"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.