Part 26 (2/2)

”I've just had a look at a poem of yours,” I told the third. ”I heard you're giving one to my mother, for Bushelbasket. I'm sure she's very grateful.”

Mrs. Karp's teeth stood rapt. ”It's the one about the placebo, yes, I couldn't sell it anywhere though it's very comical so when William mentioned it I thought it would be a nice gracious thing to oblige Mrs. Vand with it. She does so much for art.”

”Well, so does she,” said Professor Karp, explaining with a lift of his chin that he referred to his wife.

”Oh, not like Mrs. Vand. I'm not a philanthropist like Mrs. Vand.”

”She's an organizer,” her husband revised, still meaning Mrs. Karp.

”Euphoria has a hand in the New England Verse Theatre,” William elucidated with a certain abstractness.

”You're very old-fas.h.i.+oned about actresses, William,” Mrs. Karp chided him. ”If you weren't I'd insist that Nanette come to us. She has a flair, you can't deny it.”

”I call it the Worse Theatre,” said Karp. ”I prefer prose.”

”There's nothing wrong with amateurs,” Mrs. Karp said quickly. ”Oh, that's an unpardonable quip, isn't it? And William didn't catch it anyhow. Pros-professional actors, you see?”

William murmured, ”Oh, yes, I see.”

-Whereupon Connelly gave a dour little laugh: a pond rippling obediently to the stroke of William's dropped pebble.

”But we weren't talking theatre, we were talking about the government,” Mrs. Karp continued fluently. William clasped and unclasped his hands, and Professor Karp, noting this, momentarily shut his eyes in the plain hope that it would somehow initiate a similar action of his wife's mouth. It did not. ”Mr. Connelly is very shrewd about taxes. Accountants are the poets of the Sixteenth Amendment, you know. They had a sort of instinct,” she remarked, giving Connelly a wink of brilliant mischief.

The subject of her praise drew in so full a sigh that it puckered his melancholy forehead: if he had hot already been created a man, he would certainly have been in that instant a veritable bulldog. His almost vertical little ruby-dark nostrils looked healthily moist. ”The government is Bolshevik,” he stated at last. ”Doesn't make any difference, Republicans, Democrats. Tax the rich to keep the poor.”

”Is that Lenin or Robin Hood?” Mrs. Karp wanted to know, disposing of her husband's hasty frown.

But Connelly had a notable frown of his own; it made him seem more anxious than ever. ”The poor deserve their situation. People keep forgetting that,” he said strictly. ”The rich work for their money.”

This was so indiscriminate a contradiction of what I had already learned of the world that I had to dissent. ”My mother doesn't though.”

”Your mother's money works for her; it's quite the same thing,” he answered, not in the least discomfited. ”It's not taxation I object to, mind you, it's confiscation. They don't tax in Was.h.i.+ngton any more, you know. They gave up taxes years ago. They just take it all away. That's the opinion of this office, and we've had the experience to back it,” he said, offering his round head to his employer's support like an austere pedestal looted of its fretwork.

William, however, just then showed no velleity to be identified with at establishment, ruined, as he must have thought, by rivers of youths; instead he at once inquired how my mother was.

”All her hair fell out,” I said.

He nodded sadly; he knew it already. ”Her so attractive hair,” he said, contemplating it. ”Your mother is a great beauty,” he told me earnestly, as though reciting a Commandment which he feared any one of his listeners might imminently violate.

”A very handsome woman,” Connelly piously rejoined. ”Her investments are striking. I can take no exception to any of them. Though I didn't see the point,” he added with a touch of censure, ”of Michigan Laminated.”

”Good Lord!” said Mrs. Karp. ”What a terrible thing to do to Michigan.”

”Beg pardon?”

”Laminating it. It can't be comfortable living there any more.”

Connelly exposed his feeble reluctant smile; the small tidy squares of his dentures had a canine aspect, hiding a growl. ”Oh, yes, I see”-a fair rendition of William's tone, though a shade more aloof.

Mrs. Karp nevertheless was constrained to take it as a compliment to her wit. She took it, moreover, as applause, and even seemed to hear in it cries of Encore, which she at once set out to satisfy. ”It's impossible to quarrel with your views, Mr. Connelly, so long as they don't contradict Scripture. 'Blessed are the poor in spirit' is one thing; it doesn't say 'Blessed are the poor in investments,' after all, does it? And as regards the unlikelihood of a rich man's entering the Kingdom of Heaven, well, you know, a camel can go through a needle's eye. All that's required is a big enough needle. I suppose Michigan Laminated manufactures them?”

Connelly's grudging grace vanished and left a smear of distaste on his lip. ”I'm afraid I can't pretend to speak for the Church,” he said sternly.

”Then speak for yourself.”

”Not on a moral question.”

”Very well. Then do let's discuss an immoral one.”

”Now Euphoria,” said Karp, out of desperation resorting to direct address.

”Now Jerome,” mocked his wife.

”You don't want to navigate in muddy waters,” he warned.

”Don't I? But it depends which way the wind blows my sails. I've got no independent volition in these matters-I'm just like Mr. Connelly. I check everything with 'Rome.”

”Can't we leave Rome out of it?” Connelly said in a hurt voice.

”Oh, I wouldn't think of it. After twenty years of marriage? Not on your life! Besides, 'Rome has all the power in the world; he makes the first-year students tremble.”

”Oh look,” William said with a wretched display of gravity, ”she only means her husband, you know.”

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