was dressed and ready to go downtown, and Mrs. Violette was finished. So he paid her. "Mr. Gibson, could I have this old string?" she asked him, and showed him what she had fished from the kitchen wastebasket.

"Of course,", he said. "Do you need any more?" "I got a lot of stuff to tie up," she admitted. "We're going to take 'most everything in the back of the truck "

"How about this?" He gave her a ball of mustard-colored twine.

"That's Miss Gibson's." Mrs. Violette's small but ripe-lipped mouth made a hiss of the appellation.

"Well?" he bridled. "Surely I may present you with a bit of string."

Mrs. Violette said, "I don't like to take her stuff. Never mind, anyhow. I got to go to the bank and I can pick some up . . ."

"Take it," he said urgently. "I'd like you to take this."

"Well, then . . ." Mrs. Violette seemed to understand his need. She began to wind twine upon her spread fingers.

"No, take it all," he said. "Please do."

"I don't like to take more than I'll use."

"I know that," he told her. This was, he fancied, a rather silly, very trivial rebellion. He just wanted something to be as it used to be. He wanted to feel—generous. (Or ... for all he knew, he wanted, in some ridiculous revenge, to do his sister Ethel out of the price of a ball of twine.)

Mrs. Violette took the whole ball. "I'm sorry to leave you and Mrs. Gibson," said she.

"I'm sorry if my sister has upset you," he said tiredly

"Me and Joe are going up to the mountains," said Mrs. Violette. He perceived that this was an answer. "And I got to be ready by five o'clock . . ." She stopped speaking and looked at him. He had the strange conviction that she knew what he proposed to do.

"That's all right," he said soothingly.

Mrs. Violette's face lit in a rare smile. "Well, then, goodbye," she said. "They say that means 'God be with you.' "

"Goodbye," said Mr. Gibson rather fondly.

She went out the kitchen door with the ball of twine in her pocket. Now he was all alone.

At 12:10 o'clock he left the cottage and walked . . . doing quite well without his cane, although he lurched when he came down upon the shortened leg and could not help it . . . went two blocks west, crossed the boulevard

there and caught a bus for downtown. Paul Townsend he had left safe at home behind him, working away in his herb garden this morning. So Mr. Gibson knew how to get what he wanted.

He did not see the people on the bus. He did not notice the familiar scenery as the vehicle proceeded on the boulevard, then went threading around residential comers until it came upon a business street and thicker traffic. Mr. Gibson, in a mood both bitter and dangerously sweet, was composing a letter.

There was a temptation to be pathetic, and he must resist it. He must make Rosemary understand the cold choice. He must in no way seem to reproach her ... A difficult letter. What words would do this?

He came out of his absorption in time to get off the bus on a downtown corner. This little city had grown, like all California towns, as a wild weed grows. It had left the college here, and in its own park, close to the town's old center . . . and had sent tentacles romping out into valleys and lowlands on all sides. But Mr. Gibson would not go there, to the college—to walk on a campus path and be spoken to by name . . . not again. They would not miss him very much, he thought. Some younger man would come in. . . .

Paul Townsend's place of business was a block and a half in the opposite direction, and Mr. Gibson turned his uneven steps that way. He began to imagine his next moves . . . and, as he did so, he realized that he ought to have brought a container. He stopped in at a delicatessen and purchased the first small bottle he saw on the shelf. It happened to be a two-ounce bottle of imported olive oil, and quite expensive. '

"I am Kenneth Gibson. Mr. Townsend's neighbor. He asked me to stop by and fetch a letter out of his desk," said Mr. Gibson with cool nerves.

"Oh yes. Can I get it for you, Mr. Gibson?"

"He told me exactly where to put my hand on it . . . if you don't mind . . ."

"Not at all," the girl said. "This way, Mr. Gibson." She knew who he was . . . Mr. Gibson of the English Department ... a trustworthy man. "In here," she said with a smile, and ushered him into the laboratory.

He did not look at the cupboards but went to Paul's desk and opened the left top drawer and took, at ran-

dom, an old letter out of a pile. "This seems to be the one."

"Good," she said.

"Er . . ." Mr. Gibson looked distressed and embarrassed. "Is there by any chance a . . . er . . . men's room . . .?"

"Oh yes," she said becoming at once crisp and remote. "Right over there, sir." She indicated a door.

"Thank you."

As he had calculated, she left for the outer regions.

He went into the small washroom and turned the cap upon the bottle of olive oil and gravely poured the contents away into the sink.

He came out. Now the laboratory was his alone. He found the key with no trouble. He took down No. 333. His hands were steady as he poured its liquid content into his own container. It was a delicate task, from one small opening into another, but he was cold and clearheaded. He scarcely spilled a drop.

He did not take it all. As he put No. 333 back in place he thought the depletion of the supply would not be noticed for some time. He made no attempt to wipe off fingerprints or anything of that sort. He had elected not to take the whole bottle from the cupboard away with him, only because he needed time. Time to get home. Time to write his letter. He did not want the fact of some missing poison noted too soon and the girl asked and his name given and he interrupted.

Mr. Gibson put the poison he had stolen into the green paper bag, relocked the cupboard, hid the key, left the premises. He thought he might have made a cool and successful thief: he might as well have been a thief all his life for all the difference. . . .

He stood on the downtown comer, waiting for a bus, feeling absolutely numb for the moment. Just as one came, just as he got on, he thought he heard his name spoken. But he wasn't certain, didn't really care whether anyone had called his name or not. ... so he moved on and sat down by a window.

I have a tree, a graft of love That in my heart has taken root Sad are the buds and blooms thereof And bitter sorrow is its fruit—

Oh, stop! Stop this senseless jingling of old words. Villon was long dead.

Looking blindly out, the thought crossed his veering mind capriciously that perhaps he'd had, just now, a supernatural warning. But he knew what he was doing. Death. Well? He was simply going to step out of his doom. To him it seemed not an unintelligent thing to do. A just God would understand.

• How could he put this in a letter? "... Very tired . . ." he would write. No. No. It was possible that he would have to lie. What matter if he did or did not lie? ". . . I am not as well as I appear. I have known for a long time . . ." Should he hint that he had begun to doubt his sanity? Yes, that . . . Rosemary should understand. And perhaps he was insane. In fact, he did not and could not know himself, really why he was doing this deed. Not even this could he know. Doom. In the iceberg of his subconscious the motive lay and worked.

Mr. Gibson, sunk in icy gloom, saw nothing out the windows, nothing inside the bus which went its doomed way on the streets of the town carrying all the doomed people. If he could have done anything for Rosemary, or for any living soul ... he might have stayed. But all, all were doomed, and to help each other or even to love each other was only another illusion.

Some sense of time and space prodded him to notice the stop that would let him off at the comer where the market was. So he got up and, filled with such pain that he was nearly blinded, he went toward the door. As he stepped off, he thought he heard his name called again. Angels? Well, if he was about to damn himself through eternity, then he was going to do so. All his life he had done all the duty he had been given to see, made his apparent choices, and if he still had an illusion of choice, this deed appeared to him to be as much his duty as his pleasure . . . and he would do it.

And one duty besides ... a promise to keep . . . the marketing he had said he would do for Ethel. Then he would corne (with what relief) to the end of his duties.

So Mr. Gibson went into the big market and took a wheeled basket and pushed it along the aisles. He selected lettuce, he took cocoa, he took a loaf of thin-sliced white

bread ... he took cheese (the kind Ethel preferred). And he took tea for Rosemary. (It might comfort her.)

He stood at the check stand, dumb and lost in utter helplessness, while the girl fingered the buttons and rang the prices. He lifted the big brown bag in his arms. He walked two blocks east, and one north. ....

The roses at the far side of the cottage were not blooming now.

Old Mrs. Pyne was sitting in her wheel chair on the' Townsend's porch. She waved cheerily at him.

Mr. Gibson staggered his course to bring himself near enough to speak to her. (He could ask her. He could inquire about Paul and what the Church might say about marriage and divorcees. . . . But why? He didn't want to divorce Rosemary and be, for God knew how many years, her and her husband's friend. No, he didn't want that loophole into life. He would rather pretend it wasn't there. Kid himself, he thought bitterly, that the deed would be done for Rosemary's sake.)

He said, "Hello . . ." weakly.

"Goodness!" said the old lady leaning forward, "isn't that too heavy for you, Mr. Gibson?"

"Not too heavy." (But it was. It was heavy, his bag of food and death.) "How are you, Mrs. Pyne?" He smiled falsely.

"I'm all right," she said. "Isn't this a glorious day?" Her voice took on a special and almost shocking vigor. "It's so marvelous to be able to sit out in the sun."

"Yes," he said. "Yes . . . well . . ."

He stumbled across the double driveways. He heard Paul's voice calling, "Hi! How goes it?" Mr. Gibson pretended not to hear.

Marvelous to be able to sit in the sun? It was! Yes, it was! He unlocked his door and went in, beginning to know that, quite possibly, he could not do what he had planned to do. So in a night and a morning of acute depression— he had only made a fool of himself once more. He, Kenneth Gibson, was not cut out to be a suicide. No. He was fated to set Rosemary free and be her and her husband's good friend for his natural life and limp on in time and bear all. It was not his doom to die today. He couldn't change his doom. Doom is not doom if there is any way out of it. And he was doomed ... to go on being the neat, decent, too thin-skinned little man he had been JDorn to be.

Because it was marvelous to be able to sit in the sun! And this was enough to keep a man alive!

Mr. Gibson began to feel a bit hysterical. No, no, he •juould do it! One second of resolution—that was all he Qeeded. Surely he could manage to lift hand to mouth— one quick gesture—without thought . . .

But if he waited to write a letter. No, no! His whole decision was running away, running out of him. But couldn't the doomed of God ask a little kindness of the devil? Quick, then! Or suffer the tragicomedy out, be a spectator in his own skull and watch his ovni acts with what bitter amusement could be salvaged.

He was in the kitchen. He did not have—he did not even want—that kind of courage. Not any more.

He put the big brown bag on the counter. He took out the head of lettuce, the piece of cheese, loaf of bread, the box of tea, and, heavy at the bottom of the bag, the can of cocoa. And now he groped for the bottle of death. He would do it at once!

The big bag was absolutely empty.

Yes, quickly.

His hand met nothing.

His death would be a mystery: death always was. Where—?

But surely he had put the small green paper bag, twisted up around the little bottle, into the market basket, and the checker girl would have put it in with his purchases. She hadn't. It wasn't here.

Where was it? The terrible quick poison he had gone so far to steal?

He searched his jacket pockets. Not there!

Had he dreamed the whole thing? No, surely he remembered pouring the olive oil into the sink far too vividly to have done it in a dream. He had lost it? But the poison was now in a bottle labeled "olive oil." Nobody would have any way of knowing it was poison! Colorless, odorless, instant . . .

What had he done?