Cave man. Brute.
Hulking, enormous, shaggy-haired, prognathous jawed, a veritable Cro-magnard type. Bluely unshaven and scowling.
Warble saw him first across the room at a picture exhibition in Manley Knight's gallery.
His nose startled her. It was like an alligator pear—and his complexion was like those cactus fruits that likewise infest fancy grocers' shops. A visitor from the South Sea Islands? No, he wasn't that sort. He was a Fossil. Vikings were in his face, and Beef Eaters and Tarzan.
Warble flew at him.
“Do you like me?” she whispered.
“No,” he growled, and she kissed his hand which was like a hand by Rodin.
Thus does the law of compensation get in its fine work. Warble remembered the little boy at the public school, and she wished she could give Sproggins a red balloon.
“What is he?” she asked of Trymie.
“A miniature painter,” Icanspoon replied, “and a wonder! He does portraits that fairly make the eyes pop out of your head! He's got the world agog.”
Warble drifted back to the attraction.
“Dolike me,” she said, and shot him a glance that was a bolt from the blue.
Warble was of the appealing sex, and hardly a man was yet alive who could resist her.
Sproggins turned on her fiercely. He grasped her by the shoulders, pressing them back as if he would tear her apart.
“Let me see your soul!” he demanded, and his great face came near to peer down through her eyes.
“Ugh, merely blocked in,” and he flung her from him.
“It isn't block tin!” she retorted, angrily, “it's pure gold—as you will find out!”
He gave her another glance and two more grunts and turned away to devote himself to Daisy Snow.
Bing! That was the way things came to Warble.
Fate, Kismet, Predestination—whatever it was, it came zip! boom! hell-for-leather!
“It's not only his strength but his crudeness—like petroleum or Egyptian art.
“He can control—
“Amazingly impertinent!
“He wasn't—
“But I wish he had been—
“He will be!”
She went to see him—in his studio.
A bijou studio, fitted for a painter of miniatures. French gilt gimcracks. Garlands of fresh pink roses, tied with blue ribbons.
“Get out,” he said, staring at her a second and then returning to his niggling at a miniature.
Warble made a face at him.
“Do that again,” he commanded, reaching for a clean slice of ivory.
A few tiny brushmarks.
A wonder picture of Warble—made face, and all.
“Pleathe—Pleathe—” she held out her hand, and he dropped the miniature into it.
“Why don't you hit it off better with your husband?” he demanded.
“Don't ask me things when you know everything yourself.”
“I do. I paint a miniature of a face, and I get a soul laid bare.”
“Your name? Your silly first name—”
“It's a nickname.”
“For what?”
“Areopagitica.”
“Sweet—sweet—” cooed Warble, dimpling.
“Oh, you popinjay! I wish you and I were ragpickers—”
“What!”
“It's my ambition. I don't want to be a miniature painter all my life. But to be a ragpicker—ah, there's something to strive for! A rattlebanging cart, with jangling bells on a string across the back, a galled jade of a horse, broken traces, mismated lines—whoa!—giddap, there! oh—Warble, come with me!”
He swooped her up in one gigantic arm, but she slipped through and running around, faced him impishly.
“Would you really like me to go ridy-by in your wagon, and curl up in the rags and watch the stars shoot around overhead?”
“No, better stay here—” he patted her shoulder gently, leaving a deep purple bruise.
“Why?”
“Better not stay here—better go home.”
“Why?”
“Goodby.”
He took her up—it seemed to her between his thumb and forefinger—and set her outside his door, promptly closing and locking it.
She heard him return to his work. She trotted home. Her husband, as she paused to look in at his door, greeted her:
“Had a good time?”
She could not answer.
He yawned, delicately. He was seated at his mirror, arranging his wringing wet permanent in serried rows by means of tiny combs.
“Gooooo—oooo—oo—d night,” he said.
That was all. Yet she was kinda mad.
A footle, twaddly love affair! No art. A silly little dumpling smattering with a brute beast.
“No, he is not! He has noble impulses—ragpicking—inspired! His eyes were misty when he spoke of it—
“A way out of Butterfly Thenter!
“A ragpicker's cart—
“A way out—”
Petticoat held her up.
“You seem a bit gone on that tin-type fellow, Sproggins.”
“Yop. Maybe I'd better go to Atlantic Thity for a while.”
“Oh, no, you stay here. A lady's place is in the home.”
So she was fairly thrown at Porgie.
Another downpour of fate. And Warble, caught without an umbrella or rubbers.
The night came unheralded.
Petticoat had gone to Iva Payne's on an urgent summons—over-ripe sardines—and Warble had wandered out into the moonlight.
Petticoat, out of his new wealth, had, like Kubla Khan in Xanadu, a stately pleasure dome decreed, and in this new architectural triumph, where water lilies and swans floated on the surface of a deep black pool, Warble restlessly tossed in a welter of golden cushions, changing her position every ten seconds.
A giant lumbered in.
“Porgie!”
“Saw your husband speeding away—couldn't stand it, dropped in. Take me upstairs—I want to see your shoe cabinet.”
“Oh, don't spoil everything. Be my gentleman friend. Tell me about your dreams and ideals—your rags—”
“Ah—rags—you do love me!”
“I don't know—but I love rags—sweet—so sweet—”
“You're a misfit here—as who isn't. All misfits, frauds—fakes—liars—”
“All?” Warble looked interested.
“Yes, you little simpleton. I know!” He growled angrily. “Shall I tell you—tell you the truth about the Butterflies?”
“Pleathe—pleathe—”
“I will! You ought to know—you gullible little fool. Well, to start with, Avery Goodman—in his true nature, he's a worldly, carnal man. His religion is a cloak, a raincoat, a mere disguise. Mrs. Charity Givens, now, she's no more truly charitable than I am! She's shrewd and stingy, her lavish gifts to the poor are merely made for the sake of the praise and eulogy heaped upon her by her admiring friends. Manley Knight, renowed for his bravery in the war, is an arrant coward. His soul is a thing of whining terror, his heroism but a mask. Oh, I know—I read these people truly, when they sit to me—off guard and unconsciously betraying themselves.
“Mrs. Holm Boddy! Pah! She's far from domestic! She yearns for the halls of dazzling light, for gayety and even debauchery. Her devotion to home and children is the blackest of lies! And Iva Payne! She's no invalid! It's a pose to seem interesting and delicately fragile. You should see her stuff when no one's looking!
“Judge Drinkwater is a secret drunkard. Lotta Munn is a pauper—an adventuress, pretending to wealth she doesn't possess. Herman True and his wife! Zounds, if you could hear those two quarrel! Yet they pose as lovers yet, and folks fall for it!”
“May Young?” Warble asked, breathlessly.
“An old maid. Well preserved, but no chicken. And Daisy Snow! Angel-faced débutante! Huh, she knows more than her mother ever dreamed of! You should see her in my studio, at her sittings! Cocktails, cigarettes, snatches of wild cabaret songs and dances—oh, Daisy Snow is a caution!”
“The Leathershams?”
“He's a profiteer—she—well, she was a cook—”
“Marigold! No!”
“Marigold, yes! You are a little numskull, you know. You can't see through these people's masks.”
“Can I reform them?”
“No, Baby Doll, you can't do that. They're dyed in the wool hypocrites—joined to their idols—let 'em alone. And as to that husband of yours—”
“Stop! Stop! I can't stand any more! Pleathe go—pleathe—”
“What're you going to do about that Tertium Quid you've annexed?” Aunt Dressie inquired, casually.
“I don't know,” Warble uncertained. “He has wonderful ambitions and aspirations. He wants to be a ragpicker—a real one.”
“Ambitions are queer things,” Aunt Dressie thoughtfuled. “Now, you mightn't think it, but I want to be a steeple climber.”
“You take Porgie off my hands, and he'll help you—”
“Oh, no, child, every lassie has her laddie—and you saw him first.”
Warble sighed. Thus was she always thrown at Porgie's head.
Fate, like a sluicing torrent carried her ever on. Beware, beware, the rapids are below you!
Thus Conscience, Prudence, Wisdom, Policy, Safety First—all the deadly virtues called her.
Did she heed?
As the sea's self should heed a pebble-cast.
On a June evening, when Petticoat was called to Iva Payne's, Porgie came.
Bowed in by a thin red line of footmen, he found Warble in the moon-parlor. She wore a picture frock ofpoint d'espritand tiny pink rosebuds, and little pink socks and sandals.
“Come out on the Carp Pond,” he muttered, picking her up and stuffing her in his pocket. “Nobody will see us.”
He seated her in the stern of a shallop and took the golden oars. Three of his long sweeping strokes took them a mile up stream and they drifted back. Porgie talked steadily and uninterruptedly. He told her in detail of his ragpicking plans and how perfectly she would fit in.
“Think of it!” he boomed. “No fetters of fashion, no gyves of convention. Free—free as air—free verse, free love, free lunch—ah, goroo—goroo!”
“Goroo—” agreed Warble, “sweet—sweet—”
“Sweet yourself!” roared Porgie, and grabbed her all up in his gorilla-like arms just as a ringing, musical, “Ship ahoy!” sounded on their ears.
“Hello there, Warbie!”
She knew then it was Petticoat.
“Having a walk?” he inquired, casually.
“Yop,” she casualed back.
He pulled his skiff up alongside, threw Porgie into the deep pool and snatched Warble in beside himself.
“Time to go home,” he said, cheerfully. “Good night, Sproggins.”
He took her into the house through the conservatory, paused to pluck and twine a wreath of tiny pink rosebuds for her, adjusted it on her rather touseled curls, and took her out to the Moorish Courtyard.
“Now, Warb, what about the baboon?”
“I want to go ragpick with him and be pag-rickers together. Can I? Pleathe—”
“Nixy. Now, you hark at me. I'm the real thing—a good old Cotton-Petticoat—birth, breeding and boodle. Your Porgie person has none of these—”
“But he loves me!” Warble wailed.
“Yes, 'cause he can't get you. Go along with him, and then see where you'll be! No, my Soufflée, you hear me! Can the Porgie and stick to your own Big Bill—your own legit.”
“But you don't love me—”
“Oh, I do—in my quaint married-man fashion. And—ahem—I hate to mention it—but—”
“I know—and Iambanting—and exercising, and rolling downstairs and all that.”
“Well, we're married, and divorces are not the novelty they once were—so let's stay put.”
“Kiss me, then—”
He brushed a butterfly kiss across her left eyebrow, and together they strolled back into the house, and as he went up to bed, Warble went down to the pantry to see about something.
“I d-don't belong to Butterfly Thenter,” Warble sobbed, “I don't b-belong—and I-m g-going away—”
“All right,” Petticoat said, cheerfully, “how long'll you be gone?”
“It may be four yearth and it may be eleven—”
“Oh, come, now, not all that time! It isn't done.”
“You d-don't underthtand—I'm going to find my plathe in the world—I don't belong here.”
“All right. Can I go 'long?”
“No; you stay here. I'm—oh, don't you thee—I'm leaving you!”
“Oh, that's it?”
“You'll have the girls to amuse you—”
“What girls?”
“Iva and Lotta and Daisy and May Young—”
“They're not girls—they're married women—”
“What!”
“Sure they are. They don't live with their husbands all the time—they're pretty modern, you know. They have separate establishments, but they're friendly, pally, and even a heap in love with each other.”
“I don't believe it—”
“Fact, all the same. Where you going Warble—that is, if you care to tell.”
“I'm going where I can live a busy, useful life—not a Butterfly existence, with nothing to occupy my mind but art and hifalutin lingo! I can't express myself with long candles and Oriental junk! I'm going—oh, I don't know where I'm going, but I'm taking the next train out of Butterfly Thenter!”
“Warble—haven't I treated you right? Haven't you had enough to eat? The Cotton-Petticoats have always been called good providers—”
“It isn't that, Bill, dear—it's that—you don't love me very much—”
Petticoat looked at her. His eyes traveled up and down from her golden curls to her golden slippers, and then crossways, from one plump shoulder to the other.
“Goodby, Warble,” he said.
That's the way things came to Warble. Freedom! All at once, in unlimited measure—freedom!
Baffled in her attempts to reform Butterfly Center, having fallen down on the job of replacing Art by Utility, she went, undaunted and indomitable, on her way.
Hoboken.
Work in a pickle foundry. Cucumbers, small onions, green tomatoes, cauliflower, tiny string beans, red peppers, mustard, vinegar, cauldrons, boiling, seething fumes, spicy mists, pungent odors, bottles, jars, labels, chow-chow, picalilli, smarting tongue, burning palate, inflamed oesophagus, disordered stomach, enteritis.
That was the way things came to Warble. And she made good. Her position was that of a pickle taster.
At first, only of the little gherkins, then promoted through medium cucumbers, to the glory of full-fledged Dills.
A conscientious taster—faithful, diligent, she reached the amazing speed of forty pickles a minute, and all done well.
Of course it told on her. Also, her heartaches told on her.
Lonely. Homesick for Bill, for Ptomaine Haul, for the gallery of Petticoats.
Yet: A glorious soft summer afternoon.
Warble alone in a room with a big, forceful looking man.
The door is closed, and the gentle breeze scarce stirs the opaque white curtains.
In the depths of a great arm-chair, Warble, her lovely head upturned sees the eager, earnest face of the man. Closer he draws and a faint pink flush dyes Warble's cheek. His arm is round her soft neck, his hand holds her dimpled chin.
With a little sigh, Warble's blue eyes close, her scarlet lips part and though she wants to struggle she dare not, for he is a determined man, and a dentist will have his fill.
Petticoat came to see her in Hoboken after she had been there a year. Unexpected and unannounced, he strode in to the pickle foundry and grasped the fat arm of the girl who worked next to Warble.
“Come along,” he said, not unkindly, but the girl screamed.
“Beg pardon,” Petticoat said, nonchalantly, “sorry. Thought you were my wife. Know where I can find her?”
A slim, fairy-like Warble turned to greet him.
Petticoat couldn't believe his eyes. That sylph, that thread, that wisp—his Warble—his one time plump wife!
“Gee, you're great!” he cried, “I'm for you!”
She got leave from the factory for a couple of years, with privilege of extension.
“I don't want to impose on your kindness,” he said, “but I'd like to chase around Hoboken and take in the sights, I've never been here before.”
“There's a Bairns' Restaurant,” said Warble, shyly, “we might go there.”
They did. In a taxicab. He held her in his lap and told her the news.
He had had his own rooms done over. Mediaeval setting. Romanesque arches. Stained-glass windows. Sculptured cloisters. Good work.
“How are the twins?” she asked, timidly. “Pleathe.”
“Fine. Miss you terribly—we all do. Butterfly Center mourns your loss. Spring a come-back, won't you, Warble?”
“You want me?”
“More than anything in the world! I'm mad about you! You beauty! You raving beauty! You'll be the talk of the world this winter. Gee, Warble, how I can dress you, now you're thin! Won't Beer be astounded!”
That's the way things came to Warble.
The only thing she wanted, her husband's love, now flung at her feet in unstinted measure, pressed down and running over—love, slathers of it—all for her! It was sweet—a pleasant change from pickles.
“How's everybody?”
“Here and there. Iva's gone.”
“Thank Heaven! Where'd she go?”
“Dunno. Her husband took her off. Jealous of me.”
“H'm. And Daisy Snow?”
“Gone into the movies. She grew too heavy for society. May Young's in the Old Ladies' Home.”
“And Lotta Munn?”
“Murdered by her husband. He had to kill her—she wouldn't support him. The Leathershams are in the poorhouse, and Mrs. Charity Givens has bought their place. Want to go on a second honeymoon? Round the world?”
“Yop.”
They went. One night, sitting on top of the Taj Mahal, 'neath the Blue Moon of Persia, Warble cried,
“Shall I go back to Butterfly Thenter—or shall I not?”
“Spin a toddletop,” said Petticoat, taking one from his pocket.
She spun it and it came up pickle foundry.
So Warble said, “All right, dear, I'll go home with you whenever you're ready,” and she kissed him slenderly.
Ptomaine Haul.
Two Petticoats arriving. A happy Warble sprang from the car and seemed fairly to skim up the steps. She passed, unnoticing, the pantry door, and flew up to her own rooms which had been done over to suit her new slenderness.
“Beer,” she cried, “look at me!”
“Maddum!” cried the astounded Beer. “What done it?”
“Unrequited love and pickles. I can wear sport clothes now!”
“Maddum can wear anything or nothing!” declared Beer triumphantly.
That night, Warble, her hands behind her, wafted into Petticoat's room.
He sat on the edge of his bed, running lingerie ribbons in his underwear.
“I'll stay, always,” Warble said, sidling up to him. “And I'm happy. But...”
“Look out! Don't let the cat get that bolt of ribbon to play with!”
She smoothed his pillows and patted his sheets, while Petticoat glanced at her a little suspiciously, from under his gabled eyebrows.
“But I don't say that Butterfly Center is worth the ground it's built on. I don't admit that Ptomaine Street is as useful as a Hoboken alley. I don't admit that Art is any good at all. I've fought like a tiger and I didn't make a dent on the Butterflies—but, Ihavegrown thin!” “Sure, you bet you have!” said Petticoat, threading ribbon into his gold bodkin. “Well, kiss me good night—here you—I see you! Don't you put those caterpillars in my bed!”