Kitabı oku: «Ptomaine Street: The Tale of Warble Petticoat», sayfa 3
Warble and Petticoat reached home.
“Howja like ‘em?” he asked.
“I’m so hungry,” she wailed.
“Oh, Warble, you ought to be more careful about eating in public. It isn’t done. Watch Iva Payne—she doesn’t.”
“Oh, Bill—” Warble began to cry. “I want to go back to the restaurant—”
“No, no—now, Cream Puff, I didn’t mean to lambaste you. But they’re a smart crowd—”
Warble let two tears rest, glistening, in her lower eyelashes, rolled up her eyes, pulled down the corners of her hibiscus flower mouth, and waited to be kissed.
She was.
Up in Bill’s bedroom. Gray silken walls, smoked pearl furniture, a built-in English bed, with gray draperies.
Through a cloth of silver portiére, a bathroom done in gray rough stone. Oxidized silver plumbing exposure.
No pictures on the walls, save one—a barbaric Russian panel by Larrovitch.
At the windows, layers of gauze, chiffon, silk—all gray.
A great circular divan was somewhere about, and as he sank down upon it and drew her with him into its engulfing down, he patched up the quarrel.
“They took to you,” he said, “you went like hot cakes!”
It was an unfortunate allusion, and Warble, smiling with an engaging smile, wheedled, “Pleathe, pleathe—”
“No,” Petticoat said, inexorably, “if you eat all the time you’ll get to look like that soprano. Howja like that?”
“Do you care if I’m fat, Bill?”
“Me? Why, I wouldn’t care if you were as big as a house. You’re my—well, you’re my soulmate.”
“Oh, I’m so had and glappy! It’s sweet to be yours. You must excuse my appetite—you’re the only husband I have. My own Pill Betticoat!”
He kissed her in his eccentric fashion, and with her plump arms about his neck, she forgot all about Ptomaine Street.
CHAPTER VI
Warble’s own maid was named Beer.
A French thing—so slim she seemed nothing but a spine, but supplied with slender, talkative arms and a pair of delicate silk legs that displayed more or less of themselves as the daily hint from Paris reported skirts going up or down as the case might be.
A scant black costume and a touch of white apron completed the picture, and Warble played with her as a child with a new doll.
Beer wanted to patronize Warble, tried to do so, but found it impossible. Her patronage rolled off of Mrs. Bill Petticoat like hard sauce off a hot apple dumpling.
“Do you get enough to eat, Beer?” her mistress asked her.
“Wee, maddum,” the maid replied, in her pretty War French. “I eat but a small.”
“Well, don’t drop to pieces, that’s all,” warned Warble. As to personal care and adornment the hitherto neglected education of Warble Petticoat was in Beer’s hands. And she handed it out with unstinted lavishness.
That was the way things came to Warble; in slathers—in big fat chunks. In avalanches and rushing torrents.
Beer engineered all her new wardrobe, and received sealed proposals for its construction.
Beer taught her the mysteries of the toilette table, and once initiated into this entrancing art, Warble let herself go in the matter of cosmetics and make-ups, and could scarce wait for Beer’s afternoon out, to dabble about by herself.
Beer taught her how to wear jewelry, and directed what pieces she should ask Petticoat for next.
Altogether, Warble was trying out things—but carefully, as a good housewife tries out lard.
And she was not yet certain as to the results. Environment has to reckon, now and then with heredity.
Warble, at soul, all for utility, economy, diligence and efficiency, transplated to Butterfly Center, with its keynote of careless idleness, waste motion and extravagance.
One must win out. Had she a Dempsey of a heredity against a Carpentier of an environment? Or was it the other way round?
She planned to reform Butterfly Center, to do away with the street statues, the useless patches of flowers; tear down and rebuild the ridiculous classic architecture of many of the shops and substitute good solid livable houses for the castles and châteaux, the barracks and bungalows that adorned the residence section.
These reforms she meant to bring about shortly, but first, she must begin with her home.
In her pride of being a Petticoat she loved every detail of Ptomaine Haul. Yet she knew it did not express herself, it was not the keynote of her own Warbling personality.
What to do.
She sat in her boudoir, its mauve walls and gold Japanese screens backgrounding her plump prettiness, as she lolled on a gold brocade chaise longue.
She glanced out at the peacocks strutting in the Italian garden and listened to the rooks cawing in the cypresses between the marble urns on the terrace steps.
It was a big proposition to change all that. To turn the bird sticks into pruning hooks and the bird baths into plowshares.
Could she do it?
Doubtful.
She went out into the hall and looked over the rail of the great rotunda. Rugs hung from the rail, as it might be a Turkish Monday.
Below, she could see the lake in the front hall, also she could glimpse the armored bronze Petticoats guarding the entrance that led to the corridor that led to the hall leading into the dining-room.
It was well nigh hopeless.
Warble sighed. Then she rang for Beer and ordered some French pastry and a cup of chocolate.
Revived and revivified, Warble decided on a mad dash for reform.
Ordering Beer to dress her quickly, she did all she could to help, and soon, in a daring combination of canary, black and coral, she was on her way to the shops.
She achieved what is known as a utility box, and which is compounded of matting and a few bamboo strips.
This she caused to be set up in her boudoir.
Came Petticoat.
No oral observations, but the next day an antique Florentine chest, carved by Dante, replaced the box.
“Just as utile,” Bill remarked, “and a lot more expensive. Kiss me.”
That is the way the Petticoats of this world decree, and that is the way the Warbles submit.
That Thursday afternoon she was in love with her husband. She toddled into his room to talk to him. She was in pastel chiffon boudoir jambiéres picked out with rosebuds. She sat, cross-legged, on one of his gray satin floor pillows and looked up at him.
Petticoat was just going out and he sat before the mirror, earnestly adjusting a hair net over his permanent.
“Hello, Fruit Mousse,” he said, half absent-mindedly, as he went on adjusting.
Big Bill Petticoat was far from being effeminate. He was found of aesthetics and anaesthetics, and his chief interests in life were beauty and his big bills.
“What’s the use of beauty, if a thing isn’t useful?” Warble would ask, and Petticoat would reply, “What’s the use of use, anyway? There’s no use in having anything that isn’t beautiful.”
And as the house was under Petticoat rule, Big Bill won out.
“You must have a party, Warble,” Petticoat said, as he fitted a long, slim cigarette into a long, slim holder.
“I’d rather have a baby,” and she looked up at him inquiringly.
“Honest, Warbie, I can’t afford it. I’ve lots of money, but we take a lot of keeping ourselves, and to keep a baby means almost a whole extra establishment. Let’s wait till I’ve saved up a bit, or we have a windfall. Leathersham owes me a small fortune for his cook’s ptomaine cases—she’s always getting poisoned with her imported canned things—but Goldie’s slow pay, and too, I want to make a few improvements on the place. I’m thinking of bringing over a Moorish Courtyard intact—nice, eh?”
“What’s it good for?” demanded Warble. “We’ve done our courting, and anyway—look here, Bill, there’s only three things I can do. Have a baby—”
“Cut it out, Warb; I haven’t the means just now. And it might be twins.”
“That’s so. Well, the second thing is to reform this town. It’s going to the dogs—to little, silly Pekes and Poms. I can save it, and correct its ways and put it on a sound utilitarian basis.”
“Don’t believe you could do that.”
“Can do. But the third trick is to flop over to their side and be like the town people myself.”
Petticoat laughed outright.
“Nixy on that, Warble, my duck. You’d have to reduce.”
“I speck I should. Well, then the reform act for mine. I’ve got to do something, Pet, to keep amused and interested.”
“That’s what I said. Have a party.”
“I will. And it will be part of the reform. These people are too highbrow. Too soulful. Too artistic—”
“Warble! How many times have I told you never to use that word! Now, look here, if you want to play at reforming, go ahead, nobody will interfere with you. But where’ll you get time? You spend most of your waking hours in slumber, and the rest, eating. You’re a sweet, lovely, cuddly thing, but if you keep on, some day you’ll find you can’t get your kimono together.”
“Then I’ll wear two. But, Bill, I’m not so big, you know.”
Warble up, and parading the room with a martial air.
“You’re a perfect Bellona!” Petticoat said, smiling at her.
“A Bologna! Oh, you horrid thing! But that reminds me I haven’t had sausage lately. I must speak to cook. Now, about my party.”
“Have a good one while you’re about it. I might import a Spanish Ballet—”
“You might do nothing of the sort! This is to be my party, and I shall run it to suit myself.”
“All right, Tutti Frutti; you have no subtlety or poetry in your soul—indeed, I doubt if you have a soul—but you’re a dear and a sweet—”
“Bill, I’ve an idea! Build bureaus right down to the floor and then collar buttons can’t roll under them!”
“Fine idea! Better patent it. Must go. Goodby.”
“Wait a minute. Mrs. Holm Boddy is coming to see me to-day. What’s she like?”
“Oh, she’s a hen-minded Hetty with cabriole legs. Don’t bother with her much. They’re lower case people—tin pergola and pebble garden sort. And early Victorian bathrooms. You won’t like her—freeze her out.”
“All righty. Say—Billy dear—has you any choclums?”
“Not for little gourmands,” he took her in his arms. “I say, Warbie, you promised to cut out sweets. Look here.”
He led her to the picture gallery where his simpering or frowning ancestors looked down in painted disapproval.
They were all slender—wasp-waisted ladies, long lean men. Not a fatty in the bunch.
Big Bill said nothing, his painted morals adorned their own tale.
“I don’t care!” Warble exploded, angrily. “If you don’t give me enough to eat, I’ll leave your bed and board and put a notice in the paper. And you needn’t flaunt your Petticoats in my face! I don’t care that for them!”
She snapped a dimpled pink thumb and forefinger at the whole exhibit, made a face at the skinniest one of all, and then sneaked casually into Bill’s arms.
“Nice, nice,” she cooed, patting his mastoid process. “Run along now, and I’ll plan my party.”
“That Boddy woman,” remarked Beer, as she dressed Warble; “she is a pest—a pill! Wait, Maddum, I beg you! I’ve only rouged one of your cheeks!”
“That’s enough,” said Warble, inattentively, and she danced down stairs to freeze out her caller.
“I’ve been meaning to come for some time,” Mrs. Holm Boddy said, “but I thought I’d give you a chance to get a little used to your new grandeur. Quite a change for you, isn’t it?”
“No,” said Warble, “it’s rather a come down. I’ve always been very grand. Tell me about yourself.”
“Oh, I’m the old-fashioned wife and mother. Devoted to my home, and my family. I deplore the modern tendency to neglect one’s own fireside.”
“Yes, I should think you’d be happier there than anywhere else.”
Warble gazed at her guest. She was a tall, angular woman, so gaunt that her bones rattled. Warble wondered if Bill would really like her to be like that.
“Oh, I am. My dear husband, my darling children—you ought to have a lot of children, Mrs. Petticoat.”
“Yes, I shall, when we can afford it. My husband isn’t very well off just now, you see.”
“You live very extravagantly. Look at those rugs, now. Rugs cost fearfully.”
“Don’t you have any?”
“Oh, no. We don’t waste money that way.”
“Bare floors?”
“No, carpets. More homey, you know. Nice Brussels in the parlor—real Body Brussels—Bigelow—and in the bedrooms, Ingrain. Oh, the hominess of a new-laid Ingrain carpet, with lots of fresh straw under it! You acquainted with Avery Goodman, the Rector?”
“I’ve met him.”
“Splendid man-spiritual-minded and all that. Fine preacher, too. Very soulful. I often sob right through his sermons. Better go hear him.”
“My husband is a busy man—we haven’t time for church.”
“No, spose not. Doctors are kept on the jump. Specially specialists. And I know your husband is busy. Say, is there any truth in the report that he pays the grocers and delicatessen men to get—you know—doubtful canned goods, and not too fresh sea foods and all that—so there’ll be more ptomaine cases?”
“What a good idea!” Warble cried. “I had not heard of it, but if Bill does that he’s more efficient than I thought him!”
“I spose he’s terribly in love with you?”
“Bill? Oh, yes. We adore each other.”
“I didn’t know. The Petticoats are all so thin—”
“Yes, a change is always pleasant.” Warble gave her engaging smile.
“Maybe. That Daisy Snow now—she’s so pretty and slender. Dr. Petticoat seems mighty fond of her.”
“Well, you know what doctors are. Nice to everybody, of course. There’s no telling who’ll have ptomaine poisoning next.”
“Oh, yes, you can always tell that. It’s sure to be Iva Payne. She’s awful attractive, too. You must be worried about your man, Mrs. Petticoat.”
“I do worry a lot. It keeps my flesh down. Tell me more to worry about.”
“Well, there’s Lotta Munn, of course. I suppose you haven’t a fortune of your own?”
“Oh, yes; I’m enormously rich in my own right.”
“You are! Why, where did your husband get you?”
“He got me out of a mail catalogue.” Warble made a face at her. “Must you go, Mrs. Boddy?” she rose. “I won’t ask you to come again, as I know how you love your own home and fireside. Goodby.”
Though Mrs. Holm Boddy put up a strong resistance, Warble pushed her out of the front door and slammed it after her.
“That woman has left finger marks on my nice clean soul,” she said, as she went down to see the cook about the sausage.
CHAPTER VII
She had reached the peak of excitement in a confident decision that her party should be a success.
In the morning she interviewed the cook.
“You can spread yourself on the feast, François,” she said, “have any old menu you like so long as it’s edible and enough of it. But especially I want you to make for me one hundred custard pies.”
The French chef looked puzzled. He was an expensive chef and part of his duty was to look puzzled at any plain-named dish.
“But, Madame, I do not know ze custard pie. Is it a crême paté?”
“No, it isn’t a krame puttay, nor creamed potatoes, but cus-tard pie—see? Pie! Oh, don’t stand there looking like a whitewashed clown! Get out of my way, I’ll make them myself!”
Flinging on one of the chef’s jackets and aprons, Warble flew at the job and with a battalion of helpers breaking eggs and skimming cream, she herself tossed the flour and shortening together for the crust.
Efficiency scored and in an incredibly short space of time eight dozen custard pies were cooling their heels in the pantry windows.
“Not to be served with the supper,” Warble warned the butler, “when I want them brought in I’ll tell you.”
Beer dressed Warble for the party, Petticoat standing by and advising.
The gown was a few wisps of henna-colored chiffon which fitfully blew, half concealed, half disclosed a scant slip of jade green satin.
Flesh-colored stockings, Petticoat decreed, and henna slippers with carved jade buckles.
“Now, her hair—” he mused, leaning on his folded arms over the back of a chair.
He walked slowly round Warble.
“Oh, wopse it up anyway,” he said, “and tangle some jade beads in it. She’ll stand that.”
His orders were carried out and Beer clasped her hands in silent ecstasy at the result of the combined efforts of herself and her master.
“Some day, Warble,” Bill said, “I’ll teach you how to dress becomingly.”
“And I’ll teach you how to undress becomingly,” said Beer, not wanting to be outclassed in her own game.
Warble waved Petticoat out of the room, dismissed Beer with a simple “Get out!” and then quickly flung off the clothes she wore and hopped into a little frock of white organdie and cherries.
She wadded some hair over each ear, piled up the rest in a moppy coil and crowned it with a wreath of cherries.
The party came.
“Good Heavens!” Warble thought, as she looked at the smart, bored crowd, “have I got to bring these hifalutin creatures down to earth? I don’t know that I can make them laugh, but I’ll give them a jolt!”
She did.
Her cherries bobbing, two long-stemmed ones held between her teeth, she flew around like a hen with its head off.
“You see,” she explained, “it’s a Mack Sennett party, everybody puts things down everybody’s back. Like this—and here are the things.”
From a tray brought by a footman, Warble selected a fuzzy caterpillar and turning quickly dropped it down inside the soft collar of Trymie Icanspoon, a poet, who would dress as he pleased.
He went into amusing spasms and everybody took something from the tray. There were cold raw oysters, bits of ice, thistles, cooked spaghetti and plain granulated sugar. They had to put them down the backs of the men only, because the fashionably dressed ladies hadn’t any backs to put them down. You can’t put an oyster down two crossed strings of pearls.
It caused great hilarity to see the Reverend Goodman standing on his head, trying to lose a red-hot silver dollar; and Daisy Snow, whose débutante frock was available for the purpose, wriggled beneath the tickling crawling of a large but harmless spider.
Warble was almost in hysterics over the funny antics of Goldwin Leathersham down whose loose and ample collar she had herself poured a glass of water on two seidlitz powders.
“Next,” she cried, clapping her hands, “we’ll have an artistic game. Here it comes.”
Lackeys and minions brought in pails of kalsomine, of various tints, some of pale pastel shades, others of deep rich hues. One was given to each guest, and each was provided with a beautiful new whitewash brush.
“Now,” Warble explained, her blue eyes dimpling with delight, “you each make a splash on the wall—a big, hit-or-miss splash. Then we each try to evolve a lovely picture by few bold strokes.”
This was great fun.
Manley Knight, with a mighty splash of color that landed on a Fragonard panel, had quite a good start for a “Storm at Sea.” He worked it up with fine technique and you would have been surprised at the result.
Iva Payne took a splash from several different pails thereby achieving a Cubist landscape. It was entitled “High Tide off the Three-mile Limit,” and was a startling success.
Daisy Snow, timid little dear, made but a tiny daub and worked it up carefully.
“That,” she said, “is a miniature of Big Bill.”
All in all, it was gay sport, and even Mrs. Charity Givens took part, though she protested she was no artist and couldn’t even draw a straight line.
The next performance was a contest between Adam Goodsport and Avery Goodman.
Bets were made on the two contestants before the betters knew what the scrap was to be.
“It’s a character sketch,” Warble explained. “Mr. Goodsport tries to blacken Mr. Goodman’s character, while the Rector tries to whiten Mr. Goodsport’s character.”
Avery Goodman was then presented with a bag of flour and Adam Goodsport was handed a bag of soot.
They went at it hand over fist, and in a few moments the blacking and whiting process was so complete that both were pronounced perfect transformations and all bets were off.
Faces, hands and clothes were alike befloured and besooted, until Goodman was a veritable Blackamoor while Adam Goodsport looked like a Marcelline.
A few eyebrows indicated a suspicion that Big Bill Petticoat’s bride was a Little Mischief, but nobody said anything about it.
“If I can only reform them,” Warble thought to herself, “if I can only make them like and enjoy this innocent fun instead of wearing their poor brains out over capitalled Art and Literature.”
“Now,” she said, briskly, “we’re going to play a game I learned in Shanghai. All take off your shoes and stockings. No one excused—come on—off with them.”
Beer and a few other maids came in to assist the ladies, the men were properly valeted, and the barefooted crowd sat waiting further orders.
Daisy Snow made a remark about being a maiden with reluctant feet, but nobody noticed it.
Several seemed rather relieved than otherwise at the condition imposed upon them.
“Now,” said Warble, but before she could go further, Adam Goodsport butted in with:
“Oh, please, Mrs. Petticoat—oh, please! Such an opportunity! May never occur again! Oh, can’t I—may I not—oh, dear lady, do say yes—”
“Lordy, what do you want to do? Speak out, man!”
“Why, you see, I am a solist—like a palmist you know—but as to feet. I studied solistry in Asia Minor and I know it from the ground up. Oh, please, Mrs. Petticoat, let me read your sole!”
“Do,” cried Warble, “love to have you.”
She plumped herself into a pillowed divan, and held her little pink feet straight out in front of her.
Goodsport, sitting on a cushion at her feet, took one and scrutinized the sole.
“The Solar system,” he began, “is interesting in the extreme. It was invented by Solon, though Platoe also theorized on the immortality of the sole. His ideas, however have been discarded by modern footmen.
“Locke, is his treatise On the Human Understanding, discusses the subject fully and with many footnotes, and old Samuel Foote himself cast footlights on the subject.”
“Now, looky here,” Warble objected, “I won’t have a lecture in my house! I object to anything of an intellectural nature.”
“This has nothing to do with the intellect,” Adam assured her. “Quite the reverse, now, you listen. It’s really interesting. The palmist may claim to read the true character from the lines of the hand, but it is only by solistry that the real sole is laid bare and the character of a subject in any walk of life is exposed. The lines of the sole are greatly indicative of character, for all traits must draw the line somewhere. Now, Mrs. Petticoat, this line extending from the Mount of Trilby to the outer side of the sole is the life line. If that appears to be broken it indicates future death. If more pronounced on one sole than the other, it implies that the subject has one foot in the grave. You haven’t, don’t be alarmed. Here is the headline, straight and continuous, showing a long and level head.”
“Ouch,” remarked Warble, “you tickle. Try somebody else,” and she drew her feet under her.
“Me,” exclaimed Daisy Snow, coming over and holding out her dainty right foot.
“H’m,” said Goodsport. “This line running from the Mount of Cinderella to the heel is the clothes line and denotes love of dress. This line crossing it is the fish line and shows you are incapable of telling the truth.”
