A dram of poison (16 page)

"I am their neighbor," said Paul. "Townsend is my name."

"And our friend," said Rosemary with a forced sweetness as if she were struggling to keep polite and calm.

''And Miss Severson was a passenger?" Mrs. Boatright sailed right on, "Does anyone remember the tale of the Golden Goose?"

"Hey!" said the bus driver. "Sure, I remember. Everybody who takes ahold has to tag along. That's pretty good, Mrs. Boatright." I

"But who is Ethel?" Mrs. Boatright had come around | a curve and would have all clear.

"Ethel," said Rosemary in a desperately even tone, "is Kenneth's sister, a good woman, a fine person, who came

here to help and to take care of us, after we had an accident . . ." Her voice rose. "I shouldn't have said what I did. But I can't—I cannot be grateful any more. It's no time to be grateful. It just doesn't count any more." The strain was telling and Rosemary began to cry. "This terrible trouble and it's getting late and I'd so hate it to be an artist . . . way out in the country and no help near-by ..."

Mr. Gibsqn, too, could see, ahead of them, a rustic studio strewn with bodies.

"There wouldn't be much help," said Paul miserably. ''That stuff works fast."

"Now, we'll see, when we get there," said Mrs. Boat-right, "and not before. Mr. Coffey is making the best possible time. We are doing the best possible thing." "It's so long . . ." wept Rosemary. So Mrs. Boatright, who was in equal parts mother and commanding officer, took Rosemary to her bosom and began to stroke her hair. Mr. Gibson felt a tremendous relief. He blessed Mrs. Boatright. The three heads in the front seat were still, facing forward.

"Gratitude," said the bus driver suddenly, "is for the birds. There's all kinds of ins and outs to this, Mrs. Boat-right, and we don't know the half of them. But this Ethel —see, Mrs. Boatright?—she puts it into Rosemary's head that Rosemary meant to get him smashed up in an auto accident, which is why he is limping, did you notice? Well, this Ethel, she's got poor Rosemary feeling guilty as hell because she was driving at the time, although it was a pure and simple accident . . . but this Ethel she's the kind who knows better than you do what your real motives were, see? And Rosemary thinks she shouldn't get mad at Ethel, because this Ethel shows up to help and all and besides this Ethel is her sister-in-law and I don't guess Rosemary likes squabbling with the relatives. Some people thrive on that. Hey? Some people make a career out of it." "I see. I see," said Mrs. Boatright, stopping his flow. "Had you seen much of this sister-in-law before?" "Never," wailed Rosemary.

"Let her cry," said Virginia. "Cry hard, Rosemary." Paul squirmed. "Look . . . she can't take much more of this . . ."

"It's high time she bawled her head off," the nurse said fiercely. "And Mr. Gibson, too."

But Mr. Gibson sat, dry-eyed and amazed.

"I'm sorry . . ." sobbed Rosemary. "It isn't really Ethel, herself. I know that. But it's her ideas. It's the way she thinks. And what can you do? I know I'm a rabbit but, even if you aren't a rabbit, how can you fight that kind of thing? I've told myself . . . I've told her ... I couldn't have meant it. But the idea is, I wouldn't know if I had! I'd be the last to know! And how can you argue with somebody who just turns everything you say around? Who just makes you feel as if every time you opened your mouth you were giving some horrible inner beastly self away? If you insist, she thinks Aha, you protest too much! So you must really mean the exact opposite. If you talk loud, because you feel so strongly that you're right . . . why, a loud voice means you must be trying to sell yourself a lie. It's maddening," said Rosemary. "You can't know anything. You can't trust yourself, at all."

Doomed, said Mr. Gibson in his throat or his mind. Nobody seemed to hear him.

"What I'd like to know," said Lee Coffey angrily, "is who gives this Ethel her license to read minds. Hey? Fd give Rosemary a fifty-fifty chance to know, as well as Ethel, what Rosemary means by what she says."

"No, you can't," wept Rosemary. "You're the last. That's the paralyzing thing!"

The nurse said some angry syllable under her breath. The driver's head agreed savagely.

"Gratitude," said Mrs. Boatright, rhythmically stroking Rosemary's hair with one plump jeweled hand, "lasts on, for a time, after the deed that caused it. But it's like a fire, don't you think so? It's lit, it bums, it's warm. But it nepds fuel. It doesn't last forever unless it's fed."

Mrs. Boatright was making a speech. She had a clear voice and she knew how to breathe and she could be rather eloquent. Even Rosemary -stopped her weeping noises to listen.

"No one should be the prisoner of stale gratitude—to change and also mix the metaphor" declaimed Mrs. Boat- : right. "I think of the children in this world, enslaved by parents trading on gratitude for old deeds that should have been done for love only in the first place. I think of parents who have become, in fact, whining nuisances thatJ flesh-and-blood rightfully resents and yet blood, that is thicker than water, scourges itself for resenting. I shudder

at SO much unhappiness. Gratitude can be a dreadful thing when it becomes a debt—you see?—and there is guilt and reluctance. But if, by continued feeding, faith is created, and mutual respect is accumulated and confidence grows, in love, in friendship, then gratitude turns into something better. And something durable." She paused and one expected the pattering of ladies' hands over the luncheon tables. Here was only the rushing sound of the car, and Rosemary saying, "I know ..." in a choking voice.

"If parents, for instance," said Mrs. Boatright, wistfully, in a more private kind of voice, "could only grow up to be their children's friends . . . Have you children, my dear?"

Paul said hastily, almost in alarm. "They've only been married . . . less than three months . . ."

There was a silence, deep . . . except for the sounds of the car's progress.

Lee Coffey said in a moment, "Is that so? I didn't know that."

"A bride and a groom," said Virginia slowly, her voice caressing the words sadly.

The news was sinking into the fabric of all their speculations, dyeing everything to different colors. Mr. Gibson felt like crying out. No, you don't understand. It was only a silly, unrealistic arrangement. And I am fifty-five. She is thirty-two. It leaves twenty-three.

He cried out nothing.

Mrs. Boatright turned and said to him, "Rosemary finds your sister difficult. Rosemary has been unhappy. But Rosemary wasn't the one who stole the poison, was she?"

"No," he said. "No."

"Then what was the matter with you?" she asked.

He couldn't answer.

Paul turned around. "You certainly raised the devil," he said. "You might have been a little bit thoughtful of Rosie at least. And Ethel. And mey for that matter. If you'd thought of others and not yourself . . ."

"He does think of others," said Rosemary faintly.

"Not today, he didn't," said Paul, "and what he did was a sin." He jerked his head to look forward. The back of his neck was righteous and furious.

" 'Oh . . . that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter . . .' " crooned the bus driver. "That's what you mean, hey?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yes, but that's our culture," said the bus driver. "You take Japan ..."

"You take Japan," said Paul, sulkily.

Mrs. Boatright, who had a way of going back and clearing up one thing at a time, said, "I serve with the Red Cross, the Board of Education, the Society for the Encouragement of the U.N., the Council for Juvenile Welfare, the American Women for Political Housecleaning, and the church, of course, and I work in these groups. But noj for 'others.' Isn't this my world? And while I am here, my business?" She conquered her oratorical impulses. "There is a weakness about that word 'others,' " she said privately, "and I never have liked it."

"It's not definitive," snapped Virginia, "Show me one patient. An other."

"The odds ain't good," said Lee Coffey ruminatively. "Couple of billion 'others'; only one of you. You can't take an interest, except pretty vague and slightly phony, in the whole caboodle of 'em."

"Quite so," said Mrs. Boatright genially. "You can only start from where you are."

"Although once you get into this business," said Virginia softly, "you are led on."

"One thing comes .after another," agreed the bus driver, and the nurse looked at him, with that quick alert tilt of her head again.

"Do you get paid, Mrs. Boatright?" said Rosemary, straightening up suddenly.

"Of course not." Mrs. Boatright was scandalized.

"You see? She's just a parasite," said Rosemary, half hysterically.

"Hey!" crowed Lee Coffey. "That sounds like good old Ethel to me. Ethel says any dame whose old man has got dough is just a parasite? I'll betcha she does. So she never met a high-powered executive like Mrs. B. I'm telling you, this Ethel has got everything bass-ackward. Hey, what was it she said about blondes? You never did tell me

"Blondes," said Rosemary clearly, "are predatory nitwits."

"Are-ent they, though?" said Lee to his nurse fondly. "Aren't they just? All of 'em. This means you, too, honey-bunch. You and your definitive, your patient." He chuckled. "Oh boy, you know, that's Ethel's trouble, right

it-1

there? She starts out with 'some,' slides into 'many,' and don't notice herself skidding right off the rails into 'all.' "

"Ethel's a pain in the neck," said Paul grumpily. "I told you, Rosie, the day she sent you into a fit—"

"Ethel," put in Mrs. Boatright thoughtfully, "is beginning to sound like a scapegoat."

Mr. Gibson stirred himself and said rather sharply, "Yes. And you are all so very kind to be pro-me; I can't think why. . . . But I'd like to get this straight, please. I stole the poison. I meant to die. I stupidly, criminally, left it on the bus. I am responsible, guilty, wrong, and totally to blame." He knew this to be true.

"Yes," said the bus driver in a moment, thoughtfuly, "when you come right down to it, sure you are."

But Mr. Gibson was thinking dizzily . . . Yes, but if I am to blame, there was freedom. I could have done otherwise. Without freedom, there is no blame. And vice versa. His brain swam. I don't know, he thought. I thought I knew but I don't know.

"Not a lot of use in blame, though," the bus driver was saying. "It shouldn't linger. You shouldn't blow on them ashes, hey, Mrs. B.?"

"Make a note of an error," said that matron briskly, "for future reference . . . but file it. Now, RosemIary, powder your nose and put on some lipstick and brace up. Theo Marsh may very well be lost in some masterpiece with the thought of nourishment far, far from his mind. It would be quite like him."

"I haven't got a lipstick," wailed Rosemary.

"Use mine," said Virginia warmly.

"Put a good face on it, girls," said the bus driver tolerantly. "A man, he takes a shave . . ."

Mr. Gibson saw Paul Townsend rubbing his jaw.

The whole thing struck him. The six of them, this heterogeneous crew, hurtling out into the country on a guess and a prayer, and conversing so fantastically.

Mr. Gibson heard a rusty chuckle coming out of him. "You know," he said, "this is remarkable?"

Not a one of them agreed. He felt all their eyes, Lee's in the rear-vision miror, Virginia's and Paul's turning back, Mrs. Boatright's at his side, Rosemary peering around her. All the eyes said, What do you mean? Not at all!

"Are we getting there?" said Rosemary.

''We are," said Mrs. Boatright

When they passed the place where the yellow bus had been left, on the road's shoulder, it was gone. Lee said, "Hey, I wonder am I fired?" No one could tell him, and since he had sounded merely, and rather merrily, curious to know, no one tried to console him, either.

After a while Mrs. Boatright said, "It's a dirt road. Going off to the right a few yards beyond the junction. The house is wood, stained brown, and it sits on a knoll."

"I can see a house like that," said Virginia. "Look. Is that it? Up there?"

Chapter XVIll

THE LOW STRUCTURE ou the high knoll looked not only rustic but abandoned. The front wall was blank. Weeds grew up to the doorstep. On a narrow terrace of old brick, overrun by wild grass, a few dilapidated redwood outdoor chairs sat at careless angles, their cushions faded and torn. A cat leaped out of one of these and fled into the wilderness.

No sound, no sign of life came from this building.

Mrs. Boatright rapped smartly.

Without sound, the door swung inward. They could see directly into a huge room and the north and opposite wall was glass, so that this space was flooded with clear and steady light. The first thing Mr. Gibson saw was a body.

The body was that of a female in a long flaring skirt of royal blue and nothing else. It was lying on a headless couch. As he blinked his dazzled eyes, it sat up. The naked torso writhed. It was alive.

A man's living voice said, "What have we here? Mary Anne Boatright! Well! Is this a club?" 

The torso was pulling on a loose white T-shirt, slightly ' ragged at the shoulder seams. It went strangely with the rich silk of the skirt and the skirt's gold-embroidered hem.

"This is important," said Mrs. Boatright, "or I wouldn't disturb you, Theo."

"I should hope it is," said the voice. "It better be. Never mind. I'm tired. I just decided. Put your shirt on, Lavinia."

"I didj already," said the girl or woman on the couch

who was sitting there like a Imnpj now. She turned her

bare feet until they rested pigeon-toed, one over the other.

Her eyes were huge and dark and placid as a cow's.

Mr. Gibson tore his gaze away from her to see this man.

"Theodore Marsh," said Mrs. Boatright formally, but rapidly. "This is Mrs. Gibson, Miss Severson, Mr. Gibson, Mr. Townsend, Mr. Coffey."

"You don't look like a club," said the painter. "What are you? I've surely seen several of you before, somewhere."

He was tall and skinny as a scarecrow. He wore tweed trousers, a pink shirt, and a black vest. His hair was pure white and it looked as if it had never been brushed but remained in a state of nature, like fur. His face was wizened and shrewd, his hands knobby. He must have been seventy.