She’s left the school! She’s living in the splendid house in Pilchester
Square looking for a post!
She’s found a post! She’s private secretary to Mr. Simcox!
She’s left the splendid house in Pilchester Square! She’s living an
independent life! She’s going to Mr. Simcox’s office, her office, every
day, just like a man! She’s living on her own salary in a boarding house
in Bayswater!
What jumps! One clutches, as at flying papers in a whirlwind, at a
stable moment in which to pin her down and describe her as she jumps.
One can’t. The thing’s too breathless. It’s a maelstrom. It’s an
earthquake. It’s a deluge. It’s a boiling pot. It’s youth. What it must
be to live it! One thing pouring on to another so that it’s impossible
anywhere to pick hold of a bit that isn’t changing into something else
even as it is examined. That’s youth all over. Always and all the time
all change. What it must be to live it!
What it must be! Why, when youth comes bursting out of tutelage there’s
not a stable thing beneath its feet nor above its head a sky that stays
the same for two hours together! Every stride’s a stepping-stone that
tilts and throws you; every dawn a sudden midnight even while it breaks,
and every night a blinding brilliance when it’s darkest. New faces, new
places, new dresses, new dishes; new foes, new friends; new tasks, new
triumphs; never a pause, never a platform; every day a year and every
year a day--not life on a firm round world but life in the heart of a
whirling avalanche. How youth can live it! And all the time, all the
time while poor, dear youth is hurtling through it, there’s age, instead
of streaming sympathy like oil upon those boiling waters, standing
in slippered safety, in buttoned dignity, in obese repose, bawling at
tumbling youth, “Why can’t you settle down! Why can’t you settle down!
Why do you behave like that? Why can’t you do as I do? Why can’t you
be like your wise and sober Uncle Forty? Or like your good and earnest
Auntie Fifty? Why can’t you behave like your pious grandmother? Why
can’t you imitate your noble grandfather? Oh, grrrr-r, why can’t you,
you impious, unnatural, ill-mannered, irresponsive, irresponsible
exasperating young nuisance, you!” Is it any wonder poor youth bawls
back, or feels and behaves like bawling back, “How to goodness can I
behave like my infernal uncle or my maddening aunt when I’m whirling
along head over heels in the middle of a roaring avalanche?”
Oh, poor youth, that all have lived but none remembers!
One clings, faut au mieux, to the intention to tell of her life only
the things in her life that contributed to her record, as records are
judged. There shall be enormous omissions. They shall be excused by
vital insertions.
She shall be glimpsed, first, in the splendid house in Pilchester
Square, in the desperate business that getting a place for a woman in a
business house was when women were in business houses far more rare
than are silk hats in the City in 1922. It was desperate. Uncle Pyke
and Uncle Pyke’s friends were the only channel of opportunity; and Uncle
Pyke and Uncle Pyke’s friends refused to be a channel of opportunity.
They had never heard of such a thing and they desired to bathe in their
soup and smack over their wine and not be troubled with such a thing.
Aunt Belle rallied them and baited them and told them they were “great
big grumpy things”; and Aunt Belle, in her crowded drawing-room, loved
talking about the search for work and did talk about it. “Has to earn
her own living,” Aunt Belle would chatter, “and is going into business!
Oh, yes, ever so many girls who have to earn their own living are going
into business now. She’ll wear a nice tailormade coat and skirt and
carry a little satchel and flick about on the tops of buses, in the City
at nine and out again at six and a nice plain wholesome lunch with a
glass of milk in a tea shop. Oh, it’s wonderful what girls who have to
earn their own living do nowadays. Quite right, you know. Quite right,
(for them). Come over here, Rosalie. Come over here, dear child, and
tell Mrs. Roodle-Hoops what you are going to do. The dear child!”
But nothing done.
Just that glimpse and then comes Mr. Simcox.
Mr. Simcox was first met by Rosalie while walking with Aunt Belle and
beautiful cousin Laetitia in the Cromwell Road. He came along carrying
a letter in his hand with the obvious air of one who will forget to post
it if he puts it in his pocket and probably will forget to do so in
any case. He was as obviously “a man of about fifty-six” that curiously
precise figure, neither a ten nor a five, always used for men who look
as Mr. Simcox looked and always continued to look while Rosalie knew
him, and probably always had looked. Men of “about fifty-six”--one
never says “about thirty-six” or “about sixty-six”; it would be “about
thirty-five” or “about seventy”--men of “about fifty-six” are almost
certainly born at that age and with that appearance and they seem to
continue in it to their graves.
Mr. Simcox was like that, and was short and had two little bunchy grey
whiskers, and wore always a pepper and salt jacket suit, unbuttoned, the
pockets of which always bulged and the skirts of which, containing
the pockets, always swayed and flapped. When he talked he was always
talking--if that is understood--and when he was busy he was always
frantically busy and looking at the clock or at his watch as if it were
going to explode at a certain rapidly approaching hour and he must at
all costs be through with what he was doing before it did explode. He
talked in very rapid jerks, always seeming to be about to come to rest
and then instantaneously bounding off again, rather like a man bounding
along stepping-stones, red-hot stepping-stones that each time burnt his
feet and set him flying off again.
He had been in the Bombay house of a firm of indigo merchants and there
had known Aunt Belle and Uncle Pyke. He had retired and settled in
London and he now came very briskly up to Aunt Belle, to Rosalie and
to beautiful Laetitia, greeting them and bursting into full stream of
chatter while he was yet some distance away; and, having been introduced
to Rosalie and snatched at her hand precisely as if doing so while
shooting in midair between one red-hot stepping-stone and the next,
whizzed presently to “I really came out to post a letter” and flapped
the letter in the air as if it were a bothersome thing stuck to his
fingers and refusing absolutely to be stuffed into a post-box.
“Why, there’s a pillar-box just there; you’ve just passed it,” cried
Rosalie.
“Why, so there is!” exclaimed Mr. Simcox, jumping round to stare at
the pillar-box as if it had stretched out an arm and given him a sudden
punch in the back, and then spinning towards Rosalie and staring at her
rather as if he suspected her of having put the pillar-box there while
he was not looking; and while Mr. Simcox was so exclaiming and so doing
Rosalie had said, “Do let me just post it for you. Do let me,” and had
snapped the obstinate letter from his fingers, and posted it and was
back again smiling at Mr. Simcox, whom she rather liked and who reminded
her very much of a jack-in-the-box.
Indeed with his quick ways, his shortness, his bushy little grey
whiskers and his pepper and salt suit with its flapping pockets, Mr.
Simcox was very like one of those funny little jack-in-the-boxes they
used to sell. He said to her, regarding her with very apparent pleasure
and esteem, “Well, that’s very nice of you. That really is very nice
of you. And it’s most wonderful. It is indeed. Do you know, I must have
walked more than a mile looking for a letter-box and I daresay I should
have walked another mile and then forgotten it and taken the letter home
again.” He addressed Aunt Belle: “It’s a most astonishing thing, Mrs.
Pyke Pounce, but I cannot post a letter. I positively cannot post a
single letter. When I say single, I do not mean I can post no letter at
all. No, no. Far from it. I mean I can post no letter singly, by itself,
solus. My daily correspondence, my office batch, I take out in a bundle,
perhaps in a table basket. That is simple. But a single letter--as you
see, a clever young lady like this has to find a box for me or I
might carry the thing for days together. Astonishing that, you
know. Astonishing, annoying, and mind you, sometimes serious and
embarrassing.”
“Why, you busy, busy person, you!” cried Aunt Belle with her customary
air towards a man of shaking her finger at him. “You very busy person!
Fancy a basket full of correspondence! Why what a heap you must have!”
Mr. Simcox said he had indeed a heap. “Sometimes I think more than I can
manage.”
“Indeed,” agreed Aunt Belle, “you don’t seem to have much time to spare.
Why, I haven’t seen you in my drawing-room for quite a month (“You busy
little creature, you,” expressed without being stated). I expect you’re
getting very rich and disagreeable.” (“You rich little rascal, you!”)
Mr. Simcox declared that as to that his business wasn’t one to get rich
at. “In no sense. Oh, no, in no sense. It keeps me occupied. It gives
me an interest. That’s all. No more than that.” As to Mrs. Pyke Pounce’s
delightful drawing-room, most certainly he had been there less than a
month ago and most certainly he would present himself again on the
very next opportunity. To-morrow, was it? He would without fail present
himself there tomorrow, “and I hope,” said Mr. Simcox, taking his leave,
“I hope I may have the pleasure of seeing my postmistress there again.”
He smiled very cordially at Rosalie and went flapping away up the street
at the pace and with the air, not of one who had come out to post a
letter and had posted it, but of one who had come out to post a letter,
had dropped it, and was flying back to look for it.
“Oh, isn’t he an ugly little monster!” cried Aunt Belle, resuming the
walk.
“But I think he’s nice,” said Rosalie. “What is his business, Aunt
Belle?”
Aunt Belle hadn’t an idea. “He’s an agent,” said Aunt Belle, “but an
agent for what I’m sure I don’t know. He’s a very mysterious, fussy,
funny little person. We knew him in Bombay where he had a very good
position, but he retired and what he does now I’m sure I can’t say. But
he’s very busy. You heard him say how busy he is. Rosalie, he might know
of something for you. We’ll ask him, dear child. The funny, ugly little
monster! We’ll ask him. He might help.”
He did help. A very short while afterwards, Rosalie received the
appointment of Private Secretary to Mr. Simcox; twenty-five shillings
a week; one pound five shillings a week! Office hours ten to five!
Saturdays ten to one! Holiday a fortnight a year! A man’s work! A man’s
weekly salary! A man’s office hours! The ecstasy of it! The ecstasy!
The matter with Mr. Simcox was that, in India a man of affairs, in
England he found himself a man of no affairs and a man who had “lost
touch.” On a leave from the Bombay house of the indigo firm he had been
prevailed upon by his mother and his maiden sister to remain at home and
look after them and he had done it and gone on doing it, and they had
died and he had never married, and he had now no relatives, and by
this and by that (as he told Rosalie early in her installation) he had
dropped out of friendships and, as he expressed it “lost touch.” He
owned and occupied one of those enormous houses in Bayswater. It had
been his mother’s and he lived on in it after her death and the death
of his sister, alone with a housekeeper. The housekeeper resided in the
vast catacombs of the basement of the enormous house; Mr. Simcox resided
in the immense reception rooms, miles above, of the first floor; the
three suites above him, scowling gloomily across a square at the twin
mausoleums opposite, were unoccupied and un-visited; on the first floor
Mr. Simcox had his office. The business done in this office, which
Rosalie was now to assist, and why it was done, was in this wise and was
thus explained to Rosalie.
Mr. Simcox, more than ever dropped out and more than ever having lost
touch after the deaths of his sister and mother, found himself irked
more than anything else by the absence of correspondence. He had been
accustomed in India to a big receipt of letters--a big dhak, as he
called it, using the Hindustani word--now he received no letters at all;
and he told Rosalie that when you are in the habit of getting a regular
daily post, its gradual falling off and then its complete cessation is
one of the most melancholy things that can befall a man. A nice bunch of
letters in the morning, he said, is like a cold bath to a young man, a
stimulant and an appetiser; and a similar packet by the night delivery
is an entertainment to look forward to from sunset till it arrives and
the finest possible digestive upon which to go to bed. Mr. Simcox found
himself cut off from both these necessities of a congenial life and it
depressed him beyond conception. Dressing in the morning he would hear
the postman come splendidly rat tatting along the square and would hold
his breath for that glorious thunder to come echoing up from his own
front door--and it never did. Only the sound of the footsteps came,
hurrying past--always.
Set to his solitary dinner in the evening, again would come along that
glorious, reverberating music, and again Mr. Simcox would hold his
breath as it approached and again--! Oh, particularly in the winter,
it was awful, Mr. Simcox told Rosalie. Awful; she wouldn’t believe how
awful it was. In the winter, in the dark nights, there is, Mr. Simcox
said, about the sound of the postman banging along the doors something
that is the sheer essence of all the mystery, and all the poetry, and
all the life, and all the comfort, and all the light and all the warmth
in the world. Often on winter nights Mr. Simcox would get up quickly
from the table (He couldn’t help it) and go tiptoe (Why tiptoe? He
didn’t know. You had to. It was the mystery and the aching atmosphere of
the thing) tiptoe across the room to the window, and draw an inch of
the heavy curtain and peer out into the darkness and towards the music.
There would be the little round gleam of the postman’s lantern, bobbing
along as he hurried. And flick! it was gone into a doorway, and rat-tat,
flick, and there it was again--coming! Flick, rat-tat! Flick, flick,
rat-tat! Coming, coming! Growing larger, growing brighter, growing
louder! Next door now. They always get it next door. Flick, rat-tat!
What a crasher! You can feel it echo! Flick! Now then! Now then! How it
gleams! He’s stopped! He’s looking at his letters! He’s coming in!
He is--ah, he’s passed; he’s gone; it’s over; nothing... nothing for
here.... Rat-tat! That’s next door. The party wall shakes. The lustres
on the mantelpiece shake. Mr. Simcox’s hands shake. He sits down, pushes
his plate away....
It is absurd; it is ridiculous, of course it is; but it was pathetic,
it was moving, as it was received from Mr. Simcox by that young and most
warm-hearted Rosalie. Her eyes positively were caused to blink as she
listened. She had an exact vision of that funny little jack-in-the-box
figure up from the table and tiptoeing across the enormous dining
room in his little pepper and salt suit with the pockets swaying, not
flapping, as he trod along, and opening that inch of the heavy curtain
and pressing out his gaze through the black window pane, and watching
the gleam and the flick and then the crash and the gleam again, and then
holding his breath and hearing his heart go thump, and then dropping the
curtain, and back again, with his hands shaking a little and hearing the
lustres tinkle....
Yes, very moving to that Rosalie in her youth and warmth. She had
actually to touch her nose (high up, between her eyes) with her
handkerchief and she said, “Oh, Mr. Simcox.... Yes, and then what?”
“Then what? Ah! ‘Then what’ is this.” They were seated in Mr. Simcox’s
great office on the ground floor. The office of a man of many affairs.
A very large writing table furnished with every conceivable facility for
writing, not only note papers and envelopes racked up in half a dozen
sizes, but sealing waxes in several hues, labels, string, “In” basket,
“Out” basket, “Pending Decision” basket, all sorts of pens, all sorts
of pencils, wafers, clips, scales, letter weights, rulers--the
table obviously of a man to whom correspondence was a devotional, an
engrossing, an exact art, and an art practised on an expansive, an
impressive, and a lordly scale. There were also in the office a very
large plain table on which were spread newspapers, a basket containing
clippings from newspapers, an immense blue chalk for marking newspapers
and a very long, also a very short, pair of scissors for cutting out
clippings from newspapers. A range of filing cabinets stood against one
wall; a library of directories and catalogues occupied shelves against
another wall.
“‘Then what’ is this,” said Mr. Simcox, indicating these impressive
appointments of the room with a wave of his hand. “You ask me ‘then
what?’ ‘Then what’ is all this. ‘Then what’ has grown now to be you.
I’ll tell you.”
It was this--the oddest, most eccentric notion (not that Rosalie it
thought so). Mr. Simcox, cut off from letters, had determined that he
must get letters. He would get letters. If the postman would not come of
himself (so to speak) then he must be forced to come. And Mr. Simcox set
about forcing him to come by answering advertisements. Not employment
advertisements; no; the advertisements to which Mr. Simcox re-plied were
the advertisements that offered to send you something for nothing--that
implored you to permit them to send you something for nothing. They
are common objects of the periodical press. Every paper is stuffed with
them. “Write for free samples.” “Catalogues.” “Trial packet sent
post free on application.” “Write for our beautifully illustrated
art brochure.” “Descriptive booklet by return.” “Write for full
particulars.” “Free sample bottle sufficient for seven days’ trial.”
“Approval gladly. Postpaid.” “Plans and particulars of the sole agents.”
“Superbly printed art volume on receipt of postcard.”
The advertisement columns of every paper are stuffed with them and soon
the letter-box of Mr. Simcox was stuffed with them. The postman who
never stopped at Mr. Simcox’s house now never missed Mr. Simcox’s house.
He went on a lighter and a brisker man after having dealt with Mr.
Simcox’s house. The agitation with which his approach was heard was
now exchanged for a superb confidence as his approach was heard. The
deliveries that for Mr. Simcox had never been deliveries were now,
not deliveries, but avalanches. They roared into the letter-box of Mr.
Simcox. They cascaded upon the floor of the hall of Mr. Simcox.
A mail thus composed does not perhaps sound interesting. Mr. Simcox,
once he had got into the full swing of the thing, discovered it to be
profoundly and exhaustively interesting. It possessed in the highest
degree the two primary essentials of a really good mail,--surprise and
variety. There would always be two or three fascinating little parcels,
there would always be two or three handsome packets, there would always
be two or three imposing looking letters. No common correspondence could
possibly have had the number of attractively boxed gifts, the amount of
handsomely printed literary and il-lustrated matter, and certainly not
the unfailing persistency of flow, that constituted the correspondence
of Mr. Simcox.
The mine once discovered proved to be a mine inexhaustible and
containing lodes or galleries of new and unsuspected wealth. Mr. Simcox
took in but two daily papers, and two penny weekly papers, and they
might well have sufficed. But an appetite whetted and an eye opened
they did not suffice. There thundered from the Bayswater free library a
positive babel of cries from advertisers in the score of journals
there displayed, howling for Mr. Simcox graciously to permit them to
contribute their toll to his letter-box; and there were at the news
agents periodicals catering for every specialised class of the community
and falling over themselves to put before Mr. Simcox the full range
of the mysteries, the luxuries and the necessities of every trade
and profession and pursuit, from shipbuilding to cycling and from
ironmongery to the ownership of castles, moors, steam yachts and salmon
fisheries.
Mr. Simcox, entirely happy, one of the busiest men that might be found
in the metropolis, struck out new lines. Hitherto he had received his
correspondence interestedly and pleasurably but passively. He began
to take it up actively and sharply. He began to write back, either
graciously approving or very sharply criticising his samples,
his specimens and his free trials; and the advertisers responded
voluminously, either abjectly with regret and enclosing further samples
for Mr. Simcox’s esteemed trial, or abjectly with delight and soliciting
the very great favour of utilising Mr. Simcox’s esteemed letter for
publicity purposes. This, however, Mr. Simcox, courteously but firmly,
invariably refused to permit.
The engagement of Rosalie was a development of Mr. Simcox’s hobby as
natural as the development of any other hobby from rabbit breeding to
china collecting. The craze intensifies, the scope is enlarged. To have
a secretary made Mr. Simcox’s mail and the work that produced his mail
even more real than already it had become to him. Following up the
personal touch that had been discovered by the criticism of samples,
Mr. Simcox had opened up a line that produced the personal touch in
most intimate degree: personal touch with schools and with insurance
companies. He created for himself sons, daughters, nephews, nieces,
wards. He endowed them, severally, with ages, with backwardness, with
brilliancy, with robustness, with delicacy, with qualities that were
immature and required development, with absence of qualities that
were desirable and required implanting, with unfortunate tendency to
qualities that were undesirable and needed repression and nipping in the
bud. He placed these children, thus handicapped or endowed, before
the principals of selected schools; he desired that terms and full
particulars might be placed before him to assist him in the anxious task
of right selection. They were placed before him. “Your backward nephew
Robin” (to take a single example) engaged the personal attention of
preparatory schoolmasters from Devonshire to Cumberland and from Norfolk
to Carnarvon. Similarly with insurance companies. Again dependents
and friends were created, by the dozen, by Mr. Simcox. Male and female
created he them, cumbered with all imaginable risks, and darkly brooding
upon all manner of contingencies; and male and female, cumbered and
perplexed, they were studied and advised upon by insurance companies
earnest beyond measure to show Mr. Simcox what astounding and
unparalleled benefits could be obtained for them.
At the time when Rosalie joined him, Mr. Simcox’s attention was in much
greatest proportion devoted to this development of his pursuit. Under
the instruction of a friend, long since dropped out and lost, who had
held a considerable position in a leading assurance company, he had
acquired a sound working knowledge of the principles and mysteries of
insurance. The subject had greatly interested him. In the phrase he used
to Rosalie he had “taken it up”; and in the phrase that so often sequels
and rounds off a thing suddenly “taken up” he had suddenly “dropped it.”
He now, by way of the new development of his correspondence, approached
it again. It received him as a former habitation receives a returned
native. Mr. Simcox (if the metaphor may be pursued) roamed all about
the familiar rooms and corridors of the house of the principles and
mysteries of insurance. His knowledge of its possibilities enabled him
to develop an astonishing ingenuity in creating cases ripe and yearning
for the benefits of provision against contingencies, and as he very
easily was able to prove to Rosalie, and found immense delight in
proving, he had under his finger, that is to say in his exquisitely
arranged filing cabinets, also in his head, a range of insurance
companies’ literature which enabled him to work out for any conceivable
case the most suitable office or offices and the finest possible cover
for his risks. “Different companies specialize,” said Mr. Simcox, “in
different classes of risk. A man should no more walk into one of the
leading offices just because it happens to be one of the leading offices
and there take out his policy or policies than he should walk into and
take for occupation the first vacant house he sees, merely because it
is, as a house, a good house. It may be a most excellent house but it
may not be in the least the house most suitable to his requirements.”
Rosalie nodded intelligently. “But how is a man to find out, Mr.
Simcox?”
“Why, I suppose only by going round to every company and choosing the
best, just as I make out and send around these cases of mine. But of
course no one does that--the trouble for one thing, and ignorance for
another, and inability to realise their real requirements and to state
them clearly if they do realise them for a third. That’s what it is.”
Rosalie’s intelligent nodding had not ceased. She had a trick, when Mr.
Simcox was explaining things to her, of maintaining, with eyes fixed
widely upon him, a slow, affirmative movement of her head rather as
though she were some engine, and her head the dial, absorbing power
from a flow of energy. The dial never indicated repletion. Mr. Simcox
delighted to talk to Rosalie, to watch that grave movement of her head,
and to hear the short occasional “Why’s?” and comments that came like
little spurts or quivers as of the engine in initial throbbings pulsing
the power it stored.
She was absorbing power. The months were going on. The earlier
initiation into Mr. Simcox’s business might have had a tinge of
disappointment were it not that, whatever the nature of her work,
manifestly work it was, paid for, with regular hours, with an office to
attend, such as a man might do. The tinge of disappointment, if she
had suffered it, would have stung out of the thought: Where, in this
manufactured correspondence, in this pretence at a business which was in
fact no business at all, where in all this was Lombard Street? Where the
romance and mystery of finance? Where the touch with the power that was
made in countinghouses and with the exercise of the power exerted from
those countinghouses?
But it happened for Rosalie, first, that this thought could not come
because she was too busy with the glorious novelty of being in an office
and learning office ways; then, when the novelty had worn, that it could
not come because a new and a real element arrived to nullify it. In the
early days there was no realisation of sham because there was the real
business, to herself, of learning business methods and the whole theory
and practice of office routine. She could have had no better instructor
than Mr. Simcox, she could have had no better training than the
handling, the sorting and the filing of his curious and various
correspondence. She had become an efficient and a singularly apt and
keen office clerk when, more leisured because she had mastered her
duties, she might first have had time for realisation that Lombard
Street was not here nor all the romance and mystery with which she had
invested the power of countinghouses within a thousand miles of this
house of most elaborate pretence. And then, at once to prevent that
realisation and to dissipate its cause, came Lombard Street to her in
Mr. Simcox’s new absorption in (to her) the mysteries and the romance
and the astounding possibilities of the business of insurance. How the
mammoth companies, whose names soon were as household words to
Rosalie, accumulated their enormous funds and invested them; how, while
provisioning for to-day, they must calculate against liabilities falling
due in a to-morrow generations ahead; how they would put their money
into property the leases of which would fall in and the estate become
marketable again perhaps a hundred years hence, when officers of
the company yet unborn would be looking to the prudence of those now
reigning to maintain the inflowing tide; how risks were calculated and
vital statistics and chances and averages studied--all this, delightedly
and delightfully narrated by Mr. Simcox (watching that gravely nodding
head and those wide intelligent eyes) was sheer fascination to the
mind that had found romance and mystery in “Lombard Street” as commonly
romance and mystery are found in poetry and music.
Then one day she took a step towards applying the fascination that she
found.
It was the day of the conversation that has been recorded. How, Rosalie
had asked, was the seeker after insurance to find the policies best
suited to his case? Rosalie had asked; and had been told--he must go
round but he never does; he must know what there is to be had but he
never does know; he must realise exactly what he really wants but he
never does realise it; and if he does realise it he must be able to
state it clearly but he never can state it clearly.
Mr. Simcox, detailing this, permitted himself an amused contempt. The
public were ignoramuses, mere children; they knew nothing whatever about
insurance.
Rosalie said in a voice consonant with the grave measure of her nods:
“Of course, if it was a man, as you said, looking for a house, he’d go
to an agent. A house agent would tell him of houses best suited to his
needs that he could choose between. Well, there are insurance agents.
You’ve told me about them.”
“Ah, but not the same thing, not the same thing,” corrected Mr. Simcox.
“An insurance agent, the ordinary insurance agent, is agent for a
particular company. He only knows what his own company can do and he
only wants his own company to do it. That’s no good to the kind of man
in the position we’re speaking of. He wants some one who can tell him
what all the companies will do for him. Some one who can hear his case,
analyse it, put it before him in the right light and advise him the
best way of placing it. That’s what he wants. Exactly the same as these
letters I send out--as you and I send out, I should say. Why, I’ve had
practical examples of it. There was a young fellow I met at your aunt’s
house. There’ve been three or four cases of it for that matter but this
happens to be some one you know--”
He proceeded to tell her of a visitor at Aunt Belle’s, a young man home
on leave from the Indian army and recently married, with whom he had got
into conversation on the subject of insurance and had most ably helped.
The young man had a certain policy in view. Mr. Sim-cox had put an
infinitely better before him. “If he had come to me before his marriage
when he was first taking out a policy in his wife’s favour, I could have
saved him and gained her hundreds, literally hundreds,” said Mr. Simcox.
“He’d made a most awful mess of the business. As it was I helped him
very considerably. He was very grateful, devilish grateful. He went
straight to an agent of the office I recommended and did it.”
“There must be hundreds like him that would be grateful,” said Rosalie.
“Thousands,” said Mr. Simcox. “Tens of thousands. Every single soul who
insures, you may say.”
“Who got the commission?” said Rosalie.
“The agent, of course,” said Mr. Simcox.
“Oh,” said Rosalie.
“Why?” said Mr. Simcox.
“Nothing,” said Rosalie. “Only ‘oh ‘.”