Downtown one day I met Metta in the Red Front grocery buying olives and sardines in an excited way. I suppose it's for one of her unspeakable orgies, but she tells me it's something special and I must be sure to come.
"Dear Vernabelle," she says, "has consented to give an evening cycle of dance portrayals for just a few of the choicer spirits. I know there has been dreadful talk about our little group, but this will be a stunning bit and you are broad-minded, so do come."
I could just see Vernabelle consenting, almost peevishly; but it sounded like it might be disorderly enough, so I says I'll come if she promises to leave at least one window down at the top, me not having a gas mask.
Metta thinks a minute, then says she guesses she can leave one window down a mite; not much, on account of the nature of Vernabelle's dance costume. I says if such is to be the nature of her costume I'll come anyway and risk being gassed. Metta chides me gravely. She says the costume is perfectly proper to the artist eye, being a darling little early Greek thing; built on simple lines that follow the figure, it is true, yet suggest rather than reveal, and if the early Greeks saw no harm in it why should we? I tell her to say no more, but reserve me a ringside seat, though near a window if one can be opened; say, as far as the early Greeks would have done at such a time, on account of the punk sticks.
And of course I wouldn't miss it. I'm there at eight-thirty and find quite a bunch of Latin Quarter denizens already gathered and full of suppressed emotion. The punk sticks, of course, are going strong. Vernabelle in a pink kimono says they supply atmosphere; which is the only joke I ever heard her get off, if she knew it was one. Bohemians Lon Price and Jeff Tuttle are hanging over the punch bowl, into which something illegal has been poured. Jeff is calling Vernabelle little woman and telling her if worse comes to worst they might try being Bohemians on a mixture his men up on the ranch thought of for a New Year's celebration. He says they took a whole case of vanilla extract and mixed it with one dozen cans of condensed milk, the vanilla having a surprising kick in it and making 'em all feel like the good old days next morning.
Vernabelle says he reminds her of some untamed creature of the open, some woodsy monster of the dells, and Jeff says that's just what he feels like. He's going on to tell her some more about what he feels like, but Vernabelle is now greeting Oswald Cummings, the pagan of splendid sins, from the Elite Bootery. She tells Oswald there is a cold cruelty in the lines of his face that reminds her of the emperor Nero.
Finally about twenty choice spirits who did things was gathered for this half-lighted hour, so everybody set down on chairs and the couch and the floor, leaving a clear space for Vernabelle; and Professor Gluckstein, our music teacher, puts down his meerschaum pipe and goes to the piano and plays a soft piece. The prof is a German, but not a pro-German, and plays first rate in the old-fashioned way, with his hands. Then, when all the comrades get settled and their cigarettes lighted, the prof drifted into something quite mournful and Vernabelle appeared from behind a screen without her kimono.
The early Greeks must of been strong on art jewellery. Vernabelle clanked at every step with bracelets and anklets and necklaces. She had a priceless ruby weighing half a pound fastened to the middle of her bony forehead. Her costume was spangled, but not many spangles had been needed. The early Greeks couldn't of been a dressy lot. If Vernabelle had been my daughter I could of give her what she deserved with almost no trouble. The costume, as Metta had said, not only followed the lines of the figure, so far as it went anywhere at all, but it suggested and almost revealed that Vernabelle had been badly assembled. The Bohemians kind of gasped and shivered, all except Jeff Tuttle, who applauded loudly. They seemed to feel that Vernabelle was indeed getting away from it all.
Then came this here cycle-of-dance portrayals. The first one wasn't much dance; it was mostly slow, snaky motions with the arms and other things, and it was to portray a mother cobra mourning her first-born. At least that's the way I understood it. Another one was called "The Striving Soul," to which the prof played something livelier. Vernabelle went round and round, lifting her feet high. It looked to me like she was climbing a spiral staircase that wasn't there. Then she was a hunted fawn in a dark forest and was finally shot through the heart by a cruel hunter—who was probably nearsighted. And in the last one she was a Russian peasant that has got stewed on vodka at the Russian county fair. This was the best one. You couldn't see her so well when she moved quick.
Of course there was hearty applause when it was all over, and pretty soon Vernabelle come out again in her kimono. Panting like a tuckered hound she was when the comrades gathered to tell her how wonderful she had been.