Dram of Poison

by Charlotte Armstrong

  At dessert time, they had a drop of brandy with their coffee. Then without warning these two people-of-the-world fell into a fit of childlike hilarity.

  Just something he said, a turn of a phrase.

  And Rosemary capped it.

  And he extended it.

  And they were off. The whole thing spiraled up. It got funnier and funnier. They were behaving like a pair of maniacs. Mr. Gibson laughed so hard he had to retreat behind his napkin. He felt himself aching. Rosemary had her hands to the red roses printed on her bodice as if she were aching too. They rocked together. Their heads bumped. This was an absolute riot. They shushed each other, faces red, eyes wet, and beaming, and daring each other.

  People turned mildly worried faces to look at them, and this was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. And sent them off again. Nothing on earth had ever been so funny. But never could they explain why to anyone else. Which was extremely funny in itself.

  Now people were smiling by contagion and staring with real curiosity. So they controlled themselves and made their mouths stiff and sipped brandy. Rosemary thought of one more word and said it and off they went, careening on laughter right off the earth to some other place.

  It took quite a while to simmer down. But at last, just as suddenly, the little sadness fell. It was over. They mustn’t try to start it up again. No. Force nothing. Sit, with the sweet contentment in their throats, the after-taste of laughter that lies so kindly on the very membranes like a salve.

  “When will you tell me what we are celebrating?” asked Rosemary gravely.

  “I’ll tell you now.” He lifted the last drop of his brandy. “We are celebrating you. Because you are well again.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t answer.

  He said quietly, “Well, it’s late. I suppose we should go.”

  “Yes.” She fished the red wool thing from behind her. She seemed to be trembling. The waiter pulled the table away and they rose, moving slowly, as if still entranced, still sweetly remembering the food and the fun. He took the soft wide stole and held it, and she turned her back, and he folded it around her. He wanted to tuck it close around her throat, wanted her safe and warm. He couldn’t help it that his hands were tender. Rosemary bent her head, and for one quick wonderful stunning moment she pressed the warm skin of her cheek caressingly upon the bare skin of his hand.

  It was only a moment. It changed the whole world.

  Mr. Gibson followed her to the little lobby and opened the door which the proprietor was helping to open (saying good night, saying that a bit of a fog had come up, suggesting caution). Mr. Gibson may have replied mechanically. He was absolutely stunned.

  He had just discovered that he was in love with his wife Rosemary, twenty-three years his junior—but that didn’t matter. Why, he was crazy about her! Now he understood what they meant by “in love.” In love … in love … in love!

  They stepped out into a place of strangest beauty—not like the world at all. A heavy fog but oh, how beautiful!

  Rosemary stepped back to rest a moment against him. Their two bodies were all that was left of the old world and all that mattered. Everywhere, veils fell. Across the road, the fields drowsed and drowned.

  “Would you rather I drove?” he asked her.

  “No, no,” she said. “I understand the poor old Ark. Oh, Kenneth, isn’t it beautiful!”

  There was a vibration between them and he cherished it. It was too dear and too new and much too beautiful to mention.

  They got into the car. Rosemary started the noisy old engine, and backed it out of the parking slot. Mr. Gibson strained to see, and to guide her. But he hardly knew what he was seeing. She drove slowly with full caution. The big old car went steadily. The world was invisible ahead of them and vanished behind them. They were nowhere, and yet here. Together and only ten miles from home.

  Mr. Gibson didn’t think behind nor too far, nor too clearly, ahead, either. He only knew he was in love, and everything—everything was piercingly different and beautiful.

  The sudden headlights simply became, as if they’d just been created. A car raced toward them, head on. He knew that Rosemary took a sudden great pull on the steering wheel. That was all he knew but a brutal noise, one flash of pain, and then from his senses the world was gone, altogether.

  Chapter VI

  HE WAS trussed up, he was chained, like a dog in a kennel. He could not, even if he had had the ambition to try, get out of this bed and away from the contraptions that imprisoned him.

  “Then, she is all right?” he said. “You’ve actually seen her?” He tried to bend his gaze and search this face, but the girl with the clip-board had seated herself and was too low. He could see the top of her head, but not the eyes.

  “Well, no,” he heard her voice saying, “I didn’t actually see her. But I was up on her floor—trying to … you know … get information? And she’s all right, Mr. Gibson. Honest. Everybody’s told you.”

  “What do you mean by ‘all right’?” he queried irritably. His leg up in this undignified shocking fashion, his torso constricted somehow, his senses obstructed, the whole shock and indignity of injury upon him … yet he himself was “all right” in hospital parlance. What did they mean, except that he wasn’t in mortal danger? (Oh, was she?)

  “Told me she was out for a while and shaken up quite a bit,” said the uncultivated voice, “but that’s all. Now please, Mr. Gibson …”

  He rolled his head. It seemed to be all the freedom he had. But who, he thought with a flooding woe, is going to make Rosemary smile …?

  “Are you in pain?” the girl said not unsympathetically. “Maybe I could come back.”

  “I sure am in pain,” he said. “Exactly. Right inside of it. I’m in some kind of cocoon made out of fuzz and fog …” (Fog? His heart winced.) He must have been given drugs. His tongue felt thickened but loosened, too. “I don’t feel the pain, you see, but I know it is there, all around me. And it knows I know. What day is it? What time is it? Where am I?” he jested with his frightened lips.

  “It’s Saturday, the twentieth of May,” she told him slowly and patiently. “It’s nine twenty A.M. and you are in Andrews Memorial. You were brought in last night, and honest, Mr. Gibson, I’m sorry but I have to get this information for the office …”

  “I know,” he said soberly.

  He was afraid, sweating afraid, that they were all lying to him. It wasn’t inconceivable. Battered and broken as he was, they might, in their wisdom, have decided to conspire and keep from him a sorrow. He opened his eyes as wide as he could and strained to lift his head and peer at this girl through the fuzz and the mist. “Sit a little higher. I can’t see you,” he demanded.

  The girl elevated herself. She thought, Gee, he’s got nice eyes. On a girl, they’d be gorgeous! Wouldn’t it be, though? It’s like me and my sisters all got the straight hair and the boys got the natural waves.… She lowered her gaze so as not to be caught with such thoughts.

  “What are they doing to her?” Mr. Gibson said wildly.

  “Why, they got her under sedation, I guess. Least I couldn’t talk to her. Piobably they want to watch her a few days …”

  “That’s right,” he said excitedly. “Yes, that’s what they must do. Keep her and watch her. You see, she hasn’t been strong. She’s had quite a time and this could set her back …”

  The girl sighed and poised her pen. “I got your name and address. Now, lessee … When were you born, Mr. Gibson? Please, if you’ll just let me get this blank filled out …”

  “Sorry,” he said. “January fifth, nineteen hundred. Which makes it entirely too easy to figure out how old I am. You don’t even have to subtract, do you?”

  The girl wrote “Yes” after “Married?”…“How long have you been married, Mr. Gibson?” she asked aloud.

  “Five weeks.”

  “Oh, really?” Her voice became bright and interested. The next question on her blank was “Children?” She started
to write a “No” and caught herself. “Is this your first wife?”

  “My first … my only … Will you tell me one thing?” He fought to see her plain. “Is she in pain?”

  “Look,” the girl said, determined this time. “What can I do, Mr. Gibson? Honest to gosh, nobody’s trying to kid you. They don’t think she’s even got a concussion. I’d know if there was anything bad. Believe me, I’d tell you.”

  He could see her face now, and it was kind and shiny and in earnest. “I believe you would,” he said weakly. “Yes, thank you.”

  He was in a ward. There was no telephone. He was divided from Rosemary. He was farther from her than if he’d been a thousand miles. He said, whimsical in helplessness, “Could I send her a postcard?”

  The girl said, “Now. Probably she’ll be able to come down here and see you … at least by tomorrow.”

  “They might let her leave before me?” said Mr. Gibson at once, in alarm.

  “Well, I should think so. After all, you got to wait a while …”

  “They mustn’t let her.” He couldn’t bear to think of Rosemary alone. Mrs. Violette might be hired to stay, but Mrs. Violette was so remote and cool.… Paul Townsend would be kind, but he couldn’t be with her. There was nobody, he thought in panic—Yes. Yes there was! Rosemary had no people, but he had a person. He had a sister.

  “Could you send a telegram?” he asked abruptly.

  “I guess I could see to it for you, or the nurse …”

  “You do it. To Miss Ethel Gibson.” He gave her the address. “Are you writing it down? Send this. ‘Don’t worry but car accident puts me in hospital. Rosemary O.K. but we need you. Can you possibly come.’”

  “Love?” the girl asked, scribbling busily.

  “Love, Ken.”

  “Twenty words.”

  “Never mind. Please send it. Will you do that for me? I don’t know where there is any money …”

  “I’ll see about it,” she soothed. “They can charge it on your bill. Now, do you feel better? Now will you tell me the answers to all this stuff?”

  So he told her the answers.

  “O.K.,” she said at last. “I guess I got the whole story of your life. Now, don’t worry, Mr. Gibson, I’ll surely send the telegram.”

  “You’re very good …”

  “So long.” She smiled. She liked him. He was kinda cute. Didn’t look to be fifty-five, either. With the kind of skin he had—fair, and stuck to his cheekbones. A woman would have had to have her face lifted already. And him married only five weeks to his first wife. She thought it was cute, and a little bit amusing. “Don’t worry so much about your bride,” she said affectionately.

  “I’ll try not,” he promised. But he had received the news of her amusement and thought he would not open himself for the amusement of strangers again.

  When she had gone, he thought drunkenly: Story of my life. She hadn’t got any of it.… Then his whole life’s story went by him in a rush, and his heart throbbed hard for the disappointment and the postponement.

  But he took hold of himself and called up patience. He would heal, painfully, in time. The pain was nothing. It could be endured. He was not reconciled to the time it would take, but he would endeavor to be.

  If only Rosemary had not been set back too much! If only Ethel—good reliable sister Ethel—if she could come and keep … keep his house! He felt sure she would respond as he himself would have responded, of course, to such a telegram. Ethel might even fly. His sister, Ethel, was not as far away from him in time as was Rosemary, upstairs. Ethel would come and take care and, in time, all would be well again.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Gibson saw that the man on his right lay stupidly inert with a tube running in a disgusting way through one nostril. The man on his right had his ear upon the pillow, under which was a magic disk that poured out a soap opera. The ward was full of men all waiting as best they could … and most in pain. Some of them might be in love, for all he knew.

  Mr. Gibson lay remembering words, for words were good to help keep off the pain—that brute and wordless thing—and to pass the time.

  … an ever-fixèd mark

  That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

  It is the star to every wandering bark

  Whose worth’s

  Unknown …

  Unknown …

  Unknown …

  He seemed to sleep.

  Later in that shapeless day they brought him a wire: FLYING SOONEST ETHEL.

  Mr. Gibson sighed so deeply that it made his chest ache.

  “And I almost forgot. Your wife sends love,” the nurse said brightly.

  “Does she?”

  “She was pretty anxious to know how you were. Let me squinch this pillow over. Is that more comfortable?”

  “I am comforted,” he said quaintly. “Can you send her my love?”

  “We sure can,” the nurse said merrily. “I’ll put it on the grapevine, right away.”

  People are good, thought Mr. Gibson, weak with satisfaction. People are really awfully good. Good nurse. Good sister Ethel. This misery would pass.

  Chapter VII

  “GOOD TO COME,” he said to her, the next morning. “So very good to come. So glad to see you.”

  “Think nothing of it, old dear,” said Ethel, standing in her old familiar way, with the effect of being on both feet instead of settling her weight on one and using the other for balance, as most do. Ethel was a woman of some bulk. Although she wasn’t fat, her waist was solid, her legs sturdy, her shoulders wide. She was wearing a tweedy suit of severe cut and a tailored blouse, but her short gray-threaded hair was uncovered and her square ringless hands were ungloved.

  “Pretty state of affairs this is,” she said in her hearty voice. She had bright brown eyes in a face that would launch no ships. (Ethel looked a good deal like their father had, he realized suddenly. Now that she was forty-seven.) “How do you feel?” she inquired.

  “Don’t ask me. You wouldn’t want to hear about it. I want you to go to Rosemary …”

  “I’ve been to Rosemary.”

  “You have?” He felt stunned.

  “It’s ten A.M. my lad,” said Ethel. “And I got off that plane in the middle of the night and the milk-train or whatever I took landed me here at five A.M. I’ve met your landlord. I’ve seen your house. I’ve had a bath in it. And I got in to see Rosemary because she is in a semiprivate room, whereas all kinds of indecent things were going on in this ward, or so they implied.” Ethel glanced at the man with the tube in his nostril and did not flinch.

  Mr. Gibson gave out a weak “Oh,” feeling somewhat flattened by her energy.

  “Woke up your Mr. Townsend, I guess. Must say he was very amiable about it. When I identified myself, he let me in. Nothing to it.”

  “Paul’s a good fellow …”

  “Very charming,” said Ethel dryly, “one of those dreamboats, eh? And a rich widower, too? My! Quite a little house you live in, Ken.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “I put my things in what I judged to be Rosemary’s room.” Her wise glance understood everything.

  “Yes,” he said feebly. All at once, he could not imagine brisk, sensible, energetic Ethel in the little house, at all. He said impatiently—because she gave the effect of a gale blowing a sudden gust that disrupted a certain neatness and order of his thoughts—“Tell me, Ethel. How is Rosemary?”

  “Not a scratch on her,” said Ethel promptly. “She’s a little unhappy. Sc sorry it happened. Worried about you. And so forth. I understand she was doing the driving.”

  “Yes, it’s her car …” he began.

  “Which car is pretty much of a mess, so Mr. Townsend tells me. I can’t quite visualize …” Ethel frowned. “Usually it is the driver who gets the worst of it. Seems the other car hit yours right smack on the side where you were sitting.”

  “Other car …” Mr. Gibson winced.

  “Two men in it. Neither one hurt, except superficially. Yo
u seem to have got the worst of it. Only a few bones broken, Ken? Sounds to me you are lucky to be alive to tell the tale.”

  “I can’t tell the tale,” he said testily. “I can’t remember a thing about it.”

  “Just as well,” said Ethel. “Spares you some interviews. It’s going to be a kind of impasse, I’m afraid. Nobody will dare sue anybody.”

  “Sue?” He felt bewildered.

  “You see, they were on the left in the fog, where they shouldn’t have been. But Rosemary turned left, which was wrong of her. And the police smelled alcohol on both your breaths.”

  “A drop of brandy …” murmured Mr. Gibson sadly.

  “The cops have literal minds.”

  “Rosemary.” Mr. Gibson did not go on, discovering that all he wanted was to be saying her name.

  “She’s a nice girl, Ken,” said his sister.

  “Yes,” he said relaxing.

  Ethel grinned at him. Her eyes had such a wise look, kind and indulgent “I gather that you have been up to some good deeds.”

  “Well …”

  “She couldn’t say enough, Rosemary couldn’t. According to her she was broke and ill and down and out. I suppose this appealed to you.”

  Ethel was teasing but Mr. Gibson felt dead serious. “She was badly run-down. That’s exactly why I wanted you …”

  “Drastic, wasn’t it?” Ethel cocked one brow.

  “What was?”

  “To marry her.”

  “It may seem so …” he said stiffly, on the defensive.

  “She’s on the young side, isn’t she?” his sister said. “Let’s see. You are fifty-five. Well, she thinks you are a saint on earth—and perhaps you are.” She grinned affectionately.

  “I haven’t,” said Mr. Gibson indignantly, “the slightest intention of being a saint on earth or anywhere else—”

  Ethel laughed at him. “Soft-hearted old Ken. I needn’t have worried. You’d never take up with a blonde, now, would you? It would be a poor thing, a waif or a stray …”