Isabel Hurd sat bolt upright on the stiff and blackly austere divan,
and surveyed her friend with mingled surprise and concern.
"My dear Helen," she protested, "to my certain knowledge you have seen
your cousin only twice this summer, and surely it would not hurt you to
go to her reception."
"I disagree with you," replied Miss Maitland. "If there is any equity
in social obligations, it would decidedly hurt me."
"Why, what do you mean?"
"Well, just because I take the trouble to watch a certain person select
her wall paper, is that any valid reason why I should shed upon that
person the effulgence of my eyes? Not that I am a sufferer from
effulgent eyes and need the services of an oculist--I'm only
quoting--but it seems to me awfully one-sided. I hate Cousin
Henrietta's receptions--dull, poky affairs--where Mrs. Parkinson weeps
into her teacup and the Misses Pyncheon are apt--most apt--to recite a
little Browning. I detest receptions, anyway, and if I have to go to
any more of them I shall scream. If you suggest my going to any,
Isabel, I shall scream at you!"
Miss Hurd smiled a superior smile.
"Why, my dear child," she said, "you know perfectly well that I don't
care an atom whether you go to your Cousin Henrietta's or not. But I
never knew you were so down on receptions. I hope you haven't
forgotten that next month you promised to receive with mother and me at
ours."
Helen wavered a moment, then obstinately continued.
"Yes, I have. I've forgotten it absolutely. If I ever said it, I must
have been suffering from febrile lesions,--if there are any such
things,--and I hereby wave the promise aside with the magnificent
gesture of a satrap ordering somebody to execution."
Isabel no longer smiled; her answer was a little acid and very distinct.
"Of course, if you don't want to help mother and me, no one will compel
you to, my dear. Do precisely as you like; do not think of us in any
way--we can easily get some one else."
Miss Maitland looked quickly up, and saw that there was a suspicious
brightness in her friend's eyes, whereby she understood that Isabel
felt actually hurt by her diatribe against the social dragon and his
works--at least when his works were interwoven with Isabel's own
concerns. And because Helen was tender-hearted under all her social
armor, and because she and Isabel were fonder of one another than one
would have thought possible, considering the diversities between them,
she was smitten with swift compunction and hastily withdrew so much of
her protest as touched her friend.
"You are a silly person, but a dear," she said contritely; "and I
didn't really mean what I said about receptions--at least, about yours.
But I meant every word about Cousin Henrietta."
A slight shadow of doubt lingered in Isabel's eyes, and Helen, seeing
it, crossed quickly over to the divan and kissed her lightly on the
cheek. The olive branch was accepted and peace restored.
"All the same," Miss Maitland presently went on, "there are times, I
confess, when I get so tired of some of the things I do that I feel as
though I couldn't possibly do them again."
Isabel nodded understandingly.
"Is there anything in particular that you are so tired of?" she
insinuatingly asked.
"Yes, Miss Portia, there is. And furthermore you know as well as I do
what that something is."
"I would hesitate to mention it," said Miss Hurd, with a smile.
"Well, I wouldn't. On the contrary I freely and unqualifiedly announce
that I am excessively tired of a thousand things, most of which begin
with P. I am tired of portraits and portrait painters; I am tired of
posing and of poseurs; I am tired of palettes and paint; I am tired
of--" she stopped, breaking off a little suddenly.
"Well, complete it. You are tired of Pelgram, I suppose," said Isabel,
composedly.
"Pelgram, then. Yes, I am," the other girl admitted.
Her friend raised her eyebrows, and glanced at her somewhat curiously.
"You don't have to marry him, you know," she remarked in a
matter-of-fact tone.
"Of course I don't," Helen replied quickly. "But I have to sit to him
four times a week until that unspeakable portrait is finished. And
it's my belief that it never will be finished. He won't even let me
look at it now. It's my opinion that he's doing like Penelope, and
destroying every night what he has accomplished during the day. I
would never have promised to have it done if I had suspected what I was
in for. And if it were for any one else but old Aunt Mary Wardrop, I'd
back out now."
Isabel regarded her sympathetically. A portrait was bad enough without
the added embarrassment of an amatory artist.
"Is he really as difficult as that?" she asked.
"Even more difficult. He's more difficult than anything
conceivable--except analytical trig," she added reflectively.
"Don't mix art, psychology, and mathematics, or you will certainly get
into trouble," said her friend. "And really, if I were you, I would
try to forget that I had been 'higher' educated. It's enough to give
one the creeps to hear a perfectly normal girl talk of analytical
trig--whatever that may be--if there is such a thing."
Helen laughed.
"I'm not actually sure, myself, that there is. For, as I remember it
now, it deals almost exclusively with imaginary or worse than imaginary
quantities. I remember distinctly that _i_ with the acute accent meant
the square root of minus one--and stood for 'imaginary' on the face of
it. That was right at the start, and the farther you went the farther
from reality you found yourself. But I don't remember anything of the
subject--only the name--I wouldn't dream of being so Bostonian as that."
"Well, it's almost as bad merely to refer to it," said Miss Hurd.
"Especially when you know that I never could pass beginner's algebra."
The two girls laughed together. It was perfectly true that Isabel, who
was keen almost to the point of brilliance in the application of
mathematics to such practical matters as finance and real life, had
never academically been anything but a hopeless dunce, while Helen, who
had penetrated so far into the upper occult that the mind shuddered to
follow, was notoriously incapable of making her personal accounts
balance within fifty per cent. It was an understood situation that
always amused them both.
They had been friends all their lives, these two, or so nearly all
their lives that the residue was hardly worth consideration. As each
was now nearing the middle twenties, it must have been almost a full
generation since they had been presented to one another. It was at the
respective ages of six and five that little Miss Maitland and little
Miss Hurd had been discreetly conveyed to the decorous Back Bay
Kindergarten which was known to all Bostonians of a certain class as
the "Child's Cultural Institute" of Miss Dorcas Kingsbury. It was
there they met, under the watchful eye and the eagle espionage of Miss
Dorcas. That good lady was not distinguished for her social graces,
but her introduction of these two small maids was an instant success.
It has subsequently been established, by hesper light so to speak, that
the bond which first united the two was their chastened and wide-eyed
mutual marveling at six long black cockscrew curls which marked--for
only by a figure of speech could they have been said to adorn--the
lateral aspects of Miss Dorcas's chignon. Forth they jutted, these
remarkable structures, from cul-de-lampes above the lady's ears, and
thence they descended, three toward the right shoulder, three toward
the left. But their most astonishing quality was their buoyancy, their
resiliency, which made them vital and active things, and not mere
soulless parts of an ordered design.
At all events the two little newcomers, cowering somewhat under the
glittering gaze of their preceptress, drew for protection close to one
another, small hand found small hand, and a friendship was cemented
which the swirling years had proved unable to break.
Their later experiences at this fountain of learning served only to
draw them closer still. Many a time, in later years, would they smile
together, remembering incidents that had happened in the square old red
brick house with the green blinds, and the orderly terrible courtyard
with the straight narrow seats set bolt upright against a speechless
wall, and the little green pump that only grown-up persons were
permitted to touch; remembering, too, the long low-backed benches in
the schoolroom, row after row to the end of the low-ceiled room, and
the tiny gray blackboard, and the painful corner behind the stove where
recalcitrant pupils were stood, awaiting the approach of tardy
contrition or increased mental attainments; remembering, above all, the
grave, kind face of the teacher herself, Miss Dorcas Kingsbury--of
_the_ Kingsburys--reduced in her middle age to conducting a "cultural
institute," but as undeviating and inflexible in her idea of duty as
was the very line of her uncompromising brow. Not bad training for
small girls, that of Miss Dorcas; Helen and Isabel would not have
changed it, in their memories at least, for the fairest lane of
learning in the world.
Time went on and gradually carried them beyond the pale of Miss
Dorcas's influence and over the horizon beyond the sight of her curious
curls. But the school-girl lovers had become friends--which was of
much more consequence. They stayed together as they grew, although in
intellectual concerns Helen soon left Isabel behind. A year the elder,
she was also the more dominant, and had always taken the lead in their
mutual affairs. Isabel, who had a will of her own, did not always
follow; but there was never any struggle for precedence, and Helen's
unselfishness prevented her from ever assuming an unpleasant autocracy.
It would have been difficult, at any rate, to associate anything
unpleasant with Miss Maitland. She was tall, well over the middle
height, and her hair was of that uncompromising blackness that made one
think of things Amazonian--or would have done so had not her deep
violet eyes softened the effect in a peculiarly attractive manner. It
was no wonder that poor Pelgram fluttered about so compelling a flame,
and Isabel, as she looked at her friend, thought for the thousandth
time that if she were a man--well, it was a little hard to say what she
would do in that remote contingency, but she felt certain, at all
events, that she would adore Helen.
As a matter of fact no young lady in all Boston seemed less likely to
become a man in the next or any subsequent incarnation. There are
Bostonian persons of the female kind who could with readiness be
conceived as turning into men without any sea-change or especially
startling biological transmutation. But Isabel was not one of them.
Small and dainty, she was of the gold-and-white, essentially feminine
type. She lived alone with her parents in the solid old-fashioned
house on the north side of the Common, almost under the shadow of the
State House dome. It made very little difference to Isabel where she
lived, and since her father would never consider moving to any other
locality nor rebuilding the rather patriarchal homestead which he had
occupied for twenty-five years, it was just as well that the daughter
was so complaisant. She, moreover, was the only person who looked upon
John M. Hurd with a clear understanding of his habits of thought. She
could herself accomplish things with him, when her way did not conflict
too directly with his own, but she gained her points first by
concentrating her attack on the matters really of import to her, and
second by taking her way whenever she saw an avenue open, notifying her
somewhat surprised parent afterward that she had done so.
"Father once told me a story," Isabel had said, "of a man who went to a
railroad president about a culvert he wanted to build under the
railroad track, and the president told him that he should have built
his culvert first and asked permission afterwards. And I invariably
say now, if father protests against any of my performances, that he
never should have told me that story. And he usually gives a kind of
growl which I have always interpreted to mean that all is well."
Isabel had a little money of her own, but she never used the income.
Instead, she put it in the bank and lived on her allowance. She was
not John M. Hurd's daughter for nothing. Her mother, a stiff, lean,
gray woman with a tremendous capacity for being both busy and
uncomfortable and making every one around her share the latter feeling,
had little or nothing to do with Isabel or her friends. She was the
typical Puritan, the salt of a somewhat dour earth, and how Isabel ever
came into her household would be difficult to say. The mother had much
undemonstrative affection for her daughter, but no understanding and
less sympathy. She could never accustom herself to the girl's habit of
facing every problem when it had to be faced but not before; she
herself was used to spying trouble afar off, rushing forth with a sort
of fanatical desperation, and falling upon its breast. John M. Hurd
had selected her for her sterling and saving qualities, and he had
always found her all he could have wished. From her daughter's
viewpoint she left much to be desired, at least in the capacity of a
confidante, and this prerogative had long since been assumed by Miss
Maitland.
That young lady, more reserved than Isabel, usually preferred to
receive rather than to bestow confidences. Only in unusual cases, such
as the one now under contemplation, was Helen moved to such downright
speech. But in this instance she acknowledged the presence of an
irritation alien to her customary serenity, and unconsciously she hit
on conversation as a soothing influence. Thus it chanced that the talk
was still on Pelgram when the doorbell rang and the butler announced
that Mr. Wilkinson was calling.
"I believe I could write a manual of artistic courtship," concluded
Miss Maitland, "with a glossary embracing every shade of every color of
an artist's mood. Charlie Wilkinson was absurd, of course, the other
day, with his 'nuances,' but he was amazingly near the truth at the
same time, for all that. Isabel, I'm sick and tired of nuances--I
confess it freely."
"Well," said her friend, soothingly, "here is Charlie now. He ought to
be a fine antidote, for Heaven knows he hasn't a nuance in his entire
anatomy."
Mr. Wilkinson entered.
"My dear Isabel," he said reproachfully, as he shook hands, "I couldn't
help hearing most of what you were just saying about me, and I assure
you that I feel deeply flattered, but at the same time a little hurt.
I dislike to be denied the possession of anything, even an abstract
quality, whether I want it or have any use for it or not. Miss
Maitland, I bid you an exceedingly good day, and venture to express the
hope that you will concede that latent in my anatomy I may have a
liberal share of that something--the name of which I failed to
catch--although I may perhaps have up to now given no evidence of its
possession."
"You would do much better, Charlie," said his hostess, with a laugh,
"if you announced with all the emphasis at your command that you had
none of this particular quality concealed about your person. Whatever
it was, Helen just said that she never wanted to see or hear of such a
thing again."
"Miss Maitland," said the visitor with due solemnity, "I assure you
that whatever else I may be, I am as free from the taint of this
unmentionable attribute as a babe unborn. Isabel, you will bear me out
in this?"
"I feel sure of it," Helen replied smilingly. "In fact, I should have
exonerated you even without inside information of any sort. Really,
I'm awfully glad you've come. Here we are, two lone dull girls, hungry
to be amused. Be as chivalrous as you can in our distressing state."
"You two lone girls lonely!" retorted Mr. Wilkinson. "Ridiculous!
That is certainly a fine ground on which to seek sympathy from me! I
forget who it is has the proverb, 'Never pity a woman weeping or a cat
in the dark.' And I am reminded of it when I look at you two. You and
my fair cousin, when you have one another to talk to, are just about as
much in need of sympathy as a tiger is of tea . . . Speaking of tea--"
he turned to Isabel with bland inquiry in his face, after a hasty
glance about the room to make sure that no ulterior preparations had
been made. "I am anxious," he explained, "to see what progress has
been made since last I inculcated my theories as to edibles--and
detrimentals."
Isabel rose with a sigh.
"I see that I shall have to go and superintend the matter personally,"
she said, "for the customs of years are too strong to be utterly
overcome all at once. I can only dimly conjecture Peter's dismay if he
were asked to pass the Hamburger steak to Mr. Wilkinson, yet that is
the shadowy future awaiting him."
With a laugh she vanished through the doorway, and the visitor seated
himself solemnly across from Miss Maitland, whom he then proceeded to
regard with a gloomy eye.
"It is a fearful strain on one's comic spirit to have it suddenly
cooled," he said. "It makes it liable to crack, and then when you beat
on it you get nothing but a dull stodgy sound. I feel that there are
times when my ebullience, my wealth of genteel diablerie, my flow of
_jeux d'esprit_ astonish even myself, but those times are never the
ones when my hostess says, in effect: 'Charlie, you can be such an
awful idiot when you want to that I wish you'd be one now--go on,
there's a dear!'--which was substantially what you said to me. I don't
mind telling you that it's very upsetting."
"Oh, I'm awfully sorry," Miss Maitland replied. "I didn't mean to. I
should be simply heart-broken if your spring of divertissement should
ever run dry--especially if you held me in any way responsible.
Charlie serious! Good heavens! And yet, on second thought, would it
not have a certain piquant lure, gained from its utter strangeness,
which would be simply overwhelming? Try it and see. No audience was
ever more expectant."
Wilkinson's gloom melted in meditation.
"Do you know," he said thoughtfully, "that there has never been in your
attitude toward me the regard and genuine respect--I may almost say the
reverence--that I could wish to see there. If it were not such a
perfectly horrible thing to say, I should say that you do not
understand me. As it chances--though you would be surprised to learn
it--there is at this moment a mighty problem working out, or trying to
work out, its solution in my brain. You tell me to be serious, and
since I want the advice of every one, including those whose advice is
of problematic value, I will be. And who knows but when you see me
engaged, or about to engage, in practical, cosmic matters, swinging
them with a gigantic intellectual force, your veneration for me may
develop with remarkable rapidity?"
"Who knows, indeed? Go ahead--you have my curiosity beautifully
sharpened, at any rate, before a word is said."
Wilkinson cleared his throat and bent forward with an air of
concentration, meant to indicate that he was marshaling his ideas.
Then he said in a hushed and confidential tone: "What do you know of
trolley systems?"
Miss Maitland looked at him in surprise.
"Goodness, Charlie!" she said; "I know there are such things--the term
is perfectly familiar. I have always supposed that trolley cars were
part of trolley systems, but I should hesitate to go very far beyond
that statement."
The young man nodded gravely.
"You are right. Your information, so far as it extends, is absolutely
correct, but it hardly goes far enough. Trolley cars belong to trolley
companies which operate trolley systems. That's very well put, don't
you think?"
"Very. Go on--I'm awfully interested."
"I'll put it a little more simply. The scientific attitude is too
difficult to maintain. And besides, that was just about as far as I
could go scientifically, anyway. I had much better deal with concrete
facts--or with what I hope to convert into them. Don't you agree?
Although I felt rather well in my academic habiliments."
"Much better," Miss Maitland promptly agreed. "And there would be the
additional advantage that I would quite likely know what you were
talking about, which would not be at all a certainty if you insisted on
retaining your scientific manner."
"It's this way, then," said her companion. "It's this way. John M.
Hurd, Isabel's father, my step-uncle, Mrs. Hurd's husband--John M.
Hurd, in short, is the President of the most important trolley system
in this vicinity, the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company.
He is also, ex-officio, chairman of the board of directors, and except
for some dynamos, cars, conductors, tracks, and other equipment, he is
the trolley system."
"That sounds like Mr. Hurd," the girl acknowledged.
"Now I must ask you another leading question," the other continued.
"What do you know about fire insurance?"
"Well, I ought to know a little about it," replied Helen, "considering
the fact that my uncle, Mr. Osgood, has one of the leading fire
insurance agencies in Boston. Whenever there's a big fire he's always
quoted as 'Silas Osgood, the veteran underwriter, said so and so.'"
"You will pardon me," said Mr. Wilkinson, "if my legal method of
thought calls to your attention that 'ought to know' and 'do know' are
not in all cases coincident. My original question was, 'What do you
know about fire insurance?'"
"Not as much as I ought, I'm afraid," Helen confessed. "Uncle Silas
belongs to the school which believes in locking his business in the
safe when he leaves the office, and as he never mentions it, I know
very little about it--though I don't at all care for your legal method
of establishing my ignorance."
"A true gentleman ignores a lady's embarrassments. Fire insurance, to
put it briefly, is indemnity against losses by fire. Companies do it.
You pay them a little money called a premium--no connection with
trading stamps--and when your house burns down they pay you a
tremendous amount. It's a remarkable idea."
"It certainly sounds so, as you put it."
"The personal application is this: John M. Hurd owns a trolley system
which ought to be insured for five or six million dollars if it was
insured at all. But it isn't. And it is my life work to make him put
on that insurance, and make him do it in a way that will count--for me,
you understand."
"But how do you expect to convince him?" asked the girl. "If he never
has insured the system, the chances are that he doesn't believe in
insurance, or that he doesn't think the system is likely to burn up, or
that he has some other good reason for not insuring it."
"That's exactly why I'm asking your advice," her companion replied.
"Probably you are correct in all three of your conjectures. What I
want is some way to make him do something that he doesn't believe in
and from which he never expects to get his money back and that he has
some other perfectly proper argument for turning down--and make him do
it, just the same. Eventually he's _got_ to do it--it's a case of
sheer necessity--for me."
"Why don't you ask Isabel? I think I hear her coming."
And Isabel entered, the teakettle boiling in her wake. As she
dispensed the material concomitants, the conversation went on.
"We have been talking about fire insurance and trolley systems," said
Helen. And she summarized Wilkinson's remarks for her friend's
benefit. Isabel listened with interest but skepticism.
"If you really expect father to insure anything, Charlie, I'm afraid
you will be disappointed," she said frankly. "I hope you're not
serious about it."
"Serious! I should think I was! I would naturally be just a little
serious about something on which depended the life, liberty, and
pursuit of happiness of Charles S. Wilkinson, Esquire. It is a matter
of most vital necessity, I assure you--nothing less. And now having
acquainted you with the salience of the situation, I will allow you a
period for reflection undisturbed by pleasantries or philosophic
observations from myself which might conceivably divert the currents of
your minds. Meanwhile _I_ shall devote this period to an intelligent
appreciation of Isabel's compendious and soul-satisfying tea."
The two girls looked blankly at one another.
"My dear Charlie," Miss Hurd said, "it is very painful to have to
overturn the family water cooler on your ambitious young hopes, but are
you aware that for thirty years my mother--or her representative--has
carried the silver upstairs every night because as a family we did not
believe in insuring it? Burglary insurance, life insurance, fire
insurance--father has never paid a dollar for any one of them. And do
you happen to recall the line of my distinguished parent's jaw? If I
were you, Charlie, I would try to insure somebody else's trolley
system."
Wilkinson shook his head sadly.
"No, that won't do, Isabel. John M. is the only relative I have who
owns a trolley system, or much of anything else. Most of the other
systems are insured already, anyway, and the people who own them
undoubtedly insure them through their own connections--I was about to
say poor relations. No, my only hope is here, and it grieves me
deeply, Isabel, to see you take so pessimistic a view. Nevertheless, I
am not downcast; I will arise buoyantly to ask whether you cannot do
better?--whether you cannot devise some expedient whereby the heart of
your worthy father may be melted and become as other men's hearts. I
don't demand a permanent or even a protracted melting--all I ask is a
temporary thaw, just long enough to let me extract a promise from him
to let me insure those car barns and power houses. Then he can revert
to adamant and be--and welcome, so far as I am concerned. Now, Miss
Maitland, have you nothing to suggest?"
"Wouldn't it be more satisfactory to succeed by your own ideas and
devices?" Helen inquired.
"All very pretty, my plausible girl, but what if one has no ideas or
devices? That is very nearly my case, and it is a hard one. I've only
one real shot in my locker, and if that doesn't reach its mark, I'm
lost."
"And what is that?" Helen and Isabel asked almost simultaneously.
"In my single way I will endeavor to answer both these interrogations
at once. It is, then, the suggestion of a man I met in the office of
Silas Osgood and Company, a man by the wild, barbaric, outré name of
Smith. Richard Smith, I believe. And his suggestion--I tell it to you
in confidence, relying on your honor not to steal my stolen
thunder--was, very briefly, to put before my distinguished relation the
sad, disheartening effect it would have on the popularity of the
trolley stock in the banks and on the stock exchange if it became
generally noised abroad that the road carried no insurance and
maintained no proper insurance fund. What do you think of that?"
"I begin to see," said Isabel, thoughtfully. "People have bought the
stock and banks have lent money on it without knowing whether the
property was protected by insurance or not?"
"On the contrary, rather assuming that it was. Your father's antipathy
to insurance is a little unusual, you know. So far no one has ever
made a point of bringing it strongly before the public. And banks and
stock markets are queer things--and confidence is jarred with singular
ease. There are a number of pretty important men in this town who
would dislike to have some of their loans called or to have
Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction drop ten or fifteen points. Of
course this needn't happen--and for a preventative, apply to Charles
Wilkinson, Esquire, restorer of lost confidences."
Helen spoke.
"Whose idea was this, did you say?" she asked.
"His name was Smith," said Wilkinson, soberly.
Helen started to ask another question; then changed her mind, and was
silent. What surprised her was the fact that she found herself
interested, sharply interested, in the problem Charles had presented.
She was, in fact, more interested than she had been in anything for
some time. She was astonished to find this to be so. She had always
been under the impression, common enough among the more sheltered of
her class, that business was a thing in which only the men who carried
it on could possibly be absorbed. Yet here she had been interested to
the exclusion of all else in a matter that was of absolutely no
aesthetic value and with the terms and locale of which she was quite
unfamiliar. As it had been presented to her and she had tried, at
Charles's demand, to find a way out for him--she stated the problem
over more clearly--she admitted feeling a trifle piqued when she racked
her brain for a solution only to find it barren of expedients and a
hopeless blank. Yet this chance acquaintance of Charlie's had
apparently hit on _his_ expedient casually enough. Once more she
restrained the impulse to ask another question, although she scarcely
knew why she did so, and she remained silent until, a few moments
later, she was roused by the departure of the satiated Wilkinson.
"Wish me luck," he said, as he turned to go. "More depends upon this
than you pampered children of luxury can ever guess. Isabel, I
congratulate you on the educational advance of your butler. Miss
Maitland, I am your very devoted."
The curtains of the drawing room shut him from sight and sound, except
the faint rumor of his descending feet upon the steps.