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.
Because it was marvelous to be able to sit in the sun! And this was enough to keep a man alive!
Mr. Gibson began to feel a bit hysterical. No, no, he •juould do it! One second of resolution—that was all he Qeeded. Surely he could manage to lift hand to mouth— one quick gesture—without thought . . .
But if he waited to write a letter. No, no! His whole decision was running away, running out of him. But couldn't the doomed of God ask a little kindness of the devil? Quick, then! Or suffer the tragicomedy out, be a spectator in his own skull and watch his ovni acts with what bitter amusement could be salvaged.
He was in the kitchen. He did not have—he did not even want—that kind of courage. Not any more.
He put the big brown bag on the counter. He took out the head of lettuce, the piece of cheese, loaf of bread, the box of tea, and, heavy at the bottom of the bag, the can of cocoa. And now he groped for the bottle of death. He would do it at once!
The big bag was absolutely empty.
Yes, quickly.
His hand met nothing.
