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.
Paul Townsend got up and stretched. He couldn't seem to help exuding excess health. He said he had to go, he'd left off in the middle of trimming his ivy. "And by the way, Rosie," he said with his warm smile, "if you really want some cuttings there are going to be millions of them." Rosemary said, "Thanks so much, Paul, but I don't suppose I'll have the time . . ."
"Of course you'll have the time!" cried Mr. Gibson, shocked. "Don't let me be in the way ..."
She only smiled and Paul said he'd save a few dozen in water anyhow, and Jeanie, who had been seen but not heard most of this time, as she got up to go, said sweetly, "I'm awfully glad you are home again, Mr. Gibson."
By the tail of his eye, Mr. Gibson perceived on Ethel's face a look he knew very well. It was the look she wore when she was not going to say what she was thinking. This was fleetingly disturbing. In just that moment, Mr. Gibson felt quite out of touch.
"Forgot," said Paul in the doorway. "Mama sends regards and all that. Say, why don't you hob—come on over and sit with her sometimes. Gibson? She'd love it."
"I may do so, some day," said Mr. Gibson as cordially as he could, and Rosemary let the Townsends out.
"They have been so nice," she said returning. "More tea, Kenneth?"
"No, thank you." Mr. Gibson dug about in his head for a topic to mention aloud. "Jeanie is a quiet one, isn't she? Nice child."
"I don't suppose she's especially quiet with her contemporaries," Ethel said. "Although she certainly does sit like a cat watching the mouse. . . . Deeply attached to her father. Unconsciously, of course, she's scared to death he might marry again."
"Why do you say that?" inquired Mr. Gibson.
"She's bound to be," said Ethel. "And of course, he will. That's inevitable. Man in his prime and a very attractive man to women, or so I imagine. And well off, too. I doubt if he can help himself. Some blonde will catch him." Ethel took up the last piece of pound cake. "I presume he is actually only waiting for the old lady to die. Although until he gets Jeanie launched off to school or into a romance of her own, he may sense there would be trouble from that quarter."
"Trouble?" said Rosemary politely.
"The inevitable jealousy," said Ethel. "A teenager, especially, can be so bitter against a step-parent."
"I don't know Jeanie very well," murmured Rosemary rather unhappily.
"They don't intend to be known, these teen-agers," Ethel said. "They like to think they are pretty deep." She hooted.
They weren't too deep for her, the quality of its tone implied.
Mr. Gibson had known quantities of young people as they filtered through his classrooms. But the relationship, there, he reminded himself, was an arbitrary thing. They were supposed to respect him, on the surface at least. He had had many bright chattering sessions listening to the tumble of their inquiring thoughts. They'd show off to teacher. He would be the last to know them in a private or social capacity. He said rebelliously, nevertheless, "They feel deep."
"Don't we all?" said Ethel with one of her wise glances. "Shall I tell you whom I am sorry for?" she continued. "That's old Mrs. Pyne, poor soul."
"I don't feel as if I know her well enough to be sorry or otherwise," continued Mr. Gibson, for tliis was at least talk.
"Isn't it obvious?" said Ethel. "That to be old and ill and dependent upon, of all things, a son-in-law, is a pretty dismal fate? I see them wheel her out on that front porch of theirs every day and there she sits in the sun. Poor old thing. She must know, whether she lets herself admit it or not, that she is a nuisance. She must know it'll be a relief to all concerned when she dies. If ever I get old and helpless," said Ethel forcefully, "me for an institution. Remember that."
"I'll make a note of it," said Mr. Gibson with a touch of asperity. But he was doing anguished sums in his head. Take twenty years. Rosemary would be fifty-two, not many years older than Ethel was right now, and no one could be more the picture of strength than Ethel. But then he, Kenneth Gibson, would be seventy-five . . . ancient, decrepit, possibly ill . . . possibly—oh, Lord forbid!—another Professor James. Then would Rosemary be waiting for him to die?
He said wearily, "I'm afraid I had better lie down for 2l while. I'm sorry."
They sprang to assist him to his own place, where, on his own couch, among his books—his long beloveds—he tried to rest and remember without pain the bleak, the stricken pity on Rosemary's face.