“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.”