'You go for this psychosomatic stuff?' inquired the bus driver abruptly.
'Don't you?' she said.
'Long ago,' he declaimed, 'long ago I threw a whole bunch of arbitrary distinctions outa my head. Either—or. Body or mind. Matter or spirit. Hah! Now it turns out matter is less solid than spirit, far as I can figure what they're talking. Nothing's any more un-gross than the human body. Or a chair, either. Zillions of cells—atoms and subdivisions of same—whizzing around, and . . . they made outa what? Waves. Rhythms. Time itself, for all we know. Caution to the jaybirds,' he concluded.
Virginia laughed out loud, delightedly.
But Mr. Gibson was on his way down for the second time. Doom, he said to himself, and aloud, 'I suppose I was ill. At least that's a name for what I was.'
''NowI' said Virginia. 'Look, we are so ignorant.'
'Yes, we are ignorantI' said Rosemary gladly.
'Anybody who knows anything at all about medical science—or any other, I guess—only begins to know how ignorant we are,' said Virginia. She looked brightly back at Mr. Gibson. She expected him to be glad.
'Where there's life there's hope, you mean?' said PauL He seemed to think he was joining in.
The nurse frowned. Her small chin was almost resting upon the back of the front seat as she sat twisted around to talk to them. 'I meant we know enough to know there's an awful lot more to be found out. We do know just a little bit about how to find it. Don't you see, Mr. Gibson? There are people looking for ways to help all the time and they've found some. I've seen. Nobody knows what they might find out by tomorrow morning. You should have asked for help,' she chided.
'So should I,' said Rosemary not very loudly.
Mr. Gibson didn't reply. He was busy perceiving something odd. It was hard to fit into the structure of doom. That was what was odd about it. Say the individual is depressed because of his internal chemistry, call it his machinery. Even so. He is not quite doomed . . . not if his fellow men, men who hold their minds open because they humbly know their ignorance . . . not if these have discovered even some helpful things to do for him. And this was strange, a strange weakness—wasn't it?—in the huge hard jaws of doom.
'That's funny,' he said aloud.
Nobody asked him what he meant and he did not tell. The car slid up a tree-lined street and all the passengers were silent for a block.
Then Paul fidgeted. 'I should have called home. I wonder if Jeanie got back . . . and Mama's O.K.'
'It must be nearly four o'clock,' said Rosemary. 'Ethel will be home.' She lifted her head; it was almost as if she tossed it haughtily.
Ethel! Gibson felt shocked. What would Ethel say? He couldn't even imagine. Absolutely nothing that had happened since eleven o'clock this morning had made Ethel's kind of sense.
'I don't think he was ill,' the bus driver blurted. '7 think he was shook.'
Virginia tilted her head to look at him respectfully.
'To his foundations,' said the bus driver.
'But everybody loved him,' said Rosemary, and raised her clenched hands like a desperate prayer.
'Why sure, everybody thought a hell of a lot of Gibson,' said Paul indignantly, as if Mr. Gibson had offended un-pardonably.
'Everybody?' said the bus driver nmiinatively. 'Now, let's not promise candy.'
'Candy?' said the nurse with curiosity.
'He had something on his mind; it wasn't hardly just missing the brotherly love of his fellow man,' said Lee. 'Hey? And look, honeybunch,' he said to his blonde, 'we are now on Hathaway Drive, so where's this mansion?'
'It's the white Colonial,' said Virginia.
Rosemary said, 'Maybe the poison is here.'
Mr. Gibson was a chip in a current. He got out of the car with all the rest of them.
They had pulled up within the wall, in the wide spot where the drive curved before the pillared entrance. The wide and spanking-white facade looked down upon them, and all the exquisite ruffles of the dainty window curtains announced that here money, and many hired hands, made order.
' Now Virginia took the lead. She rang the bell. A maidservant opened the door. 'Is Mrs. Boatright here? We must see her quickly. It's very important.' Virginia's crisp grave manner was impressive.
The maid said, 'Come in, please,' looking as unsurprised as she was able. She left them standing on the oriental rug of the wide foyer. To their left was a huge room. A pair of saddle oxfords hung over the arm of a gray- and-yellow couch, which shoes wiggled, being attached to a pair of young feet. There must be a girl, flat on her back on the sofa. She was talking. There was no one else in there. She must be talking on the telephone.
A boy, about sixteen years old, came in a jumping gallop down the broad stairs. 'Oh, hi!' said he, and romped off to their right, where there was another room, and a lot of books and a piano. The boy snatched up a horn and they heard some melancholy toots receding.
Then Mrs. Walter Boatright, in person, sailed out of a white door under the stairs. She was about five and a half feet tall and about two and a half feet wide. Every
ounce under the beige-cotton-and-white-lace was firm. She had short white hair, nicely waved, and a thin nose made a prow for the well-fleshed face. Her eyes were blue (although not so blue as Rosemary's) and they were simply interested. 'Yes? Oh, Miss Severson. How do you do?'
