Sleeping Beauty (2 page)

James shrugged. These things happened. “Well, you will feel better then to have it over and done with.”

She shook her head. “I dread it.” She had the most lovely manner. Not bold, exactly, but unafraid, straightforward. Sure enough of herself to look a stranger in the eye and speak about her pain and fears.

“It won’t hurt too much,” he counseled. “He can give you laughing gas. You can chuckle your way through it; you’ll hardly know it happens.”

“It’s not the pain of having it out—”

“What then?”

As if the next statement followed perfectly, she said, “I turn thirty-seven next week.”

Seven years (and eight months) older than James himself. Though she didn’t look it. Or yes, she did, in a way. There was a serenity to her, an ease that one seldom saw in young women, even as she sat there holding a soggy handkerchief wet from crying. A kind of maturity showed in her face most pleasantly—in faint lines at the corners of her eyes. From smiling too much, perhaps. And in a liveliness behind her eyes themselves. A kindness. Her regard lacked the demure casts and glancing diffidence that was so favored by the feminine upper class.

Her pretty, somehow welcoming eyes smiled, a really beautiful smile with a lot of small, white, perfectly fine teeth. “Yes!” she said quietly. “It’s working better and better! Oh, thank you.”

“My pleasure. In fact, my tooth has settled down. I am here today for Mr. Limpet to buff the chipped edge smooth. I should have done it a while ago. I keep cutting my mouth. Anyway, I get to keep my tooth for now, so here.” James handed the silver snuff box full of cloves over to her. “Take this. Maybe your tooth will behave too, if you give it some time. Maybe it will fix itself. Lots of things do, you know.”

Her fist closed around the gift. “Thank you, I appreciate it. I am glad to have your cloves, then.” She continued, full of sincerity. “You see, I’ve never lost a tooth. It seems something that happens to—” She stopped, looked down again. “To toothless old crones.” She laughed at her own foolishness.

James laughed, too. Her worry was so far removed from reality, it was ludicrous.

He listened to her laughter, a breathy sound that he wanted to hear again the moment it stopped.

Still smiling, she extended her arm straight out toward him, her hand dropped at the wrist, at the fur cuff of her narrow sleeve. It took several moments for James to understand that she was offering her fingertips. An unEnglish gesture. Not one he was used to, though he knew what to do. He took her fingers. They were cool. Soft and humid against his lips, when he kissed them.

“Mrs. Wild,” she said. A most English name. She withdrew her hand with all the bearing of a
duchess, a queen. “And, no,” she continued with another soft laugh, “I don’t normally introduce myself to men on mere seconds’ acquaintance, but—” She laughed again, a woman who laughed a lot, this time a little self-consciously. “Well, since you have just saved my tooth—” She broke off once more, then her face opened with such a full and lovely smile, and she spoke with such earnestness, James was taken aback. She said, “Oh, I am so grateful.” She reached over and squeezed his hand, a quick movement, then gone. “The ache is so much less. How very ingenious and good of you.”

Her eyes held his with perfect candor, an undisguised warmth.

James asked, “And Mr. Wild?” He had already glanced at her hand, checking for a wedding ring. He knew there was none. “Is he English then? I believe you are not.”

“Mr. Wild
was
English. But he passed on about two years ago.”

“Aah.” He tried not to look too pleased by the news.

“I am French by birth. My husband and I lived abroad. I have only been here a few months.”

James made a nod of his head, a kind of bow. “Sir James Stoker,” he said, trying to hid the smugness he felt. If she read the newspapers at all, she would know the name.

He met with disappointment, however, for her face remained politely blank.

“And what are you up to in England, Mr. Stoker?” she asked. “Why are you so happy?”

“Happy?”

“Yes. You are quite obviously joyous today. Let
me see.” She teased. “I think you must have just proposed to the girl of your dreams, and she has said yes.”

He quirked one brow, laughing. He was being courted by far too many families. If he had his way, he wouldn’t find the girl of his dreams for years. It was too much fun choosing—and being wooed himself.

She tsked. “Aha, I’m wrong, I see.” Again her light flurry of laughter. He was getting used to the way the sound punctuated her speech. “In that case,” she ventured, “it must be that a woman you desperately wanted free of has at last let you go: honorably.”

James let out a hoot. “Now, you’re closer. I am just returned from Africa, and I never, never have to go back. Africa has let me go. And let me tell you, I am glad.” He paused a moment, surprised to hear these words himself. They were not the ones he usually chose to define his current good fortune.

Then he knew why he had put it in such terms. She shook her head sagely, her brow furrowing into a serious expression. “Indeed,” she said. “That is no continent for me either. I hear there are tribes down there that will eat you. Though these people have to beat the lions and leopards to you first.”

They both chuckled over this romantic half-truth, the romantic horror. But James ascended into a kind of plane of relief. At last. Someone to sympathize, someone who didn’t make his whole three-plus years in Africa into a noble, manly adventure. Which it categorically was not. He said, “Yes. I can’t tell you how happy I am to sleep each night far, far away from shallow rivers with leeches and
deserts with camels that spit. And I am relieved beyond measure to be well removed from swarms of mosquitoes and bats.”

Bats. God above. Yes. How good to be out of reach from flying, bony masses of fur that squealed like dying children and stank up everything about. He had never mentioned them aloud before and couldn’t now speak, beyond passing remark, of bats so abundant they hung from trees like clustered fruit.

The light in the room grew hazy with the passing of a cloud outside. The incoming sunlight became muted, dust motes dancing visibly in the beam that poured through the windowpanes. Mrs. Wild turned toward him slightly, sitting crookedly in her chair, raising one elbow leisurely up onto her chair back. She sat on her discarded coat.

James meant to bring the conversation back to where it belonged, into the realm of inane chatter, niceties, all unpleasantness minimized.

But she said, “I think the Burtons and Livingstons of the world quite mad to pursue so much danger, let alone discomfort.”

Exactly. James felt a little zing of rage, injustice. He found himself adding, “It’s almost galling, you know.” A kind of confession poured out. As if
he
were under the influence of laughing gas, giddily telling a stranger the truth. “A chipped tooth. It hardly seems worthy enough damage, considering I was at wit’s end, lost, sick, and sure of dying in the midst of people to whom I could barely speak. I mean, I should be missing a leg, an arm, be wearing an eye patch. But no. Not even a scar. I am healthier and stronger than the day I left England. With noth
ing to show for three and a half years of hell but a tooth I banged on something or other on one of the numerous occasions when I blacked out and fell flat on my face.” He let out a snort of disgust. “And within the hour, even that will be fixed—” He took a breath.

God, give him enough time and he would tell Mrs. Wild here his life’s story.

His mouthful was hardly the heroic tack, hardly the vein in which he, the Queen, and the Vice-Chancellor spoke of these things. James had not told his true feelings to a soul. Not even himself, apparently. For he was mildly appalled to hear these words—and feel the extreme satisfaction of saying them. They were so true. And here he was, pouring himself out to an unknown woman in a dentist’s waiting room, just because she seemed to recognize the truth when she heard it and have some sympathy for it. Just because she had a pretty face and an understanding mien.

He pressed his lips together, not sure what he had done—other than discomfit himself considerably.

She smiled at him and leaned forward. Again the light touch of her hand over his, again quickly withdrawn. “Don’t worry,” she said. As if she could read his mind now as well. “I won’t mention it. I can see that you have embarrassed yourself by speaking so openly. But believe me, there is nothing wrong with being open. Everything right with it, in fact.” She waved her hand as if she could wave away his concern. “And your secrets are safe with me. Honestly. I
have
no one to share them with. And even if I did, I never tell tales. It’s unseemly, don’t you think? To go around telling one person
what another one told you? I mean, if a person had wanted someone to know, he could have said himself, no?”

James said quickly, “You are so right. Thank you.”

She nodded, her mouth pulling into a smiling line, just the faintest humor. Then she held up her new silver case of cloves. “My pleasure,” she said, repeating his words, indicating an exchange.

Rightly or wrongly, James felt his distress ease. Apparently, a cozy dentist’s parlor could be a haven for a few minutes, a place to babble in safety. For that was certainly how it seemed.

The strangely charming Mrs. Wild stood. From her chair James picked up her coat, a loose, silky bundle of dense fur. He held it for her. It was not bulky, but rather the well-trimmed, feather-soft undercoat of a winter animal. The label sewn into the satin lining bore a name: Worth. And a city: Paris. The coat perfectly matched the fur at her cuffs and collar and the small hat that sat back on her head. The hat’s netting—studded at each juncture with tiny bits of cut jet—had been folded back, presumably so she could have her good, eye-mopping cry. The net sparkled with these bits.

James stared down at it as he helped her, an arm at a time, into her coat. A coat sublimely soft in his hands, the lovely weight of smooth, glistening fur that poured all the way to the floor. It was really a gorgeous piece.

As was the woman who smoothed her gloved hands down the front of it, then pulled the coat’s collar to her throat, her fists tight about its edge.

On a whim, James said suddenly, “I have a party
to go to tonight. In my honor, actually. I would be delighted if you would accompany me.”

She glanced up, lifting one eyebrow. Her gentle smile became arch, faintly amused, faintly skeptical. She said, “You are a lovely young man.”

The operative word was
young
.

“A dear,” she added. She smiled again, less kindly.

All right, he had overstepped. It had been overly familiar for him to ask such a thing. As if he could pick her up off the street. But James found himself, since returned to England, not always in harmony with the rules of protocol and society. The same rules he had lived by four years ago occasionally struck him now as stupid, arbitrary. Why not? Why couldn’t he ask a charming woman to go to an enjoyable celebration, and thus make it more enjoyable?

She said, “You must find yourself a nice young woman to go with you to your parties.”

She reached above her head and lowered the netting of her hat over her face. For an instant—from behind the bobbinet, as her eyes held his—it seemed to be something more, something beneath all her chic and polite smiling: a flicker of indefinable sadness. Then it was gone.

“Thank you,” she said again. Whatever James had seen, if he’d seen anything at all, she recovered quickly. “Please tell Mr. Limpet that I have decided to keep my terrible tooth a while longer.” She laughed—once more the treat of that whisper-like sound. “I am just too attached to it, tell him. I can’t give it up just yet. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never. Thank you again, Mr. Stoker.”

And, with a sway of sliding fur, the lovely Mrs. Wild turned and disappeared through the haze of motes and sun out the door into a bright spring afternoon.

Chapter 2

The earliest known version of
The Sleeping Beauty
is probably the legend of the valkyrie Brynhild. Interestingly enough, in this tale the princess sleeps in full armor—a warrior-maiden all alone on a deserted island surrounded by a wall of fire
.

From the Preface to
The Sleeping Beauty
DuJauc translation
Pease Press, London, 1877

London
29 March 1876

Dearest David
,

I’m so happy to hear you are settled in at last. The house sounds wonderful (though the bees are a little worrisome). I can’t wait to see what you have done with it. I will check the train schedules and be there before the end of the week
.

Yes, indeed, I have heard from the publisher here in London. There was a letter in today’s afternoon post. He liked the drawings I did for the Paris imprint, but he wants me to do new ones. He wants them to be “more English.” Ha ha ha. So why doesn’t he hire an English illustrator? you ask. I know the answer: He tells me the translator, some English ladyship or other, likes my drawings best. She likes all my “curlicues and squiggly things.” Prized for squiggly things, but prized at least. At any rate Perrault’s
La Belle au bois dormant
is to become
The Sleeping Beauty
for Pease Press here in London, and none other than myself will be doing all the illustrations. I am very happy. Mr. Pease says it is to be a lovely book with gold edges and color plates—which alas means he wants a dozen sketches by the end of the summer in order to pick and choose which ones they will want in color. I have my work cut out for me
.