Now his week off began to go leaping by. She helped dust some books. She couldn't, of course, dust many. Mr. Gibson had to go back to work on the Monday, so on Friday Mrs. Violette came in.
Mrs. Violette was produced for them by Paul Town-send. She was a cleaning woman; she worked for the Townsends in the afternoons. But she was a young person, very slim and quick, with shining black hair and skin of a soft peach color and a countenance of a smoothness and design that was foreign. At least there was something odd, and not plain American, about her looks—Near Eastern perhaps. One couldn't place her.
Mrs. Violette didn't concern herself with being placed. She was cool and detached, taciturn and competent. One knew that she could keep this little house clean with the back of one of her slim strong buff-colored hands. Mr. Gibson thought she would do admirably. She was not,
thank heaven, some garrulous woe-loving old creature reduced to drudgery by adversities. She was fresh and self-respecting. She would be fine. Rosemary agreed, but wondered if it wouldn't cost too much.
"Until you are perfectly well," he told her, "Mrs. Violette is an economy. Now that's just sensible."
"At least you make it sound sensible," Rosemary said with a touch of life and opinion.
So Mr. Gibson went back to his classes on the Monday, convinced that Rosemary wasn't going to die.
He rode the buses. He wasn't much of a driver, for an automobile was a thing he had known, all his life, how to do without. So he left the ancient car in the garage until such time as Rosemary might wish to use it. She understood it, which was more than he did, and he rode his thirty minutes, brooding and half-smiling to himself over little schemes. For he was possessed by the joy of nurture which is closely akin, if not identical with, the deep joy of creation. He had never known this in his Ufe before. It absolutely absorbed him.
Rosemary was eating well. She was stuffing herself to please him. (Ah, so it did!) When he came home, the little house would be shining from the administrations of Mrs. Violette, and Rosemary would recount to him how many eggs she'd had, how many glasses of milk, what toast. . . . And he'd say she'd be fat as a pig pretty soon and feel a sting behind his eyes.
One afternoon he came walking home, the two blocks from the bus stop, to see her sitting on the ground at the far side of the house, near the roses. He altered his course and stepped softly toward her on the grass. She looked up and her face was dirty where she had swipetl an earthy hand across her nose. She was patting and combing the earth around one rose bush with hef bare fingers.
This earth was dampish and richly dark. She told him it was in good tilth. Mr. Gibson squatted down to admire and, at the same time, to taste and turn and enjoy a word that was new to him. What a wonderful word! Tilth. He understood it immediately.
She said the roses needed mulchng and he learned about mulch. She showed him how delicately she had pruned this one rose bush, how the buds must be left to grow outward. She seemed to understand what the plant needed. It seemed to him that she felt toward this one
plant— all she could manage yet—much as he felt toward her, Rosemary. He didn't say so. When he helped her to her feet, it seemed to him that she sprang up rather lightly. It made him happy.
Then one Saturday morning, puttering in his room, he realized that, while he could hear Mrs. Violette in the kitchen, he missed another presence in the house. He looked out of all the windows and at last saw Rosemary sitting in the back-yard grass, in the sun, with a hairbrush in her hand. She was brushing her hair in slow rhythm and while he watched she did not cease to brush her hair. Something about the scene startled him. The rhythm, the sensuous rhythm, the ritual of it, the strangeness . . . Rosemary was a woman. She was a mystery. One day, when he had brought her to full life and health as he would do, why, he did not know with whom he would be living in this house! He did not know Rosemary, herself. ...
Paul Townsend turned out to be an ideal landlord. He was genial and easy, but he did not intrude. One day, however, when three weeks had gone by and the Gibsons could be presumed settled in, Paul invited them to supper.
It was their first social event.
Rosemary wore her best dress. Mr. Gibson admired it aloud. It was a dullish blue, a pleasant enough dress. But he fussed a little. As soon as ever she felt just like it, he told her, she must buy at least two new dresses... maybe three. Rosemary quietly promised that she would. She accepted everything he urged upon her these days with no more weak spilling of grateful tears. In fact, she was full of grace in the matter of receiving.
They walked across the double driveway to Paul Town-send's house.
While not grand, this was certainly the home of a solvent man. Paul Townsend, a chemicaf engineer, owned the plant and laboratory down near the college, and it must return him if not a fortune at least a pleasant living.
He was a widower. Mr. Gibson had never known his wife, alive. Her picture was in this house many times. It was a little sad to -see how young the pictures were. She did not look as if her daughter could be this tall Jean, fifteen, and in high school. A pleasant child, with a cropped and tousled dark head, fine white teeth in a ready smile, excellent company manners. Then there was
Paul's mother-in-law, Mrs. Pyne, a cripple, poor soul, who inhabited a wheel chair.
Supper was not formal but nicely served and stiffly, politely eaten. Mr. Gibson watched Rosemary. Was she nervous about these people? Was it a strain? Was she strong enough?
The old lady asked kind commonplace questions, and told kind commonplace statistics about herself and the family. She had a thin, rather delicately boned face, and the tact not to mention her own disabilities. The young girl kept her place among her elders, served the meal, cleared the table afterward, and then excused herself to do her homework. Paul was a considerate host, full of good will and social anxiety.
But there are just so many commonplaces. Mr. Gibson set to work to dissolve the stiffness of this first meeting of Rosemary and her nearest neighbors. He was bound Rosemary was going to find it easy and pleasant to move into a world of friendly give and take. In fact, he talked a good deal for a while. At last, by prying and prodding for mutual interests, he discovered how to egg Paul on to talk about his garden. Rosemary began to listen and contribute. Mr. Gibson was eager to learn. Once Paul asked a silly punning question . . . whether Mr. Gibson had a sense of humus. Mr. Gibson was inspired to reply, "Not mulch." And Rosemary giggled. The old lady smiled indulgently and kept listening pleasantly as the session grew quite animated.
At ten o'clock they took their leave, for Mr. Gibson did not want Rosemary tired out. After the good nights and the kind parting phrases, they crossed the roofless porch at the front of Paul's house. They came down the five steps and crossed the double driveways in the soft chill air of night time. They went in at their own back door, skirting the shining new garbage cans, symbolic of a functioning house. They crossed the pale dim orderly kitchen and entered the living room, where a lamp had been left burning. The sense of home flowed into Mr. Gibson's heart.
"Wasn't that fun?" said he. "I thought you were having a good time."
Rosemary stood there, in the blue dress, slowly shrugging off the dark sweater from around her shoulders. She looked brooding and intense. "I have never known," she
said vibrantly, "it was possible to have so good a time. I never, never, knew . . ."
It rather shocked him. He could think of nothing to reply. She tossed the sweater into her chair and sat down and looked up at him and smiled. "Read to me, Kenneth, please," she said coaxingly, "for just ten minutes? Until I simmer down?"