I
At an unearthly hour in the morning John Scidmore sat up suddenly in his
bed and remembered Julia Norris's telephone message. He rose at once,
switched on the shaded light on the bureau, and looked at his watch: the
minute hand had just swung past three o'clock.
Undisturbed by her husband's nocturnal prowling, Kitty Scidmore slept
with almost childish naturalness. He plunged the room into darkness
again and felt his way out into the hall and down the short flight of
stairs to the dining-room.
The night was unusually warm. As he opened the garden window, pungent
odors of dry stubble wet with a late October dew floated toward him. He
leaned out and drew in a deep breath, but his attempts at calmness
failed utterly.
He knew that it was absurd to fret; he might just as well go back to bed
and sleep peacefully. One could not place a line of insurance at three
o'clock in the morning. Upon what day had Julia Norris telephoned? Was
it last Friday? Yes, he remembered now, perfectly. He had been busy with
a peevish customer who haggled about a twenty-five-cent overcharge. In
the midst of the controversy, in her characteristically impulsive way,
Julia Norris had rung up:--
'O John! is that you, John? Place ten thousand dollars with the Falcon
Insurance Company on my flats in the Richmond District.'
He had recognized her voice even before she gave her name. And he had
been _so sure_ he would not forget. Why, he had been so _very_ sure that
he had not troubled to make a memorandum. And to think that the
excitement of arguing a twenty-five-cent overcharge should have so
completely put to rout Julia Norris's order!
A sudden rage at his carelessness seized him. How he loathed his life,
his work, and the soul-killing routine and cramped vision of the
figurative counting-house! He switched on the light and peered into the
mirror over the mantel, smiling satirically at the reflection greeting
him,--the reflection of plain Johnny Scidmore, insurance broker's clerk,
a commonplace, rather undersized, law-abiding citizen just turning
forty, whose face showed the lack of that forceful ability necessary to
convert opportunity into success.
As he drew back from the glass with a shrug of disgust, the futility of
his life flashed over him. He still could remember the time when he went
blithely to the day's work, buoyed by youth's intangible hope of better
things. But the years soon took their toll of enthusiasm, and there were
days when John Scidmore went through his paces like a trick horse urged
by the whip of necessity. Lately he had been worried to find how easily
he was forgetting things--telephone messages, instructions from his
chief, orders to place insurance. So far nothing very important had
slipped by him, but now he felt quite sure that he could never trust
himself again. There were many reasons why he should have remembered
Julia Norris's orders. First, because she was his wife's friend; second,
because a ten-thousand-dollar order to his credit was not an everyday
occurrence; and third, because the circumstance that had overshadowed it
was relatively of so little importance.
For over a week, then, Julia Norris's property had gone without
insurance protection. What if it had burned up? What if it were burning
up at this very moment? He sat down suddenly.
He got up again, fumbled about, and found cigarettes and a box of
matches. Two cigarettes quieted him. He began to think that he was a
silly fool, mooning about when he should have been sleeping. In the
morning he would take an early train to San Francisco and place the line
without further ado. Yes, after all, he was as silly and notional as a
young schoolgirl. He put down the window, turned off the lights, and
crawled upstairs to bed.