And if in error there was learning and if in blame there was responsibility and if in ignorance there was hope—and if in life there are surprises—and if in doom there were these cracks—still, they had not put their hands upon a little bottle full of death, and innocently labeled olive oiL And it was no illusion.
Chapter XIX
TVIr R. GffisoN sat holding his wife in his lap, and this was -LVl 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 cliild, "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 gmlt 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, "rm 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.