The Place was the counting-room in the warehouse of Messrs. Whigham & Wimper, Hides & Skins; and the Genius of it was the reek of hides both raw and dressed—an effluvium incomparable, a passionate individualist of an odour, as rich as the imagination of an editor of Sunday supplements, as rare as a reticent author, as friendly as a stray puppy.
For ten endless years the body and soul of P. Sybarite had been thrall to that Smell; for a complete decade he had inhaled it continuously nine hours each day, six days each week—and had felt lonesome without it on every seventh day.
But to-day all his being was in revolt, bitterly, hopelessly mutinous against this evil and overbearing Genius. …
The warehouse—impregnable lair of the Smell, from which it leered smug defiance at the sea-sweet atmosphere of the lower city—occupied a walled-in arch of the Brooklyn Bridge, fronting on Frankfort Street, in that part of Town still known to elder inhabitants as "the Swamp." Above rumbled the everlasting inter-borough traffic; to the right, on rising ground, were haunts of roaring type-mills grinding an endless grist of news; to the left, through a sudden dip and down a long decline, a world of sober-sided warehouses, degenerating into slums, circumscribed by sleepy South Street; all, this afternoon, warm and languorous in the lazy breeze of a sunny April Saturday.
The counting-room was a cubicle contrived by enclosing a corner of the ground-floor with two walls and a ceiling of match-boarding. Into this constricted space were huddled two imposing roll-top desks, P. Sybarite's high counter, and the small flat desk of the shipping clerk, with an iron safe, a Remington typewriter, a copy-press, sundry chairs and spittoons, a small gas-heater, and many tottering columns of dusty letter-files. The window-panes, encrusted with perennial deposits of Atmosphere, were less transparent than translucent, and so little the latter that electric bulbs burned all day long whenever the skies were overcast. Also, the windows were fixed and set against the outer air—impregnable to any form of assault less impulsive than a stone cast by an irresponsible hand. A door, set craftily in the most inconvenient spot imaginable, afforded both ventilation and access to an aisle which led tortuously between bales of hides to doors opening upon a waist-high stage, where trucks backed up to receive and to deliver.
Immured in this retreat, P. Sybarite was very much shut away from all joy of living—alone with his job (which at present nothing pressed) with Giant Despair and its interlocutor Ennui, and with that blatant, brutish, implacable Smell of Smells. …
To all of these, abruptly and with ceremony, Mr. George Bross, shipping clerk, introduced himself: a brawny young man in shirt-sleeves, wearing a visorless cap of soiled linen, an apron of striped ticking, pencils behind both angular red ears, and a smudge of marking-ink together with a broad irritating smile upon a clownish countenance.
Although in receipt of a smaller wage than P. Sybarite (who earned fifteen dollars per week) George squandered fifteen cents on newspapers every Sunday morning for sheer delight in the illuminated "funny sheets."
In one hand he held an envelope.
Draping himself elegantly over Mr. Wimper's desk, George regarded P. Sybarite with an indulgent and compassionate smile and wagged a doggish head at him. From these symptoms inferring that his fellow-employee was in the throes of a witticism, P. Sybarite cocked an apprehensive eye and tightened his thin-lipped, sensitive mouth.
"O you—!" said George; and checked to enjoy a rude giggle.
At this particular moment a mind-reader would have been justified in regarding P. Sybarite with suspicion. But beyond taking the pen from between his teeth he didn't move; and he said nothing at all.
The shipping clerk presently controlled his mirth sufficiently to permit unctuous enunciation of the following cryptic exclamation:
"O you Perceval!"
P. Sybarite turned pale.
"You little rascal!" continued George, brandishing the envelope. "You've been cunning, you have; but I've found you out at last. … Per-ce-val!"
Over the cheeks of P. Sybarite crept a delicate tint of pink. His eyes wavered and fell. He looked, and was, acutely unhappy.
"You're a sly one, you are," George gloated—"always signin' your name 'P. Sybarite' and pretendin' your maiden monaker was 'Peter'! But now we know you! Take off them whiskers—Perceval!"
A really wise mind-reader would have called a policeman, then and there; for mayhem was the least of the crimes contemplated by P. Sybarite. But restraining himself, he did nothing more than disentangle his legs, slip down from the tall stool, and approach Mr. Bross with an outstretched hand.
"If that letter's for me," he said quietly, "give it here, please."
"Special d'liv'ry—just come," announced George, holding the letter high, out of easy reach, while he read in exultant accents the traitorous address: "'Perceval Sybarite, Esquire, Care of Messrs. Whigham and Wimper'! O you Perceval—Esquire!"
"Give me my letter," P. Sybarite insisted without raising his voice.
"Gawd knows I don't want it," protested George. "I got no truck with your swell friends what know your real name and write to you on per-fumed paper with monograms and everything."
He held the envelope close to his nose and sniffed in ecstasy until it was torn rudely from his grasp.
"Here!" he cried resentfully. "Where's your manners? … Perceval!"
Dumb with impotent rage, P. Sybarite climbed back on his stool, while George sat down at his desk, lighted a Sweet Caporal (it was after three o'clock and both the partners were gone for the day) and with a leer watched the bookkeeper carefully slit the envelope and withdraw its enclosures.
Ignoring him, P. Sybarite ran his eye through the few lines of notably careless feminine handwriting:
MY DEAR PERCEVAL—
Mother & I had planned to take some friends to the theatre to-night and bought a box for the Knickerbocker several weeks ago, but now we have decided to go to Mrs. Hadley-Owen's post-Lenten masquerade ball instead, and as none of our friends can use the tickets, I thought possibly you might like them. They say Otis Skinner is wonderful. Of course you may not care to sit in a stage box without a dress suit, but perhaps you won't mind. If you do, maybe you know somebody else who could go properly dressed.
Your aff'te cousin,
MAE ALYS.
The colour deepened in P. Sybarite's cheeks, and instantaneous pin-pricks of fire enlivened his long-suffering eyes. But again he said nothing. And since his eyes were downcast, George was unaware of their fitful incandescence.
Puffing vigorously at his cigarette, he rocked back and forth on the hind legs of his chair and crowed in jubilation: "Perceval! O you great, big, beautiful Perc'!"
P. Sybarite made a motion as if to tear the note across, hesitated, and reconsidered. Through a long minute he sat thoughtfully examining the tickets presented him by his aff'te cousin.
In his ears rang the hideous tumult of George's joy:
"Per-ce-val!"
Drawing to him one of the Whigham & Wimper letterheads, P. Sybarite dipped a pen, considered briefly, and wrote rapidly and freely in a minute hand:
MY DEAR MAE ALYS:—
Every man has his price. You know mine. Pocketing false pride, I accept your bounty with all the gratitude and humility becoming in a poor relation. And if arrested for appearing in the box without evening clothes, I promise solemnly to brazen it out, pretend that I bought the tickets myself—or stole them—and keep the newspapers ignorant of our kinship. Fear not—trust me—and enjoy the masque as much as I mean to enjoy "Kismet."
And if you would do me the greatest of favours—should you