Lotta Munn ran in occasionally. She was of the anecdotal type. The
stories she told made one gasp. They were always prefaced by an “Oh, my
dear, I can't tell you _that_ one--it's _too_ awful!”
Warble didn't care much for these tales, indeed, frequently missed the
point, and laughed purely from a sense of duty.
As she observed to Petticoat, one day, in exasperation, “There are only
two classes of women in this world--women who tell naughty stories, and
women I have never met!”
Also Lotta Munn was by way of being complimentary. She told Warble that
old Leathersham thought her a peach, and that Trymie Icanspoon declared
he was going to make love to her.
That Mrs. Charity Givens had heard she was a great heiress, and meant
to stick her for a new hospital. That Le Grand Paynter wanted to do her
portrait, life size and full width, and that the Reverend Avery Goodman
said she was very light on her feet for a fat woman.
The last made Warble mad and she made a face at Lotta and sent her home.
* * * * *
A rose-colored June day. Meringues of cloud floating on a sky of
cerulean custard.
She crawled out for a walk. It was ninety-eight in the shade, too hot to
run much.
She walked down Ptomaine Street, her nose shining, and pearly drops
chasing each other down her back like rain on a car window pane.
In her tucked white dimity and ankle-ties, her pink sunbonnet and her
tiny, frilled parasol, she was as much out of place in the aesthetic
town as whipped cream on a grapefruit.
She circled the outskirts of the town, and noted the massive and
imposing gateways to the great estates. She knew the grandeur inside,
she had been there. Cubist landscapes, some of them, others were Russian
steppes, and in one instance a magnate was having the ruins of an
Egyptian temple excavated on his grounds, which he had previously with
difficulty and at great expense had buried there.
She did not know what to do about it.
She felt, intuitively, that these men would resent her criticism of
their homes. Yet she couldn't let it go on--this gigantic inutility,
this mammoth lack of practical, efficient management.
Why, the ground sunk in a sunken garden would raise crops enough to feed
an army--and Lord knew how soon they might be needed.
And then she happened to think that reform, like charity should begin at
home, and she decided to start in on Petticoat.
She did.
* * * * *
They were sitting in their home-like Tower of Jewels, and, a bit
timidly, Warble said, “Let's pote quoetry to each other.”
Poor child, nervousness or emotion always made her reverse her initial
letters.
“All right,” Petticoat returned, good naturedly, “you begin.”
Just what Warble wanted! Fate was always good to her.
“I will, because I hope to reform your tastes, dear, and teach you to
see the beauty of simple beautiful poetry. Listen to this:
“Weep and the world weeps with you,
Laugh and you laugh alone--”
“That'll do, Warb. Don't go too far. Now it's my turn. But, you know,
dear, quoting isn't everything. You must learn to dissect, to interpret,
and above all to trace the influences that swayed the poet.
“Now I'll read you a poem picked at random, and then I'll trace the
influences for you.”
Petticoat reached out a languid arm, picked up a current magazine and
read:
“'FULFILMENT
'Here, at your delicate bosom, let death
Come to me
Where night has made a warm Elysium,
Lulled by a soft, invisible sea.
'Now in the porches of your soul I stand
Where once I stood;
Fed and forgiven by a liberal hand,
My broken boyhood is renewed.
'You are my bread and honey, set among
A grove of spice;
An ever brimming cup; a lyric sung
After the thundering battle-cries.
'You are my well-loved earth, forever fresh,
Forever prodigal, forever fond,
As, from the sweet fulfilment of the flesh,
I reach beyond.'”
Noting that Warble was still awake, Petticoat discoursed:
“In the first line, we note the influence of Swinburne. There could be
no better start out. The Swinburne collocation of delicate bosom and
death is both arrestive and interesting. The third and fourth lines
denote the influence of Poe. To be sure, 'a warm Elysium' sounds like
a new and appetizing soft drink, but that is not what is meant; and the
sea is indubitably the one that sounded around the tomb of Miss Annabel
Lee.
“The second stanza opens under pure Tennysonian influences. This may
not be clear at first to the beginner in influence tracing, but it
is unmistakably so to the expert. The recurring sibilants, the sound
without sense, the fine architectural imagery, all point to the great
Lady Alfred. The latter half of this stanza is due entirely to the
strong influence of D. W. Griffith. The poem was, without doubt, written
after the poet had been to see 'Broken Blossoms,' and the liberal
hand from which that production was flung to a waiting world left its
ineffaceable finger-prints on his polished mind.
“Now we come to stanza three. The first line shows the influence of
Mother Goose; the second is an unconscious echo of Solomon's Song; the
ever-brimming cup owes itself to Omar; and the rest of the stanza to
Rupert Brooke.
“Thus we see the importance of widespread reading, and a catholicity of
influences.
“Influence is wonderful! To invent a new simile, it is like a pebble
dropped into a placid lake; the ripples form ever-widening circles, and
the influence of an influence is never wholly lost.
“Perhaps--and this is quite as it should be--the final stanza is the
finest of all. It starts out under the influences of Walt Whitman. Had
Walt been omitted, the whole structure would have tumbled to the ground!
No self-respecting poet now-a-days writes without being influenced by
Whitman. It isn't done. It would be as indiscreet as to appear in one's
shirt-sleeves. The influence of the good, gray Poet _must_ be felt, must
be _shown_, or the budding bard is out of the running. Only a dash
of Whitman is needed--'my well-loved earth' and 'prodigal' are quite
sufficient.
“'The sweet fulfilment of the flesh' is a final roundup that gracefully
blends Whitman's and Ella Wheeler Wilcox's influential powers--and,
incidentally, justifies the magnificent title of the poem.
“Then, as a crowning triumph, note the splendid last line, a masterpiece
brought about by the influence of Sir Oliver Lodge and his spiritistic
ilk! Could anything be finer? What imagery for a last line! What a
break-off, leaving the gasping reader in a state of choking suspense,
of avid, ungratified curiosity! A great poem indeed, and influenced by a
noble army of writers.
“Nor is the manner of the thing all that matters. The theme--the great
idea of the whole affair--is a marvelous example of influence. The New
York State Legislature recently passed a bill making attempted suicide
no longer a punishable offense. If successful, it is, like virtue,
its own reward. Indeed, it has to be, for as the Penal Code distinctly
states, owing to the impossibility of reaching the successful
perpetrator no forfeiture is imposed. But the new law lifts the ban from
futile efforts in the matter of self-destruction, and one need not pay
the hitherto exacted fine of a thousand dollars by way of a luxury tax
on such diversion.
“Can it be doubted, then, that our Poet read of this new law, and--it
may be unconsciously--was so influenced by it that he devoted sixteen
lines of his precious verse to the expression of his willingness to let
death come to him?”
“I don't blame him for being willing, and I wouldn't put a straw in
Death's way,” said Warble, earnestly. “I'm glad you read me that, Bill,
for that is just the sort of thing I mean to eradicate from your system.
It's like a disease, this aestheticism of yours--it's the Culture
Ptomaine.”
“Now, hold on, Dumpling Dear, do you know a culture from a ptomaine?”
“Oh, I don't mean the cultures you take, I mean Culture with a big C.
It's a poison, and as you cure ptomaine poisoning, I'm going to cure
this town of its deadly art poisoning. I'm in revolt.”
“That's right, everybody who is anybody is in revolt against something
nowadays, because our knowledge of the truth is too great for our
existing conditions, and it bursts--”
“Like poor Betsy Binn, who was so very pure within,
She burst this outer shell of sin,
And hatched herself a cherubim!”
Warble interrupted.
“Yes, or as Gertrude Stein puts it: 'It is a gnarled division, that
which is not any obstruction, and the forgotten swelling is certainly
attracting. It is attracting the whiter division, it is not sinking to
be growing, it is not darkening to be disappearing, it is not aged to
be annoying. There cannot be sighing. This, is bliss.' There you see how
art is greater than life--how--”
“Do you think I'm too fat?” Warble again interrupted him.
“I do, my dear. You weren't, I think you are, I know you will be.”
“Would you love me more if I were--didn't weigh so much?”
“Yes, in exact inverse ratio.”
Warble made an awful face at him, and then she went quietly around
behind him, and dropped down his back a little fuzzy caterpillar, which
she had tied in her handkerchief for that very purpose.
* * * * *
It was her last effort to cure her husband of culture poisoning, but she
was not yet ready to give up her big idea of reforming Butterfly Center.
Warble was a determined little person, and, too, fate often gave her a
good boost, and she thought one was about due.
* * * * *
She went to the Toddletopsis Club, at Lotta Munn's.
Lotta had inherited eight or ten town and country houses, and for the
moment was perched like a bird of passage, on her Roman villa, called
Seven Hills.
Warble's little electric Palanquin rolled through the arch of
Constantine and she ascended the dazzling flight of marble steps to the
entrance patio.
“Hello, Pot Pie,” screamed Lotta, by way of greeting, “come on in, the
firewater's fine.”
It was, and there was lots of it, and a group of long silk-legged
Butterflies were sprawled on the Roman couches, smoking and chatting as
they spun the Toddletops.
Warble was unfamiliar with the teetotum-like things, but the others
kindly instructed her. Moreover, there was a roulette wheel and some
other devices of which our litle heroine didn't even know the name.
Also, there were tables, where those who chose played high-staked
bridge, poker or rum.
Warble wasn't a born gambler. Games of chance had no appeal for her. She
wanted to make faces at everybody and run away. But she scolded herself
for being too superior and forced herself to stay with the bunch.
In a way, she was rewarded, for she won all the money from the others.
Her luck was monumental. Every different game she tried she took all the
stakes, and at last having broken the bank, she was forced to go home
for lack of occupation.
* * * * *
She was a proud and stuck-up chit all the evening.
Trymie Icanspoon called and flirted something fierce. But it didn't mean
a thing to Warble, for the man was so saturated with art that it oozed
forth in his conversation and she had no idea what he was driving at.
He went home thinking she was the most deliciously tempting morsel he
had ever seen and the biggest fool.
* * * * *
“No, I couldn't fall in love with him. I like him, as a gift-book, but
he's no man. Could I kiss him? Not with a real movie kiss.
“They say marriage is a lottery. I haven't drawn much. I mean in the
matter of love. I wish I had a Prince Charming. Bill would do, all
right, but he thinks I'm too fat. I wish I could get thinner--all of
them are. Lotta's like a golf club and Daisy's like a breadstick.
“I s'pose they were born that way.
“I wasn't.
“I wonder when we'll begin to keep a family.
“I'm crazy about Bill--I am--I am--
“Am I?
“All the girls are, too.
“Does he care for them? For any of them? For all of them?
“For that detestable Daisy? That disgusting Iva? That rotten Lotta!
“Oh, I may as well admit it--I just adore Bill!
“This frock is too tight--I must have it stretched.
“Yes, I'm mad over my husband--but--”
* * * * *
She sought Petticoat in his rooms.
She tumbled into his lap, and he pushed her out until he could set aside
the Angora cat and the Airedale and his pet guinea pig, then he said
politely, “Is this your seat?” and she perched on his knee.
“Do you love me, dear?” she asked, her voice full of a dumb pathos.
“Ooooooooooooooooooo! I'm sleepy,” he said, with a cavernous yawn and a
Herculean stretch that threw her out on the floor. “Want any money?” She
looked at him. He was not unlike John Barrymore in The Jest, and Warble
fell for him afresh.
“You are so beautiful--” she wailed. “I wish you loved me--”
“I wish I did,” he returned, honestly, “but you are such a butter-ball.”
“Oh, Butterfly Thenter calls anybody Butter-ball who weights over
ninety-five! If you're so cut up about it I won't live under this roof
another minute! I can earn my own living, and all I want, too! You can
get a divorce and marry some thread of a woman who has ptomaines all the
time!”
“Pish, tush, Warb, don't be a damfool! Lay off the melodrama. I do love
you--at least, I love ninety-five pounds of you. Now, will you be good?”
“Yeth.”
“And will you try to think of me as a devoted and loving husband, even
if I'm not one?”
“Oh, my dear, I am unjust to you! I will take what you give me--what you
can spare from the little dog and the cat and the guinea pig. And I will
be your own little Petty Warblecoat. And I won't give you over to Iva
Payne--I hate her!”