"Not vital!" he exclaimed, getting out of his chair and facing her.
"Not vital! Really, Miss Maitland, what can you call vital? Fire
insurance is as vital as anything in the world of business to-day--or
in any world that I know anything about." He paused, and some of the
indignation went out of his eyes. "I beg your pardon," he said more
gently. "I had thought I was making you understand."
"You were--you were," Helen hastened to assure him; but he shook his
head.
"Not if you think, after all, that fire insurance isn't vital."
"I'm afraid I chose my word badly. What I meant, perhaps, was that it
wasn't picturesque. It isn't that, is it--as the word is generally
understood?"
"You mean it isn't building bridges over boiling chasms three thousand
feet below in the Andes river bottoms; it isn't leading ragged armies
of half-baked South American natives against a mud stockade; it isn't
shooting African animals and dining on quinine and hippopotamus liver.
No, there's none of the soldier of fortune business about it. But
vital! My heavens! what do you call vital?"
"I don't know," said the girl, humbly. She was somewhat abashed before
this flare her words had so suddenly lighted. And she felt honestly
contrite, for she saw she had hurt an ideal that was very close and
real to the man before her.
At the sound of her reply Smith came to himself.
"I really beg your pardon--again," he said, with a little tremor in his
voice. "I didn't appreciate what I was doing, or I wouldn't have blown
up with a report like a nitroglycerine storehouse. Will you excuse me?"
Helen looked squarely at him.
"Yes--I will," she said, "on one condition."
"And what is that?"
"That you blow up again. I would really like to see it just as you do,
and that is much the best way--carry me along with you."
The underwriter looked momentarily away; then his eyes rested on her
thoughtfully.
"All right. I'll do it," he said. "I'll make it so plain to you that
you can't escape it. I'll hold you with my glittering eye till you
cannot choose but hear," he quoted, with a smile.
"I do not choose but hear," Miss Maitland said.
Smith was silent for a long minute.
"The picturesque things are all very well in their way," he said.
"Revolutions and railway building and all that. Let us take railway
building for example--I was once in the construction department of a
big railroad, myself. But every one can't get into that department,
and even there, there is a good deal of routine and very little thrill.
It's only once in a lifetime, practically, that a man gets his chance
to build the suspension bridge that swings a mile above the chasm.
With most railroad builders one day's work is pretty much like
another's. Not much excitement, except at long intervals. To plan
what you must do is interesting, of course, but the execution is
generally a long grind."
"Yes," Helen assented; "I fancy that would be so."
"It is so. But even if it were not, the kind of obstacles that must be
surmounted are very much the same, year in and year out. You ford
quicksands; you evade granite hillsides; you fight walking delegates.
What I mean is that the set of obstacles doesn't change much, and the
environment of the railway constructor is always about the same. But
that is not so with the underwriter. One moment he is in the
construction camp of the road builder, and the next in the palace of
the city banker; one moment he is in an Idaho sawmill, and the next in
a New England college chapel; one moment he is in a Florida orange
grove, and the next in a salmon cannery on the Oregon coast. Ten
thousand businesses pass before his eyes, and he must be alert to the
local conditions affecting every one. There is no fixed environment
for the underwriter."
The girl interrupted him.
"That may be true. But there is no work of original construction about
it, is there? Can you compare the vitality of your business with that
of the men who create their own ideas? There is no routine about that.
And after all, isn't that more vital than anything else can be?"
"Yes," said Smith, "I presume it is. Certainly it is for the genius;
probably even for any man of high and true talent, a man able to lose
himself in his own creation. Undoubtedly that is the only real elixir
of life, the only ineffable exaltation. But isn't that carrying your
argument out too far? We can scarcely set a standard for creative
geniuses--there are too few of them. You spoke of the men who create
their own ideas. How many of them are there? There are thousands of
near-authors, near-musicians, near-artists, near-poets, who are
painfully remote from the genuine article. Do you understand what I
mean?"
"Oh, yes. And that is so. I myself have at least seen that."
"Of course it is so. And do you suppose these second-rate creators get
the real thrill? Not they. In their hearts they know they are frauds,
impostors, dilettantes at best. There is no vitality to their grip on
things, and they know it. They deal with the spurious and fustian from
cradle to grave. Why, I myself know innumerable people that spend
their lives in trying to persuade themselves into thinking they are
doing something worth while!"
Mentally the girl winced; the words went home so close to Pelgram, who
had been in her own mind. It was this very feeling of protest, for
which Smith now found voice, that had sickened her of Pelgram.
"Such people get little out of life," the underwriter went on,
"probably first because they are constantly uneasy in the knowledge
that they are charlatans, and second because they do not have anything
real, anything alive, to face. They deal in half-tones, in nuances--"
Nuances! Was the man clairvoyant? He had suggested that an
underwriter ought to be. Helen felt that this channel had been pursued
far enough.
"No one defends dilettanteism as such," she said.
"One can, though, easily enough, if one wishes," Smith promptly
responded. "After all, to do things for the love of doing them is the
right way. But they must be the right things, and to get the full
taste out of anything one must have faced real dragons to attain it.
There is no lack of dragons in the insurance business. You're fighting
them all the time. If it isn't against time to keep your premiums up,
it's against fate to keep your losses down. And of course all your
days you're fighting on not one but a thousand battle lines to keep
your rivals from getting your business away from you. Now your little
artist, your semi-creator, hasn't anything like that. So long as he
lives he hasn't any real facts to face."
"No; I suppose not," said the girl, slowly.
"The same trouble, or very nearly the same, exists for your soldier of
fortune. To be sure, he faces facts--there can be no doubt about
that--but they are facts he deliberately seeks, and not the actual
obstacles that the world rolls up before him. He gets color and
excitement all right, but the quality of the self-constructed
excitement isn't quite so fine; in fact, after a while it begins to
pall on one. Then, too, a man wearies of doing things that serve no
useful end and that get nowhere; he begins to feel awkward and
superfluous in the whole scheme of things. And these soldiers of
fortune don't really _do_ anything, they merely put on the canvas a few
bold strokes that attract ephemeral attention but which their
successors promptly paint out, and they leave the world precisely where
it was before they entered it or carried on their living."
"But isn't that much the same with you, too? Fire insurance doesn't
_get_ anywhere, does it? Of course it's more useful to provide people
with fire insurance than with South American revolutions, but after all
it isn't indispensable. The world could move, couldn't it," she said
diffidently, "without fire insurance? At least it did so for a good
many centuries."
"The modern world couldn't," Smith said promptly. "Insurance is one of
the things that the world, having had, could not do without. You do
not perhaps realize the trend of the world to-day. It is no longer
military; it is along commercial lines. Napoleon and Wellington to-day
would be capitalists, either bankers or merchants or manufacturers, and
their battles would be fought with money, not men. The world is ruled
by commerce and trade--and where would trade be without fire insurance?
Nowhere. The foundation of modern trade is credit. Without credit, no
trade--or either petty trade limited to cash transactions or trade
carried on by great millionaires or trusts who are above the fear of
fire--although it is doubtful if there are any such. But for ordinary
people, take credit away and trade is at an end."
"How is that? I don't understand," the girl said.
"Business to-day is transacted mainly on borrowed money. Jones, who
keeps a corner grocery store, hasn't enough money to buy groceries
because his customers don't pay him until the end of the month. So he
goes to White and Company, who are wholesale grocers, and buys his
stock on credit. But do you suppose White and Company would let him
have those groceries if it were not for insurance? Certainly not;
that's their only protection. If Jones's store burned with that stock
before it was sold, and there was no insurance, who would lose? Not
Jones--White and Company could force him into bankruptcy, but that
wouldn't collect their bill. As I said, trade would be impossible,
except cash trade and that in the grip of interests so vast that the
ordinary run of fire losses wouldn't count."
"I never thought of that before," the girl remarked.
"Would the cotton grower ship his cotton north to the New England mills
or to Liverpool if he couldn't insure it in transportation? No; he
wouldn't dare take the risk. His cotton would remain on his plantation
until some venturesome buyer came, paid him cash, and carried it away
with him. We should go back to the commercial dark ages."
"You have crushed me, Mr. Smith," Helen said with a smile. "I will
admit that insurance is indispensable."
"I was in hopes that you would admit it, not because you were crushed,
but because you saw."
"I think I'm beginning to see," she answered.
The underwriter regarded her a little doubtfully; then a whimsical
smile crossed his lips, making him singularly youthful and--Helen
noted--singularly attractive. By a sudden change of thought he turned
toward the window.
"A seaport city is a wonderful thing," he said. "Here come the keels
of the world, bringing the tribute of the seven seas. It is a fine
place to work, Miss Maitland, this down town New York within sight of
the water and the water front. Even if you seldom get time to look at
it, you have the feeling that it is there. There is never a minute,
summer or winter, night or day, when those keels are not bringing
argosies home to these old docks. Merely to walk along the shore front
is as though one were in touch with all the world."
"I've seen some of it in Boston," said the girl; "but Boston is not the
port it used to be."
"There are places in the world, they say--Port Said is one of them and
the Café de la Paix in Paris is another--where all things and all
people come soon or late. Those places must be the most interesting in
the world."
"You have never been abroad?" the girl asked.
"No; I never had time. I have to get my world travel, world
strangeness, world movement, as I can. And I get it pretty well, here
in this office."
"Here! What do you mean?"
"We photograph it all, day by day."
"Oh," said Helen, "you mean you get it all from the maps you showed me?"
"Partly that. That is, the maps are part of it. They make the stage,
the setting where the insurance drama is played. But the characters
come on the stage through the medium of plain sheets of printed paper
known as daily reports. The daily report is the link that unites this
office to the throbbing life of a thousand cities around us."
"And what is a daily report? Certainly the name of it doesn't sound
romantic."
"No, it doesn't. And yet the daily report is as vital a document as
there is in the world."
"In what way? I never heard of it before."
"You never asked Mr. Osgood. He has sent us many thousand. As you
know, the company receives its business from agents, scattered all
through the country, at most of the important and a large number of
unimportant points. In New England alone this company has nearly two
hundred agents, each one writing policies when people apply for
insurance."
"Does Uncle Silas write policies? I thought the companies themselves
did that."
"No. Mr. Osgood has a young man in his office--his name is Reed--who
does nothing else. And every time a policy is written by Mr. Reed and
signed by Mr. Osgood or Mr. Cole and delivered to the assured, this
peculiar document, the daily report, is made up and sent in to this
office. It is really a complete description of the policy which has
just been written."
"But there must be thousands!"
"Of course. One for every policy every agent issues. We get more than
two hundred a day in this office."
"That's why Uncle Silas said I ought to go to a home office to see
things properly. That's what he meant--it's the center of everything.
I begin to understand."
Smith, glancing at her, perceived that there was no question of her
interest now.
"Here they come, the daily reports," he continued, "and we open
them--dailies from Chicago, San Antonio, Butte, Lenox, Jersey City,
Tampa, Bangor. Dailies in English, a few in Spanish, quite a number in
French, for a few of our Canadian agents speak nothing else. This
current of dailies flowing through this office, never ceasing day in
and day out, year after year, is like the current of the blood tending
back to the heart, like the response of the nerves to the pulse-beat,
reporting at the brain, bringing news of the body's health, even down
to the fingers' ends. And we sit here, like a spider in a web, drawing
all the world."
"What do they tell you?" asked the girl, absorbedly.
"Everything;--or nearly all. Is a trust in the making? We know of it
here, when we see the ownership of scattered factories change to a
common head. Is prohibition gaining ground in the South? We can tell
by the shut-down endorsements on brewery and distillery policies and by
the increasing losses on saloons whose owners can make no further
profit. Is there a corner in wheat or coffee or cotton? We follow the
moves in the struggle by the ebb and flow of insurance in the big
warehouses and elevators and compresses. Is the automobile market
overstocked? Our rising loss ratio gives the reply. Are hard times
coming? We can tell it when the merchants begin to cut down their
insurance, which means their stocks as well, buying what they need from
day to day. Is the panic over? We learn it by a rush of new dailies,
buildings in course of construction, new and costly machinery
introduced in factories, increased insurance all along the line."
"It sounds almost uncanny," said Helen, slowly. "Can you really learn
all these things in this way?"
"Not all, of course, or at least not always, by any means, for the
Guardian is only one of many companies, and only a small part, a
fraction of one per cent, of the country's business comes to us. But
we learn a great deal; much of it along rather surprising lines. I
learned yesterday, for example, that the scandal which has been
suspected to exist between the fair but probably frail Mazie Dupont and
her manager is undoubtedly a matter of fact."
"How could you find that out?" Helen was amazed to find herself asking.
The actress was a celebrity, to be sure, yet Miss Maitland, in her own
self-analysis, should hardly have evinced curiosity regarding the
details of her private life.
"Ownership of pretty country house up the Hudson transferred from his
name to hers. Endorsement on our policy," replied Smith. "Of course
that's not proof, but its pretty good presumptive evidence. We get
similar cases every day. Here's a millionaire gets caught the wrong
side of the stock market and needs money. We know it because his
hundred thousand dollar Franz Hals goes to the art dealer's to be sold,
or some big mercantile building that he owns is mortgaged to the
Universal Savings Bank. Endorsement for our daily report. So they go."
"Well, I shall be afraid to have our furniture insured ever again after
this," said the girl, with a laugh.
"Insure it with the Guardian, and I myself will see that your family
skeletons are kept safely out of sight in the closets where they
belong."
"That's very nice of you."
"I'm afraid, though, that your insurance wouldn't be very interesting,
as regards sensation," the underwriter went on. "But there are lots of
people the investigation of whose insurance affairs is in the field of
a first-class detective agency. There are people, as you may or may
not know, who make their living by having fires. These fires are
fraudulent, of course, but fraud is very hard to prove. We can never
secure a witness, for no one applies a match to his shop while any one
is looking on; and with only circumstantial evidence and an individual
pitted against a rich corporation, the jury generally gives the firebug
the benefit of the doubt. Most of these people put in a claim for
goods supposed to have been totally burned but which in reality they
never possessed or which have been secretly removed just before the
fire. Usually they have a fraudulent set of books, too, to back up
their claim; and we have to keep a close watch all the time for birds
of that feather."
"But how can you?"
"Oh, we have a pretty complete fire record compiled from loss
experiences sent by every company to the publisher. All companies
subscribe to this record. If a man has several suspicious-looking
fires, nobody will insure him. If he gets such a bad fire reputation
in one town that he can't get insurance there, he moves somewhere else,
but the record keeps track of him, and finally he has to turn
honest--or change his name."
"Do many of them do that?"
"Not so many as you'd think. You see, it's not so easy to disguise
one's personality. The La Mode Cloak and Suit Company may turn out to
be our old friend Lazarus Epstein; but we have the service of the
principal commercial agencies to aid us in becoming better acquainted
with our policyholders. And any one who has no rating in these
commercial agencies we investigate very thoroughly, making our local
agent tell us all he knows of the man, and sending for a full detailed
report by the commercial agency besides. Even then we occasionally get
caught with a crook, but not often. The Guardian is very careful; if
all other companies were equally so, there would be fewer firebugs in
business."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, many companies rely wholly on their agents; they don't send for
these special reports, and the result is that they get caught for a
dishonest loss, and the crook who is smart enough to make the agent
think he is straight gets away with it. Thus encouraging the
impostors."
"But are not the commercial agency men fooled too?"
"Oh, yes, they're only human; but at least you have two sources of
information to draw on--and three, if the man has a fire record. By
the time we've finished we are apt to know a good deal about our
policyholder, here at the home office, and sometimes we learn very
strange things--sometimes humorous and sometimes quite the reverse."
He stopped, and Miss Maitland, seeing his pause, hesitated with the
question she had been about to put.
"I wonder if you'd care to hear about a case that came to my notice
yesterday," he said.
"I would very much," the girl replied.
"You know these commercial agency reports are by no means what I should
term models of English prose style. They are usually about as dull and
dry documents as any I know in the manner of their presentation of
facts. Their authors have about as much need for imagination as the
gentlemen who compile city directories and telephone books; beside them
articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica are yellow journalism. All
the same, they deal with facts, and facts can be more tragic than any
romantic fiction ever produced. This case I speak of was simply the
story of a harness maker who lived in Robbinsville, a small town up in
the center of New York State. A little while ago our local agent wrote
a policy on this man's stock, and because he had no rating showing his
financial responsibility, the underwriter who passes on New York State
business sent for a detailed report, which after some delay came to us
yesterday."
Again he paused, and there was silence in the little office until he
resumed.
"The rating said--and the manner of it showed that the reporter felt
the poignancy of his words--that the harness maker was bankrupt. For
nearly fifty years he had kept a harness shop in that same little town,
and competition by a younger, more aggressive man had taken away a good
many of his customers, his money had gone in ordinary living expenses,
his assets had shrunk to almost nothing, and his liabilities had
increased to fifteen hundred dollars, which to him might just as well
have been a million, and now all he could do was to throw himself on
the mercy of his creditors. Which he did."
"And what did they do?" said Helen, in a low voice.
"This is what the old man said--the commercial agency reporter gave it
just as the old man said it: 'I have sold harness in this town since I
was twenty years old. Now you say I am bankrupt. I want to do what is
right. I don't want to cheat any man. I don't know where the money
has gone. You gentlemen must do what is best. But I hope you can make
some arrangement by which I can keep my business. I have had it so
many, so many years. It probably won't be for much longer anyhow. But
we don't want to go on the town--my wife and I. A man and his wife
ought not to go on the town when he's worked honest all his life and is
willing to work still.'"
Smith rose abruptly, and turned toward the window. "I've heard of
'Over the Hills to the Poorhouse' and similar things," the underwriter
went on, after a moment, not looking at the girl, "but this somehow
seemed different. Perhaps it was its unexpectedness, or finding it in
such a way. Do you know," he said, "I felt as though I'd like to write
a check for fifteen hundred dollars and send it to that old harness
maker up in Robbinsville, just to give him one more chance."
He turned at the touch of a light hand on his arm.
"I'd like to go halves with you," said a voice which Helen's Boston
acquaintances would hardly have recognized as hers.
"It's a go," said Smith. "I can't afford it; but five or six hundred
dollars in actual cash would probably straighten things out pretty
well, and if the creditors don't grant the extension to give the old
fellow enough to carry him the rest of the way--by Jove, we'll finance
the harness business, you and I!"
"You can count on me for my half. Shake hands on the bargain!" cried
Helen, in the exhilaration following emotion sustained, and Smith
gravely took her hand in his own. For a moment they stood side by side
looking out on the East River which O'Connor's office overlooked, and
for a space neither spoke. Then Helen returned somewhat sedately to
her seat, and demurely spoke to Smith's back:--
"Well, my present interest in the fire insurance business is all that
its most ardent champion could wish."
The underwriter turned back to her.
"I'm awfully glad if I haven't bored you," he said. "I've been holding
forth like a vendor at a county fair. But I didn't mean to do it."
"You know you haven't bored me," she replied. "But I must be going
now. I thank you very much for the trouble you have taken with my
education. I hope it will not turn out to be altogether barren."
"I hope it will not," returned Smith, politely.
She was about to turn to the door. The underwriter made no move.
"Shall I say good-by now?" she asked.
"Here better than elsewhere. Good-by."
And then, to her subsequent surprise, Helen found herself saying:--
"I am stopping with my aunt, Miss Wardrop, at thirteen Washington
Square, North. If you and I are to go into the harness business
together, I hope you will come--and bring your price lists and things,
won't you?"
"Thank you. I will surely come," the underwriter answered simply.
It was not until she found herself once more mounting the steps of her
aunt's house that Miss Maitland recollected the lamp shade.