White Ashes Part 39

Smith stopped, glancing at Mr. Wintermuth and rather apprehensive of the reply he might receive. But all that gentleman answered was:--

"We've always tried to keep down our liability in Manhattan--especially in the lower end, between Chambers and Twenty-third Street."

"Yes," said Smith; "and I believe, sir, we've kept it down too far. In the last ten years the construction has been greatly improved, a high pressure water supply has been introduced, the fire department is bigger and more efficient, and yet our liability is very little greater in the dry goods district, for example, than it was ten years ago."

"That's true," the President agreed. He turned to the other directors.

"I think perhaps that in our city business we may have been a little too conservative, but I have always preferred to err on that side, if I erred at all. I should not oppose a rather more liberal policy in New York."

"Thank you," Smith replied. "Mr. Cuyler and I will take care that the company does not get involved for dangerous amounts in any well defined district, and I hope that the larger part of our increased business will be uptown. And it will, if we can secure the right branch manager."

"But how can we help you there?" another director asked. "None of us is familiar with insurance conditions."

"I thought," the other said, "that some of you might have influence with some of the better uptown agencies. The compet.i.tion for that cla.s.s of business is tremendous. Mr. Wintermuth, Mr. Cuyler, and I all know most of these people, but a mere acquaintance is nothing--to get into a first-rate office and get their best business means that you've got to have a strangle hold on the agent--nothing less will do."

Mr. Whitehill leaned back in his chair.

"I don't know exactly what const.i.tutes a strangle hold," he said with a smile; "but there's one firm up town that handles all my trustee business, and I think they would hardly like to disoblige me. I fancy the commissions on it must amount to rather a handsome amount, year in and year out. And I think they must have an agency, because once or twice I've noticed their name signed to policies they've sent me."

"Who are they?" another director asked. "Perhaps Mr. Wintermuth or Mr.

Smith may know them."

"Evans and Jones," replied Mr. Whitehill.

The President and his young subordinate looked at one another. Even Mr. Wintermuth, who for some years past had given little attention to the details of the local business, knew that the firm in question was one of high standing.

"Of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street?" Smith asked.

"Yes. You know them? They have an agency, then?" Mr. Whitehill responded.

"They certainly have," replied the other. "They are as desirable agents as there are up town, and they represent the Ess.e.x of England, the Austrian National, and," he glanced at his chief, "the Salamander of New York."

Mr. Wintermuth found no words.

"Now, Mr. Whitehill," said Smith, "they are the people we want as branch managers. Our interests would be safe in their hands. But to take us and do us justice they would probably have to resign one of the companies they now represent. Do you think your influence with them is sufficient to get them to do that?"'

Mr. Whitehill smiled somewhat grimly.

"My boy," he said, "I don't like to extol my personal influence; but if I asked Evans and Jones anything within the bounds of reason and they declined to do it, I admit that I should be surprised--very much surprised."

This was the reason why, on a busy corner of the Street, only a week later, two men came to a stop face to face, the elder regarding the younger with a malignity that was indifferently concealed.

"Well, how's the boy underwriter?" said a sneering voice. "You think you turned a pretty trick when you took my branch manager, eh?"

"I told you we'd have to get back at you," the other replied. "But,"

he added, "I should hardly think it would be a subject you'd care to discuss."

The blood came into the face of the first speaker.

"Well, I do, just the same," he said; "and I want to tell you that you've gone too far. You've made a personal matter of ordinary compet.i.tion. All right--have it as you like. But you take it from me, this fight's just started, and I'm going to see it through, and I'll get you and your Guardian yet."

"Is that all you wish to say?" Smith queried in a level tone.

"Yes," said O'Connor, shortly; "that's all. Remember it."

And he turned toward the office of the Salamander.

CHAPTER XVIII

"27 Deerfield Street.

"DEAR MR. SMITH,--You never come to Boston any more, do you? Or when you come, do you see some other lady? a.s.suming for the sake of argument that you don't come, I can't help feeling rather relieved, for if you ever thought my mind at all above the deadest dead level of my s.e.x--a s.e.x that most gentlemen either secretly or openly believe to be vastly inferior mentally to their own, anyway--you would receive a fearful shock if you should arrive and see me now. For no girl could more enthusiastically have thrown herself into the combination of things with which the comic papers most dearly love to a.s.sociate the conventionally idiotic feminine--clothes and weddings. In this case the wedding has not yet occurred, but the clothes are in one way or another occurring nearly every twenty minutes; and far from being ashamed of my interest in such petty and ephemeral things, I have actually enjoyed the campaign--in which I have taken both an active and advisory part--toward completing a trousseau for the prospective bride.

"However, one thing gives me courage to confess this to you, and that is that I have merely followed out my natural tastes and inclinations, and I think you have a theory that anything absolutely natural has a right to exist. I hope I'm not wrong and that you really have such a theory, for it has cheered me up quite a lot, because I don't believe any one ever took a more vivid interest in clothes than I have done for the last ten days.

"I suppose by this time you are thinking I have talked so much about it that I must be acquiring this trousseau for myself, but such is not the case. The bride-to-be is Isabel, who has finally decided to marry Charlie Wilkinson at once, and without waiting longer for a change which may never occur. Miss Hurd, who inherits some of her father's sagacity, has always acted on the theory that if you consistently neglect to do things which absolutely have to be done, some one else will always do them for you,--and in this affair I am the some one else, doing most of the real work while Isabel placidly speculates on whether her father will or won't relent at the eleventh hour.

"I could save her the trouble of her speculations, for I know John M.

pretty well, and the number of times he has changed his mind in the course of his life cannot be more than six! But Isabel argues that he reversed his decision once before on a matter in which the ingenious Mr. Wilkinson figured, and so he may do again. But up to now there are no signs of any such happy conclusion, for Mr. Hurd stands on his promise that if Isabel marries Charlie, her doom will be on her own head, so to speak. He has more than once thrown out the fine old conventional paternal threat--'not one penny, and so forth'--which would give me, I admit, far more concern than it seems to occasion either of the interested parties.

"Certainly Mr. Hurd has thus far given an excellent imitation of a very fair grade of adamant, as Charlie puts it. He concedes nothing that he doesn't have to. He says Isabel is of age and can legally marry whom she pleases, but if she pleases to marry Charles Wilkinson, the Hurds'

roof shall not be the scene of the function. Charlie's obvious retort to this was that this didn't cause him very much disappointment, as Mr.

Hurd's or any one else's roof seemed a curious and somewhat inappropriate place for a marriage ceremony, anyway, and he didn't think the prospect of himself and his ushers being obliged to reach the altar by crawling out of a scuttle would lend to the occasion a dignity strictly in accordance with his well-known reputation for always doing things in correct form.

"So the pair of them are now trying to decide whether to have a church ceremony or to run away--practically--and be married without any society annex whatever to the affair. I myself rather favor the latter, but Charlie is quite keen for the church. He is really very proud of Isabel, and so far as I can make out he would like a big wedding to advertise, as it were, his achievement in getting her. And then he adds as usual that his tailor and other similar friends ought to be considered, and the more important the function the firmer his future credit will be.

"Meanwhile time flies, and poor Mrs. Hurd is torn by conflicting desires. All her life, you see, she has subordinated herself to every whim and opinion of her husband and repressed every natural inclination and desire. How you would love her! And now she finds to her surprise that her natural affection for her daughter is in danger of taking her off her feet. I really believe there have been some painful scenes between the poor lady and John M.--and there may be some more if Mrs.

Hurd's newly awakened self-a.s.sertiveness grows more positive and Mr.

Hurd remains inflexible.

"Through all of this I keep the comparatively noiseless tenor of my way, and plots, counterplots, and cabals seethe deliciously round me.

I've been having a simply splendid time, and I've discovered that the actual cause of my enjoyment is the most primitive one imaginable,--I love a romance, and a real romance ought to end in a wedding, just as this one is presently going to do. I can hear your comment on this: 'Good heavens! that Maitland girl is exactly like all the rest!' Well, perhaps I am; cut my acquaintance if you wish--but I have confessed the truth to you.

"Charlie is much improved, I think. He is as cheerful and as inconsequent as ever, and his plans for the future seem to me, although I am not a practical woman of business, more sketchy than well defined.

Sometimes, after listening to him, I have come to the conclusion that even so attractive a quality as absolute optimism can be overdone, and that the principle of never crossing a bridge before you come to it can reasonably be modified by observing before you actually get to the water whether there is any bridge at all or whether you will have to swim for the opposite bank. However, one saving grace is the fact that Charlie seems genuinely in love with Isabel, if I know any of the signs, and in contemplating the future he even talks of going to work, if the need should ever arise for that radical departure from his whole life scheme. Of course, as says, he probably wouldn't do it, but that he should even think of it he conceives to be a sign of inherent n.o.bility.

"Were it not for this excitement, I am afraid Boston would be a little dull. I am reluctant to put such a confession in writing, for some one has quite truly remarked that to say of any place that it is dull is too often a confession of one's own dullness, but I am going to be honest about it. Do you suppose it is because New York, after being denied by me so long, will have its hour?--or is this a permanent thing? Somehow I cannot get away from the feeling that Boston is small and narrow and cold. Perhaps it is because of the wonderful life that thrills through almost everything in New York--even through the things one dislikes. But I don't expect you to answer that, because I don't believe you dislike anything thoroughly characteristic of New York; I remember you once took me to a Broadway musical comedy and said you enjoyed it.

"It is a long time since you were in Boston. Are you likely to come here again within a month or two? If not, I wish you would write me all the news of the Guardian and all about the great legal fight which you and the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts are waging against the octopus. I try to keep in touch with it through Uncle Silas, who of course is intensely interested and who seems another man of late, but he has not your gift of explaining in words of one syllable. Have you ever thought of getting out a textbook of 'First Principles' of anything, for juvenile intellects of all ages? I am not wholly making fun.

"Yours faithfully,

"HELEN MAITLAND."

"It is," wrote Smith in reply, "one of the most soothing things imaginable for a person who is about to admit a human weakness to find his confession forestalled. Just as I had determined to confess to you my possession of frailties entirely incompatible with the conception of Richard Smith in the eyes of his ordinary acquaintances, I received your letter. It was with the delight of the reprieved client of a painless dentist that I read your admission that when such vital things as trousseaux and weddings are in question, you are very much like other girls--and perhaps even a little more so.