Mr. Epps emerged from Ye Amiable Oyster, walking with elaborate but
difficult dignity. He had only a remote idea where he was, but he knew
where he wanted to go--Steinbock's on Seventh Avenue. So with a temerity
quite foreign to him he stepped up briskly to the first passing
pedestrian 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's
hearing 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." He
held 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--the
Greenwich Village streets never have made up their minds where they are
going--and started him, with a gentle push, up Seventh Avenue.
Presently by some miracle Tidbury stumbled upon Steinbock's, and pushed
his way into a jumble of masks, wigs, helmets and assorted junk, till he
approached a patriarch in a skullcap, hidden behind a Niagara of white
beard.
"'Lo, ole fel'," said Mr. Epps affably. "What are you 'sguised as? Sandy
Claws 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 worn
a dozen times." He leaned forward toward Tidbury and whispered, "And
I'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 Steinbock
establishment a small uncertain figure muffled in an old raincoat. The
coat was short and from beneath it protruded bright red legs and a
generous length of red tail, with a spike on the end of it that gave
forth sharp metallic sounds as it bumped along the pavement. A derby hat
concealed one horn, but the other was visible; the face was
Mephistophelian in its general character, but softened and rounded--the
countenance of a rather amiable minor devil.
Tidbury Epps paused on a street corner to get his bearings. He had read
somewhere that woodsmen, lost in the forest, can find the points of the
compass because moss always grows on the north side of trees. He was
carefully investigating a lamp-post for a trace of moss when a
beady-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 had
never before experienced Tidbury Epps started in determined search of
the Pagan Rout. A grim purpose had been forming in his brain. So Martha
Ritter thought he was quiet, eh? Hydeman had sniggered at him, had he?
Just wait till Terrible Battling Epps reached the ball and discovered
the well-fed person of Mr. Hydeman in clerical garb. There would be
fireworks, he promised himself. No one was going to steal the girl of
Terrible Epps and get away with it.
These, and thoughts of a similar trend, reeled through the brain of
Tidbury as he hurried with a series of skips and now and then a short
sprint along the curbstone.
So busy did he become planning a dramatic descent on Hydeman that he
forgot the directions of the urchin, and soon found himself hopelessly
astray in an eel tangle of streets, as he repeated, "Two blocks wes' and
three blocks souse. Or was it three blocks souse and two blocks wes'?"
Gripping his tail firmly in his hand he tried both plans. Passers-by
eyed him with the blase curiosity of New Yorkers, as he passed at a dog
trot.
Sometimes they nudged each other and remarked, "Artist. Goin' to this
here Pagan Rout. Pretty snootful, too. Lucky stiff."
No one ventured to impede his slightly erratic progress; after half an
hour of wandering he stopped, mopped his brow and observed, "Ought to be
there by now."
As he said this he saw two figures across the street, two ladies of
mature mold, picking their way along. It was their garb which made him
give a shout of triumph and follow them. For one, who was fat, was
dressed as a colonial dame with powdered hair, and the other, who was
fatter, was a forty-year-old edition of Little Red Riding Hood; her hair
was in pigtails, but she was discreetly skirted to the ankle bones. He
followed these masqueraders with the wary steps of an Indian stalking a
moose, until they turned into the basement of a towering building of
brick, from which issued the melodic scraping of fiddles and the
pleasing 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 a
fire hydrant, put on his mask, dropped his tail, squared his red
shoulders, knotted up his small fists, drew in a deep breath and plunged
into the hall. So engrossed was he in these preparations that he failed
to 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 about
him in a dance, and, somewhat surprised, Tidbury noted that it was very
like the old-fashioned waltzes he had seen in Calais, Maine. The
waltzers evidently regarded dancing as a business of the utmost
seriousness; 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 the
gorilla, the beaded lady, the organ-grinding pirate and the bimbo from
the bamboo isle. He concluded that Jake's flasks had been too much for
them. And he saw no gypsy or Hydeman. Indeed, as he watched the
restrained and sober waltzers he could not escape the conviction that
the Pagan Rout, for an institution so widely known for impropriety, was
singularly decent in the matter of costume. There were Priscillas in
ample skirts, farmerettes in baggy overalls, milkmaids in Mother
Hubbards, Pilgrim fathers, sailors, and Chinese in voluminous kimonos.
Tidbury, a little dazed in a corner, began to think that he had
overestimated 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 her
plump shoulder.
"'Lo, cutie," he remarked in accents slightly blurred. "Where's
Cleopotter?"
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 little
cluck of horror, and scurried away like a duck from a hawk.
The eyes of Mr. Epps followed her flight and he saw that she headed
straight for a man who sat in a distant corner of the hall; the man was
masked, but Tidbury felt every muscle in his five feet three inches of
body stiffen as he saw that the man in the corner wore the garb of the
clergy. Hydeman!
Red Riding Hood whispered in his ear and pointed an accusing finger
toward Tidbury; the man in the corner gazed earnestly at the diminutive
red devil teetering on red hoofs. By now Tidbury had spied another
figure, sitting next to the masked preacher. She was a gypsy. And as she
gazed at her companion she cocked her head to one side.
With tail bouncing along the floor after him Tidbury started briskly in
their 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 the
gypsy.
Hydeman stood up. He seemed larger, rounder than the assistant to the
sales manager known to Tidbury in business hours, but the fierce fire of
jealousy 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 sharp
staccato of Hydeman's crisp business New Yorkese.
"He's making fun of me," said Tidbury, and the spirit of Terrible
Battling Epps wholly possessed him.
"You thought I was a dead one, eh?" remarked Mr. Epps. "Well, I'm going
to 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 the
weather. I fear you are not one of us."
"Not one of you?" roared Tidbury with passion mounting. "You're darn
right I'm not one of you--you low, immoral Greenwich Villagers, leading
innocent girls astray." He waved a thin red arm toward the gypsy.
The music had stopped in the midst of a bar; the masqueraders were
crowding about. The accused ecclesiastic glared down at the small devil
before 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, breathing
jerkily. "I'm Terrible Battling Epps, and----"
"Leave our hall at once!" the other returned. "You are plainly under the
influence of----"
He stretched out a hand to grasp Tidbury Epps by the shoulder, and as he
did so Tidbury brought a small but angry fist into swift contact with
the clerical waist-line.
"Oof!" grunted the man.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" screamed the Red Riding Hood. "The devil has
struck the Reverend Doctor Bewley. Help! Help!"
But Tidbury, deaf to all things but battle, had buried his other fist so
violently in his opponent's soft center that the mask popped from the
man's face. It was the round, pink, frightened face of a total stranger.
With a yelp of dismay Tidbury turned to flee, but the outraged
parishioners had pounced on him, torn off his mask, and were proving, at
his expense, that there is still such a thing as militant, muscular
Christianity in the world. As they bore him, kicking and struggling, to
the 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 Martha
Ritter. 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 of
you! I didn't think it of you!"
From the gutter in front of the church Tidbury after a while picked
himself, felt tenderly of his red-clad limbs, found them whole but
painful, applied a bit of cold paving brick to his swelling eye, and
started slowly and thoughtfully down the street, his tail, broken in the
fracas, hanging limply between his legs. Despite all, the potent
stimulus of Jake's concoction lingered with him, and there was a
comforting buzzing in his head which all but offset the feeling of dank
despair that was crowding in upon him. He had lost Martha. That was
sure. 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 never
knew, but that was where the brazen voice of the alarm clock summoned
him sharply from deep slumber. His head felt like a bass drum full of
bumblebees. But it was his heart, as he buttoned his pepper-and-salt
vest over it, that hurt him most. He tried to drive from him the aching
thoughts of the lost Martha, but the only thought he could substitute
was the scarcely more cheerful one that he'd probably be cast
incontinently from the hat company when news of his brawl reached the
alert ears of Messrs. Spingle and Blatter.
Spurning breakfast he hurried to his office, and before Martha or the
rest arrived he had climbed wearily to the pinnacle of his high stool,
and had hunched himself over his figures. He was struggling to
distinguish between the dancing nines and sixes when he heard a
voice--an oddly familiar voice--booming out from the doorway that led to
the presidential sanctum.
"Well," said the voice, "it looks to me just now, Spingle, as if we
could use about ten thousand dozen of your Number 1A hats out in Kansas
City this year. Of course I'll have to shop around a bit to see what
the others can offer----"
"Of course, Jake, of course," replied Mr. Spingle, in the satin voice
Tidbury 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 party
to-night? Dinner and then the Winter Garden? Our Mr. Hydeman will be
delighted to take you out."
The person addressed as Jake lowered his voice, but not so low that the
avid ears of Tidbury Epps missed 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 wife
always 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, and
Tidbury 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't
make much of a hit with me or the missus. Too fresh. Treated us as if we
were rubes. Out in Kansas City we know a good fellow when we see
one----Why, what the devil----"
Jake had chopped his sentence off short, and with a whoop of joy had
bounded across the room.
"Well, if it isn't Terrible Epps!" he bellowed heartily. "How's the
head, old sport? Say, Terrible, why didn't you join us at the Pagan
Rout?"
"I--I couldn't find you there," said Tidbury, trembling.
"Oh, yes," remarked Jake thoughtfully. "You must have got there after
they put us out."
"They put me out too," said Tidbury.
Jake's roar of laughter made the straw hats quiver on the heads of the
dummies 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 a
tin-horn like Hydeman on me when you've got the best little fellow, the
warmest little entertainer east of the Mississippi, right here?"
To this Mr. Spingle was totally unable to make any reply. But after a
minute his brain functioned sufficiently for him to say, "About that
order of yours, Jake----"
"Oh," said Jake reassuringly. "I'll talk to Terrible Epps about it at
dinner 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 and
everything! 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 that
Tidbury Epps was a live one, underneath?"
* * * * *
The round cheek of Martha Ritter was in immediate contact with the
pepper-and-salt shoulder of Tidbury Epps.
"And you tried to make me think," he repeated in a tone of wonder, "that
you liked Hydeman and were going to the Pagan Rout with him? Oh, Martha
dear, 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 and
drinking, won't you, Tidbury?"
"If you'll help me, dearest," promised Tidbury Epps, "I'll try."