Little Wildcat

A boisterous ragamuffin christened Mag—half feral colt, half tempest—skitters through sawdust alleys, her shriek the tin-whistle anthem of the docks. Robert Ware, society sculptor of human clay, wagers his pride that he can chisel this hoyden into a salon-ready statuette of lace and languor, while his friend Arnold scoffs from behind a cigarette’s curling sneer. Cue tutelage montages: waltz steps on rain-slick wharfs, elocution drills inside echoing warehouses, gloves forced over grubby knuckles until the girl’s gutter-growl softens into silver-bell syllables. War erupts; Arnold ships out, clutching only the memory of a transformed Mag he never got to court. In a field hospital lit by kerosene halos he meets a velvety-voiced nurse whose compassion slices through morphine haze; her silhouette brands itself on the inside of his eyelids. Armistice returns him to home turf where, over brandy and firelight, he regales Robert with the tale of that angelic caregiver. From the shadows glides Margaret—no longer Mag—now silk-wrapped and self-possessed, eyes aglint with the same anarchic spark, only banked. She disarms Arnold with a whisper: “I was your battlefield muse.” In that instant the film folds time like origami: the gutter waif and the ward saint are revealed as one protean woman, and Arnold must swallow his skepticism whole.