"After all," said Ethel, "this is pleasant of course, but when you are working, Rosemary, you won't have the daylight hours . . . Did you prick your finger, dear?"
Rosemary said quietly, "No, Ethel. I did not."
"Ah . . . well." Ethel smiled indulgently. "We ought to think of Ken, too. Will it be wise for him to ride the buses in the fall—with that leg?"
"I hadn't thought . . ." said Rosemary in a rush, and her face came up.
"I should think I could ride on a bus," said Mr. Gibson, "without . . ." His voice caught, because he could see very plainly the red smear of Rosemary's blood on the white of the collar in her hands.
"You did run that needle into your finger, dear," said Ethel chidingly. '.'Just look at the stain. On your business clothes, too . . ."
"It will wash," said Rosemary faintly, and rose; and, walking stiffly, she bore her work toward the kitchen.
Mr. Gibson wondered what it meant. "I suppose," he said, staring at the cold grate and feeling frozen, "she pricked her finger and stained the collar because she doesn't want to go to business tomorrow."
He waited timidly for Ethel to agree.
But Ethel smiled. "I don't think so," she said, "for why should she tell a lie about that?" (Mr. Gibson faced it. Rosemary had lied.) "It happened, of course," said Ethel lowering her voice, "when I spoke of leaving here"
"Leaving—?"
"Leaving him, I imagine," said Ethel, sotto. "How she gives herself away!"
He heard her sigh, but inside himself he was collapsing and shrinking with distaste. Given that nothing is what it seems; even so, he couldn't guess what it really was. In
the old poems, man was captain of his soul, and he, so steeped in them, would never learn. How could he learn? He was old. His heart sank. Mr. Gibson felt solid, felt treason, too—he couldn't help it—and he hated it. He turned his eyes back into the book and did not look up as Rosemary returned.
"Did you use cold water?" Ethel fussed.
"Of course," said Rosemary softly. "It's nothing." She was taking up her needle, as Mr. Gibson could see through his temple somehow out of the side of his averted face. Did Rosemary know why she had run a needle into her flesh? It made him sad to think, Not necessarily.
"Now, Ken, you will be all right tomorrow?" his sister asked fussily. "Mrs. Violette will be in to finish up your shirts, you know, and she could stay and fix your lunch."
"No, no," he said. He didn't want Mrs. Violette. He looked forward to being alone.
"You do feel all right?" said Rosemary timidly anxious. "Nothing's bothering you, Kenneth, is it? You don't look as well as you did, somehow. Do you think so, Ethel?"
"I wonder if I'm not missing my work," he said resettling his shoulders. "I'm used to working . . ."
Rosemary's head bent over her sewing. He wrenched his gaze from her hair.
"You mustn't give me a thought," he said. "In the first place, I have lived alone a matter of nearly half a century, in my day . . . and secondly, the Townsends are right next door, and Paul is around." He despised himself for throwing out Paul's name.
"That's so," said Ethel. "Their new cleaning woman won't be in 'til Friday, and of course Mrs. Violette will be gone. Paul, unless he can shift the load onto Jeanie, is going to be stuck right here with old Mrs. Pyne." She seemed to take a faint malicious satisfaction from this.
"Paul is very good to the old lady," said Mr. Gibson (for jealousy he would not descend to, generous and just he would be). "I think it's extraordinary."
Rosemary looked up with a flashing smile. "I think so too," she said warmly.
Mr. Gibson turned a page, which was ridiculous. He had not even seemed to read it.
"I've wondered," said Ethel with that shrewd little frown of hers. "Are you sure that this property isn't Mrs. Pyne' s property? I suppose Paul is her heir."
Rosemary said, smiling, "Sometimes you sound terribly cynical, Ethel."
"Not at all. I am only a realist," said Ethel smugly. "At least I like to think I can face a fact."
"But can't a man be simply good and kind?" Rosemary inquired. "Really?'-'
Mr. Gibson's heart seemed to swoon. "And also good-looking?" said Ethel with a grin. "I suppose it's possible. Perhaps he is as good as he is beautiful." She cocked her head and counted stitches.
"But Paul has a prosperous business, hasn't he, Kenneth?" insisted Rosemary. "He makes money."
"He is a chemical engineer," said Mr. Gibson. "Yes . . ," (All of a sudden he saw Paul's laboratory like a vision before him and a row of bottles in a cupboard. The vision flickered and went away.)
"So he doesn't need Mrs. Pyne's money—if she has any," said Rosemary. "I just don't think he's mercenary." "Nor do I," said Mr. Gibson, valiantly. Ethel said, "Of course he isn't, as far as he knows. Lots of people never admit the most basic facts. However, almost everyone will do an awful lot for material advantage. . '. . Oh, we can kid ourselves, can't we, that it's for some fancy other reason. But whether you eat, whether you're comfortable, whether you feel secure, counts. Indeed it does. And all the time."
"I suppose it does," said Rosemary flushing. She bent over her handiwork. She seemed defeated.
Mr. Gibson found himself fearing what might be in her mind. Rosemary had come to him for material comfort, for security. . . Oh, she could not have helped herself— but she knew this now. And so did he. He had urged it. He had meant it to be so.
"Naturally it counts," he said aloud gently. "Quite naturally so. . . ." He turned a page.
Ethel said with a little snort, "What do you think a baby yells for? He yells to be warm and fed, and that is all. Let me turn to the weather. I wonder if it will be hot tomorrow."
Mr. Gibson thought to himself. To be warm. To be fed, for me to be comfortable. ... Is that what's in the iceberg? All of our iceber!B:s? Do none of us know why we do anything? Because we won't admit that we are animals? Ah, but what are we here for, then? Are we
compelled, always, and every time? In all this fluid busyness, has each of us his private doom?
He disliked the idea. He tried to face it. Ethel faced it. She was strong enough. He wouldn't hide from a fact either . . . not any more. Was it this fact that depressed him so? He seized upon it.
On the air they were talking about a bomb test, with pious hope that the terrible power would never be unleashed against fellow men.
Ethel listened and Ethel said, "Of course they'll unleash it."
"The bomb?" Rosemary was startled.
"Do you think they won't?" j
"I . . . hope they won't," said Rosemary with wide | eyes.
Ethel shook her graying head. "Be sure they will."
"How can you . . . ?" Rosemary gasped.
"It's just a question of noticing," said Ethel, "that human beings are what they are. And believe me, a weapon in the hand is as good as thrown. Don't you know—in cold fact—that anything could cause it to fall? Human beings are so primitive . . . essentially. They don't mean to be. You can't call it their fault, but their nature. For which none of us are to blame. But they get angry; once angry, they begin to call the other side a monster. There seems no reason why it is not fine and honorable and brave and good to slaughter a monster. They do not wait and try to understand or to reason differences away. They simply do not. And even if they were to try—human reason is so pitifully new and such a minor factor. . . . People will always act from the blood and the animal residue."
"How do you face a fact like that?" asked Mr. Gibson quietly.
"The bomb falling?" she said, misunderstanding. "As far as I am concerned, I'll stay put and be blown up with the world I know. I don't even want to survive. Don't tell me you do!" She looked as if he could not possibly be so childish, could he?
"No," said Mr. Gibson thoughtfully. "No ... not especially. But then, I am old.''
Doom, he thought. Well, then, we are doomed. He wasn't thinking about the bomb.
"I don't see," said Rosemary to Ethel, "how you have the courage to think the way you do."