so?”
“Yes,” she acknowledged, and passed out to her machine to make
the
correction.
It chanced that day that among the several men with whom he sat
at luncheon was a young Englishman, a mining engineer. Had it
happened any other time it would have passed unnoticed, but,
fresh from the tilt with his stenographer, Daylight was struck
immediately by the Englishman’s I shall. Several times, in the
course of the meal, the phrase was repeated, and Daylight was
certain there was no mistake about it.
After luncheon he cornered Macintosh, one of the members whom he
knew to have been a college man, because of his football
reputation.
“Look here, Bunny,” Daylight demanded, “which is right, I shall
be over to look that affair up on Monday, or I will be over to
look that affair up on Monday?”
The ex-football captain debated painfully for a minute. “Blessed
if I know,” 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 on
grammar.”
Burning Daylight
111
On the way back to the office, Daylight dropped into a bookstore
and bought a grammar; and for a solid hour, his feet up on the
desk, he toiled through its pages. “Knock off my head with
little apples if the girl ain’t right,” he communed aloud at the
end of the session. For the first time it struck him that there
was something about his stenographer. He had accepted her up to
then, as a female creature and a bit of office furnishing. But
now, having demonstrated that she knew more grammar than did
business men and college graduates, she became an individual.
She seemed to stand out in his consciousness as conspicuously as
the I shall had stood out on the typed page, and he began to take
notice.
He managed to watch her leaving that afternoon, and he was aware
for the first time that she was well-formed, and that her manner
of dress was satisfying. He knew none of the details of women’s
dress, and he saw none of the details of her neat shirt-waist and
well-cut tailor suit. He saw only the effect in a general,
sketchy way. She looked right. 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
outer office door closed on her.
The next morning, dictating, he concluded that he liked the way
she did her hair, though for the life of him he could have given
no description of it. The impression was pleasing, that was all.
She sat between him and the window, and he noted that her hair
was light brown, with hints of golden bronze. A pale sun,
shining in, touched the golden bronze into smouldering fires that
were very pleasing to behold. Funny, he thought, that he had
never observed this phenomenon before.
In the midst of the letter he came to the construction which had
caused the trouble the day before. He remembered his wrestle
with the grammar, and dictated.
“I shall meet you halfway this proposition–”
Miss Mason gave a quick look up at him. The action was purely
involuntary, and, in fact, had been half a startle of surprise.
The next instant her eyes had dropped again, and she sat waiting
to go on with the dictation. But in that moment of her glance
Daylight had noted that her eyes were gray. He was later to
learn that at times there were golden lights in those same gray
eyes; but he had seen enough, as it was, to surprise him, for he
became suddenly aware that he had always taken her for a brunette
with brown eyes, as a matter of course.
“You were right, after all,” he confessed, with a sheepish grin
that sat incongruously on his stern, Indian-like features.
Burning Daylight
112
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 she laughed outright.
“I beg your pardon,” she hastened to make amends, and then
spoiled
it by adding, “but you are so funny.”
Daylight began to feel a slight awkwardness, and the sun would
persist in 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 this
proposition–got that?” And the dictation went on. He discovered
that in the intervals, when she had nothing to do, she read books
and magazines, or worked on some sort of feminine fancy work.
Passing her desk, once, he picked up a volume of Kipling’s poems
and glanced 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 it all about?” Daylight asked.
“Oh, it’s just a novel, a love-story.” She stopped, but he still
stood waiting, and she felt it incumbent to go on.
“It’s about a little Cockney draper’s assistant, who takes a
vacation on 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 very curious, 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
of them, 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.
Burning Daylight
113
“But I sure get something out of that. It’s business, and it’s
different. 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
you enjoy it. That’s what counts, I suppose; and there’s no
accounting for taste.”
Despite his own superior point of view, he had an idea that she
knew a lot, and he experienced a fleeting feeling like that of a
barbarian face to face with the evidence of some tremendous
culture. To Daylight culture was a worthless thing, and yet,
somehow, he was vaguely troubled 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
was familiar. This time he did not stop, for he had recognized
the cover. It was a magazine correspondent’s book on the
Klondike, and he knew that he and his photograph figured in it
and he knew, also, of a certain sensational chapter concerned
with a woman’s suicide, and with one “Too much Daylight.”
After that he did not talk with her again about books. He
imagined
what erroneous conclusions she had drawn from that particular
chapter, and it stung him the more in that they were undeserved.
Of all unlikely things, to have the reputation of being a
lady-killer,–he, Burning Daylight,–and to have a woman kill
herself out of love for him. He felt that he was a most
unfortunate man and wondered by what luck that one book of all
the thousands of books should have fallen into his stenographer’s
hands. For some days afterward he had an uncomfortable sensation
of guiltiness whenever he was in Miss Mason’s presence; and once
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 personal
grievance against Miss Mason before he could tell what little he
knew of her.
“She comes from Siskiyou County. She’s very nice to work with in
the office, of course, but she’s rather stuck on herself–
exclusive, you know.”
“How do you make that out?” Daylight queried.
Burning Daylight
114
“Well, she thinks too much of herself to associate with those she
works with, in the office here, for instance. She won’t have
anything to do with a fellow, you see. I’ve asked her out
repeatedly, to the theatre and the chutes and such things. But
nothing doing. Says she likes plenty of sleep, and can’t stay up
late, and has to go all the way to Berkeley–that’s where she
lives.”
This phase of the report gave Daylight a distinct satisfaction.
She was a bit above the ordinary, and no doubt about it. But
Morrison’s next words 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