The Restless Sexteen was the record altitude of Butterfly Center. It was
the elect and select of the intellect; it was the whole show--the very
Wholly of Whollies. To belong to it was canonization. Though some of its
members also belonged to the Toddletopsis Club, it meant their leading a
double life.
The Restless Sexteen were mostly young married women with their husbands
as nonresident members.
They studied higher psychology and broader psychopathy. The wrestled
with and threw Einstein and let themselves dream again with Freud.
Psychoanalysis was their washpot, and over the fourth dimension did they
cast their shoes.
Their afternoon digest was held at Faith Loveman's and Warble went.
The Loveman home was an abstract bungalow, which showed rather plainly
the iron hand in the velvet glove influence of the Japanese.
The large light hall had a built-in abstract table, and on this was an
enormous bronze plaque which held a thin layer of water on which rested
one pansy.
Faith's devotion to the Doctrine of Elimination allowed nothing else
in the hall, but in the living room there were three whole pieces of
furniture besides, of course, the caterer's gilt chairs brought in to
hold the restless sex as they tried to rest from their restlessness.
Faith Loveman looked curiously at Warble.
“You can't be very restless,” she observed, “you'd be thinner.”
Warble smiled engagingly.
“I do want to be thinner,” she conciliated, “how can I?”
And, somehow, that started them all off. They restlessly gave advice,
recommended certain exercises, uncertain drugs and most unattractive
diets.
They told their own experiences, extolled or berated their masseuses,
scribbled addresses of corsetieres for one another, and in their
interest and restless excitement they forgot all about Warble and she
wanted to go home.
But she had her mission to perform, and she waited until they restlessly
changed the subject.
They discussed current plays and seemed to get out of them far more than
the author ever put in. They talked of a picture exhibit at the Gauguin
Galleries, but this was as Choctaw to Warble; not a word could she
understand.
“Are you of the cognoscenti?” asked Faith Loveman of Warble. “I know
all about art but I don't know what I like,” she returned, blushing
prettily.
“Oh, we'll teach you that. That's what this club is for, to help us to
find ourselves, to give our restlessness an outlet to express the ego in
our cosmos and illumine the dark patches of our souls. We're riding the
pace that kills, living at the tension that snaps, blowing the bubble
that breaks. We need an outlet--a vent--you understand?”
“Yop,” said Warble, “your soul pressure is too high.”
“But we want it high--we love it high--we're restless--we're keyed up,
taut-strung, and hungry for soul food.”
“I s'pose that's the only kind you have at these meetings.”
Faith Loveman stared so hard that Warble made a face at her and went
home.
* * * * *
She reflected.
“It was my fault. I might have known restless people wouldn't eat. And I
knew I couldn't bite on their restless sex problems. A big one seems to
be how to get thin and how to stay so. They were all ready to drop the
high sign babble for that! But all women are. They took it up again.
“Can I reform them? Or shall I be sucked in, like Italians eat
spaghetti, and my personality absorbed by the Butterflies, till I
forswear all I stand for--all my utilitarian ideals shattered, all my
prosaic hopes dashed, all my common sense wrenched from me, and my
poor little brain-pan filled with the soul-mash of these high-strung
sexaphones?”
She ignored Beer's offer to undress her, she ran upstairs to an
unfrequented bathroom, and flinging off her clothes, she got into the
tub and wept in terror, her body a round pink blob in the briny water.
But, thought the poor child, it's the most sensible place to cry.
When Petticoat came home she said:
“Honeybunch, let me in on your professional secrets. Tell me more about
your most interesting cases. It might make me restless.”
“Nothing much to tell. Life just one ptomaine after another. Cases all
alike except for the primal cause.”
“Well, tell me something. Where've you been just now?”
“Over to Iva's. She had 'em again. Ripe olives. Getting better. Where
you been?”
“To the Restless Sexteen Club.”
“Like it?”
“I don't get it. They talk about things that aren't there. But I think I
could make them see--”
“Oh, cut it out, Warble. You'd dust books so hard, you'd dust off the
gilt edges. They're deep-sea thinkers, that bunch--let 'em alone. What'd
they talk about?”
“About a book called 'Painted Shawls' or something, and about
Thyco-Serapy, and about a play called 'The Housebroke Heart.' Take me to
see it, will you, Bill?”
“You wouldn't like it. You'd prefer the movies.”
* * * * *
Four days later, Daisy Snow called and gave Warble a jolt or two.
“Huh, sizing me up, are they?” Warble sniffed. “Looking at me through
the footle, distorted little microscope of their own silly scrubby
little souls! Pooh, they couldn't, one of them, make a decent puff
paste!”
“But we can get cooks to do that. The Intelligentsia seek for the rare
essence of thought, for colored words and perfumed cadences--”
“There, there, Daisy, don't try me too far! What did Lotta Munn say
about me?”
“Oh, she didn't say much. Just that you're too stout and you haven't
any ideals and you don't know a picture from a hole in the wall, and she
thinks a man like Dr. Petticoat is wasted on you.”
“Huh, she used to like Bill herself, didn't she?”
“Does yet. She's poisoned nearly as often as Iva Payne is.”
“H'm; anybody else after Bill?”
“Only May Young.”
“And you.”
“Oh, me! I'm just a débutante. I'm not after anybody yet.”
“Well, you keep off my Petticoat preserves! That Big Bill person is
mine--and I won't stand for any nonsense about that.”
“My goodness, Warble, I didn't know you had so much spunk. Lotta says
you haven't any.”
“She'll find out! Go on, what else did the cats say?”
“They made fun of your party--”
“Oh, my party! That I tried to make so nice and gay and festive!”
“They thought those bathing suits were--er--rather bizarre--”
“I _didn't_ get them out of the Bazar! I thought it all up myself. And
they made fun of it! Go home, Daisy Snow, I've got to reflect.”
* * * * *
Like a very small, very spanked child, she crawled upstairs on her hands
and knees.
It was not her father she wanted now, but an old Petticoat ancestor,
dead these two hundred years. Petticoat was dawdling on a _chaise
longue_, absorbed in a small mirror, and wondering whether one more
hair out of each eyebrow would strengthen the arch from a purely
architectural viewpoint.
“What's the trouble?” Warble asked, “broken down arches?”
“Nope, guess they're all right.”
“Say, Bill,” and she crept into the hollow of his chest, “are folks
talking about me?”
“They sure are.”
“What do they say?”
“Well, I hate to stir up trouble, but since you began it, I may as
well own up they think you're just about as lowbrow as they come. And I
s'pose you are.”
“Oh, well. And what about the girls? Are they jealous of me?”
“Sort of. Lotta says if you cut her out with Trymie Icanspoon, she'll
elope with me.”
“And will she?”
“Not if I reach the ticket office first. Besides, I like Iva better.”
“Oh, Bill, don't you love me any more?”
“Course I do, Little Fudge Sundae. But a popular doctor has
responsibilities.”
“I know. I don't mean to be unreasonable. But let's keep peace in the
family as long as it's convenient--see what I mean?”
“I see. Do you think I'd like my new pajims better trimmed with frilled
malines, or just decorated with a conventional pattern of gold soutache
braid?”
Warble, sitting on the other end of the now separated _chaise longue_
made no reply, except to scratch her leg a little.
Petticoat yawned, took a stroll round the room, tried on a new dressing
gown, mixed himself a highball, smoked three cigarettes, glanced through
“What the Swell-dressed Man can Spare,” wound his watch, put out his
Angora cat, yawned again, sneezed twice, stomped out in the hall and
back, and then went and stood in front of the fireplace, teetering on
his heels.
But until he bawled, “Aren't you ever going to clear out?” she sat,
unmoving.