Mr. Murch looked at O'Connor with more respect.
"That sounds plausible. How much would it cost—in round numbers?"
"Our reinsurance reserve is about $1,500,000. I should think a company might be found to take it over for about two thirds of that sum. You see, we have a valuable agency plant and a good business, and although you want to get rid of it, it would be considered by most companies as well worth having. The company that took over our risks wouldn't let them expire; that company would hold on to them and secure them on renewal."
"How can this be arranged?" Mr. Murch inquired.
It was like cutting off his right hand to reply, O'Connor reflected, but he did so.
"Mr. Simeon Belknap usually manages such matters," he said. "Naturally he doesn't manage them for nothing; but he does the trick, and he's much the best man for it. He has probably engineered four fifths of the important reinsurance deals that have gone through in this country. No one has ever discovered why these things gravitate so unerringly to him—but they do. He will undoubtedly be pleased to find you a reinsurer for the Salamander."
He rose from his seat. It was perfectly evident that the game was over, and only the tumult and shouting remained to die away. But Mr. Murch was not entirely through.
"Suppose we ask Mr. Belknap to come and talk it over," he proposed.
O'Connor shook his head.
"Don't do it. It would hurt your market. If he were seen coming in here at this time, the whole Street would know we were in trouble and getting ready to quit. It would be better to make an appointment with him somewhere else."
"As you say," agreed Murch. "Please arrange one for us as soon as possible."
"All right," said the man whom this operation would leave bare of position and prestige alike. "I'll get him on the phone at once."
It was late that afternoon when a three-cornered interview took place in a down-town office somewhat outside the customary espionage of William Street. Most of the talking was done by Mr. Simeon Belknap, who talked crisply and to the point.
"The figures you have given me, Mr. Murch," he said, "indicate that the Salamander's capital is impaired to the probable extent of several hundred thousand dollars. I assume from your coming to me in this way, that you have decided that it is not worth while trying to put the company on its feet. Is that correct?"
"How much would it cost to keep going?" asked the financier, bluntly.
"I should think you would have to assess your stock one hundred and fifty dollars a share. Yes, it would take $750,000 to put the Salamander in a position to continue in business with proper resources."
"Eliminate that possibility from the discussion," said Mr. Murch, tersely; and O'Connor's last faint hope died.
"There remains, then, to find some company willing to take over your outstanding business. Your present reinsurance reserve is about $1,500,000. Your available assets over capital, including your real estate and everything, will bring approximately $1,800,000. Mr. O'Connor tells me you will pay in Boston about $700,000. This leaves you $1,100,000. For this sum, or perhaps a little less, you can probably reinsure all your business now in force, leaving you, let us say, with your capital stock intact and perhaps $100,000 over."
"In other words," said Mr. Murch, "we'll get for our liquidated stock about 120;—stock which sold last week at 210!"
"Precisely. If I can get you a reinsurer on the terms I mentioned. And I think you'll be getting out pretty well. You're impaired right now, you know."
Mr. Murch's financial vanity was touched.
"After all," he said, with an effort, "I probably averaged only 150 for mine. I've got pretty fair dividends on it for some time. That'll get me out pretty nearly even. Well, Mr. Belknap, if you can arrange to reinsure the Salamander on those terms, go ahead."
"The directors of the company—?" said Belknap, suggestively.
"I either own or control a majority of the stock," replied Mr. Murch.
There was no more to be said. The President and the majority stockholder of a corporation whose days were numbered walked back to the office with hardly a word spoken between them.
These were troublous times in William Street. The Salamander was not the only company which had been hard hit in Boston. Many of the smaller underwriting institutions were tottering very close to the wall. Already two failures were known; a dozen others were suspected. But in Boston, where the stricken city lay impatiently waiting, most of the companies already had men on the ground, adjusting and paying claims. The Boston insurance district had fortunately been left untouched, so that the local records were intact, making the work of the adjusters much simpler than it would otherwise have been.
Whence was the money to come—this golden flood which now began to pour from a hundred coffers into the empty pockets of the sufferers? The large companies, for the most part, were paying without discount or delay, and the line of claimants at the Boston offices and adjustment bureaus never ceased. In New York, in London, in Hartford, wherever insurance companies had their home offices, securities were being converted into cash to meet this tremendous demand. And the golden stream that flowed toward Boston knew no stop.
Of all the companies doing a general business in the East, the Guardian had come through least scathed, its withers unwrung. Thanks to the raiding of its Boston business by the Salamander, the Guardian's loss, which was confined wholly to three-year and five-year lines unexpired, would not much exceed, according to Smith's computation, $100,000, even if all its claims were adjusted as total.
Smith's first work on reaching the home office had been to compute the actual liability of the Guardian; his second was a similar calculation for a corporation in which he had no financial interest whatever. He was engaged in this task when Mr. Wintermuth entered the office.
"Ah, Richard," said his chief, "I'm glad to see you safe. An insurance man in a fire is like a duck in a pond; but I'm glad to see you here, just the same. A terrible calamity!—a really terrible calamity! How much did we get? Wagstaff estimated it at one hundred and forty thousand, but of course we can't tell how far the fire actually went."
"He was pretty close to my figures," said Smith, with a smile. "It was a terrible calamity, sir, but not so terrible as if the Guardian had a half a million loss—instead of $107,500 at the outside limit."
"Are those the figures you have there?" inquired the President, glancing at the list on his subordinate's desk.
"No. I sent that list with the daily reports to the loss department. This is another one—even more interesting on some accounts. This is a list of the lines we didn't get."
"Ah! You mean—?" said Mr. Wintermuth.
"These are the lines that we have lost since we went out of the Osgood office."
"Indeed! What is the total?" asked the other man, with interest.
"I haven't quite finished, but I should say it would come close to $350,000."
"Which I suppose the Salamander got. I don't like to rejoice in other men's misfortunes, Richard, but there is a certain element of justice in that," said the older man, gravely.
"What interests me is, how much more than that they got," Smith returned. "Don't forget that Cole is clever, but not the careful underwriter Mr. Osgood is, and that O'Connor was out to make a record for premium income. If the Salamander's loss up there is less than $600,000, I shall be surprised."
"Their surplus isn't as much as that, is it? That will impair them."
"On the first of January their surplus was a little less than half a million."
"Oh, well," Mr. Wintermuth returned, "I suppose they'll assess their stockholders. That man Murch will probably get up an underwriting syndicate to handle it."
"But suppose he doesn't. Suppose they decide to reinsure and quit.Murch has the reputation of being a bad loser," said Smith, slowly.
His chief looked at him.
"Let them reinsure, then. But how does that affect us?" he said.
"Why shouldn't we reinsure them?" said the Vice-President.
"What!" exclaimed Mr. Wintermuth. "What's that you say?"
"I say," returned Smith, "that the Salamander is far more likely to reinsure than to stand a heavy assessment. And we want that business of theirs. We have a little score to settle with the Salamander, sir."
"Yes, yes," admitted the President. "O'Connor has treated us very badly; still, it has worked out very fortunately for us. And at any rate," he added, "I do not believe in allowing personal animus to govern one's business acts or policy."
It was a sounding phrase, although not quite new.
"Neither do I," said Smith, promptly; "but this is more than an act of poetic justice. Of course there's a certain satisfaction in finding that one of the packages stolen from us contained a bomb which blew up the burglar—but how much more appropriate it would be if the same explosion hurled the rest of the stolen property into the hands of the original and rightful owners. And besides that, the Salamander business is well worth putting on our books—and there's a lot of it."
"Yes. Too much, in fact," said his chief. "Our resources are not sufficient to permit our taking on such a load."
"I admit that," replied the younger man. "We will have to increase our capital a half a million. And now's the time to get it. We can issue it at 200, which is rather less than the present stock is selling for, and the premium will take care of our surplus when we take on this new business. I believe our stockholders will back us up. While other companies are asking their stockholders for more money to pay their Boston losses, we are asking ours to put us in the first rank of underwriting institutions in the United States."
Mr. Wintermuth looked at the young man before him, a long, grave look.
"Richard," he said at last, "I am fond of you, and I suppose that having no son of my own to be proud of, I am proud of you, too. But sometimes you make me feel a hundred years old."
"You needn't," answered Smith, affectionately, "for you've taught me almost all I know. If I am a little more aggressive than I might be, perhaps you were too, at my age. The question is, what is to the best interest of the Guardian?"
"That is a question," said Mr. Wintermuth, "for the directors to decide."
"Of course," returned the other. "But I should be surprised if our directorate didn't take a broad and liberal view of it. Immediately following this conflagration, when so much insurance capital has been wiped out, there will be a need for more. We will need our share, for we're going to do a bigger business. Even if we don't take over the Salamander or some other company, we're going to swing a much heavier premium income this year than last."
"Well," said the President, "since you have brought up the question, I should fail in my duty to the company if I should let an opportunity for extending our business pass by without submitting the matter to the directors. If you find that the Salamander business is for sale, and they want us to make a bid for it, I will call a special meeting of the board and lay the facts before our friends."
It was not for some little time that there was any palpable result of the meeting, when secured, for neither Smith nor Mr. Simeon Belknap was a man to hurry a matter to the prejudice of his interests. Following his conference with O'Connor and Mr. Murch, Mr. Belknap spent parts of several days moving quietly and almost imperceptibly about on investigations of his own. It was not every company which had facilities for extending its premiums some three million dollars a year; and besides that, most of them were being kept so busy in Boston that they had no leisure to consider so large a proposition.
Both Smith and Mr. Wintermuth were by this time aware that Mr. Belknap was handling the Salamander's affairs, and the Vice-President kept on that gifted gentleman as close an espionage as he could contrive to keep. After observing him casually engage in conversation three prominent underwriting executives, any one of whom might be supposed to be in a position to take over the Salamander, Smith determined to take the bull by the horns. On the third day after the directors' meeting he took pains to meet Mr. Belknap and similarly to engage him in casual conversation.
When, a little later, they adjourned from the Club to Mr. Belknap's office, the matter was practically settled, subject to the ratification of the directorates of both companies.
The Boston conflagration was not quite two weeks a thing of the past when Mr. Belknap signified that he had succeeded in his task of securing on satisfactory terms a purchaser for the Salamander, and if the necessary executives of that company would be in Mr. Murch's office at two-thirty that afternoon, he would bring the contracts for signature.
Over the telephone Mr. Murch said: "All right. Bring them." To his secretary he said: "Ask Mr. O'Connor to be here at two-thirty this afternoon."
At two-thirty Mr. O'Connor appeared.
"Hello—glad to see you," said Mr. Murch, urbanely. Now that the matter was coming out with such a comparatively favorable color, he saw no reason to abandon the amenities. In the first flush of anger they had suffered somewhat, but that was all over.
"Good-day," returned O'Connor, shortly. He had been out on the Street for three days, trying to catch the scent of some foreign reinsurance company ignorant of his impending change, so that his fall might not seem too humiliatingly flat, when the news should be wired every agent of the Salamander to cease writing. He had met, however, with no success, so he cannot be blamed if his response to Mr. Murch was a trifle lacking in enthusiasm.
"You're prompt," proceeded that gentleman, ignoring his visitor's lack of cordiality. "I'm glad you're on time, for Mr. Belknap just telephoned that he was on his way here with the contracts and the representative of the company that's taking us over."
"Did he say what company it was?" inquired O'Connor, with the first gleam of interest he had shown.
"I don't believe I asked him. There seems to be a lot of secrecy about these deals, and I didn't care a hang, myself, anyway. He said it was a thoroughly responsible company, and our policyholders would be fully protected. They'll be here in a minute."
"I wonder what company it is," the other man said, reflectively, half to himself.
"You'll know in a moment, because, unless I'm wrong, the boy is bringing Belknap's card now."
The boy entered with the card in question.
"Ask them to come in," said Mr. Murch.
O'Connor stood looking out the window. His gaze wandered over the well-known roofs of the buildings along William Street, and a momentary pang shot through him to think that under those roofs to-morrow there would be no place for him, and that his venture was all to begin again. He no longer felt any sense of grievance, any animosity against Murch. He was merely wondering vaguely at Fate, and at this latest whim of hers. So deep was he in his reverie that he scarcely noticed the entrance of the expected callers until he heard a voice that recalled him to actualities.
"Mr. Murch, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Smith," Belknap was saying; and O'Connor turned sharply back from the window.
To Mr. Belknap's courteous greeting he gave little heed, but like a charmed canary before a cobra his look rested on the second man of the pair. This was a young man with level, gray eyes, who nodded slightly and cheerfully said:—
"How do you do, Mr. O'Connor."
No word said O'Connor; his eyes neither lowered nor turned aside their fascinated gaze. Each of the four men stood still, waiting for the little drama to end: a long minute.
"Here are the papers, Mr. Murch," said the intermediary, at last, turning to the financier.
"All right; let me look over them," said the other.
Five minutes later the Salamander had ceased to exist.
The March winds blustered over Boston, and the cold salt smell of the ocean was borne tempestuously in upon the shivering city. Chill and keen out of the northeast came the air that hinted not at all of spring, but urgently of winter. The people in the streets walked briskly, with no laggard steps; they were accustomed to this sort of untimely treatment from the New England climate, and they had no intention of being betrayed thereby into pondering over southern lands or sunny vineclad hillsides where summer always lingered. Boston might not be climatically Utopian, but there was at all events something virile, something manly and admirable about a sort of weather for which no other good word could be used.
Between the tall buildings in Kilby Street, where now for three weeks the current of the insurance world had been flowing with quickened, almost feverish pulse, the activity on this blustering day in middle March was undiminished. Of the hastily arranged adjustment offices which the magnitude of the conflagration had made necessary, nearly all had been given up, and the comparatively few uncompleted adjustments of losses were now being handled through the regular offices.
It had been a titanic task, that of adjusting fire losses extending in the aggregate to between one and two hundred millions of dollars—for there were some indications that the Boston property damage would reach the latter figure. But after three weeks of steady work, when the lines of claimants before the adjusters' doors had hardly slackened a moment, the worst was over. Three fourths of the claims had been settled; satisfactorily to all concerned by the larger and more responsible companies; on a basis of offered compromise by those institutions tottering on the brink of insolvency; dubiously, or with craven and flagrant unfairness by the stricken "wildcats," the irresponsible undergrounders of America and Europe. For every great fire unearths the fact that there are always companies who will gladly accept premiums,—often at surprisingly low rates,—although they are only mildly addicted to the payment of losses. And every conflagration also uncovers the fact that there are many penny-wise citizens who purchase this class of indemnity. A great fire cleans, as nothing else does, the fire insurance stage of all but the fittest.
From this calamity, the greatest which had ever visited the city, Boston had, after a timeless period of uncomprehending and demoralized helplessness, leaped anew into activity and life. From all over the country, almost from all over the world, the need of the stricken city was met by a magnificent and human response. A vast catastrophe becomes nearly worth while by virtue of the humanity it discovers. Food, clothing, money—all were donated with lavish hands, and aid was rushed to Boston by a hundred trains. In comparison with the area burned over, the number of people made homeless was not great; and in three weeks the city had somehow managed to drink up and absorb this surplus without leaving a sign.
Life had now begun to move more normally again; and already the city's gaze went forward toward what was to be, rather than backward at what had been. But in a certain Kilby Street office two men were talking, one of whom still looked somewhat gloomily back, while the other, with a smile of transcendent optimism, was engaged in the cosmic process of turning Boston's holocaust into a fiery but triumphant feather for his own cap.
"Has that draft come in yet, Benny?" he was demanding.
"Came this morning," answered Cole, a trifle sourly. "Here it is."
"Would you mind letting me have it? Thanks. This is the last one, isn't it? They're all here now?"
"Yes," said Cole, curtly; "this is the last."
"If you'll give me a large envelope, I'll take them with me, then," returned the first speaker. "With a golden touch like Midas of old will I go forth into the presence of my distinguished relation. Benny, you are a base soul with no instincts above the commercial. You do not appreciate the situation. We are rapidly approaching what is vulgarly termed the psychological moment. If you had any more feeling than a dying invertebrate, you would want to come along and witness the ceremony, which is entirely private and visitors admitted by card only."
"Thanks, but I don't care to," said Cole, shortly.
Since the change which came over the complexion of matters in his world, Cole was much less assured and less assertive than before. The receipt this morning of the Salamander's final and largest loss draft marked the last public connection between that company and the Osgood office. The Salamander had reinsured, and the news of its fall was abroad on the streets of Boston as in New York, the insurance talk of all the towns. O'Connor, temporarily at least, had disappeared, and no man knew what chasm had swallowed him up. So far as Osgood and Company were concerned, he and his company were both dead issues; and once more in the old office in the corner Mr. Osgood could be seen in his wonted place.
Immediately following the conflagration Mr. Osgood had quietly resumed his authority as active head of the firm; and the Guardian, having taken over the Salamander's unburned business, which was in reality its own, once more acknowledged as its Boston representatives Messrs. Silas Osgood and Company. Of course the separation rule of the Boston Board was still nominally in force; but with the legal decision pending there was no disposition on the part of any agency or of any company to force an action of any sort. In the face of a matter so great as the conflagration had been, the smaller things, the lesser animosities, were allowed to slip peacefully into forgotten limbo. In due time the separation rule, its chief protagonist discredited and gone none knew where, would be repealed, either under legal compulsion or without. When that day came, the Guardian would be back in the position it had always enjoyed until Mr. O'Connor played—and lost—his meteoric game.
In Mr. Cole's office, meanwhile, the small pile of checks and drafts was being counted over with scrupulous care by Mr. Wilkinson.
"They seem to be in order," he said. "Three hundred and fifty-five thousand, six hundred and eighty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents. Benny, a thought strikes me! Why should not an insurance broker get a commission on losses as well as premiums? It seems to me that that is a very reasonable idea—I wonder it has never occurred to anybody before."
"You get your commission when the line is rewritten, of course," Cole responded. "What more do you want?"
"Why, that's so; I hadn't thought of that. I presume that such an operation will be more or less lucrative—unless my sagacious though unwilling father-in-law executes his sometime threat."
"Oh, I don't believe even John M. Hurd would be such a jackal without benefit of clergy as to do that."
"Well, perhaps not. Do you think of anything else, Benny, before I depart?"
"Absolutely nothing. And for heaven's sake get out!—I'm busy, and you lend an atmosphere of inertia to the whole place."
"And yet," returned Mr. Wilkinson, suavely, rising, nevertheless,—"and yet this is, in the plebeian phrase of the world of trade, my busy day. To be sure I have other occasional days when I handle transactions that run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars; but I don't mind admitting to you that these usually take place in the last ineffable hour of slumber preceding the dawn. But to-day—to-day it is true! Benny, I will go to the length of buying you a drink, a short and frugal drink."
"At eleven A.M.? Not for me," responded Cole. "Run along."
"I go," rejoined the other, gracefully, and the door swung shut behind his debonaire retreat.
A few minutes later to the youth from South Framingham he spoke nonchalantly:—
"Mr. Hurd?"
The calm presumption of that rising inflection seemed to indicate the absence of all doubt as to whether Mr. Hurd would receive him. The South Framingham scion regarded him with bovine gaze.
"Yes, I guess he's in," he said dubiously.
"Then tell him, if you please, that Mr. Charles Wilkinson wishes to see him on a matter of important business." The sentence ended so incisively that South Framingham blinked. Any display of emotion more significant was not, perhaps, to be expected. The messenger and his message started vaguely toward the door of Mr. Hurd's private office, and for an awkward moment no sound came forth.
"He says to come in," said South Framingham, reappearing.
"With alacrity but dignity," said Charles to himself; and found himself in another moment in the presence of Mr. Hurd. The traction magnate did not rise. He laid the paper which he had been reading on the desk before him, and looked fixedly across it at the intruder.
"Good-morning, sir," said Mr. Wilkinson, cheerfully.
Mr. Hurd's response to this greeting could only be denominated a grunt, but his visitor had no desire to force an issue of cordiality, so, waiving the doubtful courtesy of this reply, he continued:—
"Mrs. Hurd is well, I trust?"
"Mrs. Hurd is quite well, thank you. Did you come here through any apprehension about her health?" inquired the gentleman at the desk, with some degree of asperity to be detected in his tone by one as well acquainted with him as was Charlie. "I understood from my clerk that you came on business."
"And so I did," said the unruffled Wilkinson, "although I always endeavor that business and courtesy shall not necessarily exclude one another."
The financier looked sharply at the young man; but he felt that he was scarcely in a position to take offense at such a commendable statement.
"My business," continued the visitor, "deals with one of the best single pieces of business you ever did for the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company."
"Is the loss finally closed up?" said Mr. Hurd, curtly.
His son-in-law stood dramatically before him; he slipped his left hand into the inner breast pocket where reposed the documents with which his coup was to be made.
"Mr. Hurd," he said impressively, "you permitted me to place the insurance on your trolley system because I convinced you that it ought to be insured. Do you recall what I said about the conflagration hazard in the congested district of Boston? Well, I won't repeat it, but until I called it to your notice you had never given it serious consideration. And even after the schedule was placed, you said that another year you would not carry insurance. You may also recall that you withheld your consent to a certain marriage, which I proposed to contract with a member of your family, and which—"
"Stick to the matter in hand," suggested the traction magnate, tartly.
"I am doing so, because the point I want to make is this. On both these matters, if you'll pardon my saying so, you were equally wrong. You were afraid that as a son-in-law all my entries would be on the wrong side of your ledger. Well, I don't believe I'll overdraw my account with you for some little time, Mr. Hurd, for I hand you herewith—as we say to our stenographers—to the order of the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company, checks and drafts to the amount of three hundred and fifty-five thousand, six hundred and eighty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents, in payment of the loss on your Pemberton Street car barn and power house and a few minor items. Here they are, and, to use a colloquialism, I want to rub them in. Not to glorify my own acumen or to minimize yours,—you showed good judgment to insure your property,—but to prove to you that you made a mistake about me."
"A mistake?" said the other man.
"A colossal mistake. Your only objection to me as a son-in-law was on financial grounds. Show me, if you can, any young man you could have picked out as a husband for your daughter, who within a few months could have saved your company three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. No, Mr. Hurd, you've done me a very great injustice. And now, I'm going to ask two things of you."
"And what are they?" inquired Mr. Hurd.
"The first is your order for rewriting the schedule on the traction properties. We'll take up the second when we've finished that."
John M. Hurd gave a half hitch in his chair, and turned his face toward the window, the very casement out of which he had gazed on the day when the fate of Mr. Wilkinson's scheme was first decided. Thoughtfully he looked out and down the busy street. His visitor, by way of gently stimulating his reverie, laid the companies' loss drafts within an inch of his unmoving fingers. Unconsciously those fingers, which had through the long years acquired an inalienable tendency toward the acquisition of legal tender in whatever form proffered—those fingers slowly, almost automatically, but irrevocably, closed upon the little packet.
It seemed as though, from the contact, a soothing hint of balsam-laden pines, of comfort and satisfaction for the soul, must have proceeded from those oblong papers. Charlie, keenly watching, beheld the stony countenance in front of him, as if permeated by some ineffable warmth, stir and become human. The miracle of Galatea was worked in this face before the very gaze of him who had dispensed the beneficent influence. The grim lines around the mouth lost their inflexible rigor; and slowly, unwillingly, almost shamefacedly there stole into the hard old visage the hint, the wraith, the shadow of a smile.
Wise in his generation, Wilkinson left the work to the magic and sovereign forces now at play; he did not risk marring the alchemy by a single word. After a moment which seemed an hour he found himself once more confronted by the direct observation of his step-uncle.
"You can have your trolley schedule," said John M. Hurd. "You are certainly entitled to it. What else you want I dare say I can guess. . . . Suppose you bring Isabel up to Beacon Street this afternoon to take tea with her mother—and me."
If Mr. Wilkinson cut a pigeon wing in the outer office, it was only the scion of South Framingham whose amazement is recorded. John M. Hurd, still smiling faintly, sat reflectively eyeing the little pile of checks which his visitor had left, until at last he rang for his cashier.
"Endorse these and have them deposited immediately, Mr. Walsh," he said.
Meanwhile the telephone wires were buzzing under Mr. Wilkinson's energetic advertisement of the latest society note.
"Extry! Extry!" he announced to Isabel. "All about the reconciliation of trust magnate with beautiful though erring daughter! Extry! All about the soothing and emollient influence of a little packet of stamped paper! No, I've not gone suddenly insane, and I'll come home about four, for we are due for tea at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. John M. Hurd."
To Deerfield Street, also, the glad word presently went, to meet there the sincere congratulations of Miss Helen Maitland, who held the other end of the jubilant telephone.
"You'd better come, too, Helen. We'll stop for you. I really think it would be much smoother if you were along. And besides, Charlie says we ought to get father on record before a witness in case a conservative turn takes him again."
"I was rather expecting to have tea here," Miss Maitland confessed, after a moment's hesitancy. "Yes, Mr. Smith said he would probably come. Very well—I will bring him along, if you'd really like to have him, with great pleasure. You'll call for us, Isabel? Au revoir, then."
It was shortly after five o'clock when the Hurds' butler opened the front door to admit a company of four. These intruders, waiting no bidding and ignoring altogether the fact that one of their number had been forbidden the house, made their cheerful way, headed by Mrs. Wilkinson, into the drawing room, there to greet with effusive welcome a stern-faced, elderly lady, who met them with a broad smile, but who almost instantly, to her own infinite surprise and discomfiture, burst into tears. These rapidly abated, when there was heard a sound in the hall, a sound which the quick ears of Mr. Wilkinson distinguished at once.
"The lion comes!" he murmured in Isabel's ear; and an involuntary hush descended upon the company. Thud, thud, thud—the firm steps approached; the arras was drawn back by a deliberate hand; and into the drawing room, his manner as easy and composed as ever, came Mr. Hurd. Two steps he made inside the room, then stopped. His glance instantly comprehended the little company, and just for a moment the old, cold light shot into his eye. But it was only for a moment.
"My dear Isabel, I am very glad to see you home again."
The greeting which the financier would have extended to his other guests was lost forever in the impulsive rush which landed Mrs. Wilkinson in her father's arms. Any regret which may have lingered was banished in the shock of this impact; and it was a resigned parent who emerged from this embrace to resume his corner in the reunited world.
It remained for his son-in-law to pronounce the valedictory over the vanishing fragments of the family breach.
"Mr. Hurd, ever since the day you flung in my astounded face my character and attainments, depicted in simple but effective words of one syllable, I have felt that there was not only force, but a good deal of truth, in your pungent observations. As I remember telling you at the time, had I appreciated the disgraceful facts as you summed them up, I could only in justice to Isabel have joined my efforts to your own in endeavoring to prevent so fatal an alliance. But it was too late. And now that the thing is done, the child of Mr. Hurd, having inherited some of that gentleman's fixity of purpose and tenacity of idea, is still of the opinion—Isabel, even if I am wrong, please do not contradict me—that she needs the stimulus of my desultory presence to keep her en rapport with life. Isabel has come to find strangely piquant the sensation of uncertainty as to the approaching meal. She has come to feel that certainty in such a matter is a species of bourgeoisie. At all events we are now Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson; and however deeply we regret the lack of enthusiasm in that connection of my esteemed father-in-law, I can only suggest to him that, although probably no one in the world has as poor an opinion of me as he has, if he keeps that opinion to himself there is no reason why the world in general should ever learn the truth. Certainly it shall be my life work to prevent it; and maybe when in the years to come I am passing the plate in some far suburban tabernacle of worship, all will be forgotten. Helen, may I trouble you to hand me those sandwiches?"
Mr. Hurd emitted a dry chuckle.
"For the honor of the family, Charlie, I'll never tell," he said.
It was dark when at last Miss Maitland, under the escort of Smith, started homeward toward Deerfield Street. And even then, not so directly homeward lay their course as the hour might have warranted. By an impulse which neither resisted, their footsteps turned southeastward toward the place where they had first viewed the land of the fire's reaping. On the steel bridge over the railroad tracks they found themselves at last.
"We didn't really intend to come here, did we?" asked the girl, with a smile.
"Somebody must have intended it," argued her companion; "although I confess that my part in it seemed entirely a passive one. Still, it is a good place to come, excepting for the cinders which fly into one's eyes—as one did then."
Northward, under the pale light of the stars, the barren acres stretched away till they reached the point where the builded city recommenced. The wind, fallen to a breeze, brought still a faint hint of smoke out of the ground, as though in insistent reminiscence of the fire's breath. On the edge of this zone gleamed the city's lights, and Smith was vaguely reminded of the lights on the Jersey shore as he could see them from his window.
"Do you remember the night you showed me the lights of New York?" askedHelen, softly.
"I shall never stop remembering it," he answered. "Some day, when I get to be so valuable or valueless that I can be spared from the Guardian, we will go and see the lights of all the other cities of the world. Shall we?"
"There will be none like yours—like ours."
"As there are no lights for me like those within your eyes."
"But I thought we were going to Robbinsville!" said the girl, "to see a harness shop."
"We will go there, too," he answered. "Oh, life will be all too short for you and me!"
It was some time later when the little bridge was left once more to the cinders and to itself. Behind the backs of the two who walked slowly homeward, the plain, which once had been a city, lay gray-black in its ashes beneath the black and gold of the cloud-flecked sky.