CHAPTER III
"What?" demanded her father.
Altogether unexpectedly little Eve Edgarton threw back her tousled head and burst out laughing.
"Oh, Father!" she jeered. "Can't you take a joke?"
"I don't know as you ever offered me one before," growled her father a bit ungraciously.
"All the same," asserted little Eve Edgarton with sudden seriousness-"all the same, Father, he did stop breathing twice. And I worked and I worked and I worked over him!" Slowly her great eyes widened.
"And oh, Father, his skin!" she whispered simply.
"Hush!" snapped her father with a great gust of resentment that he took to be a gust of propriety. "Hush, I say! I tell you it isn't delicate for a-for a girl to talk about a man's skin!"
"Oh-but his skin was very delicate," mused little Eve Edgarton persistently. "There in the lantern light-"
"What lantern light?" demanded her father.
"And the moonlight," murmured little Eve Edgarton.
"What moonlight?" demanded her father. A trifle quizzically he stepped forward and peered into his daughter's face. "Personally, Eve," he said, "I don't care for the young man. And I certainly don't wish to hear anything about his skin. Not anything! Do you understand? I'm very glad you saved his life," he hastened to affirm. "It was very commendable of you, I'm sure, and some one, doubtless, will be very much relieved. But for me personally the incident is closed! Closed, I said. Do you understand?"
Bruskly he turned back toward his own room, and then swung around again suddenly in the doorway.
"Eve," he frowned. "That was a joke-wasn't it?-what you said about wanting to keep that young man?"
"Why, of course!" said little Eve Edgarton.
"Well, I must say-it was an exceedingly clumsy one!" growled her father irritably.
"Maybe so," droned little Eve Edgarton with unruffled serenity. "It was the first joke, you see, that I ever made." Slowly again her eyes began to widen. "All the same, Father," she said, "his-"
"Hush!" he ordered, and slammed the door conclusively behind him.
Very thoughtfully for a moment little Eve Edgarton kept right on standing there in the middle of the room. In her eyes was just the faintest possible suggestion of a smile. But there was no smile whatsoever about her lips. Her lips indeed were quite drawn and most flagrantly set with the expression of one who, having something determinate to say, will-yet-say it, somewhere, sometime, somehow, though the skies fall and all the waters of the earth dry up.
Then like the dart of a bird, she flashed to her father's door and opened it.
"Father!" she whispered. "Father!"
"Yes," answered the half-muffled, pillowy voice. "What is it?"
"Oh, I forgot to tell you something that happened once-down in Indo-China," whispered little Eve Edgarton. "Once when you were away," she confided breathlessly, "I pulled a half-drowned coolie out of a canal."
"Well, what of it?" asked her father a bit tartly.
"Oh, nothing special," said little Eve Edgarton, "except that his skin was like yellow parchment! And sand-paper! And old plaster!"
Without further ado then, she turned away, and, except for the single ecstatic episode of making the four hundred muffins for breakfast, resumed her pulseless role of being just-little Eve Edgarton.
As for Barton, the subsequent morning hours brought sleep and sleep only-the sort of sleep that fairly souses the senses in oblivion, weighing the limbs with lead, the brain with stupor, till the sleeper rolls out from under the load at last like one half paralyzed with cramp and helplessness.
Certainly it was long after noon-time before Barton actually rallied his aching bones, his dizzy head, his refractory inclinations, to meet the fluctuant sympathy and chaff that awaited him down-stairs in every nook and corner of the great, idle-minded hotel.
Conscientiously, but without enthusiasm, from the temporary retreat of the men's writing-room, he sent up his card at last to Mr. Edgarton, and was duly informed that that gentleman and his daughter were mountain-climbing. In an absurd flare of disappointment then, he edged his way out through the prattling piazza groups to the shouting tennis players, and on from the shouting tennis players to the teasing golfers, and back from the teasing golfers to the peaceful writing-room, where in a great, lazy chair by the open window he settled down once more with unwonted morbidness to brood over the grimly bizarre happenings of the previous night.
In a soft blur of sound and sense the names of other people came wafting to him from time to time, and once or twice at least the word "Barton" shrilled out at him with astonishing poignancy. Still like a man half drugged he dozed again-and woke in a vague, sweating terror-and dozed again-and dreamed again-and roused himself at last with the one violent determination to hook his slipping consciousness, whether or no, into the nearest conversation that he could reach.
The conversation going on at the moment just outside his window was not a particularly interesting one to hook one's attention into, but at least it was fairly distinct. In blissfully rational human voices two unknown men were discussing the non-domesticity of the modern woman. It was not an erudite discussion, but just a mere personal complaint.
"I had a house," wailed one, "the nicest, coziest house you ever saw. We were two years building it. And there was a garden-a real jim-dandy flower and vegetable garden-and there were twenty-seven fruit-trees. But my wife-" the wail deepened-"my wife-she just would live in a hotel! Couldn't stand the 'strain,' she said, of 'planning food three times a day'! Not-'couldn't stand the strain of earning meals three times a day'-you understand," the wailing voice added significantly, "but couldn't stand the strain of ordering 'em. People all around you, you know, starving to death for just-bread; but she couldn't stand the strain of having to decide between squab and tenderloin! Eh?"
"Oh, Lordy! You can't tell me anything!" snapped the other voice more incisively. "Houses? I've had four! First it was the cellar my wife wanted to eliminate! Then it was the attic! Then it was-We're living in an apartment now!" he finished abruptly. "An apartment, mind you! One of those blankety-blank-blank-blank apartments!"
"Humph!" wailed the first voice again. "There's hardly a woman you meet these days who hasn't got rouge on her cheeks, but a man's got to go back-two generations, I guess, if he wants to find one that's got any flour on her nose!"
"Flour on her nose?" interrupted the sharper voice. "Flour on her nose? Oh, ye gods! I don't believe there's a woman in this whole hotel who'd know flour if she saw it! Women don't care any more, I tell you! They don't care!"
Just as a mere bit of physical stimulus the crescendoish stridency of the speech roused Barton to a lazy smile. Then, altogether unexpectedly, across indifference, across drowsiness, across absolute physical and mental non-concern, the idea behind the speech came hurtling to him and started him bolt upright in his chair.
"Ha!" he thought. "I know a girl that cares!" From head to foot a sudden warm sense of satisfaction glowed through him, a throb of pride, a puffiness of the chest. "Ha!" he gloated. "H-"
Then interruptingly from outside the window he heard the click of chairs hitching a bit nearer together.
"Sst!" whispered one voice. "Who's the freak in the 1830 clothes?"
"Why, that? Why, that's the little Edgarton girl," piped the other voice cautiously. "It isn't so much the '1830 clothes' as the 1830 expression that gets me! Where in creation-"
"Oh, upon my soul," groaned the man whose wife "would live in a hotel." "Oh, upon my soul-if there's one thing that I can't stand it's a woman who hasn't any style! If I had my way," he threatened with hissing emphasis, "if I had my way, I tell you, I'd have every homely looking woman in the world put out of her misery! Put out of my misery-is what I mean!"