This particular morning Smith disposed with more or less ease of several claimants to his attention, before he was finally brought to a pause by the appearance of Mr. Darius Howell of Schuyler, Maine, who had come to New York in connection with his potato business, and who had incidentally decided to call at the office of the Guardian which he also had the honor locally to represent. Years before, Smith had once visited Schuyler, and at that time had met the small, grizzled individual who now stood before him. He had not, however, the slightest idea of the identity of his visitor, and waited a brief moment for a clew to aid him.
"You don't remember me, I reckon," said the caller. "I remember you, though, Mr. Smith. My name is Darius—"
"Howell," said Smith, instantly, getting up to shake hands. Of all the agents reporting to him there was only one Darius. "I remember you very well. I hope you haven't come to tell me that Schuyler has burned up. Come in and sit down. It must be five years since I've seen you."
"Six years come next July," agreed the other, cautiously. It would have been impossible for him to admit the simplest proposition without some sort of qualification; he never had done so, and there seemed no valid reason to suppose that he ever would.
"And how is Schuyler coming along?" inquired the General Agent, with decided deference to the conventionalities of such interviews.
"Oh, so so," replied the man from Maine. "There ain't been much change up there since you was there. That is, not what you'd really call a change. How's things with you? The company still pays dividends, I see."
Mr. Howell was the owner of four shares of the company's stock.
"Doing all right," Smith responded. "The Guardian believes in making haste slowly, you know; we don't go ahead very fast, but we keep plugging along. Mr. Wintermuth feels it's always best to be on the safe side. Occasionally it's discouraging when we see some competitor build up an income in three or four years as big as ours that it's taken three or four generations to establish, but when we read some morning that our enterprising friends have had to reinsure their liability with some stronger concern and retire from business because their losses have caught up to them, we don't feel quite so badly. Personally I think we could travel a little faster, and I'd like to see our premiums twice what they are now. And I hope you'll double them this year in Schuyler, anyway."
"Maybe so, but you never can tell. Business is liable to slack up just when you think it's going along all right. And there ain't been any new building in Schuyler of any account for two years back but Dodge's feed mill and the new Union School. You've got a line on both of them."
At this point their conversation was interrupted because of the departure of the persistent gentleman, who had been closeted with Mr. Wintermuth. As the door closed on him, Jimmy disappeared around the corner and thrust his head and fore quarters, so to speak, into O'Connor's open doorway.
"Th' President's at liberty now," he announced.
Without replying, the Vice-President picked up theJournal of Commerceand the daily report with the yellow telegram affixed to it, and strode over, past Smith's desk, to the office of his chief.
"Can you come out and look at the map a minute, sir?" he asked respectfully.
"Certainly. What is it? A loss?" replied Mr. Wintermuth, noticing the telegraph slip as he rose from his chair and followed O'Connor toward the map counter.
"Yes," said the Vice-president. He was passing the desk of the General Agent, and he took care that his remark might be overheard. "And it looks to me like something we ought not to have had."
"What's that?" rejoined the older man, quickly. "We're not accepting business that we shouldn't write, are we? What is it? And who passed it?"
"Smith seems to have approved the line," O'Connor said slowly."Herbert, I thought I told you to leave that Providence map out for me."
"It's right there, sir," said the map clerk; "right where you left it, sir."
"Here's the risk," said the Vice-president, pointing it out to his superior with every sign of decent regret. "It seems to be a mattress factory, a class we never write. . . . Smith appears to have passed it—there's his initial. Of course, he may have had some special reason for—"
Mr. Wintermuth interrupted him.
"Herbert, ask Mr. Smith if he will not step this way for a moment, please."
To the man from Maine the General Agent said: "You'll excuse me for a minute?"
And Darius Howell, with astonishing definiteness, replied: "Sure—go ahead."
Smith found his two officers awaiting him by the open map. From the expression on O'Connor's face he suspected that that gentleman had discovered something not displeasing to him, and unconsciously he found his own shoulders squaring themselves as though for a conflict.
"We have here," began the President, slowly, "a loss at Providence on a risk which Mr. O'Connor seems to think we should not have written."
"Where is the risk, sir?" Smith asked quietly.
"Here. Here is the daily report. It is approved by you. . . . Probably there is something about the risk which does not appear on the face of it. Do you remember the circumstances?"
Smith looked the daily report over carefully. It certainly showed the risk, just as plainly as the map also showed it, to be a mattress factory, a class prohibited by the Guardian, and there were Smith's own interwoven initials. Then, suddenly, at the sight of the hieroglyph, he remembered. "Why, you passed this line yourself, Mr. O'Connor," was on his lips to say. But he did not say it. For by the cold light in the eyes of the Vice-President he knew that course useless.
"I remember the risk," he said, addressing himself to Mr. Wintermuth. "It was a direct line of our local agents, and they were very anxious to have us take a small amount. It was accepted as an accommodation, and I reinsured one half, as you see, sir. Is it a bad loss?"
"Reported total," replied the other, turning over the telegram. "My boy, you're usually so careful, I don't understand how you came to put through such business. You ought at least to have referred it to Mr. O'Connor or myself."
Smith glanced again at the Vice-president, but that gentleman remained silent, and the General Agent again swallowed what was on his tongue to utter.
"Yes, sir, I should have done so," he substituted.
Mr. Wintermuth continued: "We cannot write such risks as that and hope to make an underwriting profit. They say I am a believer in 4 per cent bonds—perhaps I am, but I amnota believer in 4 per cent mattress factories." The old gentleman softened his criticism with a smile.
But to Smith, feeling rather than seeing the half-hidden satisfaction of the Vice-president, the President's kindly manner proved of little comfort. For Smith and O'Connor knew that the line in question had been submitted to O'Connor, and that in view of the competition of several very liberal companies in the Providence agency, the Vice-president had authorized its acceptance. With his wonted caution, however, he had refrained from putting himself on record, other than orally.
"Reinsure half, and put it through, Smith," he had directed; and Smith had done so.
In cases where his own security was involved, Mr. F. Mills O'Connor was an exceedingly cautious man. Looking before he leaped was with him almost a passion; and if he expected to leap on a Thursday, it was generally estimated that he began his preliminary looking on Monday of the week before.
He was a large, clean-shaven, dark-haired man of indeterminate age. By his profession at large he was little known, but in the Guardian office he was very well known indeed and excellently understood, and an appreciation of his character and qualities truthfully set down by the observant Jimmy or by Herbert, the map clerk, would never have been selected by the O'Connor family as satisfactory material for a flattering obituary notice.
It appeared likely, however, that it would be a long time before his obituary would be written. He was probably, at this time, a year or two the other side of forty, and his care of himself was unimpeachable, for he guarded his health as carefully as he did his other assets. He had become Vice-President and underwriting head of the company several years before this story opens, and it seemed probable that he would hold that position indefinitely—or perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say until some more advantageous position lay open to him.
Mr. O'Connor was what is commonly termed a cold proposition, and if there was any sentiment in him it was so carefully secreted that for ordinary purposes it was non-existent. Yet he was not unpopular. When he so desired, he could assume a spurious geniality so closely resembling the genuine article that few persons, and none of his agents, ever discovered the difference. And his business efficiency was commonly taken for granted.
Indeed, there was but one man in the insurance fraternity who assessed Mr. O'Connor at very nearly his proper value, and that man O'Connor disliked and feared as vividly as his rather apathetic nature would admit. The one man was Smith. Whoever might sail the seas in ships of illusion regarding the Vice-president of the Guardian, Smith saw the facts clear and looked at them squarely.
The principal cause of Smith's own position in the company was his own vitality and industry, but next to that was the fact that Mr. Wintermuth had originally given him a chance and then declined to permit any one to impede his natural progression. This attitude was due principally to the President's conviction of his own ability to judge men. Having once made up his mind, he allowed no one to tell him anything about any of his employees. He always said: "I watch the boys myself, and what I can't see I don't want to know." In the old days what he did not see was of no especial importance to the Guardian Insurance Company, but the eyes of an old lion grow also old. Yet the habit remained, and thus all Mr. O'Connor's efforts to discredit his ambitious young assistant had so far fallen on ears stone-deaf and hermetically sealed. But the Vice-president could never forgive the younger man for looking at him with so unimpressed a gaze, and never missed an opportunity to show his prejudice to their mutual chief.
There had been several incidents of a similar nature previous to the mattress factory loss, where Smith had been either indirectly advised or permitted by O'Connor to take a certain course, only to find himself excoriated when the risk burned or the outcome proved otherwise disastrous. Only a short time before, Smith had been sent into New York State, acting under vice-presidential order of procedure, to straighten out the Guardian's relations with the local division of the Eastern Conference. The Eastern Conference was an organization to which most of the leading companies belonged. Its function was the orderly regulation of all matters affecting its members' relations with their agents. Theoretically its primary purpose was to prevent the overcompensation of some agents at the expense of others. If it did not always succeed in doing this, it did at least succeed in making extremely embarrassing the lot of any company operating outside of its organization. It was everywhere an arbitrary body, and its New York State branch was perhaps the least disciplined of any of its constituent parts, and was moreover suspected of favoring some of its own members at the expense of others. President Wintermuth, loyal to his associates, but patient only up to a certain point, had of late begun to consider that his company was decidedly in the latter class. It was easy to see that a diplomat's hand was needed to accomplish what Smith was sent to accomplish, and Smith could be a diplomat of parts when the need arose; but his instructions from Mr. O'Connor had left him so little latitude that he was obliged to return without securing any positive action of any sort.
"They will take the matter up at the next meeting," he reported.
O'Connor transmitted this report to the President with an expression of disappointment.
"We ought to have had that thing fixed up. And if it had been handled right, it would have been fixed up now," he said.
Whereat the President, with one of his flashes of clear vision, replied suavely, "And who gave Smith his instructions?"
It was only a chance shot on Mr. Wintermuth's part, but it went straight to the mark, and it rankled. O'Connor knew—or felt reasonably sure—that Smith had not mentioned the matter to any one but himself, yet the chief had struck unerringly the nail's head. And all this endeared Smith but little to the man who had never liked him.
It is none too comfortable to work for a man who will covertly begrudge you your successes and indifferently conceal his satisfaction at your mistakes; for the stoutest hearted it is a discouraging business. This Smith found it, and he would have found it still more discouraging had it not been for the exuberance of his enthusiasm for his profession and his healthy appetite for most real things that came his way—real work, real pleasures, real sport, and perhaps a few real follies. Many times, after a bad hour spent in a futile defense against the only half-perceptible hostility of O'Connor, he would find himself seriously questioning whether he would not do more wisely to leave the Guardian and hazard a new fortune in another field. Yet all the while he knew that this course of speculation was idle and a waste of time and cerebral tissues. He was a Guardian man, and with the Guardian he was going to stay—unless the Company itself took a different view. Of course there was a time coming when Mr. Wintermuth would lay down his badge of office, but before that time much would occur. Sufficient unto that day would be its own evil, without enhancing it by imaginary additions. So Smith stood by his post, but there was at times an expression in his face which gave F. Mills O'Connor himself cause for careful consideration.
But to Darius Howell, somewhat awkwardly saying good-by at theGuardian's door, Smith's smile was as sunny as the skies of Schuyler,Maine. For troubles often turned out to be largely imaginary, whileDarius was indubitably real.
Promptly at nine o'clock in the morning of every business day for fifteen years, Hannibal G. Pelgram, uncle of Stanwood Pelgram, had seated himself at his desk in the office of the Pelgram Plumbers' Supply Company, and it was rarely that he left before his stenographer had begun to show signs of impatience and anxiety. But in the sixteenth year of his reign his liver, which up to that time had acted with the most commendable regularity, began to develop alarming eccentricities of behavior. Mr. Pelgram became gradually less certain in his attendance, and finally his struggle with the refractory liver ended in the victory of that inconspicuous but important organ, and he passed peacefully away at a German spa in the course of taking a cure which would very likely have killed him even had he been in perfectly normal health.
His will began by the customary direction to his executor to pay his just debts and funeral expenses—exactly as though the executor was assumed to be a thoroughly unscrupulous person who, although not benefiting himself in the least by his dishonesty, would try in every possible way to evade settlement with all the dead man's legitimate creditors, including the undertaker. Then he left a small bequest to a faithful cook and another to an endowed retreat for tuberculous Baptists which already had more money than it could hope ever to use. The residue, consisting principally of stock in the Plumbers' Supply Company, went to Stanwood, with the earnest wish that his nephew enter and eventually assume the direction of the business with which the family name had been so long and so honorably identified.
Stanwood received the news with modified rapture. He was grateful for financial independence, but the idea of taking up the bathtub business struck him with dismay. So with prudent forethought he sought out Amory Carruth, a lawyer of his acquaintance; and to him explained his dilemma. It required some measure of specious ingenuity to explain his errand as he wished; but Mr. Carruth, being used to squirming legatees, understood and came to the point with a candor which made Pelgram wince. After first flippantly suggesting that the plumbing business would at least afford Pelgram the chance to indulge his taste in porcelains, he eased the artist's mind by a phrase as soothing as it was noncommittal.
"You can follow your uncle's will as regards the disposition of his property. That part is sane enough. Whether it was equally sagacious, equally sane, to try to plunge you into the plumbing business is not so clear. We are, therefore, clearly justified if we say that he knew how he wished to dispose of his estate, but his mental condition was such that his legatee felt justified in modifying—in some degree—certain of his requests."
This apologetic theory was finally accepted. Dawes, the manager, whose surplus income had gone into the bank rather than into his liver, purchased the estate's interest, and on the proceeds Stanwood had now for five years been conducting his elaborate studio on Copley Square.
The completion of Miss Maitland's portrait was marked by one of the artist's characteristic functions. By any person in the ordinary walks of life it would have been called a tea, but Pelgram preferred to denominate it a private view. Every time he completed a work that he considered of real importance—relatively more often than modesty might have prescribed—he celebrated the birth of the masterpiece by one of these oddly termed baptisms in tannin. Possibly they were entitled to be called views, as the opus bravely challenged the tea table in popularity, and occasionally won by superior powers of endurance over a necessarily limited supply of edibles, but certainly the privacy was questionable, as to each one of them Stanwood invited nearly every one who might be expected to come.
Fortunately not a large proportion of these actually turned up. Some came because they were under obligations to the artist, and some because he was under obligations to them; some from vague curiosity, and others from sheer ignorance. Those who appeared at such a one as this, where the portrait of a young girl was displayed, were roughly limited to a few easily identified classes. There was centrally the young girl herself, and then there were the members of her family, all radiant except the purchaser of the picture, who customarily showed traces of sobriety and skepticism. There were one or two prospective patrons lured to the trap; some ephemeral sycophants, volunteer or mercenary; a few idle fellow artists who enjoyed seeing a colleague make what they considered to be an exhibition of himself; some inevitable people who went everywhere they were asked, especially when there was a prospect of something to eat; and a few puzzled and lonely-looking souls who could furnish no explanation of their attendance, did not stay very long, and never came a second time.
At this view the role of sycophants was to be played by two young girls who had taken up self-cultivation as a sort of fad, and had somehow become obsessed with the curious idea that art such as was found in Pelgram's studio could assist them in their commendable pursuit of culture. Their host was consequently delighted when, at an early hour, Miss Heatherton and Miss Long arrived, as they had promised to do. Their manifest adoration would produce an admirable spot light in which he might stand during the function, but more than that, he hoped that Helen herself would be impressed by the deep regard in which these fair disciples evidently held him and his work. Miss Heatherton was to pour the tea, and Miss Long was to distribute the thin lettuce sandwiches which formed its somewhat unsubstantial accompaniment.
Miss Heatherton's initial remark demonstrated the fact that, despite her plunge into what her family considered a dangerous part of Bohemia, she had managed to preserve intact her adherence to the traditional in conversational matters. When Pelgram escorted her to the tea table, she bleated a pathetic protest against his positive inhumanity in placing her where the great work was invisible.
"Oh, Mr. Pelgram, you are really cruel! Eleanor, don't you think he might have put me where I could sit and look at that beautiful portrait, and not down here at the other end of the room?"
Miss Long, a tall girl with large liquid eyes and a weak red mouth, languidly murmured a sympathetic assent, and their host smiled deprecatingly, but with an inward glow of satisfaction; such a remark was obviously not inspired by the exact truth, but it was nevertheless pleasant to hear.
"Ah, Miss Heatherton," he replied, "perhaps after all it is better as I have ordered it. For its little hour the picture should reign with its sovereignty unquestioned, while if you were near by—" he broke off meaningly, and Miss Long rewarded his compliment with a bovine glance of rapture, while Miss Heatherton looked modestly down at the teapot. Even to an unaesthetic person the arrangement seemed very good indeed, but rather for the more practical reason that the proximity of food and drink would very likely have distracted the attention of some of the more hungry visitors to such a degree that the work of art might have been comparatively ignored.
The next to arrive were Isabel Hurd and Wilkinson. Wilkinson had not been invited, but on hearing his cousin say that she was starting for the studio, he promptly announced that he would accompany her. He knew that Pelgram disliked him intensely, but he did not feel the slightest hesitation on that account in accepting the artist's hospitality, and in fact quite enjoyed the prospect of a dash into the enemy's country. To be sure, he saw little chance of loot except a trifling modification of his chronic afternoon hunger; but Isabel's society was desirable, and Pelgram appealed vividly to his sense of the ludicrous. His reception was all he could have hoped; his host greeted him with outward affability, but when he extended his hand from the black velvet cuff with the handkerchief tucked into it, his face expressed the hidden anguish of anticipated ridicule to such a degree that Wilkinson felt his visit already justified.
"It is very good of you to come," said the artist, with a forced smile."I had no idea you were interested in art."
"Oh, but I am, though," returned the other, confidently. "I have no idea what it is, but I'm very much interested in it. And every one says I have the artistic temperament in the highest degree. By the way, what is art, anyway? No one ever told me."
Pelgram gave a preliminary cough, and glanced hastily about the room, but calculating that his audience would be larger later on, he restrained himself.
"What is art?" he slowly repeated, half-closing his eyes and smiling mystically on his guests. "What is art?" Miss Long hung breathlessly on his words.
As, however, he seemed more interested in the question than apt to reply to it, Wilkinson moved on toward Miss Heatherton and the tea table, while his place was taken by Miss Maitland and her mother, who had just come into the room.
The studio was presently quite full, and conversation rose to a shriller pitch. The talk was mostly of art. Catch phrases indicative of informality and intimacy with the manufacture of the beautiful were recklessly flung about. The pace quickened. The operations of Miss Heatherton and Miss Long threatened speedily to be terminated because of exhausted resources as well as insufficient space. It was warmer, and there was a queer mixed odor of tea, roses, and paint. John M. Hurd, greatly relieved after he discovered that he was not immediately expected to buy anything, was recounting with animation to a fat man in a frock coat how the basis of the family fortune had been laid by Mr. Hurd's grandfather whose one life rule was never to invest his money in anything west of Albany, New York. One of Pelgram's colleagues had pinned Miss Maitland into a corner and was raptly telling her how great an influence a certain old master of whom she had never heard had exerted on the work of an extraordinarily talented young man from Fall River whose name and pictures alike were entirely unknown to her.
Pelgram went by with his arm familiarly passed through that of a phlegmatic-looking young Chinaman whom he led up to Miss Maitland's portrait. Ling Hop had been cook on a yacht, when an artistic friend of Pelgram's and a parasite of the yacht's owner had discovered one day that the guardian of the galley was a fair draughtsman with some little imagination; and much to his own surprise the Oriental had been snatched from the cook stove and thrust into the artistic arena. It was lucky for him that his scene was set in Boston, which is always sympathetically on edge to embrace exotic genius. In a society delicately attuned to intellectual harmonies from all sources, however strange or weird, the success of a Chinaman possessing the slightest facility with the brush was assured from the first. His industrious compatriots in the local laundries, themselves more impassionate critics, doubtless regarded Ling Hop as an impudent charlatan; but Boston in its most restricted and exclusive sense looked at his work with interest and respect, though sadly without humor. The guest stood silently before the portrait, scanning it earnestly, almost with anxiety, blinking his almond eyes behind his shell-rimmed glasses. As, however, he did not know enough about the technique of painting to offer a sensible appreciation, he wisely confined himself to a very few vaguely eulogistic monosyllables, which seemed greatly to gratify the artist.
"Ah," said Ling Hop, "delicate—delicate!" the adjective being pronounced with a haunting repetition of its most melodious letter. Years of more or less familiarity with the English language had not been able to efface his racial penchant for the labial. One might naturally suppose that to compress a native alphabet of some one hundred and twenty-six letters into one of twenty-six would result in much confusion and some inexplicable preferences, but no one has ever been able to point out why the functions of the extra hundred should have to be assumed by the letter "l" alone.
But to Pelgram the vague liquid sound fell dulcetly on the ear, and by Miss Long and Miss Heatherton no flaw in this art criticism could be discerned. And the artist, glancing about him, saw with gratification that, in addition to the two young ladies, there had by some vague current of motion been swept into his immediate vicinity human flotsam to the extent of perhaps half a dozen irresponsible souls, ignorant that their immediate fate was to be not guests, but auditors.
"Do you feel that? I strove for it," he said in a clear, penetrating voice, calculated to attract the attention, if not the interest, of those even outside the charmed though widening circle. "I strove for just that, feeling that here, above all, it was the one desideratum. At times I feared—" he turned to the impassive Mongolian a puckered forehead—"that I might be sacrificing somewhat of the virile. But no! I said—surely I can sacrifice all things, all considerations, save one."
"You were right," said Ling Hop, cryptically, feeling that he was called upon to say something, but still with that faint adumbration of the inevitable letter.
"In these days of strange, wild gods, in whose temples the heathen riot in flames and flares and orgies of color, it seems to me incumbent upon the saner among the craft to cling perhaps closer than ever to the great canons that the great masters have set forth for us. What do these new men worship? Color—color—blobs and blotches of raw, crude color! They think of nothing else, these barbarians. Let drawing, arrangement, construction even, go—they say—and with bloodshot eyes they dance in one wild debauch of life and light! It is not art!"
Casting an imperceptibly alert eye to right and left, Pelgram saw that he was now in possession of the maximum audience he was likely to achieve. In a near-by corner, blockaded by three attentive gentlemen who seemed much less interested in art than in nature, sat Miss Maitland, within easy though obstructed earshot. She could hardly help hearing, and with an inward sigh of satisfaction the artist gave himself over utterly to the exordium which for some inexplicable reason formed the nucleus of his idea of a properly conducted studio affair. He felt that he was going to be very eloquent, and he felt reasonably secure from interruption, for no one in that company would have the temerity to question, on his own hearthstone, his pronunciamentos. No one,—except perhaps the irrepressible Wilkinson,—and it was with the greatest relief that he beheld Charlie safely out of hearing and engaged in rapt converse with Isabel.
"Yes, those of us who believe, who still hold the immortal things sacred, have a great trust vested in us. It is for us, the few still faithful, to keep the lustral fires pure from defilement by the unbelievers. What would the great draughtsmen of old, the great true colorists among the masters, say if we should betray them to the wild, criminal vagaries of these falsest of false prophets?"
He turned savagely upon Ling Hop, who replied, with entire truth, and with a certain feeling for caution which showed that he could be trusted in any crisis:—
"Yes. What?"
"They swarm with muddy feet through the safest, surest halls of art of all time. They do not hesitate to say that arrangement—arrangement!—is not a necessity in a work of art. They say construction is not vital. They care nothing of whether nature at the moment is right or wrong—whether there is a combination of circumstances worthy of reproduction—but they throw their pictures on the canvas in any way they chance to come. And what pictures! Raw, flaunting things, with no care given to balance, none to line, none to color! It would be unbelievable—if it were not true."
Miss Heatherton, on whom his inspired gaze at this juncture rested, closed her eyes, as though she feared to disturb even by a glance the continuity of this astonishing harangue. At the footstool of Olympus sat Miss Long, in patient ecstasy.
"These painters—anarchists of the craft, I call them—would force us to leave off painting quiet interiors," continued Pelgram, lowering his voice with mournful impressiveness, "because, forsooth, interiors are inane, undramatic things unless relieved by color! Notourcolor, but the bright, blazing color that roars and raves. Still-lifes they condemn unless they swim in seas of pure emotion. For with them color is emotion, emotion color. . . . To be sure,weknow better, but I repeat that a heavy charge is on us. We must march loyally forward, keeping our banners high. We must go on painting a modest lady, dressed in dark blue, sitting on a gray chair with a shiny wooden floor beneath her—to show that these things can sometimes make an artistic harmony worthy of being translated for all time into a picture that shall never die. What if this has been done ten thousand times before? The old gods are jealous gods, and at the ten thousandth time they take their own at last."
"Yes. At last," said Ling Hop, observing that a response was expected of him.
Pelgram turned to the portrait.
"And this!—portrait painting!—to which all the masters finally turn.What wouldthey—these colorists—make out of portrait painting?"
Evidently his mind recoiled from the thought, for he turned aside with a gesture of resignation. And Miss Long and Miss Heatherton were never to know what horrid fate awaited portrait painting attheirhands, for from the rim of the circle came the cheerful voice of Wilkinson:—
"Money, old chap, money. That's what they'd make out of portrait painting. And after all, that's the only satisfactory standard of success, established for every school of art—what will the picture bring? Now isn't that so?"
Pelgram's upper lip drew viciously back from his teeth; Wilkinson, pleasantly advancing, smiled with content; the flotsam had floated away as noiselessly as youth; and the artist, collecting his forces to reply, saw that, except for the two rapt sycophants at his elbow, he was alone. He laughed a short laugh.
"With many, no doubt it is," he snapped.
His adversary continued his placid progress down the room until he reached the tea table, where immediately he could be heard inquiring whether the diminutive "arrangements in green and white" were intended for lettuce sandwiches.
Pelgram glanced quickly toward where Miss Maitland still sat, surrounded by her attentive friends. It seemed hardly likely that she could have missed Charlie's distressing incursion into a monologue to which he had not been invited, but the girl seemed so wholly occupied that the painter took heart. His ruffled self-esteem preened itself anew, and he moved circuitously toward the object of his concern in as disinterested a manner as he could assume. At the sight of their host, the other members of Miss Maitland's group took occasion inconspicuously to drift away, being moved either by hunger or by good nature or by fear lest the monologue recommence. All but one obtuse youth who neither stirred nor displayed any tendency so to do.
"Before you go I want to show you that full length of Mrs. Warburton," the artist suggested pointedly to Helen. Her only attitude was affable resignation; she accepted the inevitable as gracefully as possible, and they strolled across the end of the studio to an alcove where a number of canvases stood coyly awaiting beholders. Several tall potted plants nearly hid the alcove from the studio at large, and Pelgram noted with satisfaction that the remaining guests were mostly grouped about Wilkinson at the other end. He turned, to gain time for thought, to the pile of frames in the corner, and presently pulled forth the portrait of which he had spoken.
"Not so interesting an arrangement as I made of you," he commented.
"I might just as well have been a sandwich," was the girl's immediate thought, but she replied politely, "No."
"I would certainly have been hopelessly lacking in talent of any sort if I had not been able to do something really fine from the chance you offered me," he went on.
Feeling quite uncomfortable and not knowing exactly what to say to this, Helen said nothing. The artist, assuming that her silence implied her permission for him to continue, cleared his throat for what he felt should be a master effort.
"Miss Maitland," he said, regarding her gravely, "it is naturally not for me to say, but I sincerely believe that your portrait is a work of real merit. And whatever slight ability I may possess has of course been freely spent on it. But there is something else to consider—there is ability, but there is also the element of inspiration, and whatever I may have lacked in the one you have bountifully given me in the other. If others should think the portrait a success, I must thank not myself but you. And beyond the success of the picture itself, which at best can only be for a day, you have given me what no one ever gave me before—you must know what that may be."
"You are entirely welcome, I'm sure," his visitor replied, in considerable embarrassment. It was not exactly what she meant to say, and the egotism of the artist immediately misconstrued it.
"Helen," he said, "the painting of your portrait has been a perilous adventure for me. Up to the time I began it, I lived in a world alone, and I thought only of my art. My model was always a thing wholly subordinate; after the picture was completed I never cared whether I ever saw the subject again. But as you came here day after day, my art seemed of less importance, and you came forward more and more. And finally I have found that nothing matters—nothing counts—but you."
Miss Maitland did not answer. She was conscious only of wondering whether she were going to be able to escape from that alcove before she had expressed to her host her actual opinion of him and all his works, and she rather feared her powers of repression would prove unequal to the occasion. And her opinion of him was at its nadir. With unerring maladroitness Pelgram had chosen the time of all others when his star was burning with its feeblest flame. She continued to sit passively, while the waves of the artist's eloquence rolled over her.
"I will not ask you if you love me—it is enough to tell you that I love you more than all the world. But can you not give me one single word of hope?"
He paused expectantly.
Helen hesitated. Still persisted the naughty longing to break forth and say her will, but she knew it would be wrong. After all, there had been in Pelgram's plea as much genuine sincerity as there could be in anything of his, and she felt that her wish to be utterly candid was a childish and unworthy one.
"Mr. Pelgram," she said at length, "if I should give you any hope, it would be unjust and unkind to you, for I feel that I could never care for you in the way you wish me to. I respect your ability, but that is not enough. Please do not speak of this again. You are an artist, and there ought to be for you enough in the world to keep you happy—even without me."
Pelgram grew a little pale. To him, who had such difficulty in being real, this was very real. And seeing it, the girl softened.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm really more sorry than I can tell you."
And then she had cause for repentance, for the artist, with an effort, drew all his pride to aid him. And his proud mood was by no means his best. The only redeeming feature of the valedictory was that finally it was over.
Helen, looking a trifle jaded, walked homeward under the escort of Isabel and Wilkinson. She was quite silent, and Isabel, suspecting trouble, said little for her part.
Not so Charlie, who held forth fluently, with the exhilaration one feels on coming out of a hot church and dashing off in a touring car.
"Well," he said, "certain unfriendly persons have studiously circulated the impression that I am eligible for the Paresis Club—a chucklehead, in fact. But you will have to admit that I never give Private Views. You must concede that I do not inflict on my friends my opinions about crude color. Why, there must be several hundred things I don't do!"
"Thank Heaven you don't!" remarked Miss Maitland.
It was one minute before eleven when the card of Mr. Charles Wilkinson was borne gingerly, by a large youth from South Framingham who served as door boy, into the presence of Mr. Hurd. That gentleman, reading the bit of pasteboard with a grunt which might have been indicative of any one of a dozen invidious sentiments, opened the proximate corner of his mouth.
"Send him in," came from the brief orifice.
A moment later Mr. Wilkinson stood in the presence of his prey. Or perchance—but no, this was to be Marengo, not Waterloo—and above all, not Moscow. Something of this was in his eyes when he lifted them to meet those of his distinguished relation.
"Are you at liberty for a few moments?" he soberly inquired. He took care to delete every vestige of animation from his tone and manner, and so radical a change did this effect that his step-uncle blinked. A man as keen as John M. Hurd could not be blind to a mutation so great. He looked Mr. Wilkinson over with more care than he had ever employed before, for he recognized at once that this was no ordinary visit.
"I am as much at liberty as I am likely to be," he replied noncommittally.
His visitor wistfully and somewhat suggestively eyed a chair, but made no move to be seated. He felt that, no matter how the interview was to close, punctiliousness should begin it.
"Be seated," said Mr. Hurd, briefly.
"I have come to see you, sir," his young relative began, feeling his way cautiously, "with reference to a matter that I have never mentioned to you, although I have been studying it for some time. Perhaps you may be of the opinion that if it were of paramount importance I could have presented it to you without a long preliminary investigation. But each of us has to work in his own way, and this affair was of a sort in which I had little or no previous experience. The result was that it has taken me a considerable time to formulate my idea, and I want you to give it a fair opportunity to sink in, so to speak, before you reach any decision."
With his curiosity somewhat stirred, his hearer grunted a qualified assent.
"I have, of course, fortified myself by the possession of facts,—actual facts, sir,—and without them I should not have trespassed on your time, for I must tell you at once that my proposition concerns itself with the fire insurance of the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company."
The knowledge that this was probably the most perilous point in his passage would have caused Wilkinson to hurry past with all possible speed, but his uncle interrupted him with a grim laugh.
"That need give you no concern, my young friend," he said curtly, "for the company does not carry any insurance."
A trace of Mr. Wilkinson's normal impudence returned momentarily to his tone when he replied:—
"My dear sir, didn't I say that I had made a long preliminary investigation of this? You can scarcely hold my intelligence at so low a figure as to think that I didn't knowthatfact. That's why I'm here—because Idoknow it."
It may have been the effect of the return to the normal in his step-nephew's tone, or it may have been merely Mr. Hurd's business method, which expelled his next remark from sardonic lips.
"Then you need but one more fact to make your knowledge of the subject complete, and that I will now give you. Not only does my company carry no insurance, but it never intends or expects to. Is there anything else this morning?"
Charlie smiled calmly, unmoved.
"Now we are ready to begin, sir. You have disbelieved in insurance so strongly and so long that such a remark was exactly what I expected you to make. In fact, I should have been not only surprised, but positively embarrassed, had you not made it. Now, I repeat, we are ready to talk business. And I have your promise to listen to my plan."
It did not occur to the magnate that he had made no such promise, untilWilkinson was well launched; after that, he forgot about it.
"Did any one ever call to your attention, sir, the fact that the statistics show that the fire losses on traction schedules in the Eastern states exceed the insurance premiums on those schedules by nearly thirty-five per cent?"
Mr. Hurd shook his head shortly.
"I did not know it."
Wilkinson did not know it either, but it could not be disproved, and served excellently as a gambit.
"And I am not interested in other traction companies' fires," added his uncle.
"No, of course not. But the law of average works in the end. Your properties are subject to exactly the same conditions and hazards as others, and in the end the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company will incur more in losses than it would ever have to pay in premiums. In the long run the average wins. So far you have been surprisingly fortunate, and that is another reason why you should begin now to insure. The law of average is perfectly inexorable, and every year of low losses brings you nearer the big losses that are bound to come. You've been gambling, and now is the time to play safe."
"Perhaps, my boy," Mr. Hurd replied with amusement, "you believe these things that you quote so glibly. Perhaps not. Let us assume that you do. Therefore let me ask you this: if the insurance companies pay more losses than they get in premiums on traction schedules, why don't they cut off this loss by ceasing to insure them? Hey?"
"Oh, lots of them do," Wilkinson returned easily. "A few of the others may have had a streak of luck for a few years, just as you have had, but the rest take it all in the day's work, think that the rates may go up on account of the bad record of the class and then it would be an advantage to have the business on their books, or else they try to make it up on other better paying classes. And besides, they have the use of the money which is paid in premiums during good years when losses are light." Not for nothing had he listened to the painstaking explanations of Cole, and whatever his eccentricities, Charlie had a native shrewdness hardly second to that of old John M. himself. Perhaps the older man was thinking of this when he next spoke.
"Then it has probably occurred to you that the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company can do the same thing—and does. I use the interest and profits of my insurance fund which I have accumulated by not paying premiums, to pay losses. How about that?"
"That would be all right if your properties were widely enough distributed. But they're not. Some day you'll get a big loss, which will wipe out your interest, profits, and fund all together for twenty years. Your fund's all right for cars that burn on the road or for small fires; but what if something big went? And the insurance money would come in very nicely when you most needed it. You'd have trouble enough on your hands without having to go out and raise money, too, if your new Pemberton Street barn should burn up with half a million dollars' worth of cars in it—which it is quite possible it may do at almost any time."
"What! The new barn?" said the magnate, incredulously. "Why, my boy, that barn is the latest thing in fireproof construction! There isn't a stick of wood in that building from cellar to attic."
"And the cars, are they fireproof, too?"
John M. Hurd looked up sharply.
"No," he said slowly. "No, I don't suppose they are. . . . Still, there's nothing to set the cars afire. They're safe enough in that building. Nothing can happen to them there."
"The building itself is not located on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean," said his nephew, thoughtfully. "Itmightbe exposed to a serious fire in some of the neighboring buildings—that big paper-box factory, for example, across the alley to the south. Theremight, in fact,"—he paused—"theremightbe a general fire in that part of Boston."
"A conflagration, you mean? Nonsense! Boston is safe as a church."
"Probably safer than St. Stephen's, out in Cambridge, that burned to the ground last week," returned his visitor, with a smile.
"To be sure," said Mr. Hurd, hastily. "But there'll never be a big, sweeping fire in Boston."
"Why not? There was one once."
"Forty years ago. That's no criterion. Things are very different now. This is a modern city we're talking about—half the buildings down town are fireproof or nearly so. Modern cities don't burn the way older ones did."
"Baltimore did, as you may recall; also San Francisco. And they were modern—as modern as Boston. Therearepeople—not Bostonians, of course—who would consider them more so."
"Come now, do you mean to tell me any one honestly believes there is any danger of another really big fire here?" rejoined Mr. Hurd, almost contemptuously; but under the surface Charlie believed that his attitude of contempt was more or less assumed. He believed he had made a distinct impression, and it was therefore almost with a gambler's instinct that he brought forth his trump card.
"I tell you, sir," he said, with all the impressiveness he could command, "that the best technical engineers—not alarmists, but men who are careful students of such things—agree that the danger here is as great as in any of the big cities of the United States. The conflagration hazard in the congested district of Boston is not a thing one can exactly calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate its gravity."
Mr. Hurd regarded him with amazement.
"Would you mind repeating that?" he asked at length.
"Certainly not, since I know it to be true. I say that the conflagration hazard in the congested district of Boston is not a thing one can exactly calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate its gravity."
The traction magnate walked slowly to the window, and looked out. On the sunny pavements below him people were going back and forth on their various concerns. Around the corner came the familiar delivery wagon of a well-known dealer in wholesale groceries. Somehow the sight of these common things restored to Mr. Hurd his ordinary tranquillity of mind, which he now saw had been disturbed by the astonishing utterances of his plausible young relation. He smiled rather grimly when he thought of how near he had come to being impressed by what Charlie had said. Of course, there could be nothing in it; certainly not, from such a source. It was the old John M. Hurd who turned again to face his visitor, who with but one card left to play awaited breathlessly but with outward nonchalance the effect of his cherished speech.
"Well, I've enjoyed talking this over with you, Charlie," the older man said with candor. "There's something in what you say, too. Perhaps our insurance fund isn't as large as it ought to be. But I couldn't consider carrying insurance for the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company. And why are you so interested in this, all of a sudden, anyway?"
"Partly philanthropic and partly mercenary," said his nephew, easily. "Philanthropic, because I would like to do something of real benefit to the most distinguished member of my family—who least needs my assistance; mercenary, because I need the money. I rather expect you to let me have charge of the placing of this insurance, sir."
"Well, Charlie, I don't mind saying that you've made a better impression than any of these other insurance men that occasionally get into my office, and if I were going to take out insurance on the traction properties, I believe I'd let you make your commission on it. But I'm not. And now I must ask you to excuse me."
"Oh, I've not quite finished," returned Wilkinson. As he was in for it now, he would see it through. "I think you're making a mistake, sir; and there are still one or two aspects of the matter which you have not considered."
"And what may they be?" inquired his uncle. "Please remember I'm a busy man."
His visitor reflected briefly. He did not know whether to play his last card slowly and carefully or to slam it face upward with enough force to make the table rattle. He decided on the latter method; after all, to succeed with John M. Hurd one did well to make him blink.
"Thereissuch an institution as the Stock Exchange," he said blandly.
Mr. Hurd looked at him.
"Massachusetts Traction has been considered a very substantial security," Wilkinson went on, "so safe that its market value fluctuates very little, and so well regarded that the banks generally accept its stock as collateral at very nearly its market value. They accept it as a matter of course because they know its dividends are fully earned and paid regularly, and they have confidence in your management and don't go into the details. Your company has no bonded indebtedness; the bonds were all converted into stock years ago; if it was bonded, the bondholders would compel you to insure, whether you wished to or not. Perhaps the banks have forgotten that you are not forced to carry insurance, and are taking it for granted that you are exercising ordinary prudence along this line and insuring just the same. Suppose—only suppose—the intelligence should become diffused among certain gentlemen of State Street that you are likely to lose three quarters of a million dollars by fire if your new Pemberton Street car barn should go and the power house adjoining it be seriously damaged, and to meet such a loss you had an insurance fund of thirty thousand dollars. Do you suppose your stock would be quite so popular as collateral as it is now?"
He paused for a reply, but none came.
"Of course none of the directors of the company ever borrow money on that stock. . . . Need I say more, sir?"
It was evident that there was no need. If there were any of the directors who didnotborrow money on the stock, Mr. Hurd could not think of them offhand. Once more he walked to the window, and this time he looked long and thoughtfully out over the level roofs.
"Your point is not badly taken. And in one thing you are probably right—State Street, if left to itself, would never raise the question," he said, half to himself. But Wilkinson's reply was ready and obvious.
"There are so many thoughtless people," he said softly. "One never can tell when such news might leak out."
His uncle surveyed him sternly. But Charlie's cryptic gaze met his uncle's, undisturbed.
"Some onemighttell," he gently observed, and said no more.
It was some time before Mr. Hurd raised a thoughtful yet somewhat amused face to that of his caller.
"I'll consider the matter," he said tersely.
"I thank you, sir," replied Charles, with graceful humility, which he dared assume since his case seemed won. And a moment later South Framingham's one time pride watched his exit through the grille gate into the descending elevator.
As Wilkinson started blithely across the Common, he caught sight of a familiar figure advancing along one of the diagonal paths. He quickened his already jocund step to meet Miss Maitland at the intersection of their ways.
"Whither away so briskly this hungry noon?" he inquired with enthusiasm. "If it were not for the fact that I am in search of some one to ask me to luncheon, I would ask you to come and lunch with me."
"Then if I were really quite hungry, which I am after an hour in this autumn air, I should decline your gallant invitation with regret, and say that I am on my way to lunch with Uncle Silas at the Club."
Charlie was on the point of telling her his news—but changed his intent. After all, his were incubator chickens at best, and perhaps it would be wiser to postpone a public enumeration of them. So he merely replied, "I trust you will have a pleasant luncheon."
"The same to you, and many of them—consecutively," replied the girl, with a laugh.
"Now, that's what I call a friendly speech," rejoined her escort, and the two went their separate ways.
At the club whose billiard players have the almost unique privilege between masse shots of regarding at close range the tombstones of an aristocratic cemetery, Helen and her uncle were comfortably lingering over their demi-tasses before Mr. Osgood's guest gave speech to the thoughts within her.
"You are a dear to give me this luncheon," she began.
The old gentleman bowed a courtly head.
"I have been envied, I think, by all my more youthful fellow members here," he said. "And that is very pleasant, even when one might be supposed to have passed the age of vanity."
"Thank you, Uncle Silas. No one of your fellow members could have said a nicer thing than that." She fingered her coffee cup. "But I had a reason for inviting myself—practically—to lunch with you. I want to ask your advice."
"I'm afraid I should be inclined in advance to let you do exactly as you liked, my child," said the other, with a smile. "But what is it? I hope it's not trouble of any sort."
"No—it's not trouble, exactly," his niece responded. "It's more like—well, like dissatisfaction. I am awfully tired of being a perfectly useless person, with no definite end and aim. You don't suppose it's because I see every day the girls coming down to work, on the Massachusetts Avenue cars, do you? I went a little while ago to my doctor's because I thought perhaps there was something the matter with me, and he suggested a change of air, but I think he mixed up the cause with the effect. Perhaps I do need a change, but it's a change of interests and a change of what I see and hear and talk about."
"Commonly termed a vacation," said Mr. Osgood.
"Yes, a vacation—that's it. Not a vacation fromdoinganything, because I've done nothing, but a vacation from the atmosphere I've been living in."
"You mean the artistic atmosphere?" her uncle asked. "You are a little tired of—"
"I'm more than a little—I'm horribly tired of imitations and poses and make-believes. I want to see things and people who really live, who don't exist by the light of crimson-shaded globes and spend their days dreaming about impressions and arrangements and tones and shadows."
Helen wound up this diminutive tirade with quite a little flourish, andMr. Osgood looked thoughtfully across the table at her.
"Why don't you run down to New York?" he suggested. "I'm sure yourAunt Mary Wardrop would be delighted to have you come for a visit."
"Yes. I thought of that. I should like to go there, and I had almost decided to. But can't you suggest something for me todo? Aunt Mary's principal occupation is abusing thenouveaux riches, and one merely has to agree with her, which is not at all difficult. If I had anything todohere, I'd rather stay than go. Of course New York is quite a change from Boston—there can be no doubt about that. But—don't you see what I mean, Uncle Silas?"
"I think I do—somewhat, my dear. You are a little restless, and you think that because the things you do are small they are less real. That is not so—small things can be made very interesting if one does them with enthusiasm. Take my own business, for example. It is possibly just a 'business' to you, like any other, but that is because you have not seen it from the inside. To me it is absolutely vital. I don't know of another business so interesting."
"Really!" the girl answered. "I thought it was just getting people to buy insurance policies, very much as you would have gotten them to buy sugar if you had been in the grocery business. If it's so interesting, why couldn't I come down to your office and learn about it? I'm sure I could be of some use—I'm quite quick at figures."
"I fear you'd be disappointed," said Mr. Osgood. "I'm afraid I must admit that adding up columns of figures is very much the same in one business as in another. And as I said, to find the real interest you should see a business from the inside. My office is not the inside—it's only part way in. The real inside, the center of the web, is the home office of some big company. I'm only a local agent, you understand; you would only see one phase of the business in my office. But if you went to New York, I could arrange that you might visit the home office of one of the New York companies, if you would like."
"I think I would," said Miss Maitland.
"Then I will give you a letter to Mr. James Wintermuth, one of my oldest and closest friends and the head of the Guardian Fire Insurance Company of New York. And some morning, if you find time hanging heavy on your hands, you can go down to William Street. And if you don't arrive before ten o'clock, I think Mr. Wintermuth will be pleased to show you something real—and something which has not a purple shadow in its possession."
"Then you really think it would be a good thing for me to go to NewYork?" his niece asked.
"Decidedly. I'd write your aunt to-day, if I were you. Now that she has your portrait, she would probably like a chance to compare it with the original."
"On the contrary, she may think, that having so recent a copy, the original would be superfluous."
"I fancy I'd risk it," her uncle returned, with a smile, as they rose from the table.
And so it was arranged. Helen's mother entered her expected protest, and was promptly overruled. Trunks were packed and letters were written; among them one by Silas Osgood to James Wintermuth. And at length, as September was drawing to a close, Miss Maitland boarded the Knickerbocker Limited one day, and the town of her nativity was speedily left behind her.
On the very afternoon of her departure the office of the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company was the scene of an unusual, and, to most of the participants, a disquieting conference. The shimmering face of the big, dark, mahogany table reflected many a perplexed expression, and its substantial supports found their impeccable varnish menaced by a number of restless and uneasy boots. The directors of the company, assembled for their monthly meeting, found that, instead of the customary conventionality of procedure, a thing strangely impertinent and unexpected demanded their surprised attention.
Ordinarily these meetings were simple in the extreme, being merely ratifications of what the President had done and approvals of what he said he purposed to do. To the somewhat bored group of representative financial figureheads around the table Mr. Hurd would read a sheet of figures telling how many million miles the company had carried one passenger during the previous month—such reports are always reduced to absurdities—and would inform them of such plans as he chose to intrust to their confidence, and would then suggest the declaration of the usual dividend. To this the directors would unanimously assent. Then they punctiliously received each man his golden eagle, and a motion to adjourn closed the ceremony.
To-day had come an astonishing innovation in procedure. Instead of suavely instructing them what they should vote to do, Mr. Hurd was behaving in a most oddly uncharacteristic fashion. He was asking their advice. This amounted to abouleversement suprêmeof the usual order of things, and it was no wonder that there was disquietude among his hearers.
"It has been represented to me," he had tersely said, "that if a large fire should involve our Pemberton Street barn and power house, notwithstanding the presumably fireproof construction of those buildings, we should quite likely incur a much larger loss than we would find it convenient to pay at a time when additional financing might be somewhat embarrassing. I am therefore laying before you gentlemen the question of doing what we have never previously done, and carrying fire insurance on our properties. I prefer not to advise you, and suggest an open discussion of the matter."
Mr. Hurd sat down; his directors surveyed one another and the situation with concern. Could the old man be losing his grip, or was this merely a transient eccentricity? In the debate which followed the President took no part; only once, in answer to a question by Mr. Jonas Green, much the most penurious man at the table, as to what had brought the question up at the present time, Mr. Green being an enthusiastic exponent of the doctrine oflaissez fairewhen any additional expenditure was proposed, Mr. Hurd made reply:—
"It is represented to me that if it became public knowledge that we carry no insurance, banking and financial institutions generally may come to feel that our conservatism is open to criticism and that they are rating our stock somewhat too highly as collateral. It is intimated that some of us might conceivably be annoyed by requests to substitute in part other collateral or somewhat reduce loans secured by Massachusetts Traction stock."
"But so far as the banks are concerned, we're in exactly the same position we've always been. How is the fact we don't insure going to become public knowledge now any more than in the past?" persisted Mr. Green.
"It is suggested that news spreads—if not of its own volatility, at least with only the most trifling assistance. And that, I take it," concluded Mr. Hurd, "will be supplied."
Mr. Green's face grew almost purple.
"Why!" he exclaimed, "that's—that's pretty close to blackmail!"
The President's lips half concealed the merest trace of a smile.
"Possibly," he assented. "But I am inclined to think it is business."
The controversy continued. And Mr. Hurd, listening, found himself more and more moved to austere amusement by the effect of Charlie's suave proposal. When he had placed the matter before the directorate, it was because he himself had not made up his mind on the question of its desirability. He had slowly come to feel that his personal prejudice against carrying insurance should not be made forcibly to apply to the policy of a corporation, in which many others were interested, and he felt that he would prefer to shift the responsibility on this point to the gentlemen who presumably were paid for deciding just such things. And as he listened, he found growing upon him the hope that Charlie's plan would be adopted. This hope, unexpressed, was so utterly out of keeping with what he had supposed to be his convictions that he strangled it without a qualm. It was, he supposed, dead, when he sat up at the further request of Mr. Jonas Green to answer a few additional queries.
"Tell me," said Mr. Green, "do you honestly believe there's a particle of danger of a big fire in this city? Pooh!" He dismissed the subject almost contemptuously.
Some odd chord of recollection stirred in Mr. Hurd. Almost unconsciously he responded:—
"The best technical engineers—not alarmists, but men who are careful students of such things—agree that the conflagration hazard in the congested district of Boston is not a thing one can exactly calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate its gravity."
The sounding syllables passed from his lips with a faint, far echo which he found vaguely but unidentifiably familiar. But into the group around the long table the utterance fell with cryptic, crucial solemnity. Only Mr. Green, stubbornly contentious to the last, and thinking anxiously of both horns of the dilemma at once, found voice or will to reply.
"You don't say so!" he said feebly.
"I do," Mr. Hurd coolly rejoined. "And now, gentlemen, the motion is in order: Shall the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company insure its properties against loss by fire?"
And when the motion was put, there was no dissenting voice.
Of this somewhat unprecedented meeting the close at least was normal. But Mr. Jonas Green grasped his ten dollar gold piece more firmly than ever as he passed through the doorway.