there and caught a bus for downtown. Paul Townsend he had left safe at home behind him, working away in his herb garden this morning. So Mr. Gibson knew how to get what he wanted.
He did not see the people on the bus. He did not notice the familiar scenery as the vehicle proceeded on the boulevard, then went threading around residential comers until it came upon a business street and thicker traffic. Mr. Gibson, in a mood both bitter and dangerously sweet, was composing a letter.
There was a temptation to be pathetic, and he must resist it. He must make Rosemary understand the cold choice. He must in no way seem to reproach her ... A difficult letter. What words would do this?
He came out of his absorption in time to get off the bus on a downtown corner. This little city had grown, like all California towns, as a wild weed grows. It had left the college here, and in its own park, close to the town's old center . . . and had sent tentacles romping out into valleys and lowlands on all sides. But Mr. Gibson would not go there, to the college—to walk on a campus path and be spoken to by name . . . not again. They would not miss him very much, he thought. Some younger man would come in. . . .
Paul Townsend's place of business was a block and a half in the opposite direction, and Mr. Gibson turned his uneven steps that way. He began to imagine his next moves . . . and, as he did so, he realized that he ought to have brought a container. He stopped in at a delicatessen and purchased the first small bottle he saw on the shelf. It happened to be a two-ounce bottle of imported olive oil, and quite expensive. '
"I am Kenneth Gibson. Mr. Townsend's neighbor. He asked me to stop by and fetch a letter out of his desk," said Mr. Gibson with cool nerves.
"Oh yes. Can I get it for you, Mr. Gibson?"
"He told me exactly where to put my hand on it . . . if you don't mind . . ."
"Not at all," the girl said. "This way, Mr. Gibson." She knew who he was . . . Mr. Gibson of the English Department ... a trustworthy man. "In here," she said with a smile, and ushered him into the laboratory.
He did not look at the cupboards but went to Paul's desk and opened the left top drawer and took, at ran-
dom, an old letter out of a pile. "This seems to be the one."
"Good," she said.
"Er . . ." Mr. Gibson looked distressed and embarrassed. "Is there by any chance a . . . er . . . men's room . . .?"
"Oh yes," she said becoming at once crisp and remote. "Right over there, sir." She indicated a door.
"Thank you."
As he had calculated, she left for the outer regions.
He went into the small washroom and turned the cap upon the bottle of olive oil and gravely poured the contents away into the sink.
He came out. Now the laboratory was his alone. He found the key with no trouble. He took down No. 333. His hands were steady as he poured its liquid content into his own container. It was a delicate task, from one small opening into another, but he was cold and clearheaded. He scarcely spilled a drop.
He did not take it all. As he put No. 333 back in place he thought the depletion of the supply would not be noticed for some time. He made no attempt to wipe off fingerprints or anything of that sort. He had elected not to take the whole bottle from the cupboard away with him, only because he needed time. Time to get home. Time to write his letter. He did not want the fact of some missing poison noted too soon and the girl asked and his name given and he interrupted.
Mr. Gibson put the poison he had stolen into the green paper bag, relocked the cupboard, hid the key, left the premises. He thought he might have made a cool and successful thief: he might as well have been a thief all his life for all the difference. . . .
He stood on the downtown comer, waiting for a bus, feeling absolutely numb for the moment. Just as one came, just as he got on, he thought he heard his name spoken. But he wasn't certain, didn't really care whether anyone had called his name or not. ... so he moved on and sat down by a window.
I have a tree, a graft of love That in my heart has taken root Sad are the buds and blooms thereof And bitter sorrow is its fruit—
Oh, stop! Stop this senseless jingling of old words. Villon was long dead.
Looking blindly out, the thought crossed his veering mind capriciously that perhaps he'd had, just now, a supernatural warning. But he knew what he was doing. Death. Well? He was simply going to step out of his doom. To him it seemed not an unintelligent thing to do. A just God would understand.
• How could he put this in a letter? "... Very tired . . ." he would write. No. No. It was possible that he would have to lie. What matter if he did or did not lie? ". . . I am not as well as I appear. I have known for a long time . . ." Should he hint that he had begun to doubt his sanity? Yes, that . . . Rosemary should understand. And perhaps he was insane. In fact, he did not and could not know himself, really why he was doing this deed. Not even this could he know. Doom. In the iceberg of his subconscious the motive lay and worked.
Mr. Gibson, sunk in icy gloom, saw nothing out the windows, nothing inside the bus which went its doomed way on the streets of the town carrying all the doomed people. If he could have done anything for Rosemary, or for any living soul ... he might have stayed. But all, all were doomed, and to help each other or even to love each other was only another illusion.
Some sense of time and space prodded him to notice the stop that would let him off at the comer where the market was. So he got up and, filled with such pain that he was nearly blinded, he went toward the door. As he stepped off, he thought he heard his name called again. Angels? Well, if he was about to damn himself through eternity, then he was going to do so. All his life he had done all the duty he had been given to see, made his apparent choices, and if he still had an illusion of choice, this deed appeared to him to be as much his duty as his pleasure . . . and he would do it.
And one duty besides ... a promise to keep . . . the marketing he had said he would do for Ethel. Then he would corne (with what relief) to the end of his duties.
So Mr. Gibson went into the big market and took a wheeled basket and pushed it along the aisles. He selected lettuce, he took cocoa, he took a loaf of thin-sliced white
bread ... he took cheese (the kind Ethel preferred). And he took tea for Rosemary. (It might comfort her.)
He stood at the check stand, dumb and lost in utter helplessness, while the girl fingered the buttons and rang the prices. He lifted the big brown bag in his arms. He walked two blocks east, and one north. ....
The roses at the far side of the cottage were not blooming now.
Old Mrs. Pyne was sitting in her wheel chair on the' Townsend's porch. She waved cheerily at him.
Mr. Gibson staggered his course to bring himself near enough to speak to her. (He could ask her. He could inquire about Paul and what the Church might say about marriage and divorcees. . . . But why? He didn't want to divorce Rosemary and be, for God knew how many years, her and her husband's friend. No, he didn't want that loophole into life. He would rather pretend it wasn't there. Kid himself, he thought bitterly, that the deed would be done for Rosemary's sake.)
He said, "Hello . . ." weakly.
"Goodness!" said the old lady leaning forward, "isn't that too heavy for you, Mr. Gibson?"
"Not too heavy." (But it was. It was heavy, his bag of food and death.) "How are you, Mrs. Pyne?" He smiled falsely.
"I'm all right," she said. "Isn't this a glorious day?" Her voice took on a special and almost shocking vigor. "It's so marvelous to be able to sit out in the sun."
"Yes," he said. "Yes . . . well . . ."
He stumbled across the double driveways. He heard Paul's voice calling, "Hi! How goes it?" Mr. Gibson pretended not to hear.
Marvelous to be able to sit in the sun? It was! Yes, it was! He unlocked his door and went in, beginning to know that, quite possibly, he could not do what he had planned to do. So in a night and a morning of acute depression— he had only made a fool of himself once more. He, Kenneth Gibson, was not cut out to be a suicide. No. He was fated to set Rosemary free and be her and her husband's good friend for his natural life and limp on in time and bear all. It was not his doom to die today. He couldn't change his doom. Doom is not doom if there is any way out of it. And he was doomed ... to go on being the neat, decent, too thin-skinned little man he had been JDorn to be.