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.