Withal, he was a monster for work. There is not much truth in men's unending talk of how hard they work or are worked. The ravages from their indulgences in smoking, drinking, gallantry, eating too much and too fast and too often, have to be explained away creditably, to themselves and to others—notably to the wives or mothers who nurse them and suffer from their diminishing incomes. Hence the wailing about work. But once in a while a real worker appears—a man with enormous ingenuity at devising difficult tasks for himself and with enormous persistence in doing them. Frederick Norman was one of these blue-moon prodigies.
Obviously, such a man could not but be observed and talked about. Endless stories, some of them more or less true, most of them apocryphal, were told of him—stories of his shrewd, unexpected moves in big cases, of his witty retorts, of his generosities, of his peculiarities of dress, of eating and drinking; stories of his adventures with women. Whatever he did, however trivial, took color and charm from his personality, so easy yet so difficult, so simple yet so complex, so baffling. Was he wholly selfish? Was he a friend to almost anybody or to nobody? Did he ever love? No one knew, not even himself, for life interested him too intensely and too incessantly to leave him time for self-analysis. One thing he was certain of; he hated nobody, envied nobody. He was too successful for that.
He did as he pleased. And, on the whole, he pleased to do far less inconsiderately than his desires, his abilities, and his opportunities tempted. Have not men been acclaimed good for less?
In the offices, where he was canvased daily by partners, clerks, everyone down to the cleaners whose labors he so often delayed, opinion varied from day to day. They worshiped him; they hated him. They loved him; they feared him. They regarded him as more than human, as less than human; but never as just human—though always as endowed with fine human virtues and even finer human weaknesses. Miss Tillotson, next to the head clerk in rank and pay—and a pretty and pushing young person—dreamed of getting acquainted with him—really well acquainted. It was a vain dream. For him, between up town and down town a great gulf was fixed. Also, he had no interest in or ammunition for sparrows.
It was in December that Miss Hallowell—Miss Dorothea Hallowell—got her temporary place at ten dollars a week—that obscure event, somewhat like a field mouse taking quarters in a horizon-bounded grain field. It was not until mid-February that she, the palest of personalities, came into direct contact with Norman, about the most refulgent. This is how it happened.
Late in that February afternoon, an hour or more after the last of the office force should have left, Norman threw open the door of his private office and glanced round at the rows on rows of desks. The lights in the big room were on, apparently only because he was still within. With an exclamation of disappointment he turned to re-enter his office. He heard the click of typewriter keys. Again he looked round, but could see no one.
"Isn't there some one here?" he cried. "Don't I hear a typewriter?"
The noise stopped. There was a slight rustling from a far corner, beyond his view, and presently he saw advancing a slim and shrinking slip of a girl with a face that impressed him only as small and insignificant. In a quiet little voice she said, "Yes, sir. Do you wish anything?"
"Why, what are you doing here?" he asked. "I don't think I've ever seen you before."
"Yes. I took dictation from you several times," replied she.
He was instantly afraid he might have hurt her feelings, and he, who in the days when he was far, far less than now, had often suffered from that commonplace form of brutality, was most careful not to commit it. "I never know what's going on round me when I'm thinking," explained he, though he was saying to himself that the next time he would probably again be unable to remember one with nothing distinctive to fix identity. "You are—Miss——?"
"Miss Hallowell."
"How do you happen to be here? I've given particular instructions that no one is ever to be detained after hours."
A little color appeared in the pale, small face—and now he saw that she had a singularly fair and smooth skin, singularly beautiful—and he wondered why he had not noticed it before. Being a close observer, he had long ago noted and learned to appreciate the wonders of that most amazing of tissues, the human skin; and he had come to be a connoisseur. "I'm staying of my own accord," said she.
"They ought not to give you so much work," said he. "I'll speak about it."
Into the small face came the look of the frightened child—a fascinating look. And suddenly he saw that she had lovely eyes, clear, expressive, innocent. "Please don't," she pleaded, in the gentle quiet voice. "It isn't overwork. I did a brief so badly that I was ashamed to hand it in. I'm doing it again."
He laughed, and a fine frank laugh he had when he was in the mood. At once a smile lighted up her face, danced in her eyes, hovered bewitchingly about her lips—and he wondered why he had not at first glance noted how sweet and charmingly fresh her mouth was. "Why, she's beautiful," he said to himself, the manly man's inevitable interest in feminine charm wide awake. "Really beautiful. If she had a figure—and were tall—" As he thought thus, he glanced at her figure. A figure? Tall? She certainly was tall—no, she wasn't—yes, she was. No, not tall from head to foot, but with the most captivating long lines—long throat, long bust, long arms, long in body and in legs—long and slender—yet somehow not tall. He—all this took but an instant—returned his glance to her face. He was startled. The beauty had fled, leaving not a trace behind. Before him wavered once more a small insignificance. Even her skin now seemed commonplace.
She was saying, "Did you wish me to do something?"
"Yes—a letter. Come in," he said abruptly.
Once more the business in hand took possession of his mind. He became unconscious of her presence. He dictated slowly, carefully choosing his words, for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Then he stopped and paced up and down, revolving a new idea, a new phase of the business, that had flashed upon him. When he had his thoughts once more in form he turned toward the girl, the mere machine. He gazed at her in amazement. When he had last looked, he had seen an uninteresting nonentity. But that was not this person, seated before him in the same garments and with the same general blondness. That person had been a girl. This time the transformation was not into the sweet innocence of lovely childhood, but into something incredibly different. He was gazing now at a woman, a beautiful world-weary woman, one who had known the joys and then the sorrows of life and love. Heavy were the lids of the large eyes gazing mournfully into infinity—gazing upon the graves of a life, the long, long vista of buried joys. Never had he seen anything so sad or so lovely as her mouth. The soft, smooth skin was not merely pale; its pallor was that of wakeful nights, of weeping until there were no more tears to drain away.
"Miss Hallowell—" he began.
She startled; and like the flight of an interrupted dream, the woman he had been seeing vanished. There sat the commonplace young person he had first seen. He said to himself: "I must be a little off my base to-night," and went on with the dictation. When he finished she withdrew to transcribe the letter on the typewriter. He seated himself at his desk and plunged into the masses of documents. He lost the sense of his surroundings until she stood beside him holding the typewritten pages. He did not glance up, but seized the sheets to read and sign.
"You may go," said he. "I am very much obliged to you." And he contrived, as always, to put a suggestion of genuineness into the customary phrase.
"I'm afraid it's not good work," said she. "I'll wait to see if I am to do any of it over."
"No,