Very softly in the darkness his hand grazed hers.
"Did you touch my hand on purpose, or just accidentally?" asked Eve Edgarton, without a flicker of expression on her upturned, gold-colored face.
"Why, I"m sure I don"t know," laughed Barton. "Maybe--maybe it was a little of each."
With absolute gravity little Eve Edgarton kept right on staring at him. "I don"t know whether I should ever specially like you--or not, Mr. Barton," she drawled. "But you are certainly very beautiful!"
"Oh, I say!" cried Barton wretchedly. With a really desperate effort he struggled almost to his feet, tottered for an instant, and then came sagging down to the soft earth again--a great, sprawling, spineless heap, at little Eve Edgarton"s feet.
Unflinchingly, as if her wrists were built of steel wires, the girl jumped up and pulled and tugged and yanked his almost dead weight into a sitting posture again.
"My! But you"re chock-full of lightning!" she commiserated with him.
Out of the utter rage and mortification of his helplessness Barton could almost have cursed her for her sympathy. Then suddenly, without warning, a little gasp of sheer tenderness escaped him.
"Eve Edgarton," he stammered, "you"re--a--brick! You--you must have been invented just for the sole purpose of saving people"s lives. Oh, you"ve saved mine all right!" he acknowledged soberly. "And all this black, blasted night you"ve nursed me--and fed me--and jollied me--without a whimper about yourself--without--a--" Impulsively he reached out his numb-palmed hand to her, and her own hand came so cold to it that it might have been the caress of one ghost to another. "Eve Edgarton," he reiterated, "I tell you--you"re a brick! And I"m a fool--and a slob--and a mutt-head--even when I"m not chock-full of lightning, as you call it! But if there"s ever anything I can do for you!"
"What did you say?" muttered little Eve Edgarton.
"I said you were a brick!" repeated Barton a bit irritably.
"Oh, no, I didn"t mean--that," mused the girl. "But what was the--last thing you said?"
"Oh!" grinned Barton more cheerfully. "I said--if there was ever anything that I could do for you, anything--"
"Would you rent me your attic?" asked little Eve Edgarton.
"Would I rent you my attic?" stammered Barton. "Why in the world should you want to hire my attic?"
"So I could buy pretty things in Siam--or Ceylon--or any other queer country--and have some place to send them," said little Eve Edgarton.
"Oh, I"d pay the express, Mr. Barton," she hastened to a.s.sure him.
"Oh, I promise you there never would be any trouble about the express!
Or about the rent!" Expeditiously as she spoke she reached for her hip pocket and brought out a roll of bills that fairly took Barton"s breath away. "If there"s one thing in the world, you know, that I"ve got, it"s money," she confided perfectly simply. "So you see, Mr.
Barton," she added with sudden wistfulness, "there"s almost nothing on the face of the globe that I couldn"t have--if I only had some place to put it." Without further parleying she proffered the roll of bills to him.
"Miss Edgarton! Are you crazy?" Barton asked again quite precipitously.
Again the girl answered his question equally frankly, and without offense. "Oh, no," she said. "Only very determined."
"Determined about what?" grinned Barton in spite of himself.
"Determined about an attic," drawled little Eve Edgarton.
With an unwonted touch of vivacity she threw out one hand in a little, sharp gesture of appeal; but not a tone of her voice either quickened or deepened.
"Why, Mr. Barton," she droned, "I"m thirty years old--and ever since I was born I"ve been traveling all over the world--in a steamer trunk.
In a steamer trunk, mind you. With Father always standing over every packing to make sure that we never carry anything that--isn"t necessary. With Father, I said," she re-emphasized by a sudden distinctness. "You know Father!" she added significantly.
"Yes--I know "Father,"" a.s.sented Barton with astonishing glibness.
Once again the girl threw out her hand in an incongruous gesture of appeal.
"The things that Father thinks are necessary!" she exclaimed softly.
Noiselessly as a shadow she edged herself forward into the light till she faced Barton almost squarely. "Maybe you think it"s fun, Mr.
Barton," she whispered. "Maybe you think it"s fun--at thirty years of age--with all your faculties intact--to own nothing in the world except--except a steamer trunkful of the things that Father thinks are necessary!"
Very painstakingly on the fingers of one hand she began to enumerate the articles in question. "Just your riding togs," she said, "and six suits of underwear--and all the United States consular reports--and two or three wash dresses and two "good enough" dresses--and a lot of quinine--and--a squashed hat--and--and--" Very faintly the ghost of a smile went flickering over her lips--"and whatever microscopes and specimen-cases get crowded out of Father"s trunk. What"s the use, Mr.
Barton," she questioned, "of spending a whole year investigating the silk industry of China--if you can"t take any of the silks home?
What"s the use, Mr. Barton, of rolling up your sleeves and working six months in a heathen porcelain factory--just to study glaze--if you don"t own a china-closet in any city on the face of the earth?
Why--sometimes, Mr. Barton," she confided, "it seems as if I"d die a horrible death if I couldn"t buy things the way other people do--and send them somewhere--even if it wasn"t "home"! The world is so full of beautiful things," she mused. "White enamel bath-tubs--and Persian rugs--and the most ingenious little egg-beaters--and--"
"Eh?" stammered Barton. Quite desperately he rummaged his brain for some sane-sounding expression of understanding and sympathy.
"You could, I suppose," he ventured, not too intelligently, "buy the things and give them to other people."
"Oh, yes, of course," conceded little Eve Edgarton without enthusiasm. "Oh, yes, of course, you can always buy people the things they want. But understand," she said, "there"s very little satisfaction in buying the things you want to give to people who don"t want them. I tried it once," she confided, "and it didn"t work.
"The winter we were in Paraguay," she went on, "in some stale old English newspaper I saw an advertis.e.m.e.nt of a white bedroom set. There were eleven pieces, and it was adorable, and it cost eighty-two pounds--and I thought after I"d had the fun of unpacking it, I could give it to a woman I knew who had a tea plantation. But the instant she got it--she painted it--green! Now when you send to England for eleven pieces of furniture because they are white," sighed little Eve Edgarton, "and have them crated--because they"re white--and sent to sea because they"re white--and then carried overland--miles and miles and miles--on Indians" heads--because they"re white, you sort of want "em to stay white. Oh, of course it"s all right," she acknowledged patiently. "The Tea Woman was nice, and the green paint by no means--altogether bad. Only, looking back now on our winter in Paraguay, I seem to have missed somehow the particular thrill that I paid eighty-two pounds and all that freightage for."
"Yes, of course," agreed Barton. He could see that.
"So if you could rent me your attic--" she resumed almost blithely.
"But my dear child," interrupted Barton, "what possible--"
"Why--I"d have a place then to send things to," argued little Eve Edgarton.
"But you"re off on the high seas Sat.u.r.day, you say," laughed Barton.
"Yes, I know," explained little Eve Edgarton just a bit impatiently.
"But the high seas are so dull, Mr. Barton. And then we sail so long!"
she complained. "And so far!--via this, via that, via every other stupid old port in the world! Why, it will be months and months before we ever reach Melbourne! And of course on every steamer," she began to monotone, "of course on every steamer there"ll be some one with a mixed-up collection of sh.e.l.ls or coins--and that will take all my mornings. And of course on every steamer there"ll be somebody struggling with the Chinese alphabet or the Burmese accents--and that will take all my afternoons. But in the evenings when people are just having fun," she kindled again, "and n.o.body wants me for anything, why, then you see I could steal "way up in the bow--where you"re not allowed to go--and think about my beautiful attic. It"s pretty lonesome," she whispered, "all snuggled up there alone with the night, and the spray and the sailors" shouts, if you haven"t got anything at all to think about except just "What"s ahead?--What"s ahead?--What"s ahead?" And even that belongs to G.o.d," she sighed a bit ruefully.
With a quick jerk she edged herself even closer to Barton and sat staring up at him with her tousled head c.o.c.ked on one side like an eager terrier.
"So if you just--could, Mr. Barton!" she began all over again. "And oh, I know it couldn"t be any real bother to you!" she hastened to rea.s.sure him. "Because after Sat.u.r.day, you know, I"ll probably never--never be in America again!"
"Then what satisfaction," laughed Barton, "could you possibly get in filling up an attic with things that you will never see again?"
"What satisfaction?" repeated little Eve Edgarton perplexedly. "What satisfaction?" Between her placid brows a very black frown deepened.
"Why, just the satisfaction," she said, "of knowing before you die, that you had definitely diverted to your own personality that much specific treasure out of the--out of the--world"s chaotic maelstrom of generalities."
"Eh?" said Barton. "What? For Heaven"s sake say it again!"
"Why--just the satisfaction--" began Eve Edgarton. Then abruptly the sullen lines grayed down again around her mouth.
"It seems funny to me, Mr. Barton," she almost whined, "that anybody as big as you are--shouldn"t be able to understand anybody as little as--I am. But if I only had an attic!" she cried out with apparent irrelevance. "Oh, if just once in my whole life I could have even so much as an atticful of home! Oh, please--please--please, Mr. Barton!"
she pleaded. "Oh, please!"