Sheer Brain

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 77, 1 April 1940, Page 13

Sheer Brain

Short Story ... Bγ W. A. SWEENEY

" IJAS Mr. Stevenson called?" There n was a note of anxiety in the speaker's voice. "No, Miss Rosalie." The maid's reply was sad and sympathetic. Miss Rosalie Dent sighed heavily. Then she arose and walked towards the door of the breakfast room. A few minutes later she was walking rapidly, blowing a trifle as she went, along the broad white road that led to her parents' house. She was doing her daily three-mile tramp. Presently she would return, hot and perspiring", disgustingly hungry, and she would weigh herself. Then she would eat a heavy lunch, weigh herself again and weep. Tragedy dogged the existence of Rosalie Dent. She was twenty-six,- good natured, excessively rich, well featured, but fat. From her childhood Rosalie had been fat. Her parents, regarding her with horrible misgivings when she was eighteen, had hoped the awful thing would pass, but as the years went on Rosalie put on more weight. Doctors dieted her; all to no purpose. She walked thousands of miles through the year, cycled, rode, ran. danced, but she might as well have been lying in bed eating things like roast pork* for all the difference it made. At twenty-six Rosalie weighed just under 16 stone. The sight of a weighing machine on a promenade made her burst into tears. Rosalie had an affectionate nature. She was fond of the society of young men. As she had a colossal inheritance young men looked on her with favour. A paltry plumpness they found (after they discovered how much money she had) did not detract from a girl's charms. What was a little heaviness compared with the incomparable endowment of a loyal heart and a simple, trusting disposition, they said. To look at these young men one would not have credited them with such self-sacrificing sentiments, hut who can say what sweet nobility may lie within' a mind that seems incapable of any effort greater than a perfect mastery of the Charleston or the correct method of creasing a pair of Oxford trousers? But one by one they dropped out, and Rosalie remained single and sorrowful. The young men were incapable of the physical effort demanded of them. As Rosalie spent most of her day walking or cycling all over the county of Sussex. in order to hold social intercourse with her they had to accompany her. Young Reggie Wilberford. for example, after walking 120 miles in one week (not to spoak of what he cycled), went to his doctor a living skeleton, and was immediately ordered to a health resort for a month. Bobbie Trevors became so weak after a fortnight of trying to cultivate Rosalie Dent that he had to undergo a three months' course of fattening foods. Algy Burlingham gave up after the first four days, and for six weeks after used to fall asleep in people's drawing rooms as soon as he sat down. Jimmy Stevenson had called for Rosalie for four mornings, but now it seemed, this morning, he, too, could not stay the course. So Rosalie, near to ears, set off alone. It was about a fortnight after the failure of Stevenson that Rosalie met Guy Teviot. He met Ros/ilie at a dance and pretty well monopolised her for the evening. Now Guy Teviot was a lad with A Brain. He was what the French call a penseur. He thought. Hβ thought over the matter of Rosalie. He had no intention of doing the marathon business with her. His aesthetic sense was with her. His aesthetic sense was offended by her avoirdupois. So he thought and thought, and his brain throbbed. The amount of pondering the young man did in the matter o7 Rosalie can only be compared with the amount of physical exertion the others had put in on her account. The problem was constantly beating at the walk of his understanding.

He managed to see her frequently at dances and put in some overtime in the magnetic-attraction-plus fascination line. He worked hard at this and then went home and did some more thinking. At last he gave one whole day to her society (he went into training" for it), and during that day he exerted himself to his utmost—in more senses than one. On the way home Rosalie was, so to speak, eating out of his hand. As he left her at the gate of her house he said: "I'm going away to-morrow for a week or so." "Going away?" echoed. Rosalie. "Yes," said Mr. Teviot "I'm going to Eastbourne for a bit. Staying with some friends." "Oh," said Rosalie. He bade her good-night and went home. That night he dispatched to a friend of his in Eastbourne a number of postcards with instructions that they were to 1* sent to Miss Rosalie Dent a't regular intervals during the next two weeks. They were postcards and photographs—photographs taken a year before at Eastboun.e, in which Mr. Teviot invariably appeared in what seemed the most favourable surroundings for a young man. The messages were brief. Having off the cards, he retired to bed with the intention of spending a quiet and thoughtful couple of weeks in London.

The first postcard photograph Rosalie received (displaying Mr. Teviot bein" splashed happily by about six bathing beauties) she retired to her room and burst into tears. The second card (outside a tent on the beach with a different collection of ladies) made her completely unable to partake of food for about three days. The third (with nothing written on it more tender than "Cheerio, Guy , ') drove sleep from her pillow. The girl was in love badly. She mooned and moped and sighed aixmt all day, and by night lay wet-eyed and sleepless. Her parents" grew 'alarmed and prayed on her to try a bite of something. But Rosalie only shook her head and went forth on her daily exercises with the enthusiasm of a melodrama heroine tottering from the ancestral home with her "ehe-ild" into the snow. At tiie end of two weeks Mr. Toviot returned. He gave her a quick glance as she came towards him.

"Oh, Guy," she said, "Guy!" and then Hie could suv no more.

"What's your weight?" he demanded sharply.

"I don't know," she faltered. "I've been so wretched, dear, since you went away! And those cards you sent. I haven't had the heart to bother about my weight." "Come and weigh yourself," he commanded brisklv.

She turned "the scale at nine stone, and they were married the following week. "

The marriage was a success. Sometimes now, from time to time, Mr. Teviot will look up from his newspaper at breakfast time and glance sharply at his wife and say: "Weighed yourself recently, my dear?" "Yes, darlinjr," Rosalio will replv. "How much?" '"Ten stone.' , in a whisper. "Hm." Mr. Teviot will say, and go on with his breakfast. Just as he is <*oinout of the door he will turn and observe casuMly: "Oh, by the way, dear, I shall be goin<* away for a few days shortly—alone I have some business to do—in Brighton." "Oh. Guy," she will gasp, dismayed. Brain, that's what it is. Sheer brain. (The End.)