Ptomaine Street: The Tale of Warble Petticoat - Carolyn Wells

Carolyn Wells

Ptomaine Street THE TALE OF WARBLE PETTICOAT

FOREWORD TO A FOOLISH BOOK

CHAPTER I

On a Pittsburgh block, where three generations ago might have been heard Indian war-whoopsyes, and the next generation wore hoops, tooa girl child stood, in evident relief, far below the murky gray of the Pittsburgh sky.

She couldnt see an Indian, not even a cigar store one, and she wouldnt have noticed him anyway, for she was shaking with laughter.

A breeze, which had hurried across from New York for the purpose, blew her hat off, but she recked not, and only tautened her hair ribbon with an involuntary jerk just in time to prevent that going too.

A girl on a Pittsburgh block; bibulous, plastic, young; drinking the air in great gulps, as she would later drink life.

It is Warble Mildew, expelled from Public School, and carolling with laughter.

She had only attended for four weeks and they had been altogether wasted. In her class there were several better girls, many brighter, one prettier, but none fatter. The schoolgirls marveled at the fatness of her legs when, skirts well tucked up, they all waded in the brook. Every cell of her body was plump and she had dimples in her wrists.

And cheeks, like:

Her eyes were of the lagoon blue found in picture postcards of Venice and her hair was a curly yellow brush-heap. Sunning over with curlsyou know, sort of ringolets.

In fact, Warble was not unlike one of those Kewpie things, only she was more dressed.

Expelled!

Thats the way things were to come to Warble all her life. Fate laid on in broad strokesin great splashesin slathers.

Expelled! And she had scarce dared hope for such a thing.

To sound the humor of Warble.

She hated school. Books, restraint, routine, scratching slate pencils, gum under desks, smellsall the set up palette of the schoolroom was not to her a happy vehicle of self-expression.

Often, in hope of being sent home, she had let a rosy tongue-tip protrude from screwed up red lips at teacher, but it had gone unpunished.

And now

Now, rocking in triumphant, glorious mirth, her plump shoulders hunched in very ecstasy, the child was on the peak!

Expelled! Oh, gee!

And all because she had put a caterpillar down Pearl Jane Tuttles back. One little, measly caterpillar.

Pearl Jane had sat right in front of her.

A loose neckband round a scrawny neck.

And when Pearl Jane wiggled, a space of neck between two thin, tight black pigtailsa consequent safe-deposit that was fairly crying out to have something dropped down it.

A caterpillar mooching along the schoolroom aisleclearly sent by Providence.

Helpless in the grip of an irresistible subconscious complex, Warble scoops up the caterpillar and in an instant has fed him into the gaping maw at the back of that loose gingham neckband.

Gr-r-r-r-rh!

That, then, is why Warble stood in such evident relief on the Pittsburgh block.

Expelled! The world was hers!

It had always been hers, to be sure, but it was now getting bigger and more hers every minute.

The very first day she went to school, a little boy said to her:

Do you like me?

No, said Warble.

The little boy gave her all his candy and his red balloon.

So you see, she had a wayand got away with it.

Warble was an orphan. She had a paprika-seasoned sister, married to a chiropodist, in Oshkosh. But for all that, she planned to earn her own living.

And she had an ambition. At present beyond her grasp, yet so sure was she of its ultimate attainment, that she shaped her entire cosmic consciousness toward that end. Her ambition was not unique, perhaps not unattainable. It had been achieved by others with seemingly little effort and less skill; and though as yet, merely a radiant hope, Warble was determined that some day she would gain her goal.

Her ambition was to get married. Her sister had; her mother had; she politely assumed her grandmother had.

She would.

Often she imagined herself the heroine of delightful scenes she watched at the cinema. She loved the slow unwinding of the story on the screen, but when engaged with her imagination she hurried it on in haste to reach the final close-up.

It was at no ones advice, but because of her own inner yearnings that Warble took a job as waitress in a Bairns Restaurant.

She reveled in the white tiles, the white gloss paint, the eternal clearing-up and the clatter of flatware. She loved the flatwareit always made her think of a weddingsometimes of her own.

She adored the white-capped King Alfred baking his cakes in the window, but merely as a fixture, as she adored the mute stacks of clean plates and the piles of pathetic little serviettes.

In a more intimate and personal way she adored the pork and beans, the ham and eggs, the corned beef and cabbage, andimportantlythe gentle, easy-going puddings and cup custards. These things delighted her soul and dimpled her body.

She was proud of her fellow-waitresses, proud of their aspirations (the same as her own).

Having exceptional opportunity, Warble learned much of culinary art and architecture, at least she became grounded in elementary alimentary science.

She had little notebooks filled with rules for Parisian pastry, Hindu recipes for curry; foreign dishes with modern American improvements.

Joyously she learned to make custard pie. This, as the tumultous future proved, was indicative.

Only the little smiling gods of circumstance, wickedly winking at one another, knew that when Warble whipped cream and beat eggs, she laid the corner stone of a waiting Destiny, known as yet but to the blinking stars above the murky Pittsburgh sky.

She was extravagant as to shoes and diet; and, on the whole, she felt that she was living.

She was not mistaken.

She went to dances, but though sometimes she toddled a bit, mostly she sat out or tucked in.

During her three years as a waitress several customers looked at her with interest though without much principle.

The president of a well-known bank, the proprietor of a folding-bed concern, a retired plumber, a Divinity student and a ticket-chopper.

None of these made her bat an eyelash.

For months no male came up for air. Then, the restaurant door swung back on its noiseless check and spring, and in walked Big Bill Petticoat.

CHAPTER II

The Petticoats were one of the oldest and pride-fullest of New England families. So that settles the status of the Petticoats. A couple of them came over in the Mayflower, with the highboys and cradles and things, and they founded the branch of Connecticut Petticoatsthan which, of course, there is nothing more so.

Of course, the Petticoats were not in the very upper circles of society, not in the Dress Circle, so to speak, but they formed a very necessary foundation, they stood for propriety and decency, and the Petticoats were stiff enough to stand alone.

Another fine old New England family, the Cottons.

Intermarriage linked the two, and the Cotton-Petticoats crowded all other ancient and honorable names off the map of Connecticut and nodded condescendingly to the Saltonwells and Hallistalls. Abbotts and Cabots tried to patronize them, but the plain unruffled Cotton-Petticoats held their peace and their position.

The present scion, Dr. Petticoat, was called Big Bill, not because of his name or stature, but because of the size of his bills. He presented them quarterly, and though his medicine was optionalthe patient could take it or leave itthe bills had to be paid.

Wherefore Dr. Petticoat was at the head of his profession financially. Also by reputation and achievement, for he had the big idea.

He was a specialist, and, better yet, a specialist in Ptomaine Poisoning.

Rigidly did he adhere to his chosen line, never swerving to right or left. People might die on one side of him from water on the brain and on the other side from water on the palate, not a prescription could they get out of Big Bill Petticoat unless they could put up unmistakable symptoms of ptomaine poisoning.

And he was famous. People brought their ptomaines to him from the far places, his patients included the idlest rich, the bloatedest aristocrats, the most profitable of the profiteers. His Big Bill system worked well, and he was rich beyond the most Freudian dreams of avarice.

As to appearance, Petticoat was very pretty, with that fresh rosy beauty that is so attractive. His walnut hair was fine and silky, but a permanent wave made it fuzz forth in a bushy crinkle that was distractingly lovely. His tweezed eyebrows were arched to a perfect span and his finger nails showed a piano polish.

His features were cold-chiseled and his coloring was exquisite. In fact, his coloring was too good to be true, and no wonder, for it came out of a very modern and up-to-date six-cylinder makeup box.

His lips looked as if they were used to giving orders in restaurants, and he wore clothes which you could never quite forget.

Warble edged toward the stranger, and murmured nothing in particular, but somehow he drifted into the last and only vacant seat at her table.

She whisked him a 2 x 2 napkin, dumped a clatter of flatware at him, and stood, awaiting his order.

The pause becoming lengthy, she murmured with her engaging smile, Whatcha want to eat?

Pleased to eat you, he responded, looking at her as though she was an agreeable discovery.

Small wonder, for Warble was so peachy and creamy, so sweet and delectable that she was a far more appetizing sight than most viands are. She smiled againengagingly this time, too.

Thus in the Painted Vale of Huneker, Vamp and Victim beguiled the hours. Thus, and not in treacled cadences, intrigued Mariar and Sir Thomas in the back alley.

Do you like it here? asked the doctor.

Yop. But sometimes I feel wasted

You dont look wasted

No after a hasty glance in the wall mirror.

Dont you get sick of the sight of food?

Here, oh, no! I dont know any lovelier sight than our kitchensyes, yes, sir, Ill get your pied frotatoes at oneth.

When Warble was a bit frustrated or embarrassed, she often inverted her initials and lisped. It was one of her ways.

The other clients at her table had no intention of being neglected while their Pickfordian waitress smiled engagingly on a newcomer.

It was the iceman who had hollered. He seemed to be merely a red-faced inanimate object, that worked by strange and compound levers.

Next him was a hat-check girl, a queenly person who communed with something set in the lid of her vanity case, and fed on chicken à la king.

Then there was a newsboy, whose all-observant eyes darted about everywhere, the while he absorbed baked beans and ketchup.

An old maid shopper. She merely brooded over her worn and pencil-scored memorandum, and muttered of fringe and buttons as she spilled tea on her samples of Navy blue foulard.

A blind man. Of no interest save that he had a calm and gentle demeanor and was the only one who didnt spill things. His face wore a grieved but resigned look, as if something had died in his scrambled eggs. The iceman, who had the hard, set jaw of a prize fighter was successfully eating steak, and he welcomed the incoming fried potatoes, as one greets a new instalment of a serial.

It was a fat and pink and lovely Warble who at last trotted back with Petticoats order.

The great specialist had an unbridled passion for pie, and throwing restraint to the winds he had ordered three kinds. The wedges Warble brought were the very widest she could wheedle from the head pie-cutterand Warble was some wheedler, especially when she coaxed prettily for a big pieth of cuthtard.

Petticoat looked at her again as she came, pie-laden.

Her cap was a bit askew, but her eyes werent. In her white linen dress and apron and white cap, her little pink face looked to Petticoats appraising glance like a postage stamp on an expanse of white linen envelope.

Little did he think, as he took his custard pie that he was about to put his foot in it. Yet he did.

May I see you again sometime? he said, ignoring the hat-check girls ogling and the icemans cold stare.

Warble made a face at him. It was one of her ways.

Whats your address? he asked. You can ask the Bossif you really want to know.

Want to know! Say, you waitress!

Of the love-making of Warble and Big Bill Petticoat there is nothing to be reported which may not be read in any Satevepost serial, which may not be heard at any summer resort, in any winter garden. They were zoology and history. Their speech was free silver and their silence was golden.

It was a non-stop courtship. All the plump beauty of youth and all the assured complacence of a well-to-do married man kept them up in the air.

Petticoat wasnt a married man, but he had their technique.

They took a walk, and followed a roundabout way. Then they sat on a bank, and his arm followed a roundabout way.