'And deeply interested, too. Same thing, you realize. Say, what's-your-name-Gibson . . . why did you plan to kill yourself in the first place?' asked Theo Marsh. 'No money?'
'Money!' shrieked Rosemary.
'Why not?' said the artist. 'Money is something I take care to have about me. Believe me. I'm a shrewd moneymaker. Am I not, Mary Anne?'
'A leech and a bloodsucker.' said Mrs. Boatright calmly.
'Well, money is a serious matter,' said Theo with a pout, as if nobody would talk seriously. 'So naturally, I wondered. Is he broke?'
'No,' said Rosemary shortly.
'In some kind of way,' said Lee Coffey, with his keen ears stretched backward, 'he was broke . . .'
'I assume,' said Theo Marsh loftily, 'that something bothers him. Want to know what, that's all.'
'He won't say,' said Mrs. Boatright, 'but perhaps he can't . . .'
'Yes, he can,' said Theo Marsh. 'He's articulate. And I'm listening. It interests me.'
'Oh, it does?' said Mr. Gibson spitefully. He felt Rosemary's body tensing.
'Shall I guess?' said she, in a brave voice that was full of fear. 'He married me ten weeks ago ... to s-save me. He likes to help waifs and strays, you see. It's his hobby. But when I got well . . . there he was, still stuck with me.'
'What!' cried Mr. Gibson, outraged. He grabbed her with both arms as if she might fall with his agitation. 'No. No!'
'Well, then?' she trembled. 'I don't know why you wanted to do it, Kenneth. I only guess . . . it's something Ethel put in your head.' She leaned forward, far away from him, and put her hands on the front seat and laid her face on her forearm. 'I'm afraid—it's something about me.' And Mr. Gibson's heart ached terribly.
'We don't know,' said Lee mournfully, over his shoulder. 'Nope, we still don't know what it was that shook him.'
Virginia said, 'I should think you might tell us. We've been so close. Please tell us.' Her little face was a moon setting on the horizon of the back of the seat. Her hand came up and touched Rosemary's hair compassionately. 'It would be good for you to tell us,'
Mrs. Boatright said with massive confidence. 'He will, in a minute.'
Paul said, 'You can take a short cut up Appleby Place.'
'I'm way ahead of you,' said Lee, 'and Lavinia's had them on the phone by now.'
'Lavinia!' spat Paul. 'That girl with no clothes!' He evidently couldn't imagine being both naked and reliable.
Marsh said airily in his high incisive voice, 'I guess Gibson likes his secret reason; hugs it to his bosom. Won't show it to us. Oh, no, we might spoil his fun.'
'Don't talk like that!' cried Rosemary, straightening up. 'You sound like Ethel.'
So everybody talked at once, telling the painter who Ethel was.
'An amateur,' the painter groaned. He had one foot up against the seat ahead. His socks were yellow. 'How I loathe and despise these amateurs! These leaping amateurs! Amateur critics.' He uttered a long keen. 'Amateur psychologists are among the worst. Skim a lot of stuff out of an abbreviated article in a twenty-five-cent magazine . . . and then they know. So they treat their friends and neighbors out of their profundity. They put their big fat clumsy hands in where the daintiest probe can't safely go, and they rip and they tear. Nothing so cruel as an amateur, doing good. I'd like to strangle the lot of them.'
Mr. Gibson stirred. 'No,' he said. 'No, now I want you
to be fair to Ethel. I'll have to try to make you understand. It's just that . . . perhaps Ethel made me see it . . . but it's the doom.' There. He had told them.
'Doom?' said Mrs. Boatright encouragingly.
He would have to explain. 'We aren't free,' he said earnestly. 'We are simply doomed. It . . . well, it just suddenly hit me very hard. To realize ... I mean to believe and begin to apply—the fact that choice is only an illusion. That we are at the mercy of things in ourselves that we cannot even know. That we are not able to help ourselves or each other . . .'
They were all silent, so he pressed on.
'We are dupes, puppets. What each of us will do can be predicted. Just as the bomb ... for instance ... is bound to fall, human nature being what it . . .'
'Baloney,' groaned the painter. 'The old sad baloney! Predict me —Gibson. I dare you! You mean to say you got yourself believing that old-fashioned drivel?' he sputtered out.
But Rosemary said, 'Yes, I see. Yes, I know. Me, too.'
Then everybody else in the car, except Paul, seemed to be talking at once.
The bus driver's voice emerged on top. 'Lookit!' he shouted. 'You cannot, from where you sit, predict! I told you. Accidents! There's the whole big fat mixed-up universe . . .'
'What if I can't predict?' said Mr. Gibson, somewhat spiritedly defending his position. 'An expert . . .'
'No, no. We are all ignorant,' cried the nurse. 'But it's the experts who know that. They know we're guessing. They know we're guessing better and better, because they're trying to check up on the guesses. You have to believe that, Mr. Gibson.'
