Trust (41 page)

"You all seem to have a sense of humor," I essayed.

"I know, we're a howl sometimes. Especially the Cabbages. I mean some days we can laugh and laugh for hours."

This took from me no more than a lugubrious nod. Here was fate arrayed and laughing, and here was fortune all smiling, quite as common speech depicts them: behold, in flutes and flowers, William's son's lissome lot. Of myself, meanwhile, what could I gloomily think but "infelix Dido"?—out of that poet known as Virgin to Miss Jewett's unconscious mediaevalists. (For the Roman literati spelled it Vergil: wasn't it the cabalistic monks who, in pious deference to their Lady, echoed it into Virgil?) Oh, well, there—now parenthetically I've shown what Stefanie Pettigrew believed of me. Not that I stood mumbling to myself in a dead language! I only mean that I knew acutely what she saw, that blithe girl, and felt the soaring scorn of her half-justified assessment: myself a mopish moralist,' drab and yawning and pocked interiorly with the mold of pedantry—while she, in contrast, petalled all over like a paper flower-cart, or real daffodils in a trance, leaned against that dark legal wall and lit it. The more I suspected her of holding this shrivelled image of me, the more I pitied my standing there, starched by wonder, fixed on the single tea rose that sprang down to touch her flower-ear where William's son had kissed. I ■ gave myself out, then, as futility coming before the judgment of a gleaming garden bent on no verdict but beauty and vitality, and let down in resignation the long, long vine of my self-grieving; I twined it all around me, sad because I had none of that life of chatter and charm and lyrical frivolity that splattered the corridor with ascending joyous shrieks. She was all undeliberate liquescence, a wind on a pond, Miss Jewett's pretty Artemis, her arrow-point nothing but the green stem of a water lily magicked into power. "Well, if you want to hear about sense of
humor,
" she interposed, "you ought to come and meet Mrs. Karp—she's a riot! I mean she writes the funniest poems—not anything like Ed McGovern's—
you
know, just funny, about people's being sick and things. I just can't be bothered with poems," she brought out with the smile of a restless conquistador, "unless they're weird: you want to see?"

I did not; I wanted, rather, to go, but the passage was suddenly full of the flutter of the scroll's unfurling—the cover flashed by so quickly I could not tell whether it was
Harper's,
or
Harper's Bazaar,
or merely
Harps,
"the magazine for angels," the celestials being, of course, those glorious hosts of housewives who bought it. Whichever it was, the illustrious Euphoria Karp wrote for it, and in a moment, while Stefanie simpered beside me, I was staring at the wit of the wife of the Professor of Copyright:

OPERATION CYST

A GYNECOLOGICAL GARLAND OF VISCERAL VERSES

"Read it!" insisted Stefanie, and put the page firmly in my grasp. "You'll absolutely
die.
All the Cabbages did," and, so as not to survive alone in a Cabbageless world, I complied. The poem was in two parts. I read them both:

I

My life isn't as interesting as Madame Bovary's.
My trouble isn't lovers—just ovaries.
The Doctor said to Madame Bovary, "I'll kiss and squeeze ya."
The Doctor said to me, "111 give ya anaesthesia."
Madame Bovary had a lover's tryst.
But
I
only had a cyst.

("Isn't it a
scream?
" said Stefanie.)

II

O Cyst, from thine ovarial perch descended,
Poor Cyst, arrested in thy bloom and apprehended!
Once happy parasite, no longer canst thou sit
'Mongst companion entrails, where thou wert wont to flit
Poor abstracted Cyst! Ah, what fate could be sadder
Than to have to leave thy fellows—kidney, womb, and bladder!
But grimmest of all that heartless stroke, that sharp-edged blow
That cut thee from thy paramour—O woe!
Come, dry thy tears, good Cyst; in thy bitter grief take heart:
E'en the best of Cysts from his Ovary at length must part
So the gods decree. Now farewell, O wistful Cyst,
Farewell—for thou never wilt be missed.

—Euphoria Karp

"I told you she's a riot!" my companion burst out as I lifted my eyes from these unusual verses. "She writes a lot of stuff like that. For all the big magazines. Once she did one on getting your arm broken and having to wear a sling, and once on a slipped disc.
That
one was an absolute howl."

"Are all her themes surgical?" I asked, not caring to dispute this literary passion. If Mrs. Karp's couplets were to be correctly classified as mock heroic, then my own heroism in having read them must be acclaimed as altogether genuine.

"I guess so. But even if they're not," said Stefanie, reluctant to disappoint, "she's practically famous anyhow, on account of
Skunk on Sundays
—that's a book she did once. It's supposed to be hilarious: even Qur school library has it."

"Writing a book doesn't necessarily make you famous," I countered. "My mother wrote one years ago. It was a best-seller but it didn't make her famous."

"Except in Russia. In Russia they even write
articles
about your mother's book. I've heard all about that."

"You have?" I exclaimed.

"Sure! What d'you think William's talking to Karp about? Come on, I'll show you," and she led me away, marching gaily ahead of me with her rolled-up magazine stabbing the air like a baton and her remarkable little feet spurning the carpet beneath them.

A morose curiosity made me keep up with her. We raced past all the secretarial nooks and dashed over the threshold of the clamorous room where the festive talkers swarmed; but no sooner had we plunged into the margins of the throng than the Cabbages converged. "Gimpy's looking for you, Fannie," said one; "Knell said you'd gone to the head; I told Beets no one was in there but some little coolie with a comb," insisted another, "and so you missed the best thing. You'll never guess!"

"You got the gin in the cooler," Stefanie guessed.

"Lordy, you're off the track!—Hoofy found a contraband Onion!"

"No! That's nerve! Which one was it?"

"Of all people, fat little Silverpants. She came right in and walked straight up to your fiancé and said she was from Miss Jewett's and her name was Sylvia Prantz and as a friend of the future bride she wanted to congratulate him—"

"What gall!" yelled half the Cabbages.

"Friend!" yelled the other half in disdain.

"—and so he actually shook
hands
with her," the narrator concluded indignantly. "Hoofy saw the whole thing from start to finish."

"No kidding! What'd she
do?
"

"Quick called a war council. With everybody looking we couldn't throw her
out,
so Stookie said did she want some cake and old Silverpants said sure, and Stookie said well, there's none left out there and the rest's in
there,
through that door, come on, and bang! locked her up."

"Locked her
up!
" Stefanie squealed. "Where?"

"Right there," said one of the meeker Cabbages, pointing to a door. "She's been quiet as a mouse all the time. She's a good prisoner all right."

"Last time they caught one of
us
was at Toodles' Christmas thing, remember? When that New Haven creep threw up?"

"
You're
the morbid one, Hoofy," protested a very long Cabbage. "They nearly tossed me out the window. If Stookie hadn't called the Fire Department they would've, too."

"Good old Stookie!" applauded all the Cabbages together; it made a wondrous roar, into which Stefanie herself disappeared, while the room revolved its multiple head to see what it was all about; and William, who was far off under a window, turned too, and gravely took my glance.

I had to go to him, then, and made my way through Cabbages and clerks and novice lawyers and finally an unexpected puddle which the broadloom was wearily soaking up, to where solemn William glowered. "Water in the rug," I said with a try at a pleasantry, "has there been an accident with the water cooler?"

"Not an accident," he said grimly, and introduced me to his confederates.

There were three: Connelly; Professor Karp; and, thin as a crane, behind a ruffled jabot like a crane's breast, Euphoria Karp.

"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-fashioned 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 Washington 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."