White Ashes Part 41

"Why wouldn't he?"

"Well, he just wouldn't. And I was unwilling to force the matter for fear of losing entirely that coy and canny fish. I did get him, though, to let me rewrite the line last month, so as to include some property not at first insured, and that ties it up until next April.

And maybe before next April comes around, the hard-hearted John M. will have relented toward his gifted son-in-law, and all will be well.

Meanwhile we will live on our princ.i.p.al."

"Meanwhile we will do nothing of the sort," said Mrs. Wilkinson, with a smile. "I may not have inherited all father's talent for finance, Charlie, but there are one or two things I know enough not to do, and that is one of them."

"Madam," said her husband, sternly, "there is in your speech a hint of definite purpose which is at once encouraging and disquieting to me.

May I ask if your plan contemplates the labor of your consort? Do I make myself clear? In other words, are you suggesting that I shall go to work?"

"It may come to that," smiled his wife.

"Well, well! Charles Wilkinson a wage earner!" He shook his head silently, and the trio walked on.

It had been arranged that Helen was to dine with them. The sudden marriage, which had been forced by a swift access of hostility on the part of John M. Hurd, had left little time for preparations, but the dinner was merry enough, and the health of the bride and groom was pledged with the utmost fidelity to tradition; and after that, Charles and Isabel escorted their guest home, and left her at the door of the apartment on Deerfield Street.

Mrs. Maitland found her daughter but silent company the rest of that evening, and at a comparatively early hour the Maitland apartment grew dark. In Mrs. Maitland's room all was quiet, and in due course, presumably, sleep; but Helen found that slumber was alien to her eyes.

So, opening her window to the little breeze that came hinting of summer although speaking of spring, she looked out wide-eyed into the starry night.

It was warm, even for the time of year, and the cool breath of the ocean which Boston knows so well was not in the air. Instead the breeze moved slowly in from the westward, bringing the imagined odor of apple blossoms from unseen orchards. The city's sounds were dying to a mere rumor of sound. Now and again a light went out suddenly in some window of a near-by building; the reflection of the street lamps on the night became more and more clear. For a long time Helen gazed out into the darkness.

Across the water to the northward shone the lights on the Cambridge sh.o.r.e. Seeing them her memory went back to the time when first she had really seen New York by night. Smith had volunteered to show her the night city as it should be seen, and never was she to free her imagination from the sight. They had gone first to the South Ferry, in the gathering dusk, and taking boat for Brooklyn had witnessed from its rear deck the golden pageant of the thousand lighted buildings of the lower city--had watched them gleam in a thousand ripples across the dark river, ripples that lay and moved like silver and golden serpents along the water. Back presently they had turned, approaching once more the stately towers that touched the sky, and this time they had sought a new angle. Over to the Jersey sh.o.r.e their blunt-nosed ferryboat had taken them, and thence north along the river to Twenty-third Street, seeing the gold and velvet-black city slide southward as in a dream.

On all this Helen was now indefinitely reflecting, and of the man with whom she had seen it first she perhaps thought a little. But those were oblique thoughts, and hardly worth the name. All the experiences and impressions of the day--Isabel's departure from home, the wedding, the grave face of the old minister, the silence of the dim room in the parsonage, Charlie's subsequent comments, the dinner _a trois_--all these mingled in her mind, and somehow seemed a part of the great night into which she gazed.

Yet there was an undercurrent of vague dissatisfaction in her reflections. All these things were true and vital, and she had been only a spectator, a visitor at the fair. Life had surged around her, but had touched her not at all, or lightly at best. Unconsciously her thoughts toward the sleeping city were as though she offered herself to it and to the life that bound it and swept through its veins.

Presently, across the water, a clock began to strike the hour--midnight--and softened by the distance, the chimes came gently across the intervening s.p.a.ce.

Helen roused herself a moment: midnight! Yet the blood that flushed her cheeks showed that sleep for her was still afar off. And so she sat, unmoving, while in the darkness above her the myriad stars moved slowly in their majestic courses.

CHAPTER XIX

The bringing of order out of chaos is one of the most interesting and also one of the most satisfying employments a person can have.

Likewise it is usually one of the most exhausting, if the chaos has been really chaos and the order be really order. But the satisfaction of seeing, as the clouds break and the skies clear, the salient outline of the thing appear as it ought to appear is sufficient compensation for all the effort. Even if the work be no more elevated than was.h.i.+ng up a trayful of soiled china, a certain thrill is there at the successful completion of the task; and the greater the Augean stable, the purer is the pleasure of him who cleans it.

When in the spring of this, his most eventful year, Smith had taken charge of the slipping, wavering, demoralized Guardian, the stable of Augeas there confronting him would perhaps have dismayed a less enthusiastic and a less determined man. Everything was at loose ends; under the s.h.i.+ftless hand of Gunterson even the fine insurance machine built up by Mr. Wintermuth in his best constructive days had suddenly grown to creak painfully in its joints. The heads of departments, seeing no inspiring or even efficient leaders.h.i.+p above them, had become discouraged, and there had been no one to brace their failing spirits.

Mr. Cuyler and Mr. Bartels in particular had felt the altered fortunes of the company more keenly than they had felt any business crisis in all their previous experience.

When Mr. Cuyler had witnessed his local business, his pride and his life, the fixed star of his professional soul, begin slipping away, his gloom, as has been told, was not to be lifted. But the case of Mr.

Bartels was even more sad. Year after year had that painstaking official made up the current statement of the company's position, to be presented in silence to Mr. Wintermuth on the first business day of every month. Year after year had he carried this balance sheet to his chief and stolidly waited for the word of satisfaction which was always forthcoming, save in exceptional cases. For there had come to be a kind of sacred formula about it, and if that formula failed to materialize, the world was all awry for Mr. Bartels, until another month put matters right once more. And this, so placidly prosperous had the Guardian been, the succeeding month had seldom failed to do.

"Holding our own, Otto?" the President would inquire.

"Poohty good; losses is bad but premiums is up some, too," Mr. Bartels would usually reply; and Mr. Wintermuth, appreciating the impossibility of ever reaching a loss ratio low enough to meet the approval of his Teutonic subordinate, would scan the statement with little fear of the result. And then, after another little exchange of courtesies, this monthly playlet would end.

When the Guardian had first met the rough water, Mr. Bartels had not been able to understand that anything was amiss--that anything could be amiss--with the company whose inconspicuous prosperity had been an axiom of the Street. When, on the first day of February, he had taken off his first summary of January results, a little cloud of puzzled suspicion had gathered in his still blue eyes. After carefully checking his own figures he had rung for Dunham, the chief accountant, and it had been a querulous and angry summons.

"Here, dese figures is all wrong. You have January premiums pretty near fifteen per cent behind last year. Fix 'em."

But Dunham, chill as the Matterhorn, a.s.sured the excited little man that the figures were quite correct and that he had checked them twice to make certain.

"But--but--" said Bartels in bewilderment, "we cannot be going backwards like that! We have never gone back like that in January."

"Until this year," incautiously rejoined the other.

"No; nor this year, neither!" cried Mr. Bartels; and only his own thrice repeated checking of the premium sheets would convince him.

Shaking a puzzled and resentful head, he at last sought his chief; with a hang-dog air he handed over his statement, and with heavy heart he waited for the President to speak.

Speech was longer than usual in coming.

"Not quite so good?" the President said at last.

"No," said Mr. Bartels. "Rates must be off, I guess?"

"No, Otto," returned Mr. Wintermuth, slowly. "It's not a rate war. It is that we have had to give up some of our agencies in the East on account of the Conference separation rule. I am afraid we shall have to expect a certain decrease for a little while until things get readjusted. But it won't last; you needn't worry about that."

Unfortunately, however, it did last; and not only that, but it became more and more marked with each succeeding month. With the third statement, when the greatest inroads had been made into the Guardian's business, Mr. Bartels became like a living sepulcher. So heavy and sad was the heart he carried in his breast that not all the consoling words of his chief could stir him.

"I have seen agencies whose accounts I have pa.s.sed for twenty years fall away to almost nothing or nothing at all. From Silas Osgood I get no March account; from Jones and Meers I get none. Every month for fifteen years have I written Jones and Meers to correct their adding; now I write them not at all." And there were many more.

Finally, when at last it dawned upon Mr. Bartels's Bavarian mind that the Guardian was really in peril and that unless something were done quickly, a large part of the remainder of the agents in the East would follow those already gone, his blind anger and resentment knew no bounds. He could not, however, understand the real facts in the case, and no one ever took the trouble fully to explain them to him. So his impotent rage, lacking a target whereat to aim it, became even blinder.

He was like a child, being unjustly punished for some wrong which he had not committed, and which he could in no way comprehend. The thought of facing his chief with a semiannual statement made up of a series of months like these, was more than he could bear. Fortunately he was not to be called upon to do so, for Mr. Gunterson left the Guardian when the fat was all but in the fire, and another turn was given to affairs.

And the year now just closing had been a busy year for Mr. Richard Smith. During the most of it he had worked nearly twelve hours a day, and spent a liberal share of the balance in laying his plans. Now, and only now,--as the year 1913 was drawing to a close,--had he time to draw a full breath and look about him.

His Augean stable, if not wholly clean, was at least free from the more dangerous impurities. The Guardian was not yet, it was true, clear of all possibility of disaster; but the tide had been turned, and with strict care there was no further need to fear s.h.i.+pwreck. In Pennsylvania, in Maryland, in New York,--in short, practically everywhere save in Ma.s.sachusetts, where the fight was still in the courts,--separation had received its deathblow, while robbed of this advantage the Conference companies could do little or nothing to harm the Guardian. And in justice to them it must be said that none of them apparently manifested any abnormal desire to do so, excepting always the Salamander, whose hostility increased in geometrical ratio with the Guardian's recovery of strength and prestige. Most of the agencies which had been lost under Mr. Gunterson's management were either restored to the company's lists, or else their places had been taken by others of equal or superior quality.

Out in the field the special agents had under Smith's aggressive direction recovered their courage and carried out with striking success the details of his campaign. At the few points where the company's loss record had been consistently bad, Smith either kept the Guardian out altogether or made an appointment on such a basis that the agent's profits would be small unless the company itself made money through that agency. Being free and not bound by Conference restrictions, he was able at many points to improve his company's position. And when, in the early days of the coming January, Mr. Bartels should approach his annual statement, it seemed probable that it would show little diminution in the Guardian's resources. The statement would be helped, too, by the fact that the value of some of the securities owned by the company, chiefly considerable blocks of bank and anthracite railroad stocks, had appreciated very handsomely during the year. And Mr.

Cuyler, thanks to the increased conflagration line and to the large business he was securing from his new branch manager, was making a record so good that he could scarcely believe the figures which he himself had compiled.

All in all, the showing would be by no means a discreditable one. It had been a remarkable task; and Smith, now that he came to look back on it, remembering the black days of the reign of Gunterson the Unready, could himself only wonder mildly at the way all these things had come about. In the midst of the satisfaction which he could not help but feel, there was always a genuine sense of amazement at the facile way in which Fate had played into his hand. If he had any doubts, however, no one else confessed to any. Mr. Wintermuth frankly gave to his young underwriter the proper share of credit for the results that had been brought about. All this was pleasant, but it was also earned.

In these months of activity, activity unusual even for Smith, who was customarily a busy man, there had been for him only one personal diversion. This was his growing friends.h.i.+p with Helen Maitland; and to this relations.h.i.+p Smith had by this time come to turn as a lost Arab turns to a chance-discovered oasis. Through the days of Gunterson's administration he had not had heart to write Helen or even to think of her--to his darkened vision she seemed increasingly far away. But this could not last, and when the tide turned, he presently found himself writing to her almost as to another self, and found himself awaiting her letters as filling one of the most vital needs of his life. There was a name for this, but as yet he was not prepared to use it, and if Helen were prepared, certainly no hint of any such readiness showed through her diction.

Because men no longer go abroad, as in medieval times, hewing their way to glory and romance with sword and mace, it is no sure sign that the flower has fallen from romance's tree. Merely because that flower now blooms perhaps more quietly, less flamboyantly than it used to bloom in purple and gold, is no reason to think that it does not bloom at all.

The singers of world songs find voice to-day, just as they always have, and no lack of all the panoply of old-time chivalry and war can make a friends.h.i.+p slipping into love less than a beautiful and wondrous thing.

It is perhaps in some ways to be regretted that the inspiring bombast of the elder days is no longer in vogue--the grandiloquent arrogance that led a man to tie a lady's ribband to his arm and proclaim on fear of sudden death her puissance of beauty throughout the world. This is perhaps unfortunate; but through added reticence beauty really suffers no wrong.

Smith, although he had not as yet formulated his precise wishes or intentions as regards Helen, still knew that he desired a house professionally in order before he allowed himself to think of another kind of house. The Guardian was his company, and the Guardian must be placed in a haven where storms could come not, before he would feel that his charge was sufficiently relaxed to allow of his dreaming dreams.

It was with this idea that, as the old year was drawing to a close, he approached Mr. Wintermuth with a definite project in view.

"We are not going to have such a bad year, after all," he began.

"I fancy we shall come through pretty well," the President agreed.

"Although it didn't look much like it at the start."