A dram of poison

by Charlotte Aut Armstrong

  To Mr. Gibson her voice was patter . . . patter he scarcely heard. His attention was bent upon his wife Rosemary, upon the state of her body and her soul.

  There she was, standing at the foot of his bed, wearing the white dress with the red flowers on it, and dirt)' and crumpled the dress was. She hugged around her the red

  stole. Her face was too pale for the strong red that wrapped her.

  "Are you sure . . .?" said he. He didn't think she looked well enough to go out of the hospital.

  "I'm so sorry," burst Rosemary. "So sorry! Oh, Kenneth, I wish it had been me. I'd have done anything in the world rather than hurt you . . ." She was quivering with the need to say this.

  "Oh, come now," said Mr. Gibson in some alarm. "We had an accident. Now, mouse . . . it's nothing to worry about." He thought. It's set her back, alas. "Here's Ethel come all this way," he soothed . . . "Your sister, Rosemary." (He had to give her something. He gave her Ethel.) "The two of you are going to have a fine time." He looked as bright and easy as he could. "I just have to lie here with my leg hung up like the Monday wash— until the bones take a notion to mend. But it will mend—"

  He had coaxed no smile. Rosemary said, "I turned to the left, you see. I thought ..."

  "You are not to blame," said Ethel a little loudly and very firmly. "There is no blame."

  "Of course not," cried Mr. Gibson, appalled at this, "Of course you are not to blame! What an idea! Now, Rosemary, don't think about it. Please. Just wipe it out of your mind. Be like me. I don't remember a thing about it, you know. Just whammo . . . and here I am." He smiled at her.

  "Don't you?" she said a little pathetically. She moistened her lips. "How do you feel?"

  "I feel ridiculous," he said crisply, "and pretty undignified, believe me." But he was powerless to reach behind that white-faced stare. He feared she was still shocked, still fighting against the fact of the accident, still trying to wish it away. "Take her home, Ethel," he begged. "Now Rosemary, I want you to do as Ethel says. I want you to rest."

  "Yes. I will, Kenneth. I wasn't hurt at all."

  "Good night, then," he said gently. "And Ethel, you take care of her." (He thought. Oh yes, she has been hurt. She has been set back. Oh, too bad!) He said aloud, "I want you to be well, Rosemary?"

  "Yes," she said. "I will be well." Just as if it was something she'd do to please him.

  Then she was gone.

  Ethel shepherded her charge into the taxi and then made conversation. She was sorry for this stranger, her sister-in-law. (And in-law, she presumed, was exactly all.) However had this poor thing got herself into such a false and ridiculous position? Her brother. Ken, was such a dreamer, such an unrealistic soul. The whole affair was pitiful. Ethel set out to comfort Rosemary.

  "You really shouldn't entertain this feeling of guilt," said Ethel kindly. "There is no such thing as guilt, you know."

  "I don't feel that exactly . . ." said the sad mouth, the low voice of Rosemary. "I feel so sorry. I hate so to to see him . . ."

  "Of course you do," soothed Ethel. "He has done a great deal for you. I know. Just like him."

  "Kenneth—" began his wife in a voice more resolute and shrill.

  But Ethel cut in. "He's an old dear. But so vulnerable. Some people, of course, are like that. Charity does something for them. Expresses some need. Fills some deficiency."

  Rosemary said, faintly breathless, "I love your brother very much. I think he's wonderful. I hate — "

  Ethel looked at her and pitied her. "Naturally," she said. "We can only hate the ones we love, you know."

  "But I don't hate him" said Rosemary. "I couldn't. Possibly."

  "Of course not," said Ethel. "That is the trouble. Of course, you 'couldn't possibly.' But you are still a young woman, Rosemary. That is just a fact and none of your fault. You really needn't feel guilty about it."

  "But . . ."

  "We understand," intoned Ethel. "We understand these things. Now. My dear, just try to relax. Just don't brood about the accident. Tell me, what are those incredible masses of flowers? Geraniums! I never saw such a sight. Now, I'm here to see that you rest and recover. Frankly, I am delighted. It makes a break for me that I have wanted for a long time. You see, I'm quite selfish, Rosemary. We all are."

  "I suppose so," said Rosemary dispiritedly.

  "You will soon feel strong and well . . ."

  "Yes."

  Ethel herself felt strong and well and pleased with the feel of the helm in her hand.

  Mr. Gibson lay thinking about Rosemary. It had been a flat and almost stupid exchange between them. Lugubrious. Also conventional. Nothing like what he had wanted. But what else could it have been, here in the crowded ward, with the slack eyes of the man with the tube, the curious eyes of the man on the other side, both fixed on the spectacle of Rosemary. And Ethel, also there.

  Mr. Gibson braced himself. Wait then. In no such public spot as this would he declare his love. Nor would he declare at all until he felt less unsure of himself than he felt. today. What did he know about love, anyhow? He could have mistaken a fatherly joy for the other thing. Little enough he knew about that, either. Bachelor that he had been. (Innocent.) And of course another mistake was quite probable. Whatever he felt, Ethel could be right about Rosemary. Ethel was a shrewd and worldly woman, and her judgment deserved attention. He may have taken a gesture of loving gratitude in the wrong way entirely. Of course Rosemary was grateful to him. He squirmed at the thought of it. He had made her stop saying so. But that might have contributed to her—obsession, as Ethel called it. Well, he would have to be rid of that —be sure that wasn't warping and interfering. ...

  His heart was beating in slow rhythm, a kind of dirge-time.

  For should I but see thee a little moment, Straight is my voice hushed . . .

  He felt very much aware of his broken self and the harsh truths of the hospital, the bum of the taut sheet upon his skin, the uncozy light. The scene in the restaurant was long long ago . . . the other side of the mist ... far—and receding like a dream.

  Certainly, certainly, the last thing he would do was upset Rosemary any more than she was upset, right now. He didn't want to upset her ever. To have one's adopted father . . . (Mr. Gibson's mind fled from finishing this thought. It was too abhorrent!) He had better swallow down what might be only some foolishness of his ... at least for the time being. Ah, poor girl—to blame herself because she happened to be driving. But Ethel was sensible. Ethel's sound common sense would pull her out of that. He could not. He couldn't be there.

  Mr. Gibson sighed and his ribs ached. Sometimes he felt pitiable, rather than ridiculous, to be so strapped and tied together as he was. So stopped . . . right in the midst of all he had been accomplishing. But he must endure. At least his sister Ethel had come. . . . God bless her!

  Chapter VllI

  DAYS BEGAN to take on shape and they went by. At first Ethel and Rosemary came together to see him every afternoon. It was not long before he ceased to look forward to this visiting hour. They spoke with such common-place cheer. They stood beside his bed and, all down the ward, others stood and spoke in the same way. Mr. Gibson felt as if he were in the zoo and human beings came here to make noises at the animals that communicated good will but little else. As if men in a hospital ward had lost their reason, their ideas, their imaginations. They were bodies healing, and nothing more.

  During the second and third weeks, Ethel often came alone, saying that Rosemary was resting. And Ethel gave the cheerful trivial news. Mrs. Violette was a great expense, but they would keep her if Ken insisted. The weather was charming. Rosemary? Oh, Rosemary was being sensible, eating well, getting along fine. Mr. Gibson beat down a jealous sense that the two of them got on and the house ran too well without him. He wished he could get out of here. He didn't say so. He said he was getting along fine, too.

  Paul Townsend dropped in once or twice, and spoke cheerful commonplaces. Shame this had to happen. Everyone well at home. Getting along
fine.

  Only when one or another of his fellow teachers came and the talk went—as it had gone so many years of his life—flitting through remembered books, did Mr. Gibson receive a sense of nourishment from the visitation.

  One day, Rosemary came alone. Ethel had been speaking more and more seriously of staying on permanently. Today she had gone looking around for jobs. To Mr.

  Gibson's shock, Rosemary proposed to go job-hunting herself.

  "After all," she said, and she was standing on both feet, much as Ethel did, "a substitute is going to finish off your year, Kenneth, and then it is summer. You are not the richest man in the world. . . . You shouldn't work at anything this summer, after these injuries. . . . And in spite of the insurance, you know we can't recover all the cost of all of this." She looked very bleak for a moment. "But there is no reason why I can't help. I'm well now ..."

  She was well enough. She looked physically quite sound. He didn't know what made him fidget. He seemed to catch overtones of Ethel's briskness and practicality in Rosemary's voice . . . The new man in the right-hand bed was frankly listening to every word being said, and Mr. Gibson couldn't quite black out his own consciousness of this fact, either.

  "A woman needn't be a parasite," said Rosemary, "unless, I suppose, she's married to some fabulous captain of industry who can afford a parasite . . ."

  "Or likes them," he murmured. "Some men are old-fashioned." He revised his thought, sternly. "If you would enjoy a job," he told her, "of course, Rosemary. How... how is the garden?"

  "All right, I guess."

  "Have you tried to paint the little wall?" He was groping back after something far away, the other side of the fog.

  "No," she said. "I haven't. I could never be a painter, Kenneth. Just a dabbler. Ethel says, you know, people go in for things like that in retreat from reality, and I'm afraid I haven't been aware enough of the . . . well, the economic world . . . the commercial world . . . the real world."

  (Mr. Gibson thought to himself, Yes, this is Ethel. But it is good for her.)

  "I guess I was more or les? sheltered for too long," said Rosemary.

  "We-ell . . ." he considered. "I dunno as I would call it that." A prison is a shelter, he was thinking, in a way. But . . .

  "I see now," she said vigorously. "There was something too dreamy and not quite tough enough about the

  way I let things go on. If I'd had more sense ... if I had faced up to facts ... I needn't have ever gotten into such a state as I was in . . ."

  "As you were" he said admiringly. "You sound like a very determined young woman now."

  "I am." She smiled. The praise had pleased her. "There are jobs I could do, now."

  "Yes." He knew. Jobs for rude health. First stepping-stones toward working experience. "Well," he sighed, "I never proposed to keep you wrapped in what the British call cotton wool . . . forever." He looked at the detestable ceiling.

  Curly-locks, curly-locks, wilt thou be mine?

  he intoned . . .

  Thou shalt not wash dishes nor yet feed the swine, But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam, And feed upon strawberries, sugar and cream.

  He'd made her laugh. (If the laugh was a bit artificial, a bit strained, perhaps this waT' because the man in the next bed was wearing such a look of shocked contempt on his whiskery face.)

  "What an unbalanced diet!" cried Rosemary, attempting to be gay. '

  "Much too rich and probably fattening," Mr. Gibson agreed, looking drowsy. Covertly he inspected her new briskness. Was it real? Was it Rosemary? Was he wrong to so dislike it?

  "Do you need more books?" she said suddenly. "I wasn't sure . . ."

  He squirmed his head. "It's an effort to hold a book, I find," he said miserably. "Maybe I have had too steady a diet of poetry. When 'life is real, life is earnest'—and there I go." His own smile felt somewhat artificial.

  "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.