X: _Terrible Epps_
Sec.1
The blue prints and specifications in the case of Tidbury Epps follow:
Age: the early thirties.
Status: bachelor.
Habitat: Mrs. Kelty's Refined Boarding House, Brooklyn.
Occupation: a lesser clerk in the wholesale selling department ofSpingle & Blatter, Nifty Straw Hattings. See Advts.
Appearance: that of a lesser clerk. Weight: feather. Nose: stub. Eyes:apologetic. Teeth: obvious. Figure: brief. Manner: diffident. Nature:kind. Disposition: amiable but subdued.
Conspicuous vices: none.
Conspicuous virtues: none.
Distinguishing marks: none.
Tidbury was no Napoleon. He was aware of this, and so was everybody inthe hat company, including, unfortunately, Titus Spingle, the president,who felt that he knew a thing or two about Bonapartes because he hadonce been referred to in a straw-hat trade paper as the Napoleon ofHatdom.
Mildly, as he did everything else in life, Tidbury admired, indeedalmost envied Mr. Spingle's silk shirts, which customarily suggested anexplosion in a paint factory. But such sartorial grandeur, Tidburyfelt, was not for him. He stuck to plain white shirts, dark blue tiesand pepper-and-salt suits. The pepper-and-salt suit was invented forTidbury Epps.
Tidbury worked diligently and even cheerfully on a high stool and a lowsalary, copying neat little black figures into big black books. Thesalary and the stool were the same Tidbury had been given when he firstcame to New York from Calais, Maine, ten years before.
It probably never entered his head, as he bent over his columns ofdigits that crisp fall morning, that in their sanctum of real mahoganyand Spanish leather his employers were discussing him.
"Whitaker has quit," announced Mr. Blatter, who acted as sales manager.
Mr. Spingle's acre of face, pink and dimpled from much good living,showed concern.
"How come you can't keep an assistant, Otto?" he inquired.
"After they've been with me for six months," explained Mr. Blattermodestly, "they get so good that they simply have to get better jobs."
"Well, got any candidates for the place?" queried the president.
"Burdette?" suggested Mr. Blatter.
Mr. Spingle eliminated Burdette with a flick of his finger.
"Too young," he said.
"Wetsel?"
"Too old."
"Fitch?"
"Too careless."
"Hydeman?"
"Too inexperienced."
"Well," ventured Mr. Blatter, "what about Tidbury Epps?"
Mr. Spingle's shrug included his shoulders, face and entire body.
"He's neither too old, too young, too careless nor too inexperienced,"advanced Mr. Blatter.
"You're not serious, Otto?"
"Sure I am. Epps has been with us ten years and he's worked hard. Ibelieve in giving our old employees a chance."
"So do I," rejoined the Napoleon of Hatdom; "but you know perfectlywell, Otto, that Tidbury Epps is a dud."
"He's as conscientious as a Pilgrim father," remarked Mr. Blatter.
"That's the trouble with him," snorted Mr. Spingle.
"He spends so much time being conscientious that he hasn't time to beanything else. Not that I object to a man having a conscience,y'understand. But Epps hasn't anything else. You know how it is in thehat trade, Otto; you've got to be a good fellow."
Mr. Spingle paused to pat his silken bosom, in hue reminiscent of sunsetin the Grand Canon. That he was a good fellow, a _bon vivant_, even, wasgenerally admitted in the hat trade.
"You see," went on the Napoleon of Hatdom, "your assistant has to benice to the trade. That's almost his chief job. Remember the motto ofour house is, 'Our business friends are our personal friends.' That'smeant a lot to us, Otto. Now and then you've simply got to take a bigbuyer out and show him a good time--buy him a meal and take him to theWinter Garden. You and I are mostly too busy to do it, but yourassistant isn't. Whitaker made us a lot of good friends, and goodcustomers, too, because he was a regular fella and knew the ropes. Butcan you imagine old Epps giving a party?"
Mr. Blatter was forced to admit that he couldn't.
"But he's so willing," he argued.
"Oh, sure," agreed Mr. Spingle; "and sober and industrious and standswithout hitching and all that. But he's too much of a hermit. No morepersonality than a parsnip. No spirit. No nerve. No fire. No zip. SorryI can't jump him up; he may be a good man, but he's not a good fellow."
"I suppose it will have to be Hydeman, then," remarked Mr. Blatter,rising. "He's a little too slick and flip to suit me, and we don't knowmuch about him, but I suppose he'd know how to show a buyer Broadway."
"I'll bet he would," said Mr. Spingle. "Try him out. But watch hisexpense account, Otto."
So Tidbury Epps continued to enjoy his high stool and his low salary andto copy endless little figures into big black books. His shouldersdrooped a little when he heard of Hydeman's quick promotion, but he saidnothing.
Messrs. Spingle and Blatter, being interested solely in what went onoutside men's heads, did not attempt to find out what was wrong withTidbury Epps. But had a psychoanalyst peered darkly into the interior ofTidbury's small round cranium he would have instantly noted that Mr.Epps was suffering from a bad case of inferiority complex, complicatedby an acute attack of Puritanical complex.
If anybody was to blame for this it was not Tidbury himself but his AuntElvira, who, with the aid of a patented cat-o'-nine-tails she had sentall the way to Chicago for, willow switches from her own back yard, andan edged tongue that cut worse than either, had confined his juvenilesteps to a very straight and exceedingly narrow path by the simpleprocess of lambasting him roundly whenever he so much as glanced to theright or to the left.
Aunt Elvira was a lean woman with no digestion to speak of, and thechief tenet of her philosophy was that whatever is enjoyable is sinful.She impressed this creed on young Tidbury with her thin but sinewy arm,until one day while castigating him violently for laughing at a comicsupplement that the groceries had come in she succumbed to an excess ofvirtue and a broken blood vessel.
Tidbury promptly came to New York with two suits of flannel underwearand many suppressed desires, and went soberly to work in the hatcompany. His subsequent life was as empty of adventure, variety, sin orsuccess as the life of a Hubbard squash. His job wholly absorbed him.The little figures in the big books became his only world. He had neverlearned to play.
Yet people liked Tidbury, even while they thought him kin to the snail.He had a quiet twinkle in his eye and he took over mean jobs and nightwork without a peep of protest. It was his willingness to take onovertime work, and his quiet competence that first attracted theapproving eye of Mr. Blatter. But Mr. Blatter had to admit that Mr.Spingle had diagnosed the case of Tidbury Epps all too accurately;Tidbury was indubitably, incurably a dud; and that is worse than being adub. If any latent fire lurked beneath that pepper-and-salt bosom no onehad ever glimpsed so much as a spark of it. Tidbury never lived up tothat twinkle in his eye.
One would have said that Tidbury was as inconspicuous as an oyster in afifteen-cent stew, and yet love, mysterious, ubiquitous love, found himout and laid him violently by the heels.
It was the round black eyes of Martha Ritter, the new girl at theinformation desk, and the way she cocked her head on one side when shesmiled, that first brought to Tidbury the alarming realization that hisheart was something more than a pump.
She was an alert little thing who would have been teaching school in hernative Ohio village of Granville had not the glittering metropolitanmagnet drawn her to it as every year it draws ten thousand MarthaRitters from ten thousand Granvilles.
She smiled at Tidbury one day as he registered his punctual arrival onthe time clock, and a sudden strange warmth was kindled under hispepper-and-salt coat. Tidbury knew that it was wicked to feel so good,but he couldn't help it. Love laughs at complexes.
He saw her home; he called on her;
he brought her salted peanuts; hetook her to a concert in Central Park; he kept her picture on hiswashstand. But, characteristically, Tidbury as a lover was no volcano ofimperious emotion. He was no aggressive bark, battling fiercely againstwind and wave; he was a chip, floating with the tide. Matrimony, withMartha, was a desirable but distant shore; he would drift there in time.But Martha Ritter, who had more than a dash of romance in her, did notthink much of this sort of courting.
The last time he had been with her--they had gone to the Aquarium toview the fishes--pent-up protest had burst from her, and she hadexclaimed, "Oh, Tidbury, you are so--so quiet!"
The words had jolted him; he had said them over to himself uncountedtimes, and had pondered over them; indeed he was trying to keep fromthinking of them as he bent over his task the day they made Hydemanassistant to the sales manager. Tidbury had noticed lately that Marthatalked about Mr. Hydeman a great deal; she had mentioned his polishedfinger-nails; she had suggested that Tidbury would do well to get one ofthose high-lapeled, snug-waisted suits that Mr. Hydeman affected; shehad quoted some of Mr. Hydeman's witticisms, and had retailed someincidents from his highly colored life. In short, she appeared to havetaken a sudden acute interest in Mr. Hydeman.
Tidbury Epps could not drive from his mind the disquieting thought thatMr. Hydeman as a rival would be dangerous. In the washroom Mr. Hydemanmade no secret of his finesse as a Don Juan. He was everything thatTidbury was not--dashing, worldly, confident. There was something abouthis smooth black hair, held in place by a shiny gummy substance,something about the angle at which he tilted his short-brimmed hat,something about the way his tight little knot of brilliant tie fittedinto his modishly low collar, something about the way he filliped theash from his cigarette so that one could see the diamond twinkle on hisfinger--that carried a subtle suggestion of sophistication and anadventurous nature.
That morning they had entered together--Tidbury and Mr. Hydeman--andTidbury, with icy fingers gripping his heart, had noted that Marthabestowed on Mr. Hydeman a smile with a lingering personal note in it,while her greeting to Tidbury was a curt formal nod. His bitter cup wasfull, and for the first time in his life he gave way to the pangs ofjealousy when, at noontime, he saw Mr. Hydeman take her to lunch.Tidbury came upon them, talking and laughing together, and Martha madenot the slightest attempt to conceal her interest in the suave newassistant to the sales manager; she was open, even brazen about it.
Tidbury was moodily copying figures and trying not to heed the fact thatthe green-eyed monster was clutching him with torturing talons when Mr.Hydeman came up to his desk and prodded him playfully in the ribs.
"Well, old Tid," remarked Mr. Hydeman, "I'll bet you wish you were goingto be in my shoes to-night."
Tidbury looked up from his work.
"Why?" he asked.
For answer Mr. Hydeman thrust two tickets beneath Tidbury's stub ofnose. With only a vague comprehension Tidbury glanced at what wasprinted on them.
ADMIT ONE
THE PAGAN ROUT
ALL GREENWICH VILLAGE WILL BE THERE
WEBBER HALL
ONLY PERSONS IN COSTUME ADMITTED. DON'T MISS THE DARING GARDEN OF EDEN BALLET AND MASQUE AT FOUR A.M.
"Are you a Greenwich Villager?" asked Tidbury.
Mr. Hydeman smiled at the note of horror in Tidbury's voice.
"Oh, I hang out down there," he admitted airily.
"And you're going to the Pagan Rout?"
Even into the seclusion of Calais, Maine, and Mrs. Kelty's, rumors ofthat revel had filtered.
"I never miss one," replied Mr. Hydeman grandly. "And say, I've acostume this year that's a knockout."
"You have?"
"Yes. I've got a preacher's outfit. Can you imagine me a parson?"
Weakly Tidbury said he couldn't.
"And say," went on Mr. Hydeman, lowering his voice to a confidentialwhisper, "I'll have a flask of hip oil on me."
"Hip oil?"
"Sure. Diamond juice."
"Diamond juice?"
"Aw, hooch. For me and the gal."
"The girl?" quavered Tidbury.
"Say," demanded Mr. Hydeman, "did you think I was going to take ahippopotamus with me?"
Tidbury's small face was pathetic.
"You don't know what you're missing, Tid," Mr. Hydeman rattled on. "It'sa real naughty party. Those costumes! Oh, bebe." Mr. Hydeman rolled hiseyes toward the roof and blew thither a kiss. "Last year there was aCleopatra there and she didn't have a thing on her but a pair of----"
"The cashier's waiting for these figures," mumbled Mr. Epps. "I've gotto go to him."
He heard Hydeman's sniggle of laughter behind him.
That evening the desperate Tidbury met Martha Ritter as she was leavingthe hat company's building.
"May I come to see you to-night?" he asked, trying not to stammer, andhoping his ears were not as red as they felt. "There's a nice bandconcert in Prospect Park and I thought----"
Martha Ritter cocked her head to one side and smiled mysteriously.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Epps," she said coolly, "but I have an engagement."
"You--have--an--engagement?" He repeated the words as if they were aprison sentence.
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Oh, it's a masquerade." She smiled, her head on one side.
"Whom are you going with?" he blurted; he was trembling.
"That would be telling," she laughed. "Well, good night, Mr. Epps. Imust hurry home and get my costume on. I'm going as a gypsy."
And she disappeared into the maw of the Subway.
A masquerade! In gypsy costume! Tidbury was struck by the lightning ofcomplete realization; he understood Hydeman's leer now. Feebly he leanedagainst a lamp-post until his numbed brain could recover from theimpact. Then he committed a sin. Deliberately he kicked the lamp-post avicious kick.
"Darn it all," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Yes, gosh darn itall!"
Then he went wearily to his boarding house. Morosely he ate of Mrs.Kelty's boiled beef and bread pudding; morosely he sat in his lonelystall of a bedroom and glowered at a hole in the red carpet.
"I'm too quiet. Too darn quiet," he kept saying to himself in a sort oflitany. "Yes, too gosh darn quiet."
And when he thought of Martha, sweet simple Martha, and so short a timeago his Martha, at the Pagan Rout with Hydeman, surrounded by indecorousand no doubt inebriate denizens of Greenwich Village, his head all butburst. That she was lost, and, most poignant thought of all, lost tohim, kept beating in upon his brain. He moaned.
Suddenly his spine straightened with a terrible resolve. His smallguileless face was set in lines of stern decision. He leaped from hischair, dived under his brass bed, rummaged in his trunk and fished uptwenty-five hard-saved dollars in a sock.
Clapping his hat on his head in emulation of the tilt of Mr. Hydeman'shat Tidbury issued forth. In the hall he passed Mrs. Kelty, who regardedhim with some surprise.
"You're not going out, Mr. Epps?" she asked. "Why, it's after nine!"
"I am going out, Mrs. Kelty," announced Tidbury Epps.
"Back soon?"
"I may never come back," he answered hollowly.
"Sakes alive! Where are you going?"
"I am going," said Tidbury Epps firmly, "to the devil."
And he strode into the night.
Sec.2
Never having gone to the devil before, Mr. Epps was somewhat perplexedin mind as to the direction he should take. But a moment's reflectionconvinced him that Greenwich Village was the most promising place forsuch a pilgrimage. He had never been there before; he had been afraid togo there. Startling stories of the gay profligacy rampant in that angleof old New York had reached his ears. He believed firmly that if thedevil has any headquarters in New York they are somewhere belowFourteenth Street and west of Washington Square.
Mr. Epp
s debouched from a bus in Washington Square and started westwardalong West Fourth Street with the cautious but determined tread of anexplorer penetrating a trackless and cannibal-infested jungle. Heglanced apprehensively to right and left, his eyes wide for the sight ofpainted sirens, his ears agape for gusts of ribald merriment. At eachcorner he paused expectantly, anticipating that he might come upon adelirious party of art students gamboling about a model. He traversedtwo blocks without seeing so much as a smock; what he did see was anancient man of Italian derivation carrying a bag of charcoal on hishead, and a stout woman wheeling twins stuffed uncomfortably into asingle-seater gocart, and a number of nondescript humans who from theirsedate air might well have been Brooklyn funeral directors. He owned,after a bit, to a certain sense of disappointment. Going to the devilwas more of a chore than he had fancied.
As he trekked ever westward a sound at length smote his dilated ears andmade him catch his breath. It was issuing from a dim-lit basement, andwas filtering through batik curtains stenciled with strange, smearybeasts. He had heard the wild, dissipated notes of a mechanical piano. Alurid but somewhat inexpertly lettered sign above the basement doorread,
YE AMIABLE OYSTER
REFRESHMINTS AT ALL HRS.
With a newborn boldness Tidbury Epps thrust open the door and entered.No shower of confetti, no popping of corks, no rousing stein songgreeted him. Save for the industrious piano the place seemed empty.However, by the feeble beams that came from the lights, bandaged inbatik like so many sore thumbs, he discerned a mountainous matron behinda cash register, engaged in tatting.
"Where's everybody?" he asked of her.
"Oh, things will liven up after a bit," she yawned.
Tidbury sat at a small bright blue table and scanned a card affixed tothe wall.
Angel's Ambrosia ........ $0.50 Horse's Neck ............ .60 Devil's Delight ......... .70 Dry Martini ............. .50 Very dry Martini ........ .60 Very, very dry Martini .. .90 Champagne Sizzle ........ .75
A sleepy waiter with a soup-stained vest came from the inner roompresently.
"Gimme a Devil's Delight," ordered Tidbury Epps recklessly.
He had heard that Greenwich Village, the untrammeled, laughs openly inthe teeth of the Eighteenth Amendment. He had never in his life tastedan alcoholic drink, but to-night he was stopping at nothing. The Devil'sDelight came, and Tidbury as he sipped its pink saccharinity foundhimself feeling that the devil is rather easily delighted. He hadexpected the potion to make his head buzz; but it did not. Instead itdistinctly suggested rather weak and not very superior strawberry sirupand carbonated water. He crooked a summoning finger at the waiter.
"Horse's Neck," he commanded.
The Horse's Neck made its appearance, an insipid-looking amber fluidwith a wan piece of lemon peel floating shamefacedly on its surface.
"Tastes just like ginger ale to me," remarked Mr. Epps. "Wadjuh expeckin a Horse's Neck?" queried the waiter bellicosely. "Chloride of lime?"
"I can't feel it at all," complained Mr. Epps.
"Feel it?" The waiter raised his brows. "Say, what do you think thisjoint is? A dump? We ain't bootleggers, mister."
"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Epps.
He was about to go elsewhere, when a babel of excited voices outside thedoor made him sink back into his chair; evidently the promise of thetatting matron was to be made good, and Ye Amiable Oyster was about toliven up.
The first thing that entered the door was an animal--a full-size, shaggyanthropoid ape, big as a man. Mr. Epps was too alarmed to bolt. But asthe creature careened into the light Mr. Epps observed that his face washuman and slightly Hibernian. Behind him came a girl, rather sketchilydressed for autumn in a pair of bead portieres, a girdle or two, and agilt plaster bird, which was bound firmly to her head. Mr. Epps had seenthings like her on cigarette boxes. A second couple followed, hilarious.The man wore a tight velvet suit, a sombrero several yards around, blackmustaches of prodigious length and bristle that did not match the red ofhis hair, and earrings the size of cantaloupes; it was not clear whetherhe was intended to be a pirate or an organ grinder or a compromisebetween the two; but it was clear that he was in a state where it didnot matter, to him, in the least. His companion wore a precariousgarment of dry grass, and her arms were stained brown; at intervals sheconveyed the information to the general atmosphere that she was a bimbofrom a bamboo isle.
The four, after an impromptu ring-around-a-rosie, collapsed into chairsnear the wide-eyed Epps. Fascinated he stared at them--the firstauthentic natives of Greenwich Village on whom his cloistered eye hadever rested.
"Ginger ale," bawled the ape.
It was brought. The ape dipping into a fold in his anatomy brought tolight a capacious flask, kissed it solemnly, and poured its contentsinto the glasses of the others.
"Jake, that sure is the real old stuff," said the girl in the grassdress.
"Made it m'sef," said the ape proudly. "Y'see, I took dozen apricots,and ten pounds sugar, and some yeast and some raisins, and mixed 'em ina jug, and added water and----"
"That's nine times we heard all about that," interrupted the pirate ororgan grinder. "Better be careful, anyhow. Mebbe that guy is a revnooofficer."
They all turned to stare at Mr. Epps.
"Of course he ain't 'nofficer, Ed," protested the ape, surveying Tidburywith care. "He's got too kind a face. You ain't 'nofficer, are you?"
"No," said Tidbury.
"What did I tell yuh?" cried the ape, triumphantly, to his companions."Shove up your chair, old sport, and have a drink with us. You look likea live one. I like your face."
Thus bidden, Tidbury, with an air of abandon, joined the group. The apenamed Jake tilted his flask over Tidbury's spiritless Horse's Neck withsuch vehement good-fellowship that a gush of pungent brown fluid spurtedfrom the container. Tidbury downed the mixture at a gulp; it made tearsstart to his eyes and a conflagration flame up in his brain.
"Howzit?" demanded Jake the ape.
"'Sgoo'," answered Tidbury warmly.
"Have 'nuther. Got plenty," said Jake, producing a second flask fromanother recess in his shaggy skin. "I like your face."
"Don't care if I do," said Tidbury nonchalantly.
The lights in the near-cafe were very bright, the voices very high, theconversation exquisitely witty, the mechanical piano a symphonicrhapsody, and the heart of Tidbury Epps was pumping with wild, unwontedpumps; he smiled to himself. He was going to the devil at a great rate.He waxed loquacious. He told them anecdotes; he even sang a little.
He beamed upon Jake, and playfully plucked a tuft of hair from hiscostume.
"Nice li'l' monkey," he said affably.
"Not a monkey!" denied Jake indignantly.
"Wad are you? S-s-schimpaz-z-ze-e-e?"
"Nope. Not a S-s-schimpaz-z-ze-e-e."
"Ran-tan?"
"Nope. Not a ran-tan."
"Bamboo?"
"Nope. Not a bamboo."
"Well, wad are you?"
Jake thumped his hairy chest proudly.
"I'm a griller," he explained.
"Oh," said Mr. Epps, satisfied. "A griller. Of course! Is it hard work?"
"Work?" cried Jake. "Say, this ain't my real skin. It's a 'sguise."
"Oh," said Mr. Epps. "So you're 'sguised? Wad did you do?"
"Careful, Jake," the organ grinder or pirate warned. "He may be a revnooofficer."
The gorilla turned on him angrily.
"Lookahere, Ed Peterson, how dare you pass remarks like that about myole friend, Mr. ---- What is your name, anyhow? Of course he ain't norevnofficer? Are you?"
"I'll fight anybody who says I am," declared Tidbury Epps, glaringfiercely around at the empty chairs and tables.
"You a fighter?" inquired the gorilla, in a voice in which awe,admiration and alcohol mingled.
Mr. Epps contracted his brow and narrowed his eyes.
"Yep," he said impressivel
y. "I'm Terrible Battling Epps. I'd ratherfight than eat." He turned sternly to the gorilla. "Why are you'sguised? Wad did you do?"
"Why, you poor nut," put in the girl in the beads, "we're going to thePagan Rout."
"Sure, that's it," chimed in Jake. "Goin' to the Pagan Row. Come onalong, Terrible."
"Aw, I'm tired of Pagan Routs," said Mr. Epps loftily. But thesuggestion speeded up the pumpings of his heart.
"Oh, do come!" urged the girl in the beads.
"Ain't got no 'sguise," said Mr. Epps. He was wavering.
"Aw, come on!" cried the gorilla, clapping him on the shoulder till histeeth rattled. "Proud to have you with us, Terrible. I know a live onewhen I see one. Come on along. You'll see a lot of your friends there."
His friends? Tidbury thought of Martha.
"If I only had a 'sguise----" he began.
"You can get one round at Steinbock's, on Seventh Avenue," promptlyinformed the organ grinder-pirate. "That is," he added with suddensuspicion, "if you ain't one of these here revnofficers."
"S-s-s-s-sh, Ed," cautioned Jake, the gorilla. "Do you want TerribleBattling Epps to take a poke at you?"
Tidbury had made up his mind.
"I'll go," he announced.
"Good!" exclaimed the gorilla delightedly. "Atta boy! Glad to have areal N'Yawk sport with us. Meet you at Webber Hall, Terrible."
"Webber Hall? Wherezat?" inquired Tidbury as he sought to negotiate thedoor.
"Well," confessed the gorilla, "I dunno 'zactly m'sef. Y'see, I'm fromKansas City m'sef. In the lid game, I am. Biggest firm west of theMizzizippi. Last year we sold----"
"Aw, stop selling and tell Terrible how to get to Webber Hall," put inthe girl in the beads; she appeared to be the gorilla's wife.
"Well," said Jake, thoughtfully rubbing his fuzzy head, "far as Iremember, you go out to the square and you go straight along till youget to the L and you turn to the right----"
"Left!" interjected the organ grinder-pirate.
"Right," repeated the gorilla firmly. "And then you turn down anotherstreet--no, you don't--you go straight on till you see a dentist's sign,a big gold tooth, with 'Gee, it didn't hurt a bit at Dr. B. Schmuck'sParlors,' painted on it, and you turn to your right----"
"Left," corrected the pirate-organ grinder sternly.
"Waz difference?" went on the gorilla blandly. "Well, as I was saying,you turn to the right or left and then you go along three or fourblocks, and then you turn to your left----"
"Right, I tell you!" roared the man in velvet.
"Oh, well, you go along until you come to a corner and you turn it andgo down a little bit, and there you are!"
"Where am I?" Mr. Epps, posing against the door, asked.
"Webber Hall," said Jake. "Pagan Row."
"Oh," said Mr. Epps.
"Didn't you follow me?"
"Of course I followed you."
"Good. See you at the party, Terrible. You're hot stuff."
"I'll be there. G'night."
"G'night, Terrible, old scout."
Sec.3
Mr. Epps emerged from Ye Amiable Oyster, walking with elaborate butdifficult dignity. He had only a remote idea where he was, but he knewwhere he wanted to go--Steinbock's on Seventh Avenue. So with a temerityquite foreign to him he stepped up briskly to the first passingpedestrian and asked, "Say, frien', where's Sebble Abloo?"
The man accosted puckered a puzzled brow.
"I don't get you, frien'," he said.
"Sebble Abloo!" repeated Mr. Epps loudly, thinking the stranger'shearing might be defective.
"What?"
"Sebble Abloo!" roared Mr. Epps.
The man shook his head as one giving up a conundrum.
"Sebble Abloo," repeated Mr. Epps at the top of his voice "Look." Heheld up his fingers and counted them off. "One, two, sree, four, fi',sizz, sebble. Sebble Abloo!"
"Oh, Seventh Avenue. Why didn't you say so in the first place?"
"I did."
"I'm going that way. I'll show you."
The stranger steered Tidbury through a rabbit warren of streets--theGreenwich Village streets never have made up their minds where they aregoing--and started him, with a gentle push, up Seventh Avenue.
Presently by some miracle Tidbury stumbled upon Steinbock's, and pushedhis way into a jumble of masks, wigs, helmets and assorted junk, till heapproached a patriarch in a skullcap, hidden behind a Niagara of whitebeard.
"'Lo, ole fel'," said Mr. Epps affably. "What are you 'sguised as? SandyClaws or a cough drop?"
"Did you wish something?" inquired the patriarch coldly.
"Sure," said Tidbury. "Gimme 'sguise for Pagon Row."
"Cash in advance," said the patriarch. "What sort of costume?"
Tidbury considered.
"Wadjuh got?"
The venerable Steinbock enumerated rapidly, "Bear, bandit, policeman,Turk, golliwog, ballet girl, kewpie, pantaloon, Uncle Sam, tramp, diver,Lord Fauntleroy, devil----"
The ears of Mr. Epps twitched at the last word.
"Devil?"
"Yes," said Mr. Steinbock; "a swell rig; nice red suit; hasn't been worna dozen times." He leaned forward toward Tidbury and whispered, "AndI'll throw in a brand-new pair of horns and a tail!"
"I'll take it!" cried Tidbury. "Where can I hang my pants?"
After an interval there emerged from the depths of the Steinbockestablishment a small uncertain figure muffled in an old raincoat. Thecoat was short and from beneath it protruded bright red legs and agenerous length of red tail, with a spike on the end of it that gaveforth sharp metallic sounds as it bumped along the pavement. A derby hatconcealed one horn, but the other was visible; the face wasMephistophelian in its general character, but softened and rounded--thecountenance of a rather amiable minor devil.
Tidbury Epps paused on a street corner to get his bearings. He had readsomewhere that woodsmen, lost in the forest, can find the points of thecompass because moss always grows on the north side of trees. He wascarefully investigating a lamp-post for a trace of moss when abeady-eyed urchin approached him with outthrust hand.
"Give us one, mister?"
"One what?"
"A sample."
"Sample of what?"
"Ain't you advertising something?"
Tidbury drew himself up.
"No," he said with dignity. "How do I get to Wazzington Square?"
"Aw, chee," the urchin said in disgust, "you're one of them artist guys!Washington Square is two blocks south and three blocks west."
With every corpuscle in his small frame aglow with an excitement he hadnever before experienced Tidbury Epps started in determined search ofthe Pagan Rout. A grim purpose had been forming in his brain. So MarthaRitter thought he was quiet, eh? Hydeman had sniggered at him, had he?Just wait till Terrible Battling Epps reached the ball and discoveredthe well-fed person of Mr. Hydeman in clerical garb. There would befireworks, he promised himself. No one was going to steal the girl ofTerrible Epps and get away with it.
These, and thoughts of a similar trend, reeled through the brain ofTidbury as he hurried with a series of skips and now and then a shortsprint along the curbstone.
So busy did he become planning a dramatic descent on Hydeman that heforgot the directions of the urchin, and soon found himself hopelesslyastray in an eel tangle of streets, as he repeated, "Two blocks wes' andthree blocks souse. Or was it three blocks souse and two blocks wes'?"
Gripping his tail firmly in his hand he tried both plans. Passers-byeyed him with the blase curiosity of New Yorkers, as he passed at a dogtrot.
Sometimes they nudged each other and remarked, "Artist. Goin' to thishere Pagan Rout. Pretty snootful, too. Lucky stiff."
No one ventured to impede his slightly erratic progress; after half anhour of wandering he stopped, mopped his brow and observed, "Ought to bethere by now."
As he said this he saw two figures across the street, two ladies ofmature mold, picking their way along. It was their garb which made himgive a
shout of triumph and follow them. For one, who was fat, wasdressed as a colonial dame with powdered hair, and the other, who wasfatter, was a forty-year-old edition of Little Red Riding Hood; her hairwas in pigtails, but she was discreetly skirted to the ankle bones. Hefollowed these masqueraders with the wary steps of an Indian stalking amoose, until they turned into the basement of a towering building ofbrick, from which issued the melodic scraping of fiddles and thepleasing bleating of horns. His heart skipped a beat. The Pagan Rout!The devil's doorway.
Tidbury Epps shucked off his raincoat and derby hat, tossed them at afire hydrant, put on his mask, dropped his tail, squared his redshoulders, knotted up his small fists, drew in a deep breath and plungedinto the hall. So engrossed was he in these preparations that he failedto note a home-made poster nailed outside the door. It read:
COME ONE, COME ALL THE LADIES' AID SOCIETY WILL GIVE A COSTUME PARTY IN THE CHURCH BASEMENT TO-NIGHT
With a rolling gait Tidbury Epps entered the hall. Figures eddied abouthim in a dance, and, somewhat surprised, Tidbury noted that it was verylike the old-fashioned waltzes he had seen in Calais, Maine. Thewaltzers evidently regarded dancing as a business of the utmostseriousness; their lips, beneath their dominoes, were rigid and severe,save when they counted softly but audibly, "One, two, three, turn. One,two, three, turn." In vain Tidbury searched the room for Jake thegorilla, the beaded lady, the organ-grinding pirate and the bimbo fromthe bamboo isle. He concluded that Jake's flasks had been too much forthem. And he saw no gypsy or Hydeman. Indeed, as he watched therestrained and sober waltzers he could not escape the conviction thatthe Pagan Rout, for an institution so widely known for impropriety, wassingularly decent in the matter of costume. There were Priscillas inample skirts, farmerettes in baggy overalls, milkmaids in MotherHubbards, Pilgrim fathers, sailors, and Chinese in voluminous kimonos.Tidbury, a little dazed in a corner, began to think that he hadoverestimated the glamour of sin.
He perceived that the obese Red Riding Hood was standing at his elbow,gazing at him with some curiosity.
He lurched toward her, and administered a slap of good-fellowship on herplump shoulder.
"'Lo, cutie," he remarked in accents slightly blurred. "Where'sCleopotter?"
The lady gave vent to a squeal of surprise.
"Sir," she said, "I do not know Miss Potter."
She sniffed the atmosphere in the vicinity of Mr. Epps, gave a littlecluck of horror, and scurried away like a duck from a hawk.
The eyes of Mr. Epps followed her flight and he saw that she headedstraight for a man who sat in a distant corner of the hall; the man wasmasked, but Tidbury felt every muscle in his five feet three inches ofbody stiffen as he saw that the man in the corner wore the garb of theclergy. Hydeman!
Red Riding Hood whispered in his ear and pointed an accusing fingertoward Tidbury; the man in the corner gazed earnestly at the diminutivered devil teetering on red hoofs. By now Tidbury had spied anotherfigure, sitting next to the masked preacher. She was a gypsy. And as shegazed at her companion she cocked her head to one side.
With tail bouncing along the floor after him Tidbury started briskly intheir direction at a lope. Within a yard of them he reined himself down,and stood, with a hand on either hip, glaring at the cleric and thegypsy.
Hydeman stood up. He seemed larger, rounder than the assistant to thesales manager known to Tidbury in business hours, but the fierce fire ofjealousy burned within Mr. Epps--and he was not to be daunted by size.
"So it's you, is it?" he remarked with biting emphasis.
"Naturally," said the man. "Whom did you expect it to be?"
His voice had a soft sweet note in it, not at all like the sharpstaccato of Hydeman's crisp business New Yorkese.
"He's making fun of me," said Tidbury, and the spirit of TerribleBattling Epps wholly possessed him.
"You thought I was a dead one, eh?" remarked Mr. Epps. "Well, I'm goingto show you that sometimes the quiet ones come to life and----"
The other eyed him sternly.
"Young man," he said, "I fear that you are er--a bit--er--under theweather. I fear you are not one of us."
"Not one of you?" roared Tidbury with passion mounting. "You're darnright I'm not one of you--you low, immoral Greenwich Villagers, leadinginnocent girls astray." He waved a thin red arm toward the gypsy.
The music had stopped in the midst of a bar; the masqueraders werecrowding about. The accused ecclesiastic glared down at the small devilbefore him.
"How dare you say such a thing of me?" he demanded. "Who are you?"
"You know well enough who I am, Milt Hydeman," cried Tidbury, breathingjerkily. "I'm Terrible Battling Epps, and----"
"Leave our hall at once!" the other returned. "You are plainly under theinfluence of----"
He stretched out a hand to grasp Tidbury Epps by the shoulder, and as hedid so Tidbury brought a small but angry fist into swift contact withthe clerical waist-line.
"Oof!" grunted the man.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" screamed the Red Riding Hood. "The devil hasstruck the Reverend Doctor Bewley. Help! Help!"
But Tidbury, deaf to all things but battle, had buried his other fist soviolently in his opponent's soft center that the mask popped from theman's face. It was the round, pink, frightened face of a total stranger.
With a yelp of dismay Tidbury turned to flee, but the outragedparishioners had pounced on him, torn off his mask, and were proving, athis expense, that there is still such a thing as militant, muscularChristianity in the world. As they bore him, kicking and struggling, tothe door, he saw in all the blur of excited faces one face with staring,unbelieving eyes. The gypsy had removed her mask, and she was MarthaRitter. In all the babble of voices hers was the only one he heard.
"Oh, Mr. Epps! Oh, Mr. Epps!" she was sobbing. "I didn't think it ofyou! I didn't think it of you!"
From the gutter in front of the church Tidbury after a while pickedhimself, felt tenderly of his red-clad limbs, found them whole butpainful, applied a bit of cold paving brick to his swelling eye, andstarted slowly and thoughtfully down the street, his tail, broken in thefracas, hanging limply between his legs. Despite all, the potentstimulus of Jake's concoction lingered with him, and there was acomforting buzzing in his head which all but offset the feeling of dankdespair that was crowding in upon him. He had lost Martha. That wassure. He--he was a failure. He couldn't even go to the devil.
How he got back to his own room in Mrs. Kelty's boarding house he neverknew, but that was where the brazen voice of the alarm clock summonedhim sharply from deep slumber. His head felt like a bass drum full ofbumblebees. But it was his heart, as he buttoned his pepper-and-saltvest over it, that hurt him most. He tried to drive from him the achingthoughts of the lost Martha, but the only thought he could substitutewas the scarcely more cheerful one that he'd probably be castincontinently from the hat company when news of his brawl reached thealert ears of Messrs. Spingle and Blatter.
Spurning breakfast he hurried to his office, and before Martha or therest arrived he had climbed wearily to the pinnacle of his high stool,and had hunched himself over his figures. He was struggling todistinguish between the dancing nines and sixes when he heard avoice--an oddly familiar voice--booming out from the doorway that led tothe presidential sanctum.
"Well," said the voice, "it looks to me just now, Spingle, as if wecould use about ten thousand dozen of your Number 1A hats out in KansasCity this year. Of course I'll have to shop around a bit to see whatthe others can offer----"
"Of course, Jake, of course," replied Mr. Spingle, in the satin voiceTidbury knew he reserved for the very largest buyers. "But say, Jake,wouldn't you and your wife like to be our guests at a little partyto-night? Dinner and then the Winter Garden? Our Mr. Hydeman will bedelighted to take you out."
The person addressed as Jake lowered his voice, but not so low that theavid ears of Tidbury Epps mis
sed a syllable.
"Between you and me, Spingle," said Jake, "I wouldn't care to at all."
"Why, Jake," expostulated Mr. Spingle, "I thought you and the wifealways liked to whoop it up a bit when you came to the big town."
"So we do," admitted Jake, "but not with him."
"What's wrong with Hydeman?" demanded the Napoleon of Hatdom, andTidbury read anxiety in his tone.
"Everything," replied Jake succinctly.
"You know him, then?"
"Yep, ran into him last night at the Pagan Rout," said Jake. "He didn'tmake much of a hit with me or the missus. Too fresh. Treated us as if wewere rubes. Out in Kansas City we know a good fellow when we seeone----Why, what the devil----"
Jake had chopped his sentence off short, and with a whoop of joy hadbounded across the room.
"Well, if it isn't Terrible Epps!" he bellowed heartily. "How's thehead, old sport? Say, Terrible, why didn't you join us at the PaganRout?"
"I--I couldn't find you there," said Tidbury, trembling.
"Oh, yes," remarked Jake thoughtfully. "You must have got there afterthey put us out."
"They put me out too," said Tidbury.
Jake's roar of laughter made the straw hats quiver on the heads of thedummies in the show cases. He turned a beaming face to Mr. Spingle.
"Say, Spingle," he cried, "what do you mean by trying to palm off atin-horn like Hydeman on me when you've got the best little fellow, thewarmest little entertainer east of the Mississippi, right here?"
To this Mr. Spingle was totally unable to make any reply. But after aminute his brain functioned sufficiently for him to say, "About thatorder of yours, Jake----"
"Oh," said Jake reassuringly. "I'll talk to Terrible Epps about it atdinner to-night."
* * * * *
"And to think," repeated Mr. Spingle for the third or fourth time to Mr.Blatter, "that Tidbury is a man-about-town who goes to Pagan Routs andeverything! You'll give him Hydeman's job, won't you, Otto?"
"I already have," said Mr. Blatter.
"Good!" exclaimed the Napoleon of Hatdom. "Didn't I always say thatTidbury Epps was a live one, underneath?"
* * * * *
The round cheek of Martha Ritter was in immediate contact with thepepper-and-salt shoulder of Tidbury Epps.
"And you tried to make me think," he repeated in a tone of wonder, "thatyou liked Hydeman and were going to the Pagan Rout with him? Oh, Marthadear, why did you do it?"
She hid her eyes from his.
"I did it," she murmured, "because I wanted to make you jealous."
The clock ticked many ticks.
"But, Tidbury, if I marry you," she said anxiously, "you'll reform,won't you? You'll promise me you'll give up Greenwich Village anddrinking, won't you, Tidbury?"
"If you'll help me, dearest," promised Tidbury Epps, "I'll try."
The Sin of Monsieur Pettipon, and other humorous tales Page 10
