[THE SLEEP WALKER]
There was nothing abnormal in the character of Beverton except a tendency, while very young, to walk in his sleep, and nothing in his twenty-five years of life of which he was really ashamed except a deed of his infancy, born of the above-named tendency, for which he had been severely punished at the time. The punishment, no doubt, impressed the incident on his mind, and he recalled it occasionally, always with a flush of shame, while he lived his years of boyhood, youth, and early manhood. He remembered being rudely awakened from sleep, not in a crib where his mother had placed him, nor beside her, where he sometimes slept, but flat on his back on the carpeted floor of a long hall, dimly illumined by distant gas jets, the soft glow from which showed him a woman in a night-robe looking down upon him with angry eyes, and a purple-faced child, a little younger than himself, gasping and choking in her arms. His cheek burned from the slap she had given him, and his head hurt from the impact with the floor, so he joined the other baby in protest, and the uproar brought several uniformed hall-boys and a night clerk, who led him to the room occupied by his parents. After punishment, and when able to understand, he learned what he had done in his sleep—left his crib, sought the hall, buried his small fingers in the throat of this other sleep-walking infant—whom he had never seen before—and might possibly have murdered it had not its mother wakened and arrived in time to interfere. He was well spanked for the feat.
His mother believed in both punishment and prayer as factors in reform. For a long time he received nightly spankings in bed, with injunctions to stay where he was put until morning, and supplemented his "Now I lay me down to sleep" with a plea to be cured of his infirmity.
The treatment was successful; the unconscious cerebration left him, but the spankings continued until he had outgrown the conscious cruelty common to all children, then, having ceased vivisection of insects and angle-worms, and overcome his antagonism to the aged, the helpless, and the infirm of his own species, he began his development into a cheery, generous, and humane character, which, assisted by good health, good home training, and a good education, found, at manhood, outward expression in six feet of good looks.
These good points brought him a wife—a creature as well favored as himself, but his very antithesis in disposition and physique. He was of the blond type, calm, masterful, and imperturbable in temperament; she of the brunette, warm-hearted, and impulsive, yielding him neither obedience nor spoken approval, and meeting him half-way only upon the common ground of love, which Mother Nature provides for the agreement of her opposites.
Beverton was content with her, and managed her in a way peculiar to himself. Whether it was the best way or not, is hard to decide; for it is possible that with more antagonism from him there would have been less from her. But it was successful. As instance—she had thrown a plate of newly buttered griddle-cakes across the breakfast table; her aim being good, they had struck him fairly in the face, and the melted butter smeared not only his face and shirt-front, but a gorgeous puff cravat which her own fingers had made for him. He smilingly left the table, changed his raiment, and they finished breakfast in silence; then, instead of going to business, he cleared the kitchen table and began cleaning the neckwear. A full hour he spent at the task, much in her way and to the neglect of his business, when she broke her moody silence with:
"What are you doing? Why do you not go down town?"
"I will soon, my dear," he answered amiably. "Just as soon as I get the syrup and butter out of this tie you made. I don't mind washing my face twice instead of once, but I hate to see this tie soiled."
She was upon him instantly, her arms about his neck and tears in her eyes, while she begged, brokenly, for forgiveness. It was granted, of course, and for a long time griddle-cakes were omitted from their discussions.