The Best Policy Part 23

Tom Nelson found her quite as unreasonable and bewildering as did Harry.

Tom was older and more resourceful than Harry, but he was not so steady and persistent. Harry was content to let his money acc.u.mulate in a savings' bank, but Tom deemed this too slow and was willing to take risks in the hope of larger profits. He made more, but he also spent more, and, all else aside, it was a question as to whether Harry would not be able to provide the better home. Then, too, Tom occasionally lost money, while nothing but a bank failure could endanger Harry's modest capital. So Tom had his own troubles with the girl. He knew her dread of poverty-amounting almost to a mania-and he made frequent incidental reference to his capital.

"But that isn't much," she said lightly. Her self-confessed mercenariness was always brought out in a whimsical, half-jocular way that seemed to have nothing of worldly hardness in it. "And there's no telling whether you'll have it six months from now," she added. "As long as I had you to take care of me, it would be all right, but-"

She always came back to the same point. Yet one of these two she intended to marry, her personal preference being for Harry, and her judgment commending Tom. The former would plod; the latter might be worth twenty thousand in a few years, or he might be in debt. Harry never would have much; Tom might have a great deal-enough to make the future secure, no matter what happened.

"Will you invest the money for me?" she asked.

"Why, no,-I must use it to make more."

Thus she flirtatiously, laughingly, but with an undertone of seriousness, kept them both uncertain, while she impressed upon them her one great fear of being left helpless. Yet even in this her ambition was modest: no income for life, but only something for her temporary needs until she could adjust herself to new conditions, if that became necessary. Anything more than that was too remote for serious thought.

Harry finally told his troubles to a friend, when these exasperating conditions had continued for some time. He wanted consolation; he got advice.

"A little too worldly to suit me," commented the friend. "Still, it might be better if some of the girls who marry hastily had just a little of such worldliness. There would be fewer helpless and wretched women and children."

"That's just it," returned Harry. "She knows what it means, and that two thousand of Tom Nelson's looks awful big to her. If I had as much I'd invest it for her outright, and that would settle it."

"Doesn't want it to spend, as I understand it?" queried the friend.

"Oh, no-just to know that she has something in case anything happens."

"Why don't you try life insurance?" asked the friend.

It took Harry a moment or two to grasp this. Then his face lighted up.

"By thunder! I never thought of that!" he cried.

"That's the trouble with lots of men," remarked the friend dryly.

"Marriage is considered a dual arrangement when it should be a triple-man, woman and life insurance. That's the only really safe combination. The thoughtful lover will see that the life insurance agent and the minister are interviewed about the same time."

"Where did you learn all that?" asked the astonished Harry.

"Oh, it's not original with me," was the reply. "I heard Dave Murray talk about insurance once. He's an enthusiast. He claims that the best possible wedding gift is a paid-up life insurance policy, and I guess he's right. It would be a mighty appropriate gift from the groom's father to the bride-a blame sight better than a check or a diamond necklace. A paid-up policy for five thousand would look just as big as a five-thousand-dollar check, and it wouldn't cost nearly as much-unless the old man plans to sneak back the check before it can be cashed. And what a lot of good it might do at a time when the need may be the greatest! If the bride is the one to be considered in selecting a wedding gift, as I understand to be the case, what better than this?"

"I guess Dave Murray is the man for me," said Harry in admiration of the originality of this idea.

"Of course he is," a.s.serted the friend. "And if you want to make the argument stronger for your wavering girl, get an accident insurance policy, with a sick benefit clause, also, and then take out a little old age insurance. There ought to be no trouble about giving her all the a.s.surance necessary to allay her fears."

Harry was a good risk, and he had no difficulty in getting a policy. He saw Murray personally, but, as he did not explain his purpose or situation, their conference was brief: Murray merely asked if he thought a thousand-dollar policy was all he could afford.

"Because," said Murray, "when you go after a good thing it's wise to take all you can of it. There ought to be enough so that something can be found after your estate is settled."

"I'd make it five hundred if I could," said Harry.

"Most of the good companies," said Murray, "wisely protect a man from his own economical folly by refusing to issue a policy for less than a thousand."

"It's an experiment. A fellow doesn't want to put too much money into an experiment."

Murray, the resourceful Murray, was bewildered. Life insurance an experiment! Surely he could not mean that.

"Well," he said, "your widow will be pretty sure to think the experiment a success."

"I haven't got a widow," a.s.serted Harry.

"Of course not; but you may have."

"How can I have a widow when I am dead?" asked Harry. "How can I have anything when I am dead?"

"You can't tell by the looks of an electric wire how highly it is charged," mused Murray. "I guess I touched this one too recklessly."

Then to Harry: "But there may be _a_ widow."

"There may," returned Harry.

"Well, she'll be sorry you didn't experiment on a larger scale, because it really isn't an experiment at all. There's only one thing surer than insurance."

"What's that?" asked Harry with interest.

"Death; and, with the popular gold bonds or any limited payment policy, you have a chance to beat death by some years. But suit yourself."

So Harry took the physical examination and got the policy, payable to his estate. Then he promptly a.s.signed it to Alice.

"There's one thousand dollars sure, if anything should happen to me," he said. "That beats any old elusive two thousand that Tom Nelson may have."

"You're a dear, good, faithful boy, Harry," she said impulsively, and she gave him a kiss.

That was happiness enough for that day and the next, but on the third he began to get down to earth again and deemed the time propitious.

"You'll marry me?" he suggested.

"Perhaps," was her reply.

"Perhaps!" he cried. "It's always perhaps."

"Perhaps it won't be always perhaps," she returned.

In truth, she had wavered so long that she found it difficult to make up her mind. Besides, Tom was prospering, Tom was devoted, and Tom was a nice fellow. True, he was twenty-six while she was only eighteen, and Harry, at twenty, was nearer her own age, but-well, aside from any question of the future, it was rather nice to have two men so devotedly attentive. Then, too, Tom spent his money more freely, and she derived the benefit in present pleasures. There was no hurry; the future was now brighter, whichever she chose, and, things being so nearly equal, there was even less reason for haste. Alice, in addition to her dread of poverty, was a natural flirt: she enjoyed the power she exerted over these two men. But she said nothing to Tom of Harry's latest move; perhaps she thought it would be unfair, or perhaps she was a trifle truer to Harry than to Tom.

Harry, in his "simple" way, misinterpreted this irresolution. He was too devoted to criticize; he had begun to understand her dread and to think that she was quite right in taking such a very worldly view of the situation. Why should she not, so far as possible, endeavor to make her future secure? It was for him to convince her of his thoughtfulness and his ability to provide for her. Thereupon he got an accident insurance policy.

"You're awfully thoughtful, Harry," she said. "I like you."

"I don't want you to worry," said Harry, flattered and pleased.

"I'm not worrying," she told him.

"But I am," he retorted ruefully.

"Men," she a.s.serted, "are _so_ impatient."