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PTOMAINE STREET
THE TALE OF WARBLE PETTICOAT
By Carolyn Wells
To Roberta Wolf Buehler My Beloved Friend
FOREWORD TO A FOOLISH BOOK
A certain Poet once opined
That life is earnest, life is real;
But some are of a different mind,
And turn to hear the Cap-bells peal.
Oft in this Vale of Smiles I've found
Foolishness makes the world go round.
Ecclesiastes, Solomon,
And lots of those who've passed before us,
Denounced all foolishness and fun,
Not so the gay and blithesome Horace;
And Shakespeare's Jaques, somewhat hotly,
Declared the only wear is Motley!
We mortals, fools are said to be;
And doesn't this seem rather nice?
I learn, on good authority,
That Fools inhabit Paradise!
Honored by kings they've always been;
And--you know where Fools may rush in.
And so, with confidence unshaken,
In Cap and Bells, I strike the trail.
I know just how, because I've taken
A Correspondence Course by mail.
I find the Foolish life's less trouble
Than Higher, Strenuous or Double.
Dear Reader, small the boon I ask,--
Your gentle smile, to egg my wit on;
Lest people deem my earnest task
Not worth the paper it is writ on.
Well, at white paper's present worth,
That _would_ be rather high-priced mirth!
I hope you think my lines are bright,
I hope you trow my jests are clever;
If you approve of what I write
Then you and I are friends forever.
But if you say my stuff is rotten,
You are forgiven and forgotten.
Though, as the old hymn runs, I may not
Sing like the angels, speak like Paul;
Though on a golden lyre I play not,
As David played before King Saul;
Yet I consider this production
A gem of verbalesque construction.
So, what your calling, or your bent,
If clergy or if laity,
Fall into line. I'll be content
And plume me on my gayety,
If of the human file and rank
I can make nine-tenths smile,--and thank.
PTOMAINE STREET
CHAPTER I
On a Pittsburgh block, where three generations ago might have been heard
Indian war-whoops--yes, and the next generation wore hoops, too--a
girl child stood, in evident relief, far below the murky gray of the
Pittsburgh sky.
She couldn't see an Indian, not even a cigar store one, and she wouldn't
have noticed him anyway, for she was shaking with laughter.
A breeze, which had hurried across from New York for the purpose, blew
her hat off, but she recked not, and only tautened her hair ribbon with
an involuntary jerk just in time to prevent that going too.
A girl on a Pittsburgh block; bibulous, plastic, young; drinking the air
in great gulps, as she would later drink life.
It is Warble Mildew, expelled from Public School, and carolling with
laughter.
She had only attended for four weeks and they had been altogether
wasted. In her class there were several better girls, many brighter, one
prettier, but none fatter. The schoolgirls marveled at the fatness of
her legs when, skirts well tucked up, they all waded in the brook. Every
cell of her body was plump and she had dimples in her wrists.
And cheeks, like:
A satin pincushion pink,
Before rude pins have touched it.
Her eyes were of the lagoon blue found in picture postcards of Venice
and her hair was a curly yellow brush-heap. Sunning over with curls--you
know, sort of ringolets.
In fact, Warble was not unlike one of those Kewpie things, only she was
more dressed.
* * * * *
Expelled!
That's the way things were to come to Warble all her life. Fate laid on
in broad strokes--in great splashes--in slathers.
Expelled! And she had scarce dared hope for such a thing.
* * * * *
To sound the humor of Warble.
She hated school. Books, restraint, routine, scratching slate pencils,
gum under desks, smells--all the set up palette of the schoolroom was
not to her a happy vehicle of self-expression.
Often, in hope of being sent home, she had let a rosy tongue-tip
protrude from screwed up red lips at teacher, but it had gone
unpunished.
And now--
Now, rocking in triumphant, glorious mirth, her plump shoulders hunched
in very ecstasy, the child was on the peak!
Expelled! Oh, gee!
And all because she had put a caterpillar down Pearl Jane Tuttle's back.
One little, measly caterpillar.
Pearl Jane had sat right in front of her.
A loose neckband round a scrawny neck.
And when Pearl Jane wiggled, a space of neck between two thin, tight
black pigtails--a consequent safe-deposit that was fairly crying out to
have something dropped down it.
A caterpillar mooching along the schoolroom aisle--clearly sent by
Providence.
Helpless in the grip of an irresistible subconscious complex, Warble
scoops up the caterpillar and in an instant has fed him into the gaping
maw at the back of that loose gingham neckband.
Gr-r-r-r-rh!
* * * * *
That, then, is why Warble stood in such evident relief on the Pittsburgh
block.
Expelled! The world was hers!
It had always been hers, to be sure, but it was now getting bigger and
more hers every minute.
The very first day she went to school, a little boy said to her:
“Do you like me?”
“No,” said Warble.
The little boy gave her all his candy and his red balloon.
So you see, she had a way--and got away with it.
* * * * *
Warble was an orphan. She had a paprika-seasoned sister, married to a
chiropodist, in Oshkosh. But for all that, she planned to earn her own
living.
And she had an ambition. At present beyond her grasp, yet so sure
was she of its ultimate attainment, that she shaped her entire cosmic
consciousness toward that end. Her ambition was not unique, perhaps
not unattainable. It had been achieved by others with seemingly little
effort and less skill; and though as yet, merely a radiant hope, Warble
was determined that some day she would gain her goal.
Her ambition was to get married. Her sister had; her mother had; she
politely assumed her grandmother had.
She would.
Often she imagined herself the heroine of delightful scenes she watched
at the cinema. She loved the slow unwinding of the story on the screen,
but when engaged with her imagination she hurried it on in haste to
reach the final close-up.
* * * * *
It was at no one's advice, but because of her own inner yearnings that
Warble took a job as waitress in a Bairns' Restaurant.
She reveled in the white tiles, the white gloss paint, the eternal
clearing-up and the clatter of flatware. She loved the flatware--it
always made her think of a wedding--sometimes of her own.
She adored the white-capped King Alfred baking his cakes in the window,
but merely as a fixture, as she adored the mute stacks of clean plates
and the piles of pathetic little serviettes.
In a more intimate and personal way she adored the pork and beans, the
ham and eggs, the corned beef and cabbage, and--importantly--the gentle,
easy-going puddings and cup custards. These things delighted her soul
and dimpled her body.
She was proud of her fellow-waitresses, proud of their aspirations (the
same as her own).
Having exceptional opportunity, Warble learned much of culinary art
and architecture, at least she became grounded in elementary alimentary
science.
She had little notebooks filled with rules for Parisian pastry, Hindu
recipes for curry; foreign dishes with modern American improvements.
Joyously she learned to make custard pie. This, as the tumultous future
proved, was indicative.
Only the little smiling gods of circumstance, wickedly winking at one
another, knew that when Warble whipped cream and beat eggs, she laid
the corner stone of a waiting Destiny, known as yet but to the blinking
stars above the murky Pittsburgh sky.
She was extravagant as to shoes and diet; and, on the whole, she felt
that she was living.
She was not mistaken.
She went to dances, but though sometimes she toddled a bit, mostly she
sat out or tucked in.
During her three years as a waitress several customers looked at her
with interest though without much principle.
The president of a well-known bank, the proprietor of a folding-bed
concern, a retired plumber, a Divinity student and a ticket-chopper.
None of these made her bat an eyelash.
For months no male came up for air. Then, the restaurant door swung back
on its noiseless check and spring, and in walked Big Bill Petticoat.