"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 ba.s.s drum full of b.u.mblebees. But it was his heart, as he b.u.t.toned 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 subst.i.tute 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 rea.s.suringly. "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."
XI: _Honor Among Sportsmen_
Each with his favorite hunting pig on a stout string, a band of the leading citizens of Montpont moved in dignified procession down the Rue Victor Hugo in the direction of the hunting preserve.
It was a mild, delicious Sunday, cool and tranquil as a pool in a woodland glade. To Perigord alone come such days. Peace was in the air, and the murmur of voices of men intent on a mission of moment. The men of Montpont were going forth to hunt truffles.
As Brillat-Savarin points out in his "Physiology of Taste"--"All France is inordinately truffliferous, and the province of Perigord particularly so." On week-days the hunting of that succulent subterranean fungus was a business, indeed, a vast commercial enterprise, for were there not thousands of Perigord pies to be made, and uncounted tins of _pate de foie gras_ to be given the last exquisite touch by the addition of a bit of truffle?
But on Sunday it became a sport, the chief, the only sport of the citizens of Montpont. A preserve, rich in beech, oak and chestnut trees in whose shade the shy truffle thrives, had been set apart and here the truffle was never hunted for mercenary motives but for sport and sport alone. On week-days truffle hunting was confined to professionals; on Sunday, after church, all Montpont hunted truffles. Even the sub-prefect maintained a stable of notable pigs for the purpose. For the pig is as necessary to truffle-hunting as the beagle is to beagling.
A pig, by dint of patient training, can be taught to scent the buried truffle with his sensitive snout, and to point to its hiding place, as immobile as a cast-iron setter on a profiteer"s lawn, until its proud owner exhumes the prize. An experienced pointing pig, with a creditable record, brings an enormous price in the markets of Montpont.