Fancies and Goodnights Part 36

"If you want to fill in the time," said the hotel-keeper, "you can always have a look at the Carnival. It opens up at one."

On the very stroke of one, Edward was at the turnstile, and the first blast of music engulfed him as he pa.s.sed through.

"I must restrain myself," he thought, "from dashing too madly at the side-shows. I will see the Calf at half-past one, the Fat Lady at two, and the Pigtailed Boy at half-past, and the Circus itself at three. At four-thirty, I will indulge myself in the glamour of the Fan Dance, the memory of which will colour the Giant Rat at five-thirty, and at half-past six I will see the Sleeping Beauty, whatever she may be, and that will leave me half an hour to pick up my bags, and a happy hour on the place where the platform would be if there was one. I hope the train will not be late."

At the appointed hours Edward gravely inspected the heads of the Two-headed Calf, the legs of the Fat Lady, and the bottom of the Pigtailed Boy. He was glad of the fans when it came to the Fan Dance. He looked at the Giant Rat, and the Giant Rat looked at Edward. "I," said Edward, "am leaving on the eight o'clock train." The Giant Rat bowed its head and turned away.

The tent that housed the Sleeping Beauty was just filling up as Edward approached. "Come on!" cried the barker. "Curtain just going up on the glamorous face and form of the girl who can't wake up. In her night attire. Asleep five years. In bed! In bed! In bed!"

Edward paid his twenty-five cents and entered the crowded tent. An evil-looking rascal, dressed in a white surgical coat, and with a stethoscope hung round his neck, was at that moment signalling for the curtain to be drawn aside.

A low dais was exposed, and on it a hospital bed, at the head of which stood a sinister trollop tricked out in the uniform of a nurse.

"Here we have," said the pseudo-doctor, "the miracle that has baffled the scientists of the entire world." He continued his rigmarole. Edward gazed at the face on the pillow. It was, beyond any question at all, the most exquisite face he had ever seen in his life.

"Well, folks," said the impresario, "I just want you to know, for the sake of the reputation of the scientific profession, that there has been absolutely no deception in the announcement made to you that this young lady is A, asleep, and B, beautiful. Lest you should be speculating on whether her rec.u.mbent posture, maintained night and day for five years, has been the cause of shrinkage or wasting of the limbs, hips, or bust - Nurse, be so good as to turn back that sheet."

The nurse, grinning like a bulldog, pulled back the grubby cotton and revealed the whole form of this wonderful creature, clad in a diaphanous nightgown, and lying in the most graceful, fawn-like posture you can possibly imagine.

"If," thought Edward, "all my woods and fields, instead of bursting into bluebells and cowslips and wild roses and honeysuckle, had h.o.a.rded their essences through the centuries to produce one single flower, this would be the flower." He paused to allow the genius loci, which had been so arbitrary on other occasions, to voice any objections it might have. None was forthcoming.

"My friends," the abominable showman was saying, "world science having got nowhere in waking this beautiful young lady from her trance which has lasted five years, I want to remind you of a little story you maybe heard around that dear old Mamma's knee, about how the Sleeping Beauty woke right up saying, 'Yummy,' when Prince Charming happened along with his kiss."

"There's no doubt," thought Edward, "that if all the good-night kisses and candlelight visions and dreams and desires that have gleamed and faded in that faded little nursery ever since the day it was built were fused into one angelic presence, this is she."

"Top medical attention costing plenty, as you very well know," continued the showman, "we are prepared, for the fee of one quarter deposited in the bowl on the bedside table, to allow any gentleman in the audience to step up and take his try at being Prince Charming. Take your places in the queue, boys, and avoid the crush."

Shaking his head, Edward pushed his way out of the tent and returned to Mergler's Hotel, where he sat in his bedroom devoured by rage and shame. "Why should I be ashamed? Because I didn't try to make a fight of it? No," said he, "that would be ridiculous. All the same, there's something . . . something disgusting. It isn't - it can't be - that I want to kiss her myself! That would be vile, base, despicable! Then why, in the name of all that's shy, wild, lovely, and innocent, am I walking back to this unspeakable spectacle?"

"I'll turn back in a moment. This time I'll take my bags to the station, and sit on them, and wait for that train. In an hour I'll be on my way home."

"But what is my home?" he cried almost aloud. "What was it made for, but to be a sh.e.l.l, a dwelling place for this creature and no other? Or the image of her, the dream of her, the memory of her, that I could take home on my lips and live with forever, if I kissed her just once. And that, by G.o.d, is what I will do!"

At this moment he had arrived at the booth, just as a lip-licking audience was issuing forth. "Very good," said Edward. "The curtain will be lowered while the tent fills up again, I'll arrange to have a moment alone with her."

He found the back entrance, and squeezed through a narrow flap in the canvas. The doctor and the nurse were taking a little refreshment between shows.

"Other way in, Buddy," said the doctor. "Unless you're the Press, that is."

"Listen," said Edward, "I want to spend a few minutes alone with this girl."

"Yeah?" said the doctor, observing Edward's flushed face and breathless speech.

"I can pay you," said Edward.

"Stool-pigeon - vice-squad," observed the nurse in a level tone.

"Listen, Buddy," said the doctor, "you don't want to muscle in here with a low-down immoral proposition like that."

"I'm an Englishman!" cried Edward. "How can I be a member of the vice-squad or anything else?"

The nurse examined Edward with prolonged and expert attention. "O.K.," she said at last.

"O.K. nothing," said the doctor.

"O.K. a hundred bucks," said the nurse.

"A hundred bucks?" said the doctor. "Listen, son, we all been young once. You want a private interview - maybe you are the Press - with this interesting young lady. Well, could be. A hundred bucks, cash on the barrel head, for - what do you say, Nurse?"

The nurse examined Edward again. "Ten minutes," said she.

"Ten minutes," continued the doctor to Edward. "After twelve o'clock tonight, when we close down."

"No. Now," said Edward. "I've got to catch a tram."

"Yeah?" said the doctor. "And have some guy sticking his long nose in to see why we don't begin on time. No, sir! There's ethics in this profession - the show goes on. Scram! Twelve o'clock. Open up, Dave!"

Edward filled in part of the time by watching the thickening crowds file into the booth. At nightfall he went away and sat down by the stinking creek, holding his head in his hands and waiting for the endless hours to drag by. The sunken water oozed past, darkly. The night over the great flat of lifeless clay was heavy with a stale and sterile heat, the lights of the fair glared in the distance, and the dark water crept on.

At last the blaze of lights was extinguished. A few were left; even these began to wink out one by one, like sparks on a piece of smouldering paper. Edward got up like a somnambulist and made his way back to the fair.

The doctor and the nurse were eating silently and voraciously when he entered. The single harsh light in the tent, falling on their ill-coloured faces and their fake uniforms, gave them the appearance of waxworks, or corpses come to fife, while the girl lying in the bed, with the flush of health on her cheeks and her hair in a lovely disorder, looked like a creature of the fresh wind, caught in this hideous stagnation by some enchantment, waiting for a deliverer.

"Here is the money," said Edward. "Where can I be alone with her?"

"Push the bed through the curtain," said the doctor. "We'll turn the radio on."

Edward was alone with the beauty for which he, and his whole life, and his house, and his land, were made. He moistened his handkerchief and wiped away the blurred lipstick from her mouth.

He tried to clear his mind, to make it as blank as a negative film, so that he could photograph upon it each infinitely fine curve of cheek and lip, the sweep of the dreaming lashes and the tendrils of the enchanted hair.

Suddenly, to his horror, he found his eyes were dimming with tears. He had made his mind a blank in order to photograph a G.o.ddess, and now his whole being was flooded with pity for a girl. He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.

It is the fate of those who kiss sleeping beauties to be awakened themselves: Edward jerked aside the curtain and went through.

"On time," said the doctor approvingly.

"How much," said Edward, "will you take for that girl?"

"Hear that?" said the doctor to the nurse. "He wants to buy the act"

"Sell," said the nurse.

"Never did like her, did you?" said the doctor.

"Twelve grand," said the nurse.

"Twelve thousand dollars?" said Edward.

"She said it," said the doctor.

This was not a matter for haggling over. Edward cabled his lawyer to raise the money. It arrived, and that evening Edward and his wonderful charge set off for Chicago. There he took a hotel room for her to rest in between trams. He wrote some letters, and went downstairs to mail them. He noticed a man and a woman standing by the desk. He thought they looked extremely unsavoury.

"This is the gentleman," said the receptionist "Mr. Laxton?" said the man.

"My daughter!" cried the woman in a heartrending tone. "Where's my little girl? My baby!"

"What does this mean?" cried Edward, moving with them to a deserted side-hall "Kidnapping, white-slave trade, and violation of the Mann Act," said the man.

"Sold like a chattel!" cried the woman. "Like a white slave!"

"What is the Mann Act?" asked Edward.

"You move a dame, any dame but your wife or daughter, outa one state into another," said the man, "and that's the Mann Act Two years."

"Prove she's your daughter," said Edward.

"Listen, wise guy," said the man, "if half a dozen of the hometown folks aren't enough for you, they'll be enough for the district attorney. Do you see that guy standing by the desk in there? He's the hotel d.i.c.k. Boy, I've only got to whistle."

"You want money," said Edward at last "I want my Rosie," said the woman.

"We drew twenty per for Rosie," said the man. "Yeah, she kept her folks."

Edward argued with them for a time. Their demand was for twenty thousand dollars. He cabled once more to England, and soon afterwards paid over the money, and received in exchange a doc.u.ment surrendering all parental rights and appointing him the true and legal guardian of the sleeping girl.

Edward was stunned. He moved on to New York in a sort of dream. The phrases of that appalling interview repeated themselves constantly in his mind. It was with a horrible shock that he realized the same phrases, or others very like them, were being launched at him from outside. A seedy but very businesslike-looking clergyman had b.u.t.tonholed him in the foyer of his hotel.

He was talking about young American womanhood, purity, two humble members of his flock, the moral standards of the State of Tennessee, and a girl called Susie-May. Behind him stood two figures, which, speechless themselves, were calculated to take away the power of speech from any man.

"It is true, then," said Edward, "about hillbillies?"

"That name, sir," said the clergyman, "is not appreciated in the mountain country of ------."

"And so her real name is Susie-May?" said Edward. "And I have her upstairs? Then the other parents were crooks. I knew it! And these want their daughter back. How did they hear of it?"

"Your immoral act, sir," said the clergyman, "has had nationwide press publicity for the last three days."

"I should read the papers," said Edward. "These people want to take the girl back to some filthy cabin ..."

"Humble," said the clergyman, "but pure."

"... and no doubt sell her to the next rascally showman that pa.s.ses." He spoke at length of the purity of his intentions, and the excellent care he proposed to take of Susie-May.

"Mr. Laxton," said the clergyman, "have you ever thought what a mother's heart really means?"

"Last time," said Edward, "it meant twenty thousand dollars."

One should never be witty, even when in the depths of despair. The words twenty thousand were rumblingly echoed, as from a mountain cavern, from the deep mouth of the male parent, whose aged eye took on a forbidding gleam.

From that moment the conversation was mere persiflage. Edward asked leave to walk up and down by himself for a little time, in order to think and breathe more freely.

"This will take the last penny of my capital," he thought "I shall have nothing to live on. Susie will need the most expensive doctors. Ah, well, I can be happy with her if I sell the estate and retain only the keeper's cottage. We shall then have four or five hundred a year, as many stars as before, and the deep woods all round us. I'll do it."

He did not do quite that for he found that hasty sales do not usually result in prices proportionate to the beauty and the value of estates. There were also some legal fees to be paid, one or two little presents to be made in the interests of haste, and some heavy hotel and travelling expenses.

When all was done, Edward found his fortune had dwindled to a very little more than two hundred a year, but he had the cottage, with Orion towering above it and the mighty woods all round. He would walk up and down outside, and watch the treacly yellow candlelight shine through the tiny pane, and exult in knowing that all the beauty of the world was casketed there. At such moments he was the happiest of men.

There was only one fly in his ointment. The man who had bought the estate turned out to be something less than simpatico.

He seemed, somehow, hardly right for the place. Edward was no doubt a little prejudiced, but it seemed to him that this man had the loudest, most hectoring and boastful voice ever heard, that his clothes were too new, his manicure too conspicuous, his signet ring too ma.s.sive and too bright. His features, also, lacked delicacy. But if, as Edward maintained, he had the appearance of a hog, he made it very obvious that he was an extremely wealthy one. He had some blood-chilling intentions for what he called little improvements on the estate.

Compared with the fate of his beloved land, Edward's other troubles were of no great importance. In spite of his legal guardianship of his lovely charge, one of the local papers condemned him as a libertine, while the other treated the matter with revolting levity. His richer relations disclaimed further acquaintance with him; his poorer ones called to expostulate. A lady of strong moral principle struck him several times with an umbrella in the High Street at Shepton-Mallet.

While all this was going on, he had by diligent enquiry found out an endocrinologist of acknowledged genius. The great man proved to be an enthusiast, and was always throwing up important engagements in London to rush down and take another look at Susie-May. Edward trembled to think of what the bill would be.

At last a day arrived when the doctor came down the narrow little stairway, and, brushing a cobweb from his sleeve, regarded Edward with a complacent smile. "I have some good news for you," said he. "Yesterday I heard from Vienna, from Wertheimer."

"Good news, you say?" said Edward, his heart beginning to beat very fast "Do you mean you can wake her?"

"Not only wake her," rejoined the specialist, "but keep her awake. Here's the preparation, made up by Wertheimer's people in accordance with the reports I've been sending in. Very ordinary-looking capsules, as you see; nevertheless, they mark an epoch. Do you see the label? To be administered at 9 A.M. and 6 P.M. Not about nine, or around six. Is that quite comprehensible to you?" demanded the doctor.

"I understand you," said Edward. "These have to be given at exactly the right time."

"Or she will very quickly fall asleep again," continued the doctor sternly.

"Now tell me when she will wake," demanded Edward.

"It may be twenty-four hours, or it may be forty-eight," replied the doctor. "Or it may be even longer."

He added a good many little instructions, repeated his admonition as to punctual dosage some half a dozen times or so, brushed another cobweb from his sleeve, and departed.

Edward pa.s.sed the next two days in a state of exaltation, qualified by certain misgivings. Most of all he feared she might be frightened at waking and finding herself in a strange place, alone with a strange man. He thought of asking the village girl, who attended to her by day, to stay overnight and sit by her, but he could not give up the right to be with her when she woke.

On the second night and the third he sat by her bedside, dizzy and red-eyed from lack of sleep, but watching every moment for the faintest flicker of her lowered eyelids. The third night wore on; the candle guttered and went out. The window was already pale with the coming dawn. Soon the first rays of the sun struck through the little window and fell aslant on the bed. The sleeper stirred, sighed, and opened her eyes. They were certainly the most beautiful eyes in the world. They dwelt upon Edward.

"Hey!" said Susie-May uncertainly.

"How do you do?" said Edward. "At least ... I mean to say ... I expect you wonder where you are."

"Where I am, and how I G.o.ddam well got here," said his lovely guest sitting up on the bed. She rubbed her brow, obviously trying hard to remember. "I must have pa.s.sed right out," she said. And then, pointing at him accusingly: "And you look like a son of a b.i.t.c.h who'd take advantage of me."

"I a.s.sure you," said Edward faintly, "you are utterly mistaken."

"I hope I am," responded the young lady. "But, boy, if you have, you're going to pay through the nose for it"

"I think you'd better let me tell you exactly what has happened," said Edward.

He proceeded to do so.