The Best Policy Part 4

"I will give you a place here whenever that is necessary to enable you to live, but I prefer that you should complete your preliminary business training under some one else. No boy can consider himself a success until he has proved his independence, and no boy can be sure he has proved that until he has made a secure place for himself outside the family circle."

So Ross, being wise enough to see the reason and justice of this, endeavored to show his independence by securing a position with Murray.

And, although fairly successful from the start, he was only just beginning to take a real interest in his work. Murray liked him and encouraged him: there was, he thought, the making of a good and successful man in him, and he frequently went to considerable trouble to explain the theory and practice of insurance. Then, too, he knew that Ross had married just before he lost his other position, and that he was living in a modest little flat on his own earnings, in spite of the fact that he had a father who would be much more ready to a.s.sist him financially than he was to take him into his own office at that particular time. In fact, the elder Ross was quite willing that his son and his son's wife should live with him, holding only that the family influence should not extend to his first business connections, but Owen deemed the flat a necessary evidence of his independence.

"I'll get that sanctimonious optimist to-morrow," he mused as he walked along. "He can't answer those arguments that Murray gave me. He is content because the Lord will provide, but why may not I be the human instrument through which the Lord makes provision? That sounds presumptuous, but why not? Hasn't He provided for others in just this way? Hasn't many a man, convinced against his will, protected the future of those he loved barely in time?" He laughed quietly at a thought that occurred to him. "If this man should be insured to-morrow and die the next day," he went on, "he would think the Lord had provided, but if he has to pay the premiums for twenty years, he'll think it all very human.

I'm beginning to understand him."

He was still smiling at this quaint conceit when he entered his flat and was informed by his wife that Mrs. Becker had been there to see him.

Mrs. Becker was a woman who did washing and occasional cleaning for them.

"To see me!" he exclaimed. "Why, her dealings are all with you."

"It has something to do with insurance," his wife explained. "She knows you're in that business, of course, and she is in deep distress. She was crying when she was here this afternoon, but I couldn't understand what the trouble was. She said she'd come back this evening."

Ross puzzled over this a good deal during dinner, and even tried to get some additional information by questioning his wife closely. Exactly what did the woman say? Her words might be "all Greek" to his wife and still be intelligible to him, if only she could repeat them.

"But I can't," she insisted. "I was so sorry for her and so helpless that I really didn't hear it all, anyway. I only know that it had something to do with an application or a premium or a policy, and her husband is very sick and she needs money."

Ross began to speculate. The ignorant have strange ideas of insurance, and very likely this woman thought she could insure a dying husband. His backbone began to stiffen at once. Of course such a thing was actually, as well as ethically, impossible, but it was going to be a very difficult matter to explain it to her, and he antic.i.p.ated a distressing scene. His wife was interested in the woman, spoke frequently of her hardships and her courage, and had helped her to such trifling extent as they could afford. No doubt the woman had some wild notion that he, being an insurance man, could do this for her and would do it as a matter of charity. Ethical questions do not trouble such people.

When she came, he was prepared for a request that was impossible in honor and in fact, and he was ready to refuse it with such gentleness as he deemed due to a weary and desperate woman who did not realize what she was asking-the gentleness of sympathy coupled with the firmness of principle. Ross was a young man, inclined to exaggerate the importance and difficulties of problems that confronted him, and he was disconcerted when he found he had made an error in the basis from which he had reached his conclusion; the woman did not wish to insure a dying husband, but to protect insurance he already carried.

"Oh, good Mr. Ross," she wailed, "you must fix it for me some way. If we don't pay to-morrow, we'll lose everything. And we haven't the money, Mr. Ross, not enough to pay the doctor even, and it's worrying Peter more than the sickness. But you can fix it for us-of course you can fix it for us,"-with appealing hopefulness.

"Sit down, Mrs. Becker, and tell me about it," he urged. "I don't understand."

She sank into a chair, and looked at him with anxious, tearful doubt and hope. Worn out with work and watching, she was a prey to conflicting emotions. Never doubting that he could help her, she feared he might refuse. Her anxiety was pitiable, and it was some time before he could get the details of the story from her. Finally, however, he learned that in more prosperous days her husband had insured his life for five thousand dollars, and, even in adversity, had succeeded in keeping up the payments, until stricken by this last illness. The sum he had saved up for the next premium-the one due the following day-had been used for medicines and other necessaries, and now he was near death. The doctor held out no hope; he might live a few days, but hardly more than that, for he was slowly but surely sinking. Until the previous night, when there came a turn for the worse, his recovery had been confidently expected, and his wife had worried little about the premium; the insurance company would be glad to take it when he was well.

"But _he_ worried," she said with unconscious pathos; "he worried and asked about it until-he couldn't any more. He's too sick to know now.

But,"-hopefully,-"he'll understand when I tell him it's all right."

Ross was as much distressed as the woman, but he could give her little comfort. He could protect the insurance only by paying the premium himself, and he was not able to do that. Still, almost all policies provided for the payment of something proportionate to the amount paid in, even when the premiums were not kept up, so-He paused uncomfortably at this point, for the woman's att.i.tude and expression had changed from tearful anxiety to dull, sullen suspicion. She did not believe him; like all insurance men, he was ready to seize any opportunity to defraud her; she was helpless, and a rich company would take advantage of her helplessness.

"You can get the money, Owen," his wife urged, almost in tears herself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Perhaps I can arrange it," he said at last. "In what company is he insured?"]

"I'll pay it back to you-when he dies!" cried the woman, and Ross gave her a quick glance. It seemed heartless, but he saw it was not. The woman was tried beyond her endurance; she, with her two children, faced a future that was absolutely devoid of hope; she was sick, wretched, despairing, and the husband she had striven so hard to keep with her was already beyond recall. She spoke of his approaching death merely as something certain, that could not be prevented, and that force of circ.u.mstances compelled her to consider. She had to think for herself and children, plan for herself and children, even at this fearful time, for there was no one to do it for her, no one to relieve her of any part of the burden. The problem of the larder and the problem of burial would confront her simultaneously; she had to face these cold, hard, brutal facts, in spite of the grief and sorrow of the moment.

All this Ross saw and appreciated, and he gave his attention to various possible ways of raising the necessary money.

"Perhaps I can arrange it," he said at last. "In what company is he insured?"

It proved to be his own company. Instantly, his talk with Murray flashed through his mind. "You are paid to protect your company, so far as lies in your power," Murray had said. Absolute loyalty to its interests was imperative. Would it be honorable for him to enter into any arrangement with this woman that would cost his company money? Had he any right to do more than the company would do itself? What would be thought of an employee in any other line of business who advanced money that was to be used to the financial disadvantage of his employer, however proper it might be in the case of some one else?

"I can do nothing," he announced shortly.

"Oh, Owen!" cried his wife reproachfully.

"It is impossible!" he insisted. "If it were a proper thing to do, Murray would do it for her himself."

"Mr. Murray doesn't understand the situation," urged his wife.

"Murray would understand my situation and his," he returned. "We are taking money from this company, we are its trusted agents, and we can not do anything that would be to its disadvantage. It is a matter of business integrity."

The woman did not weep now, but the look she gave him haunted him all that night. And his wife's entreaties and reproaches added to his unhappiness.

"Why, Jennie," he explained, "I stand alone between the company and a loss of over four thousand dollars. I know that this man is dying; I know that, if I pay this premium, the company will have to pay out the full amount of the insurance within a few days; I know that the premiums paid to date amount to only about five hundred or six hundred dollars, which, under the terms of the policy, the woman will not wholly lose.

For me, an employee, to conspire to get the rest of the money for her would be like taking it from the cash drawer. I won't do it; I can't do it after Murray's talk to me to-day about business integrity!"

"The company can afford it," persisted Mrs. Ross, "and the woman needs it so badly."

"There are lots of companies and individuals who could afford to let the woman have five thousand dollars," replied Ross.

Still, Mrs. Ross could not understand. If he had been willing to pay the premium to another company, why not to his own?

"Resign and pay it!" she exclaimed suddenly, feeling that she had solved the problem; but that was a greater sacrifice than he was prepared to make. He was sincerely sorry for the woman; the case was on his mind all the following morning; but Murray's talk had made a deep impression.

This was one of the severe temptations of the business-the more severe because there was no question of corruption, but only of sympathy, in it. Such, he had read, were the temptations that led men of the best intentions astray in many of the affairs of life.

He was thinking of this when he called to see the "sanctimonious optimist"; he was thinking of it when he advanced the arguments Murray had given him; he was still thinking of it when the man said he was almost convinced and would telephone him after talking with his wife.

Consequently, this success failed to elate him.

"The law of humanity," he told himself, "is higher and more sacred than the law of business."

He had walked unconsciously in the direction of his father's office, and, still arguing with himself, he went in.

"Father," he said, "I want to borrow a hundred dollars." The premium was a little more than that, but he could supply the remainder.

"For what?" asked the senior Ross.

"There is something I may wish to do," was the enigmatical reply. "I will repay it as rapidly as possible."

"Commissions few and small?" laughed the senior Ross. "Well, a young man never finds out exactly what he's worth, while working for a relative or a friend, so this experience ought to be valuable."

Still undecided, but with the money in his pocket, Ross left his father's office and went to his own. He wanted to pay that premium, but it seemed to him a very serious matter, ethically and actually. The woman faced a future of privation; he faced what seemed to him a crisis in his business career. He revolted at the thought of being false to his employer, but to let the woman suffer would be heartless.

"A letter for you, Ross," said one of the clerks, as he entered the office. "Your wife left it."

He opened it with nervous haste, and a notice of a premium due dropped out.

"You must find some way to help this woman, Owen," his wife wrote. "I went to see her to-day, and the situation is pitiable. She has used up every cent she had and is in debt. Her husband is conscious at intervals, and he looks at you so wistfully, so anxiously, that it makes your heart bleed. Oh! if I could only tell him that the insurance is all right! It would give him peace for the little time that is left to him on this earth. _Owen! resign, if necessary, but do what I ask!_"

Ross crumpled the note in his hand and walked into Murray's private office.

"Mr. Murray," he said, "please accept my verbal resignation."

"What's the matter?" asked Murray.

"I have no time to explain now," said Ross. "I want to be released from my obligations to the company at once."