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.
