White Ashes Part 12

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.

"There _is_ such an inst.i.tution as the Stock Exchange," he said blandly.

Mr. Hurd looked at him.

"Ma.s.sachusetts 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 did _not_ borrow 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 one _might_ tell," 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 a.s.sume 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 ma.s.se shots of regarding at close range the tombstones of an aristocratic cemetery, Helen and her uncle were comfortably lingering over their demi-ta.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 from _doing_ anything, 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, and Mr. Osgood looked thoughtfully across the table at her.

"Why don't you run down to New York?" he suggested. "I'm sure your Aunt 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 to _do_? Aunt Mary's princ.i.p.al occupation is abusing the _nouveaux riches_, and one merely has to agree with her, which is not at all difficult. If I had anything to _do_ here, 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 New York?" 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 Ma.s.sachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company was the scene of an unusual, and, to most of the partic.i.p.ants, a disquieting conference. The s.h.i.+mmering 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, a.s.sembled 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 pa.s.senger 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 a.s.sent. Then they punctiliously received each man his golden eagle, and a motion to adjourn closed the ceremony.

To-day had come an astonis.h.i.+ng innovation in procedure. Instead of suavely instructing them what they should vote to do, Mr. Hurd was behaving in a most oddly uncharacteristic fas.h.i.+on. He was asking their advice. This amounted to a _boulevers.e.m.e.nt supreme_ of the usual order of things, and it was no wonder that there was disquietude among his hearers.