Burning Daylight Page 19

  CHAPTER VI

  Into Daylight's life came Dede Mason. She came rather imperceptibly.He had accepted her impersonally along with the office furnishing, theoffice boy, Morrison, the chief, confidential, and only clerk, and allthe rest of the accessories of a superman's gambling place of business.Had he been asked any time during the first months she was in hisemploy, he would have been unable to tell the color of her eyes. Fromthe fact that she was a demiblonde, there resided dimly in hissubconsciousness a conception that she was a brunette. Likewise he hadan idea that she was not thin, while there was an absence in his mindof any idea that she was fat. As to how she dressed, he had no ideasat all. He had no trained eye in such matters, nor was he interested.He took it for granted, in the lack of any impression to the contrary,that she was dressed some how. He knew her as "Miss Mason," and thatwas all, though he was aware that as a stenographer she seemed quickand accurate. This impression, however, was quite vague, for he hadhad no experience with other stenographers, and naturally believed thatthey were all quick and accurate.

  One morning, signing up letters, he came upon an I shall. Glancingquickly over the page for similar constructions, he found a number of Iwills. The I shall was alone. It stood out conspicuously. He pressedthe call-bell twice, and a moment later Dede Mason entered. "Did I saythat, Miss Mason?" he asked, extending the letter to her and pointingout the criminal phrase. A shade of annoyance crossed her face. Shestood convicted.

  "My mistake," she said. "I am sorry. But it's not a mistake, youknow," she added quickly.

  "How do you make that out?" challenged Daylight. "It sure don't soundright, in my way of thinking."

  She had reached the door by this time, and now turned the offendingletter in her hand. "It's right just the same."

  "But that would make all those I wills wrong, then," he argued.

  "It does," was her audacious answer. "Shall I change them?"

  "I shall be over to look that affair up on Monday." Daylight repeatedthe sentence from the letter aloud. He did it with a grave, seriousair, listening intently to the sound of his own voice. He shook hishead. "It don't sound right, Miss Mason. It just don't sound right.Why, nobody writes to me that way. They all say I will--educated men,too, some of them. Ain't that so?"

  "Yes," she acknowledged, and passed out to her machine to make thecorrection.

  It chanced that day that among the several men with whom he sat atluncheon was a young Englishman, a mining engineer. Had it happenedany other time it would have passed unnoticed, but, fresh from the tiltwith his stenographer, Daylight was struck immediately by theEnglishman's I shall. Several times, in the course of the meal, thephrase was repeated, and Daylight was certain there was no mistakeabout it.

  After luncheon he cornered Macintosh, one of the members whom he knewto have been a college man, because of his football reputation.

  "Look here, Bunny," Daylight demanded, "which is right, I shall be overto look that affair up on Monday, or I will be over to look that affairup on Monday?"

  The ex-football captain debated painfully for a minute. "Blessed if Iknow," he confessed. "Which way do I say it?"

  "Oh, I will, of course."

  "Then the other is right, depend upon it. I always was rotten ongrammar."

  On the way back to the office, Daylight dropped into a bookstore andbought a grammar; and for a solid hour, his feet up on the desk, hetoiled through its pages. "Knock off my head with little apples if thegirl ain't right," he communed aloud at the end of the session. Forthe first time it struck him that there was something about hisstenographer. He had accepted her up to then, as a female creature anda bit of office furnishing. But now, having demonstrated that she knewmore grammar than did business men and college graduates, she became anindividual. She seemed to stand out in his consciousness asconspicuously as the I shall had stood out on the typed page, and hebegan to take notice.

  He managed to watch her leaving that afternoon, and he was aware forthe first time that she was well-formed, and that her manner of dresswas satisfying. He knew none of the details of women's dress, and hesaw none of the details of her neat shirt-waist and well-cut tailorsuit. He saw only the effect in a general, sketchy way. She lookedright. This was in the absence of anything wrong or out of the way.

  "She's a trim little good-looker," was his verdict, when the outeroffice door closed on her.

  The next morning, dictating, he concluded that he liked the way she didher hair, though for the life of him he could have given no descriptionof it. The impression was pleasing, that was all.

  She sat between him and the window, and he noted that her hair waslight brown, with hints of golden bronze. A pale sun, shining in,touched the golden bronze into smouldering fires that were verypleasing to behold. Funny, he thought, that he had never observed thisphenomenon before.

  In the midst of the letter he came to the construction which had causedthe trouble the day before. He remembered his wrestle with thegrammar, and dictated.

  "I shall meet you halfway this proposition--"

  Miss Mason gave a quick look up at him. The action was purelyinvoluntary, and, in fact, had been half a startle of surprise. Thenext instant her eyes had dropped again, and she sat waiting to go onwith the dictation. But in that moment of her glance Daylight hadnoted that her eyes were gray. He was later to learn that at timesthere were golden lights in those same gray eyes; but he had seenenough, as it was, to surprise him, for he became suddenly aware thathe had always taken her for a brunette with brown eyes, as a matter ofcourse.

  "You were right, after all," he confessed, with a sheepish grin thatsat incongruously on his stern, Indian-like features.

  Again he was rewarded by an upward glance and an acknowledging smile,and this time he verified the fact that her eyes were gray.

  "But it don't sound right, just the same," he complained. At this shelaughed outright.

  "I beg your pardon," she hastened to make amends, and then spoiled itby adding, "but you are so funny."

  Daylight began to feel a slight awkwardness, and the sun would persistin setting her hair a-smouldering.

  "I didn't mean to be funny," he said.

  "That was why I laughed. But it is right, and perfectly good grammar."

  "All right," he sighed--"I shall meet you halfway in thisproposition--got that?" And the dictation went on. He discovered thatin the intervals, when she had nothing to do, she read books andmagazines, or worked on some sort of feminine fancy work.

  Passing her desk, once, he picked up a volume of Kipling's poems andglanced bepuzzled through the pages. "You like reading, Miss Mason?"he said, laying the book down.

  "Oh, yes," was her answer; "very much."

  Another time it was a book of Wells', The Wheels of Change. "What's itall about?" Daylight asked.

  "Oh, it's just a novel, a love-story." She stopped, but he still stoodwaiting, and she felt it incumbent to go on.

  "It's about a little Cockney draper's assistant, who takes a vacationon his bicycle, and falls in with a young girl very much above him.Her mother is a popular writer and all that. And the situation is verycurious, and sad, too, and tragic. Would you care to read it?"

  "Does he get her?" Daylight demanded.

  "No; that's the point of it. He wasn't--"

  "And he doesn't get her, and you've read all them pages, hundreds ofthem, to find that out?" Daylight muttered in amazement.

  Miss Mason was nettled as well as amused.

  "But you read the mining and financial news by the hour," she retorted.

  "But I sure get something out of that. It's business, and it'sdifferent. I get money out of it. What do you get out of books?"

  "Points of view, new ideas, life."

  "Not worth a cent cash."

  "But life's worth more than cash," she argued.

  "Oh, well," he said, with easy masculine tolerance, "so long as youenjoy it. That's what counts, I suppose; and there's no accounting
fortaste."

  Despite his own superior point of view, he had an idea that she knew alot, and he experienced a fleeting feeling like that of a barbarianface to face with the evidence of some tremendous culture. To Daylightculture was a worthless thing, and yet, somehow, he was vaguelytroubled by a sense that there was more in culture than he imagined.

  Again, on her desk, in passing, he noticed a book with which he wasfamiliar. This time he did not stop, for he had recognized the cover.It was a magazine correspondent's book on the Klondike, and he knewthat he and his photograph figured in it and he knew, also, of acertain sensational chapter concerned with a woman's suicide, and withone "Too much Daylight."

  After that he did not talk with her again about books. He imaginedwhat erroneous conclusions she had drawn from that particular chapter,and it stung him the more in that they were undeserved. Of all unlikelythings, to have the reputation of being a lady-killer,--he, BurningDaylight,--and to have a woman kill herself out of love for him. Hefelt that he was a most unfortunate man and wondered by what luck thatone book of all the thousands of books should have fallen into hisstenographer's hands. For some days afterward he had an uncomfortablesensation of guiltiness whenever he was in Miss Mason's presence; andonce he was positive that he caught her looking at him with a curious,intent gaze, as if studying what manner of man he was.

  He pumped Morrison, the clerk, who had first to vent his personalgrievance against Miss Mason before he could tell what little he knewof her.

  "She comes from Siskiyou County. She's very nice to work with in theoffice, of course, but she's rather stuck on herself--exclusive, youknow."

  "How do you make that out?" Daylight queried.

  "Well, she thinks too much of herself to associate with those she workswith, in the office here, for instance. She won't have anything to dowith a fellow, you see. I've asked her out repeatedly, to the theatreand the chutes and such things. But nothing doing. Says she likesplenty of sleep, and can't stay up late, and has to go all the way toBerkeley--that's where she lives."

  This phase of the report gave Daylight a distinct satisfaction. She wasa bit above the ordinary, and no doubt about it. But Morrison's nextwords carried a hurt.

  "But that's all hot air. She's running with the University boys,that's what she's doing. She needs lots of sleep and can't go to thetheatre with me, but she can dance all hours with them. I've heard itpretty straight that she goes to all their hops and such things.Rather stylish and high-toned for a stenographer, I'd say. And shekeeps a horse, too. She rides astride all over those hills out there.I saw her one Sunday myself. Oh, she's a high-flyer, and I wonder howshe does it. Sixty-five a month don't go far. Then she has a sickbrother, too."

  "Live with her people?" Daylight asked.

  "No; hasn't got any. They were well to do, I've heard. They must havebeen, or that brother of hers couldn't have gone to the University ofCalifornia. Her father had a big cattle-ranch, but he got to foolingwith mines or something, and went broke before he died. Her motherdied long before that. Her brother must cost a lot of money. He was ahusky once, played football, was great on hunting and being out in themountains and such things. He got his accident breaking horses, andthen rheumatism or something got into him. One leg is shorter than theother and withered up some. He has to walk on crutches. I saw her outwith him once--crossing the ferry. The doctors have been experimentingon him for years, and he's in the French Hospital now, I think."

  All of which side-lights on Miss Mason went to increase Daylight'sinterest in her. Yet, much as he desired, he failed to get acquaintedwith her. He had thoughts of asking her to luncheon, but his was theinnate chivalry of the frontiersman, and the thoughts never came toanything. He knew a self-respecting, square-dealing man was notsupposed to take his stenographer to luncheon. Such things did happen,he knew, for he heard the chaffing gossip of the club; but he did notthink much of such men and felt sorry for the girls. He had a strangenotion that a man had less rights over those he employed than over mereacquaintances or strangers. Thus, had Miss Mason not been hisemployee, he was confident that he would have had her to luncheon orthe theatre in no time. But he felt that it was an imposition for anemployer, because he bought the time of an employee in working hours,to presume in any way upon any of the rest of that employee's time. Todo so was to act like a bully. The situation was unfair. It was takingadvantage of the fact that the employee was dependent on one for alivelihood. The employee might permit the imposition through fear ofangering the employer and not through any personal inclination at all.

  In his own case he felt that such an imposition would be peculiarlyobnoxious, for had she not read that cursed Klondike correspondent'sbook? A pretty idea she must have of him, a girl that was toohigh-toned to have anything to do with a good-looking, gentlemanlyfellow like Morrison. Also, and down under all his other reasons,Daylight was timid. The only thing he had ever been afraid of in hislife was woman, and he had been afraid all his life. Nor was thattimidity to be put easily to flight now that he felt the firstglimmering need and desire for woman. The specter of the apron-stringstill haunted him, and helped him to find excuses for getting on noforwarder with Dede Mason.