Fancies and Goodnights

SLEEPING BEAUTY

Edward Laxton had everything in the world that he wanted except a sweetheart, fiancée, or wife.

He had a very civilized little Regency house, whose ivory façade was reflected in a few acres of ornamental water. There was a small park, as green as moss, and well embowered with sober trees. Outside this, his land ran over some of the shaggiest hills in the south of England. The ploughed fields were on the small side, and lay locked in profound woods. A farmhouse and a cottage or two sent their blue smoke curling into the evening sky.

With all this, his income was very small, but he was blessed with good taste, and was therefore satisfied with simple fare. His dinner was a partridge roasted plain, a bottle of Hermitage, an apple pie, and a crumb of Stilton cheese. His picture was a tiny little Constable left to him by his great-uncle. His gun was his father's old Holland and Holland, which fitted him to a hair. His dogs were curly-coated retrievers, one liver coloured and one black. Such dogs are now considered very old-fashioned, and so, by those who knew him, was their master. He was now over thirty, and had begun to tell his tailor to make him exactly the same suits as last year, and when his friends went abroad it did not occur to him to find out others.

He turned more and more to the placid beauty of his house, and to the rich, harsh beauty of the upland farms. A man should beware of surrendering too much of himself to this sort of thing, for the beauty of a place can be as possessive as other beauties. Believe it or not, when Edward met a girl who attracted him, a certain hill would thrust its big shoulder, furred with oak woods, between them, for all the world like a jealous dog. It would at once be obvious that the girl was weak in the ankles, and wore too much make-up. The bare, prim front of a certain stock-man's cottage, like the disapproving face of an old servant, could make a merry girl seem altogether too smart, and there was a certain faded little nursery room, the memory of which could make any young woman of these days look like something out of the cinema.

Thus Edward was under the necessity of sitting alone after dinner and telling himself, firmly, that he was the most fortunate man in the world. Into this felicity came a letter: it was from his oldest friend, inviting him to spend a season on his ranch in New Mexico. Edward reflected that he had never had the pleasure of seeing his own place after a long and homesick absence. He telegraphed, packed, and set forth.

He arrived in New Mexico, and admired immensely the beautiful immensities of that state. Nevertheless, he soon began to long excruciatingly to see a certain turn in a certain lane at home; a very ordinary corner, of which he had never taken any particular notice when he was there. He said good-bye to his host, and started for New York, but, wishing to see something of the country before leaving it, he bought an old car and set out by road.

His way lay along the northern edge of what was then called the dust-bowl, a landscape from which, after a few hours of driving, the eye seems to recoil in blank disbelief. This is a very dangerous tendency, especially in one who is dreaming of a far-distant lane. Edward followed a gentle curve which happened to be some four thousand miles away, and found himself halted in a back alley, with a severe pain in his ribs, a watermelon by his side, and an impression of having driven through a small country store. «Now I am in trouble,» thought Edward. He was soon to learn that he was also in Heeber's Bluff, Arkansas, and, what with settling up for the damage and getting his car repaired, he was likely to be there some days.

Heeber's Bluff is the dreariest town that ever sweltered on the devastated prairie. Sickly trees, tipsy posts, and rusty wire effectively dissipate the grandeur of the endless plain. The soil has all been blown away in the droughts; the fields are nothing but a hideous clay, with here and there the skeleton of a horse or a cow. A sunken creek, full of tin cans, oozes round a few hundred shacks whose proportions are as mean as the materials of which they are built. The storekeepers have the faces of alligators; all the other people have the faces and voices of frogs.

Edward deposited his bags in Mergler's Hotel, which stands opposite the funeral parlour. After a minute or two he stepped outside and checked up on the signs. He went into the hotel dining-room and was confronted with a corned-beef hash more terrible than the town itself, because, after all, he did not have to eat the town. Emboldened by this consideration, he went out to stroll along the main street

When he had strolled a few yards, he had a strong apprehension that he was losing his mind, so he returned to Mergler's Hotel. Here he soon found himself biting the ends of his fingers, and shaken by a strong impulse to rush out again. He was restrained by a quaking and a dread which seized upon him as he stepped into the doorway. «Here is a place,» said he to himself, «in which one suffers simultaneously from claustrophobia and agoraphobia. Now I see the purpose of the porch, and understand the motion of the rocking chair!»

He hastened to plant himself in one of these agreeable devices, and oscillated every few seconds between the horrors of the hotel and the terrors of the street. On the third day, at about eleven in the morning, this therapy failed of its effect, and something within him broke. «I must get out of this,» said he. «And quickly!»

His money had arrived. His fine was paid, and his ribs were taped. He still had to settle with the owner of the store, but what had seemed disproportionate as damages appeared dirt-cheap when regarded as ransom. He paid it, and was free to go. He went to collect his car from the garage where it was being repaired, and there he met with a little disappointment. He returned to the hotel, packed his bag, and called for his bill. «At what time does the next train leave this town?» he asked.

«Eight o'clock,» said the hotel-keeper calmly.

Edward looked at his watch, which now expressed the hoar of noon. He looked at the hotel-keeper, and then he looked across the street at the funeral parlour. «Eight hours!» said he in the low, broken voice of despair. «What am I to do?»

«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 passed 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 recumbent 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 hoarded 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 shell, 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 God, 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 goddess, 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 dick. 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 document 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 buttonholed 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 passes.» 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 massive 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 passed 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 goddam well got here,» said his lovely guest sitting up on the bed. She rubbed her brow, obviously trying hard to remember. «I must have passed right out,» she said. And then, pointing at him accusingly: «And you look like a son of a bitch who'd take advantage of me.»

«I assure 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.

«You mean to say,» said Susie-May, when he had finished. «You mean to say you took me out of show business and brought me to this dump?»

«But my dear girl, you were asleep, you were sick …» expostulated Edward.

«Aw, phooey!» said she, «I'd have woke up. I betcha I'd have woke up the minute that show hit Hollywood. And now what am I going to do?»

«I can answer that question very easily,» said Edward. «You will eat the food that's set before you, or you'll go hungry. You'll spend a few days learning to walk again, or you'll spend the rest of your life sitting on your backside. As soon as you can look after yourself, we'll talk about what you shall do. By that time you'll know this place, and you'll know me, a great deal better than you do at present.»

These words were uttered with a forcefulness that surprised both of them. Susie, somewhat daunted, and perhaps fatigued by the liveliness of her first waking impressions, said nothing in reply, but soon drooped her delectable eyelids and fell into a light doze.

Watching her, Edward found all his tender feelings, so rudely scattered, come fluttering home again: «I have just seen,» thought he, «the scars of an appalling childhood. Somewhere, far, far below the pathetic surface, there must be a mind to match that lovely face. That is the real sleeper, and it's going to be devilish hard to awaken her.»

In the days that followed he buckled to his task, and enfolded her in a warm and cheerful affection. He offered her, as one lays one toy after another to the hand of a sullen child, a smile, a flower, a word of endearment, or an American cigarette procured especially from London. He invited her to note the flavour of the speckled trout he caught for her, the fragrance on the September honeycomb, and the lustre of the beaded raindrops on the windowpane as they sparkled under the returning sun with a brightness exceeding that of diamonds.

Had any cynical person told him he was wasting his time, Edward would have replied with terrifying logic. «Look at that face!» he would have said. «It seems suitable to this place, does it not? It should, for it was made here. That, my dear sir, is a face straight out of eighteenth-century England, and it has been preserved unchanged (as if in a sleep two or three hundred years long) in the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky. Depend upon it, her sleeping soul is of the same order of beauty, and will awaken, if it wakes at all, in response to surroundings like these, from which it originally sprung. Wait till I take her into the woods!»

The days went by, and her strength returned rapidly, and she was able to walk around the little garden patch, where the straggled flowers of late summer leaned out to catch her eye, but without success. At last Edward was able to take her by the arm, and lead her out into the great woods which had once been his own.

He took her down a mile-long ride, over rabbit-nibbled turf as smooth as green velvet. Immense beeches walled it on either side; behind them the summer trunks stood hushed in a silvery dimness, regardful of the dryad. Farther down, towards where his old house stood, the beeches gave place to mighty oaks, bronzed, lichened, antlered, Virgilian. He had her peep into glades aflame with willow-herb, and others rusty with the turning bracken. The rabbits scuttled off in all directions; the hare limped away with many a backward glance; the coppery pheasant rose, clattering like a dragon, its long tail rippling dragon-like behind it. The great woodpecker, laughing heartily over something or other, swooped on from tree to tree before them all the way home.

All this time Edward had said scarcely a word, and had hardly dared to look into her face to see what she was feeling. Now, on the threshold of the cottage, he took her hands in his, and, gazing deep into her eyes, he asked her: «Well? How did you like it?»

She replied: «Lousy.»

Edward's chagrin was so sudden and so fierce that for a moment he was bereft of his senses. Recovering them, he saw Susie cowering away in the very likeness of a spitting cat, and he realised his right hand was raised menacingly in the air. He lowered it. «Don't be afraid,» he said breathlessly. «I am incapable of striking a woman.»

Susie must have believed him, for she did not hesitate to offer some very unflattering reasons for this incapacity. Oddly enough, he himself was not so convinced, and his conscience so bit and tore at him that he scarcely heard what she was saying. He waited till six, gave her her capsule, and then strode out of the cottage and off over the dark and windy hills like a man pursued. After several miles at a very high speed, the turmoil within him abated a little, and he came to his conclusion. «I was enraged because she would not accept my standards: the standards of a man who is capable (for I lied when I said I wasn't) of striking a helpless girl. There is only one thing to do.»

It is a sad reflection on life that when there is only one thing to do it is always extremely unpleasant. Next day, Edward arranged for the little daily maid to stay with Susie overnight, while he himself went up to town to see his lawyer.

«How much would I get if I sold everything I have?» asked Edward, in a somewhat grating voice.

«Including the little place you are living in?»

«The whole damned shoot»

The lawyer consulted his files, scribbled on a pad, deprecated the state of the market, and finally told Edward he might expect between four and five thousand pounds.

«Then sell,» said Edward, and, brushing aside all expostulation, he repaired to a hotel, and next day took the train back home.

Just as he approached the cottage, he saw his Susie coming towards him along the path that led from the woods. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright, her hair was a little disordered.

«What is this?» said he, as they met «Don't tell me you have been in the woods!»

«I don't know where else there is to go,» she replied.

«Come inside,» said Edward, «and I will tell you of somewhere else. How would you like us to go to Hollywood, California?»

«Are you kidding?» she asked in astonishment «I thought yon was broke.»

«I am selling what I have left,» said Edward. «It will not bring enough to live there very long, or on a very grand scale, but since that is what you want it seems to me you should have it»

Susie was silent for a little. «Aw, shucks!» she said at last «Not if it's your last cent.»

Edward, astounded at her magnanimity, tried to explain the reasons for his change of heart. However, she cut him short. «Forget it,» she said. «I'd just as soon stick around here. For a while, anyway.»

Edward heard this with the emotions of a man reprieved, if not from the gallows, at least from transportation. «What has happened?» cried he. «Is it possible we have both changed, only in opposite directions? Ah, I know! You have been in the woods. Something there has touched you.»

«You'd better shut your big trap,» said she almost angrily. «You don't know what the hell you're talking about»

«I know,» said he, «that these feelings can be very delicate and private ones; vague gropings that one prefers not to discuss. For example, I think you would not have felt what you felt today had I been there. My presence on Monday was a mistake, much as I hoped to share these sensations with you. In future you shall go alone.»

So thereafter she went every afternoon alone into the woods, and Edward remained at home, and every day she came back smiling more sweetly than before.

«The woods are working for me,» thought Edward, and his imagination followed her like a dog. He seemed to see her in the dappled sun and shade under the great trees, or paddling in the brook, or fanning herself with a fern frond, or staining her mouth with blackberries. Finally he felt he could live no longer without seeing these pretty things with his own eyes, so one afternoon he slyly followed her among the trees.

He kept a good way behind her, thinking to come up quietly when she stopped to rest, but instead of stopping she went on faster and faster, and at last broke into a run, and for a while he lost her altogether. He pressed on to where he heard a jay scolding in the distance, and when he got there he looked all around, but saw no sign of her. Suddenly he heard her laugh. «She must have seen me all the time!» he thought.

Her laugh had a low, sweet, inviting quality that made his heart beat fast. It came from a little dell near by, where the ground fell away at the wood's edge. Edward stepped softly to the upper edge of this dell, half-expecting, yet not daring to expect, that he'd see her there looking up at him, and with her arms spread wide. He parted the twigs and looked down. She was there indeed, and her arms were spread wide, but it was the better to embrace Edward's corpulent and detested neighbour.

Edward walked quietly away, and returned to the cottage. There he awaited Susie, who came back very late, and smiling more sweetly than ever.

«You may take that smile off your face,» said Edward. «You dirty, double-crossing little harlot… .»

She at once obliged him in the matter of the smile. «Why, you low-down, snooping bastard,» she began, and the conversation continued with the utmost vivacity. Edward so far forgot himself as to utter a threat or two, which she treated with the most galling derision, as if secure in the protection of her paramour.

«He's got a big film company up in London,» she said, «and he's promised to put me in a picture.»

«You forget,» said Edward, «that I happen to hold your contract.»

«You mean to say you'd stop me?»

«Why not?»

«Because I'm going to the cops right now,» said Susie. «And do you know what I'm going to tell 'em? About when I was asleep?» She was about to supply the information when she was interrupted by an enormous yawn.

Edward glanced at his watch, and saw that the hour of six had long ago slipped by unnoticed.

«Well?» said he. «What?»

«Enough to … put you in jail for …» she muttered, in a voice like a slowing phonograph record, and she yawned again. Her head drooped down and down till her cheek rested on the table.

«Pleasant dreams!» said Edward, and taking the little box of capsules from the mantelpiece, he pitched it into the fire. Susie observed this operation with a glazing eye. A little flame of fury flickered up in it to match the leaping flame on the hearth. It died, and the eye closed. She looked ravishing.

Edward put her to bed, and came downstairs and wrote a letter to a firm that advertised motor caravans and trailers. Next summer he was at Blackpool, in a spotless white coat, addressing the multitude from under a sign that read:

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY

_Dr. von Stangelberg presents

the Wonder of Modem Science

Adults only._

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY

Admission sixpence.

They say he is rapidly recovering his fortune.