Mr. Gibson was suddenly touched. His heart quivered as if something had reached in and touched it.
Mrs. Boatright cleared her throat. 'Organized human effort,' she began.
'This is not the PTA, Mary Anne,' the artist said severely. 'This is one simple intelligent male. Give me a crack at him.' He had come so far forward to peer at Mr. Gibson that he seemed to be crouching, angular as a cricket, on air. 'Listen, Gibson. Take a cave man.'
'Yes,' said Mr. Gibson, helplessly, with a kind of melting feeling. 'I'm taking one.'
'Did he foresee his descendants flying over the North Pole to get from here to Europe tomorrow?'
'Of course not.'
'So . . . how can you be as narrow-minded as a cave man?'
'Narrow?'
'Certainly. You extrapolate a future on what's known now. You extend the old lines. What you don't take into account are the surprises.'
'Hey!' said the bus driver. 'Hey! Hey!'
'Every big jump is a surprise, a revelation,' lectured the artist, 'and a tangent off the old. Penicillin. Atom splitting. Who guessed they were coming?'
'Exactly,' cried Virginia. 'Or the wheel? Or television? How do we know what's coming next?' She was all excited. 'Maybe some whole vast opening up in a direction we've hardly thought of . . .'
'Good girl,' said Theo Marsh, 'Have you ever done any modeling?'
'Of the spirit, too,' boomed Mrs. Boatright. 'Of the mind. Men have developed ideals undreamed in antiquity. You simply cannot deny it. Would your cave man understand the Red Cross?'
'Or the S.P.C.A.,' said the bus driver, 'him and his saber-toothed playmates. Doom—schmoom. Also, if you gotta, you very often do. Take a jump, I mean. I'm talking about the bomb . . .'
'So the bomb might not fall,' said Rosemary. She lifted her clasped hands in a kind of ecstasy, 'because men might find something even better than common sense by tomorrow morning. Who knows? Not Ethel! Ethel is too —'
'Too rigid, I expect,' said the painter. 'Death is too rigid. Rigor is mortis. Keep your eyes open. You'll be surprised!' This was his credo. Mr. Gibson found himself stretching the physical muscles around his eyes.
'It's gonna fall if you sit on your fanny and expect it,' the bus driver said, 'that's for sure. But everybody isn't just sitting around, telling themselves they are so smart they can see their fate coming. Lookit, we'll know the latest news today, when we look backward from fifty years. Not before. The present views with alarm. It worries. It should. But these trends sneak up like a mist that you don't notice.'
'Righto!' shouted the artist. ''You don't even see what's already around you in your own home town.'
'People can, too, help each other,' said Rosemary. She was sitting on his lap yet turned in facing him. 'And I'm the living proof. You helped me because you wanted to, Kenneth. There wasn't any other reason.'
'The ayes have it,' the painter said. (Perhaps he said 'eyes.') 'You are overruled, Gibson. You haven't got a leg to die on. You can't logically kill yourself on that silly old premise.' He drew back upon the seat and crossed his legs complacently.
The bus driver said dubiously, 'However, logic . . .'
The nurse suddenly put her forehead against his arm.
Mrs. Boatright said firmly, 'If you see that you were wrong, now you must admit it That is the only way to progress.'
And then they waited.
Mr. Gibson's churning mind settled, sad and slow as a feather. 'But in my error,' he said quietly, 'I may have caused a death.'
Paul said uncontrollably, 'If anything happened to Mama or Jeanie, I'll never forgive you.'
'Don't say 'never,' ' said Virginia, raising her head and speaking gently.
'It ain't scientific to say 'never,' hey?' said the bus driver, and leaned and kissed her ear.
The car shot off the boulevard upon a short cut.
Everyone was silent. The excitement was over. The poison was still lost. They hadn't found it.
And if in error there was learning and if in blame there was responsibility and if in ignorance there was hope— and if in life there are surprises—and if in doom there were these cracks—still, they had not put their hands upon a little bottle full of death, and innocently labeled olive oiL And it was no illusion.
Chapter XIX
TVIr R. GffisoN sat holding his wife in his lap, and this was -LVl bitter-sweet. 'Rosemary,' he said softly in a moment, almost whispering, 'why did you say you hadn't run the needle into your finger . . . when you had?'
'Why do I think I said it?' But her face softened and she discarded the bitterness. 'I just didn't care to have Ethel know ...' Her breath was on his forehead.
'Know what, mouse?'
'How much,' said Rosemary. She drew a little away to look down into his eyes. 'I loved our cottage,' she said. 'My—sentiments. She hasn't any sympathy with sentiment. I suppose it was sentimental, but I didn't want to go away.'
Mr. Gibson squeezed his own eyes shut.
