Ptomaine Street: The Tale of Warble Petticoat

In the hall and the great library she was conscious of vastness and magnificent distances, but, she thought, if necessary, I can use roller skates.

As she followed Petticoat and the current shift of servants upstairs, she quavered to herself like the fat little gods of the hearth.

She took her husband into her arms, and felt that at last she had realized her one time dreams of the moving pictures, ay, even to the final close-up.

What mattered, so long as she could paw at the satin back of his shirt, and admire his rich and expensive clothing.

“Dear—so dear—” she murmured.

CHAPTER IV

“The Leathershams are giving a ball for us to-night,” Petticoat said, casually, as he powdered his nose in the recesses of his triplicate mirror.

“A ball?”

“Oh, I don’t mean a dance—I mean—er—well, what you’d call a sociable, I suppose.”

“Oh, ain’t we got fun!”

“And, I say, Warble, I’ve got to chase a patient now; can you hike about a bit by yourself?”

“Course I can. Who’s your patient?”

“Avery Goodman—the rector of St. Judas’ church. He will eat terrapin made out of—you know what. And so, he’s all tied up in knots with ptomaine poisoning and I’ve got to straighten him out. It means a lot to us, you know.”

“I know; skittle.”

Left alone, Warble proceeded systematically to examine the interior of Ptomaine Haul. She gazed about her own bedroom and a small part of its exquisite beauty dawned upon her. It was an exact copy of Marie Antoinette’s and the delicately carved furniture and pale blue upholstery and hangings harmonized with the painted domed ceiling and paneled walls.

The dressing table bore beautiful appointments of ivory, as solid as Warble’s own dome and from the Cupid-held canopy over the bed to the embroidered satin foot-cushions, it was top hole.

The scent was of French powders, perfumes and essences and sachets, such as Warble had not smelled since before the war.

“Can you beat it,” she groaned. “How can I live with doodads like this?” She saw the furniture as a circle of hungry restaurant customers ready to eat her up. She kicked the dozen lace pillows off the head of the bed.

“No utility anywhere,” she cried. “Everything futile, inutile, brutal! I hate it! I hate it! Why did I ever—”

And then she remembered she was a Petticoat now, a lace, frilled Petticoat—not one of those that Oliver Herford so pathetically dubbed “the short and simple flannels of the poor.”

Yes, she was now a Petticoat—one of the aristocratic Cotton-Petticoats, washable, to be sure, but a dressy Frenchy Petticoat, and as such she must take her place on the family clothesline.

She drifted from oriel window to casement, and on to a great becurtained and becushioned bay, and looked out on the outlook.

She saw gardens like the Tuileries and Tuilerums, soft, shining pools, little skittering fountains, marble Cupids and gay-tinted flowers. This was the scene for her to look down upon and live up to.

“I mustn’t! I mustn’t! I’m nervous this afternoon! Am I sick?… Good Lord, I hope it isn’t that! Not now! I’d hate it—I’d be scared to death! Some day—but, please, kind Fate, not now! I don’t want to go down now with ptomaine poisoning! Not till after I’ve had my dinner! I’m going out for a walk.”

When Warble had plodded along for six hours, she had pretty well done up the town.

Ptomaine Street, which took its name from her husband’s own residence, was a wide, leafy avenue with a double row of fine old trees on each side. They were Lebbek trees, and the whole arrangement was patterned after the avenue which Josephine built for Napoleon, out to the Mena House.

She passed the homes of the most respectable citizens. Often they were set back from the road, and the box hedges or tall iron fences prevented her from seeing the houses. But she saw enough and sped on to the more interesting business and shopping section of Butterfly Center.

She passed Ariel Inn, the hotel being like a Swiss Chalet, perched on some convenient rocks that rose to a height above street level. A few fairly nimble chamois were leaping over these rocks and Warble heard a fairy-like chime of bells as afternoon tea was announced.

A man in an artist’s smock sauntered across the street. A palette on one thumb, he scratched his chin with the other. A hearse, its long box filled with somebody, crawled down the block. A dainty Sedan with a woman’s idle face at its window wafted by. From a Greek Temple came the sound of Interpretative Dancing, and the applause of perfunctory hands.

She wanted to elope. Her own ideas of utility, efficiency, and economy were being shattered—broken in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Her sense of proportion, her instinct for relative values, her abhorrence of waste motion, her inborn system and method, all were swept away as a thief in the night. Could she reform this giddy whirl? Could she bring chaos out of cosmos? Was her own ego sufficient to egg her on in her chosen work?

She haed her doots.

She maundered down the street on one side—back on the other.

Dudie’s Drug-store was like unto a Turkish Mosque. Minaret and pinnaret, battlement and shuttle-door, it was a perfect drug-store, nobly planned. The long flight of steps leading up to its ptortal was a masterpiece in the step line.

Inside, the Soda Pagoda was a joy of temple bells and soft, sweet drinks, while at the prescription counter, the line formed on the right, to get Dr. Petticoat’s prescriptions filled for their ptomaines.

A Moldavian Incense Shop was the barber’s; a half-timbered house sold English-built clothes; a brick affair of Georgian influences and splendid lines, housed the hardware needed by the Butterflies, and the milliner’s was a replica of the pyramid of Cestus.

The bank was the Vatican, with Swiss guards in the doorway.

Perpetual waste motion! In all the town not one building that connoted to Warble the apotheosis of efficiency shown by the King Alfred tossing cakes in the window of Bairns’ Restaurant. Not a dozen buildings that even suggested use in addition to their beauty.

And the street was cluttered with trees in tubs, window boxes, sudden little fountains or statues; gilded wicker birdcages on tall poles—songs issuing therefrom.

Arbors, covered with pink Dorothy Perkinses, here and there by the curbside. And, worst of all, people sitting idle in the arbors. Idle!

She wouldn’t have cared so much, if the people had been busy—even one of them. She fought herself. “I must be wrong. It can’t be as silly as it looks! It can’t!”

She went home and found Petticoat waiting for her.

“Like the burg, eh? Great stuff, what? Not an eyesore inside the city wall. Good work, I’ll megaphone.”

Warble sat down in an easy-going chair—so easy, it slid across the room with her, and collided with a life-sized Chinese lady of yellow stone.

“Yes,” Warble responded, “it’s very uninteresting.”

CHAPTER V

Goldwin Leathersham was a great Captain of Industry. In fact, he put the dust in industry, or, at least, he took it out of it. He got it, anyway.

His home was an Aladdin’s Palace, with a slight influence of Solomon’s Temple. Gold was his keynote, and he was never off the key.

When our Petticoats arrived at the party, they were met by gold-laced footmen, who whisked them into shape and passed them along.

Warble found herself in a white and gold salon, so vast, that she felt like a goldfish out of water. The place looked as if Joseph Urban had designed it after he had died and gone to Golconda. Whatever wasn’t white was gold, and the other way round. The gold piano had only white keys, and the draperies were cloth of gold with bullion fringe. All real, too—no rolled or plated stuff.

A huge coat-of-arms in a gold frame announced that Mr. Leathersham was descended from the Gold Digger Indians, a noble ancestry indeed; and it was no secret that his wife had played in “The Gold-diggers,” during its second decade run.

Marigold Leathersham was a charming hostess, and greeted Warble with a shriek of welcome. “You duck,” she cried; “how heavenly of you to dress so well.”

Warble was simply attired in a white pussy-willow silk underslip. In her haste and excitement she had forgotten to add the gown meant to go over it, and as she wore no jewels save the chased gold lingerie clasps at her shoulders, the result was a simplicity as charming as it was unintentional.

And so she made a hit.

That was the way things came to Warble; a hit—a social success—and all because she forgot to put on her frock.

She mingled with the glittering throng of gilded youth, of golden lads and girls, of gilt-edged married people, and found herself in the arms of Goldwin Leathersham, her host.

“Here comes the bride,” he shouted, as he piloted her about and introduced everybody to her.

“This demure little beauty,” he said, “is Daisy Snow. Note her sweet, pure face and wide-eyed, innocent gaze.”

“It is all so new—so wonderful—” Miss Snow breathed, “I’m a débutante, you know, and I have scarcely butterflied out of my chrysalis yet. How splendid the Leathershams are. He has a heart of gold. Oh, he is such a good man, he says his life motto is the Golden Rule.”

“And Mrs. Leathersham?” asked Warble.

“Marigold? Oh, yes, she’s as good as gold, too. We’re firm friends.”

Warble was agog to mingle, so she moved on.

Le Grand Paynter, a celebrated Cubic artist, fascinated her with his flowing locks, flowing tie and marvelous flow of conversation. He asked to paint her as a Semi-nude Descending a Ladder, but she only said she must refer him to her Petticoat.

Freeman Scattergood, the well-known philanthropist was chatting with Mrs. Charity Givens, who was the champion Subscription List Header. Many had tried to oust her from this enviable position but without success. Near them stood Avery Goodman, the rector, and he was deeply engaged in a flirtation with Miss May Young, one of his choir girls.

Manley Knight, a returned soldier, was resplendent with a Croix de Guerre, a Hot Cross Bun and many other Noughts and Crosses.

Warble fingered them in her light way.

“Isn’t he splendid!” babbled Daisy Snow the ingénue; “Oh, how wonderful to offer one’s life for glory! You can fairly see the heroism bubble out of his eyes!”

“How you admire him!” said Warble.

“Yes, but he doesn’t care for me.”

“Not specially,” admitted Manley Knight. “Yes,” Daisy said. “He thinks me too ignorant and unsophisticated—and I am. Now, there’s Lotta Munn, the heiress—she’s more in his line. But Ernest Swayne is devoted to Lotta. I think it will be a real love match—like the Trues.”

“The Trues?” asked Warble, politely.

“Yes,” and she glanced toward a very devoted looking pair sitting apart from the rest, on a small divan. “They’re wonderful! Herman True is the most marvelous husband you ever saw. He never speaks to anyone but his wife. And she’s just the same. She was Faith Loveman, you know. And they’ve been married two years and are still honeymoon lovers! Ah, what a fate!”

Daisy sighed, a sweet little-girly sigh, and blushed like a slice of cold boiled ham.

But this Who’s Whosing was interrupted by a footman with a tray of cocktails.

Daisy Snow refused, of course, as became a débutante so did Judge Drinkwater, who stood near by, frowning upon the scene, he being a Prohibitionist.

A sickly looking lady next to him achieved several, and Warble asked Daisy who she might be.

“Oh, that’s Iva Payne—you met her, you know. She’s very delicate, a semi-invalid, under the care of specialists all the time. I don’t exactly know what her malady is, but it’s something very interesting to the doctors. There’s scarcely anything she can eat—I believe she brings her own specially prepared food to parties.

“She seems to relish the cock-a-whoops all right,” Warble commented.

“I understand the doctors prescribe stimulants for her—she is not at all strong. They give her artificial strength, she says.”

“Yes, she seems to be strong for ‘em. Don’t you take any?”

“Oh no! I’m a débutante. And mother says she wants to be with me when I take my first cocktail and smoke my first cigarette.”

“Dear girl, Daisy, so fresh and unspoiled! Her mother is one of a thousand.”

This from Manley Knight, who constituted himself Daisy’s proxy in the matter of cocktails and drank all that would have been Daisy’s had her mother permitted.

Goldwin Leathersham seemed to be acting as proxy for some débutante also, for he seemed to feel pretty bobbish, but Warble was only slightly interested in the whole matter.

She rolled her Wedgwooden eyes about, hoping the horde would be herded toward the dining-room. But no such luck.

Instead they drifted in the opposite direction and, swept along with the crowd, Warble found herself in one of a serried series of gilt chairs, facing a platform as large as a theater stage.

An erudite looking man who appeared on the platform received tumultous applause.

“Who is he?” Warble whispered to her neighbor, who chanced to be Avery Goodman, “an impersonator?”

“Lord, no; it’s Wunstone, the great scientist—rants on Fourth Avenue dimensions, or something like that.”

In a tone of forceful mildness the speaker began: “It must be conceded that, other things being equal, and granting the investiture of all insensate communication, that a psychic moment may or may not, in accordance with what under no circumstances could be termed irrelevancy, become warily regarded as a coherent symbol by one obviously of a trenchant humor. But, however, in proof of a smouldering discretion, no feature is entitled to less exorbitant honor than the unquenchable demand of endurance.

“Though, of course, other things being equal, and granting the investiture of all insensate communication, no feature is entitled, in accordance with what under no circumstances could be termed irrelevancy, to become warily regarded as a coherent symbol. And doubtless in proof of a smouldering discretion, and in accordance with one obviously of a trenchant humor, it may or may not be warily regarded.

“Though it cannot be denied that the true relevancy of thought to psychic action is largely dependent on the ever increasing forces of disregarded symbolisms. And this again proves the pantheistic power of doubt, considered for the moment and for the subtle purposes of our argument as faith. For, granting that two and two are six, the corollary reasoning must be that no premise is or may be capable of such conclusion as will render it sublunary to its agreed parallel.

“But this view is ultra and should be adopted with caution.

“We are therefore forced to the conclusion that pure altruism is impossible in connection with neo-psychology.”

There was more, but it was at that point that Warble went to sleep.

She was awakened later by the high notes of a celebrated Metropolitan soprano, who had consented to exchange a few of her liquid notes for Goldwin Leathersham’s yellow-backed ones.

Tired, hungry and sleepy, Warble fidgeted in her little gilt chair, but the music went inexorably on.

It was followed by the appearance of a Neo Poet.

This man wore eccentric dress of some sort, and as he waited for the applause to melt away, he stood, absent-mindedly picking crumbs out of his beard.

By subtle hint of auto-suggestion this made Warble hungrier than ever and she looked around for Petticoat. But he was busy flirting with Daisy Snow, and it was not Warble’s way to cut in.

In hollow tones the performer read extracts, excerpts and exceptions from the works of Amy Lynn, Carl Sandpiper and Padriac, the Colyumist, and Warble went back to sleep.

There was more, but no merrier, and when at last the platform was cleared for the last time, the guests were refreshed by the passing of a small glass of punch and a wafer to each.

Then they went, with a flutter of silk stockings and twinkling slipper buckles, and a medley of shrieked goodbys.

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.”