Ева Эдгартон. Часть 13

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"Why--what an awful dream!" deprecated her father.

"Awful?" queried little Eve Edgarton. "Ha! It makes me--laugh. All the
same," she affirmed definitely, "good old John Ellbertson will have to
have his beard cut." Quizzically for an instant she stared off into
space, then quite abruptly she gave a quick, funny little sniff.
"Anyway, I'll have a garden, won't I?" she said. "And always, of
course, there will be--Henrietta."

"Henrietta?" frowned her father.

"My daughter!" explained little Eve Edgarton with dignity.

"Your daughter?" snapped Edgarton.

"Oh, of course there may be several," conceded little Eve Edgarton.
"But Henrietta, I'm almost positive, will be the best one!"

So jerkily she thrust her slender throat forward with the speech, her
whole facial expression seemed suddenly to have undercut and stunned
her father's.

"Always, Father," she attested grimly, "with your horrid old books and
specimens you have crowded my dolls out of my steamer trunk. But never
once--" her tightening lips hastened to assure him, "have you ever
succeeded in crowding--Henrietta--and the others out of my mind!"

Quite incongruously, then, with a soft little hand in which there
lurked no animosity whatsoever, she reached up suddenly and smoothed
the astonishment out of her father's mouth-lines.

"After all, Father," she asked, "now that we're really talking so
intimately, after all--there isn't so specially much to life anyway,
is there, except just the satisfaction of making the complete round of
human experience--once for yourself--and then once again--to show
another person? Just that double chance, Father, of getting two
original glimpses at happiness? One through your own eyes, and
one--just a little bit dimmer--through the eyes of another?"

With mercilessly appraising vision the starving Youth that was in her
glared up at the satiate Age in him.

"You've had your complete round of human experience, Father!" she
cried. "Your first--full--untrammeled glimpse of all your Heart's
Desires. More of a glimpse, perhaps, than most people get. From your
tiniest boyhood, Father, everything just as you wanted it! Just the
tutors you chose in just the subjects you chose! Everything then that
American colleges could give you! Everything later that European
universities could offer you! And then Travel! And more Travel! And
more! And more! And then--Love! And then Fame! 'Love, Fame, and Far
Lands!' Yes, that's it exactly! Everything just as you chose it! So
your only tragedy, Father, lies--as far as I can see--in just
little--me! Because I don't happen to like the things that you like,
the things that you already have had the first full joy of
liking,--you've got to miss altogether your dimmer, second-hand
glimpse of happiness! Oh, I'm sorry, Father! Truly I am! Already I
sense the hurt of these latter years--the shattered expectations, the
incessant disappointments! You who have stared unblinkingly into the
face of the sun, robbed in your twilight of even a candle-flame. But,
Father?"

Grimly, despairingly, but with unfaltering persistence--Youth fighting
with its last gasp for the rights of its Youth--she lifted her haggard
little face to his. "But, Father!--my tragedy lies in the fact--that
at thirty--I've never yet had even my first-hand glimpse of happiness!
And now apparently, unless I'm willing to relinquish all hope of ever
having it, and consent to 'settle down,' as you call it, with 'good
old John Ellbertson'--I'll never even get a gamble--probably--at
sighting Happiness second-hand through another person's eyes!"

"Oh, but Eve!" protested her father. Nervously he jumped up and began
to pace the room. One side of his face was quite grotesquely
distorted, and his lean fingers, thrust precipitously into his
pockets, were digging frenziedly into their own palms. "Oh, but Eve!"
he reiterated sharply, "you will be happy with John! I know you will!
John is a--John is a--Underneath all that slowness, that ponderous
slowness--that--that--Underneath that--"

"That longish--reddish--grayish beard?" interpolated little Eve
Edgarton.

Glaringly for an instant the old eyes and the young eyes challenged
each other, and then the dark eyes retreated suddenly before--not the
strength but the weakness of their opponents.

"Oh, very well, Father," assented little Eve Edgarton. "Only--"
ruggedly the soft little chin thrust itself forth into stubborn
outline again. "Only, Father," she articulated with inordinate
distinctness, "you might just as well understand here and now, I
won't budge one inch toward Nunko-Nono--not one single solitary little
inch toward Nunko-Nono--unless at London, or Lisbon, or Odessa, or
somewhere, you let me fill up all the trunks I want to--with just
plain pretties--to take to Nunko-Nono! It isn't exactly, you know,
like a bride moving fifty miles out from town somewhere," she
explained painstakingly. "When a bride goes out to a place like
Nunko-Nono, it isn't enough, you understand, that she takes just the
things she needs. What she's got to take, you see, is everything under
the sun--that she ever may need!"

With a little soft sigh of finality she sank back into her pillows,
and then struggled up for one brief instant again to add a postscript,
as it were, to her ultimatum. "If my day is over--without ever having
been begun," she said, "why, it's over--without ever having been
begun! And that's all there is to it! But when it comes to Henrietta,"
she mused, "Henrietta's going to have five-inch hair-ribbons--and
everything else--from the very start!"

"Eh?" frowned Edgarton, and started for the door.

"And oh, Father!" called Eve, just as his hand touched the door-knob.
"There's something I want to ask you for Henrietta's sake. It's rather
a delicate question, but after I'm married I suppose I shall have to
save all my delicate questions to--ask John; and John, somehow, has
never seemed to me particularly canny about anything except--geology.
Father!" she asked, "just what is it--that you consider so
particularly obnoxious in--in--young men? Is it their sins?"

"Sins!" jerked her father. "Bah! It's their traits!"

"So?" questioned little Eve Edgarton from her pillows. "So? Such
as--what?"

"Such as the pursuit of woman!" snapped her father. "The love--not of
woman, but of the pursuit of woman! On all sides you see it to-day! On
all sides you hear it--sense it--suffer it! The young man's eternally
jocose sexual appraisement of woman! 'Is she young? Is she pretty?'
And always, eternally, 'Is there any one younger? Is there any one
prettier?' Sins, you ask?" Suddenly now he seemed perfectly willing,
even anxious, to linger and talk. "A sin is nothing, oftener than not,
but a mere accidental, non-considered act! A yellow streak quite as
exterior as the scorch of a sunbeam. And there is no sin existent that
a man may not repent of! And there is no honest repentance, Eve, that
a wise woman cannot make over into a basic foundation for happiness!
But a trait? A congenital tendency? A yellow streak bred in the bone?
Why, Eve! If a man loves, I tell you, not woman, but the pursuit of
woman? So that--wherever he wins--he wastes again? So that indeed at
last, he wins only to waste? Moving eternally--on--on--on from one
ravaged lure to another? Eve! Would I deliver over you--your mother's
reincarnated body--to--to such as that?"

"O--h," said little Eve Edgarton. Her eyes were quite wide with
horror. "How careful I shall have to be with Henrietta."

"Eh?" snapped her father.

Ting-a-ling--ling--ling--ling! trilled the telephone from the farther
side of the room.

Impatiently Edgarton came back and lifted the receiver from its hook.
"Hello?" he growled. "Who? What? Eh?"

With quite unnecessary vehemence he rammed the palm of his hand
against the mouth-piece and glared back over his shoulder at his
daughter. "It's that--that Barton!" he said. "The impudence of him! He
wants to know if you are receiving visitors to-day! He wants to know
if he can come up! The--"

"Yes--isn't it--awful?" stammered little Eve Edgarton.

Imperiously her father turned back to the telephone.
Ting-a-ling--ling--ling--ling, chirped the bell right in his face. As
if he were fairly trying to bite the transmitter, he thrust his lips
and teeth into the mouth-piece.

"My daughter," he enunciated with extreme distinctness, "is feeling
quite exhausted--exhausted--this afternoon. We appreciate, of course
Mr. Barton, your--What? Hello there!" he interrupted himself sharply.
"Mr. Barton? Barton? Now what in the deuce?" he called back
appealingly toward the bed. "Why, he's rung off! The fool!" Quite
accidentally then his glance lighted on his daughter. "Why, what are
you smoothing your hair for?" he called out accusingly.

"Oh, just to put it on," acknowledged little Eve Edgarton.

"But what in creation are you putting on your coat for?" he demanded
tartly.

"Oh, just to smooth it," acknowledged little Eve Edgarton.

With a sniff of disgust Edgarton turned on his heel and strode off
into his own room.

For five minutes by the little traveling-clock, she heard him pacing
monotonously up and down--up and down. Then very softly at last she
summoned him back to her.

"Father," she whispered, "I think there's some one knocking at the
outside door."

"What?" called Edgarton. Incredulously he came back through his
daughter's room and, crossing over to the hall door, yanked it open
abruptly on the intruder.

"Why--good afternoon!" grinned Barton above the extravagantly large
and languorous bunch of pale lavender orchids that he clutched in his
hand.

"Good afternoon!" said Edgarton without enthusiasm.

"Er--orchids!" persisted Barton still grinningly. Across the
unfriendly hunch of the older man's shoulder he caught a disquieting
glimpse of a girl's unduly speculative eyes. In sudden impulsive
league with her against this, their apparent common enemy, Age, he
thrust the orchids into the older man's astonished hands.

"For me?" questioned Edgarton icily.

"Why, yes--certainly!" beamed Barton. "Orchids, you know! Hothouse
orchids!" he explained painstakingly.

"So I--judged," admitted Edgarton. With extreme distaste he began to
untie the soft flimsy lavender ribbon that encompassed them. "In their
native state, you know," he confided, "one very seldom finds them
growing with--sashes on them." From her nest of cushions across the
room little Eve Edgarton loomed up suddenly into definite prominence.

"What did you bring me, Mr. Barton?" she asked.

"Why, Eve!" cried her father. "Why, Eve, you astonish me! Why, I'm
surprised at you! Why--what do you mean?"

The girl sagged back into her cushions. "Oh, Father," she faltered,
"don't you know--anything? That was just 'small talk.'"

With perfunctory courtesy Edgarton turned to young Barton. "Pray be
seated," he said; "take--take a chair."

It was the chair closest to little Eve Edgarton that Barton took.
"How do you do, Miss Edgarton?" he ventured.

"How do you do, Mr. Barton?" said little Eve Edgarton.

From the splashy wash-stand somewhere beyond them, they heard Edgarton
fussing with the orchids and mumbling vague Latin imprecations--or
endearments--over them. A trifle surreptitiously Barton smiled at Eve.
A trifle surreptitiously Eve smiled back at Barton.

In this perfectly amiable exchange of smiles the girl reached up
suddenly to the sides of her head. "Is my--is my bandage on straight?"
she asked worriedly.

"Why, no," admitted Barton; "it ought not to be, ought it?"

Again for no special reason whatsoever they both smiled.

"Oh, I say," stammered Barton. "How you can dance!"

Across the girl's olive cheeks her heavy eyelashes shadowed down like
a fringe of black ferns. "Yes--how I can dance," she murmured almost
inaudibly.

"Why didn't you let anybody know?" demanded Barton.

"Yes--why didn't I let anybody know?" repeated the girl in an utter
panic of bashfulness.

"Oh, I say," whispered Barton, "won't you even look at me?"

Mechanically the girl opened her eyes and stared at him fixedly until
his own eyes fell.