CHAPTER III

Among the rolling stock of a great railroad, a moving mass of steel. A soft sludge as it came noiselessly to rest beneath the glazed chintz awnings of the Butterfly Center station.

A faint scent of chypre from Petticoat’s cigarette as he alit.

From his private train, which had slithered across the intervening spaces and slid into its moorings as butter slides from a hot plate.

It is September, cool, green and well-sprinkled.

The obviously important man was followed by a yellow-topped, rose-cheeked girl, whose eyes were all blue and a yard wide as she looked about.

About what?

About eighteen.

They were Dr. Big Bill Petticoat and his bride, Warble.

They had been married and had spent their honeymoon in riotous loving.

It had been transforming. Warble had been frightened to discover how hungry she could be even on a wedding trip.

Bill had mused to himself; what’s the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? One honeymoon. And now they had reached their home town. People were not altogether new to Warble. She had seen them before. But these were her own people, to bathe and encourage and adorn—and, they didn’t seem to need it.

They distressed her. They were so smart. She had always held that there is no style in America, no chic effects out of Paris.

But here on the terrace of the simple little hewn stone station were hordes of men and women who seemed to be, mentally, morally and physically, literally butterflies.

“Isn’t there any way of waking them up?” she begged of Petticoat, grabbing his arm and shaking him.

“These guys? Wake ‘em up? What for? They’re happy.”

“But they’re so smug—no, that isn’t what I mean. They’re so stick-in-the-mud.”

“Look here, Warble, you want to get over your fool idea that because a woman is slender she isn’t adorable. These folks are up to date, snuff and mischief.”

“I know, that’s what’s biting me. Life seems so hard for them.”

“Oh, they don’t mind it. Now you must meet the bunch. They’re all down here to meet their husbands or something just as good. Now you behave yourself.”

“Yop.”

She had a grip on herself. She was ready to kiss and be friends with them all. But she was scared at the rackety pack who ballyhooed like Coney Island and surged down upon her like a Niagara Falls.

She had the impression that all the men had soft voices, large, embracing arms, gimlet eyes and bored, impersonal smiles. She knew they were taking her in. Their pleasant hoots and yells of greeting overcame her.

“Oh, pleathe—pleathe,” she lisped.

In her fresh frilled dimity and soft sash of baby-blue Surah, her rolled white socks disclosing but a few tantalizing inches of seashell-pink calf, Warble stood, eyes cast down, a pretty, foolish thing,

 
  As soft as young,
  As gay as soft,
 

and, to a man, the male population of Butterfly Center fell for her.

Not so the remainder of the citizens.

One of the men was yelling at Petticoat:

“Hop into my car, Bill, Don’t see yours—I’ll tote the bride-person you’ve got there—with joy and gladness.” Warble looked at the yeller.

“Can’t quite place me, chick, can you?” he grinned at her. “Well I’m only old Goldwin Leathersham—no use for me in the world but to spend money. Want me to spend some on you? Here’s my old thing—step up here, Marigold, and be introduced. She’s really nicer than she looks, Mrs. Petticoat.”

“Indeed I’m not,” Marigold Leathersham cried gaily, “I couldn’t be—nobody could be!”

She came running—a beautiful, slim young woman, with a wealth of expensive looking gold hair, white and gold teeth that broke into a lavish smile. Her voice was rich and though she looked above, away from and through Warble, yet she saw her.

“So glad to welcome you, you pretty baby,” she chirruped. “You’re going to love us all, aren’t you?”

“Yop,” said Warble, and smiled her engaging smile.

“You bet she’ll love us,” declared Leathersham, “she’ll make the world go round! Hello, Little One,” he turned to pat the cheek of a white-haired, red-faced old lady, who hawk-eyed and hawk-nosed, stood by, listening in. “This, Mrs. Petticoat, is our Lady Bountiful, Mrs. Charity Givens—noted for her generosity. She ostentatiously heads all Donation Lists, and she’s going to start a rest cure where your husband’s unsuccessful cases may die in peace. And here’s one of the cases. Hello, Iva Payne!”

“Hello,” languidly responded a girl like a long pale lily—a Burne-Jones type, who sometimes carried around a small stained-glass window to rest her head against.

“Are you really Bill’s wife?” she asked, a little disinterestedly, of Warble.

“Yop,” said Warble, and made a face at her.

“How quaint,” said Iva.

“Whoopee, Baby! Here we are,” and Petticoat rescued his bride from the middle of a crowd and yanked her toward his car.

The car was a museum piece, and as Warble caromed into its cushions she felt that her lines had fallen in pleasant places.

That was the way Fate came to Warble. In big fat chunks, in slathers. Unexpected, sudden, inescapable—that’s Fate all over.

“I shall like Mr. Leathersham—I shall call him Goldie. They’re all nice and friendly—the men. But this town! Oh, my Heavens! This Jewel Casket—this Treasure Table! I can’t live through it! This Floating Island of a Tipsy Charlotte!” Her husband nudged her. “You look like you had a pain,” he said; “Scared? I don’t expect you to fit in at first. You have to get eased into things. It’s different from Pittsburgh. But you’ll come to like it—love is so free here, and the smartest people on earth.”

She winked at him. “I love you for your misunderstanding. I’m just dog-tired. And too many chocolates. Give me a rest, dear. I’m all in from wear sheeriness.”

She laid her feet in his lap and snuggled into the corner of the pearl-colored upholstery.

She was ready for her new home, beautiful, celebrated Ptomaine Haul. Petticoat told her that his mother had been living with him, but had fled incontinently on hearing a description of Warble.

The bride chuckled and smiled engagingly as the car slithered round a corner and stopped under the porte cochère of a great house set in the midst of a landscape.

Neo-Colonial, of a purity unsurpassed by the Colonists themselves.

A park stretching in front; gardens at the back; steps up to a great porch, and a front door copied from the Frary house in Old Deerfield.

A great hall—at its back twin halves of a perfect staircase. To the right, a charming morning room, where Petticoat led his bride.

“You like it? It’s not inharmonious. I left it as it is—in case you care to rebuild or redecorate.”

“It’s a sweet home—” she was touched by his indifference. “So artistic.”

Petticoat winced, but he was a polite chap, and he only said, carelessly, “Yes, home is where the art is,” and let it go at that.

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!