It was late afternoon in the drawing room of Miss Wardrop's house in
Washington Square. The short November dusk was fading into night, and
outside in the old Square, the street lights gleamed in the frosty air.
In the fireplace, before which two people were sitting, a wood fire
crackled, throwing fantastic shadows about the old room.
Dinner at Miss Wardrop's was at half after seven. Just why Mr. Smith
should have considered it necessary to drop in, on his way home from
the Guardian, could no doubt have been better explained had his face
not been shaded by his hand. The face in the room best worth seeing,
however, was not so shaded, and Smith manifested no displeasure at the
fact. He himself sat on the chimney seat, and he appeared to be less
talkative than usual. His reticence may or may not have been
understood by Miss Maitland, but if it were, she chose to pretend
otherwise.
"Why are you so very silent?" she finally asked. "Do you know, it
isn't at all flattering. One might think your thoughts were a thousand
miles away from here."
"Well, perhaps some of them are," Smith confessed. "And I must really
ask your pardon for thinking far away, when I am with you. And yet,"
he smiled slightly, "perhaps you also came in as an important factor in
the background of those far-off thoughts."
"If you are trying to stimulate my curiosity, you have been quite
successful," said Miss Maitland, and she waited expectantly.
"Do you remember Mr. O'Connor, the Vice-President of the Guardian?"
Smith asked abruptly.
"Yes. He was the one, wasn't he, who came into Mr. Wintermuth's office
for a minute?"
"Yes."
"You say he is Vice-president of the company? Is he a great friend of
yours? Perhaps my first impression was wrong, but I don't believe I
liked Mr. O'Connor very much--not nearly so much as that amusing Mr.
Cuyler, or nice, polite Mr. Wintermuth, or queer, silent Mr. Bartels."
"Well, between you and me, I don't believe your first impression was
far from correct. I don't like O'Connor much, myself," said Smith.
"More than that, I know he is unfriendly to me. But that is not the
point. The point is that he is up to something, and I don't know what
it is. And I've got to find out what it is. That's what I was
thinking of."
"What kind of a thing do you mean? And what has he done to make you
think so?" the girl asked.
"He has succeeded in persuading the President to take the Guardian out
of the Eastern Conference. And I can't figure out why. He's got some
ulterior motive, but I can't guess what it is."
"What is the Eastern Conference?"
"It's a sort of association of insurance companies doing business in
New England, New York, and other Atlantic states. Most of the best
companies belong to it. It's a sort of offensive and defensive
alliance. It keeps down the general expense of conducting business by
limiting the rate of commission its members can pay to any agent, and
it supplies inspections to its members and does a lot of other things.
But it really isn't a question of what the Conference does for its
members so much as a question of what it may do to the Guardian, if the
Guardian gets out. There's considerable quiet coercion about such a
union, you see--the Conference companies can make it very interesting
for an outsider, if they choose to do so. And after a company has been
operating on the inside for a good many years, it's hard to jump the
fence and make so radical a change. It upsets your organization."
"But why should the Conference try to make you belong? And will they
attempt to hurt you if you resign?"
"I don't know. Possibly not. That will soon be seen. But what I
can't fathom is why O'Connor, after all these years, should now lay his
wires to get the Guardian out. He never does an important thing like
that for nothing; he's got some idea in the back of his head. I feel
certain of that from the elaborate pains he took to make me think it
was not at his instigation that the thing was done. But I know better,
for I know O'Connor."
"Haven't you any clew at all?"
"Not really. They're all too vague. I can't for the life of me see
what O'Connor has to gain by getting the Guardian out of the
Conference. What good can it possibly do him personally?"
"I feel sure you'll hit on the correct solution at last," Helen said
thoughtfully, "because I have a distinct remembrance that one of your
chance shots went right to the mark when Charlie Wilkinson was trying
to get Mr. Hurd to insure his street car company. Charlie thought it
was tremendously clever of you. It was the first time I had ever heard
of you."
Smith looked at her quickly. Feeling rather than seeing the glance,
the girl hastily continued:--
"I wonder whether Mr. Hurd ever decided to carry insurance."
"I wonder, too," the underwriter agreed, with amusement. "If cool
nerve counts for anything, your friend Wilkinson ought to have come out
all right. I must ask Mr. Osgood about it the next time I go to
Boston."
"If he does succeed, I'm sure he'll feel it was quite largely due to
your suggestion. And that is why I think you'll eventually solve the
mystery of Mr. O'Connor's conduct."
"I wish I could believe it. But I seem to be as far away as when I
began to speculate. The only things I can think of don't appear to me
to be reasonable."
"What are some of them? Could I understand them?"
"Better than I, very likely. Since I've gotten you so far into this
horribly businesslike affair, I may as well go all the way through. As
I said, I can't see how O'Connor can personally get any advantage out
of this in any conceivable way, so long as he stays with the Guardian."
"But suppose he himself resigned--what then? Or don't people ever
leave the Guardian?"
"Oh, minor employees, of course--they're always shifting about. But no
one of any importance has left the company, except by old age or death,
for a good many years. Nobody knows exactly why, but it's a good
company, and every one just stays. And besides, if O'Connor got out to
go with some one else, what good would this move have done him?"
"Isn't it just possible that he has gotten the impression the company
has treated him badly, and he is trying to do something to hurt it
before he leaves?"
"Pure malignance? Hardly that. And besides, if that were so, why
should Mr. Wintermuth accept his suggestion? No, I can't believe that
is it."
"What could Mr. O'Connor do, supposing that he left the Guardian and
went with some other company?"
"That's another thing. As things are now, I don't see how he could do
much to hurt us. It would be a bit awkward for us, I don't mind
saying, if he went with some Conference company, for some of the
insiders are none too scrupulous in their methods against
non-Conference competitors. Of course, if the Conference should pass a
separation rule--but no, that's impossible."
"What is a separation rule?"
"Why, it's a kind of boycott. The Conference might pass a rule
reducing the commission of any agent who also represented
non-Conference companies. You see, most agents represent several
companies--a good, big agency may perhaps represent fifteen or
twenty--and the Conference companies are in the majority in most of the
agencies where the Guardian is represented. It would mean that those
agents would have to choose between resigning us and having their
commissions reduced, and there is very little doubt as to which course
they would take. The Conference might even forbid its companies to be
represented at all in mixed agencies--where both Conference and
non-Conference companies were located--and then those agents would
either have to throw us out or lose the bulk of their companies."
"But couldn't they get other non-Conference companies to fill up their
agencies and keep the Guardian?"
"No--hardly. There are only a few really high-class companies on the
outside. And most of the agents couldn't afford to change. They would
simply have to let us go; and that would mean that we'd have to make
our agency plant practically all over again."
"And that would be hard to do, I suppose?"
"It would be just about equivalent to building a new company, for the
company's agents are the company."
"But you say it's impossible they should pass this rule. Why?"
"Several reasons. It's pretty arbitrary--it looks a little like a
combination in restraint of trade, although company organizations in a
lot of states have separation rules. But I doubt whether the Eastern
Conference has the backbone to put such a rule in effect. Besides,
it's scarcely worth while as things now stand--almost all the good
companies are in the Conference, and as for the rest, they're either
used to them or they feel they're hardly worth bothering about."
"But the Guardian is, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Smith, thoughtfully, "I suppose it is. Still, what good
would it do O'Connor? That's what I keep coming back to, because I'm
absolutely certain he wouldn't have put this thing through without some
personal end in sight."
"Might not he be disinterested, for once?"
"Not O'Connor," said Smith, dryly. "But good heavens! haven't we
talked intrigues and cabals and plots long enough? There are one or
two other things in life, you know--I've hardly given you a chance to
speak, and I've been holding forth like an unsuccessful detective
reporting to his superior officer."
And the conversation drifted into other channels.
A great city is a wonderful place in a thousand ways, not the least of
which is its magical influence upon human relationships. Perhaps its
mere size, the multiplicity of its sights and sounds, its effect of
isolating an individual in the midst of an almost impenetrable
throng--perhaps these things are chiefly responsible. But it is
certain that, in common with the desert and the sea, a city like London
or Paris or New York carries in its very atmosphere a sense of almost
devotional reality, of almost the pure essence of life. In the very
shrine of the unreal and the artificial, reality grips with a power
elsewhere unknown. Beyond all the curious striving for the immaterial,
the sense of the utter futility of that very effort becomes wholly
clear. Follies and affectations may be sought with added fervor for
the mind and the body, but the want of them is stilled in the soul.
Since this is so, in the very home of conventions and conventionalities
these artificial ideas become more palpably ridiculous. Surrounded by
needless man-made fetters, one sees them to be inane. The wind that
blows between the worlds blows in the world's great cities, and it
blows, for their lovers at least, the cobwebs from the heart. What is
natural is seen to be right, and what is real is seen to be true.
To Smith, lover of his city as he was, these truths were peculiarly
obvious; and to Helen Maitland, seeing them largely from the angle of
Smith's vision, they became the truth no less. She remembered with
some surprise her quite recent dislike of New York, and her even more
recent chill of distaste and dread, when she came from the Park, which
had checked for the moment the liking she felt springing to life. Of
course it was loneliness; but here was a man who had told her that New
York's loneliness was one of its greatest charms, and who regarded the
apparent heartlessness of the city as one of its most inspiring tonics.
Somehow, and apparently most naturally, she found it was coming to seem
so to her.
If a man wishes to interest a woman, he does well to speak to her of
his enthusiasms; and if he desires to alienate her interest, he will do
well to forget them. Smith, who cared deeply for New York, and who was
moving unconsciously along the sunny way that led to Helen Maitland,
found that never two enthusiasms welded so readily as these. Part of
this, no doubt, was due to the city's own influence, but probably the
greater part was due to his own genuine understanding and affection for
the town itself.
And Helen had not been the readiest of converts, for in the first
place, coming as she did from Boston, her sympathies were not with the
larger city. She had found its confusion rather tiresome, its
contrasts perhaps a little crude, its poverty somewhat distressing, and
its wealth a trifle vulgar. With Smith, a new viewpoint was hers, and
her old conceptions, which now seemed hopelessly provincial, melted
like mist before the sun.
Smith knew his city as a maestro knows his instrument, and their
voyages together were like incursions into an enchanted space where
time was not. He seemed to know exactly what had been in every nook
and corner of the town at every period of its career. Once they stood
on Broadway near Columbia University, on whose granite wall was fixed
the plate which told of Washington's muster upon those very heights;
and Smith had built up for her, not as an historian, but as an actor in
the drama, the picture before her eyes. He showed her the old Jumel
Mansion farther up town, and they went back together a century and a
half to all the strange sights those old halls had seen.
Perhaps the softest spot in Smith's sympathies was held by the
Knickerbockers--those sturdy old citizens who seemed all of them
somehow to have taken something of the mold of their redoubtable leader
and the greatest of them all, Peter Stuyvesant. Smith was familiar
with them all, from Peter down. And old Minuit, the Indian, selling
his island for a song, was so much a matter of reality to Smith that
Helen came to believe in him also as a real individual.
"There he is now!" Smith once suddenly remarked, as they turned a
corner and found themselves almost in the arms of an exceptionally
spirited cigar-store figure.
"Who?" Helen had asked in surprise.
"Why, old Peter Minuit himself, in the very act of reaching for the
proceeds," Smith explained. For which piece of simple levity it is to
be feared that he was neither properly ashamed nor adequately rebuked.
It was in the old city, below Twenty-third Street, that the work of
time had been most diverse. Here four full eras had left their
mark--the aboriginal, the early Dutch, the English-American, and lastly
the modern age of granite canyons and sky-seeking towers and marvels of
high air and below ground. Smith knew all four, and if one knows where
to search, there are plenty of interesting relics of the first three
still to be found. He knew how the southern end of Manhattan looked
when Hendrick Hudson moored the Half Moon in the lower harbor; and
where the shore line lay when the old Dutch keels with their high poops
and proud pennons rode at anchor in the river; and again later on when
the English flag had replaced the Dutch, and the towering masts of
frigates and brigs and schooners made with their threaded rigging a
constant etching of the water front.
He guided Helen through old streets where a century's relics still
persisted and where one could still find an occasional cornerstone
which the flight of a hundred hurrying years had not displaced. He was
familiar with most of the old street names,--how West Broadway was once
Chapel Street,--many of them long since abandoned for modern
changelings far less effective. For the first time Helen realized the
origin of the name of "Bouwerie," and how far into New York's and the
nation's traditions reached some of the mossy gravestones in Trinity
Churchyard.
The city, during the progress of the Civil War, of which Helen had
heard Augustus Lispenard speak, was clearer in her vision than ever
before, for Smith's grandfather had marched down Broadway in '61, and,
unlike Mr. Lispenard, he had not come back.
"They were just starting Central Park," Smith said; "because I have
heard mother say often that her father's letters from the front asked
several times how the Park was getting along."
"It seems odd, doesn't it? I had always looked on the Park as
something which must always have been where it is," Miss Maitland
commented. "But I suppose there must have been a beginning some time."
Now all these wanderings and this companionship could not go wholly for
naught. Smith was not at all a sentimental person, and Miss Maitland
was not in search of emotional adventure, but they were on hazardous
ground, and it was hazardous because it was very pleasant to them both.
Miss Mary Wardrop was a lady in whom discretion was held in but
lukewarm esteem. Had this not been so, she would have doubtless
interposed, for convention's sake at least, in the swiftly developing
friendship between her niece and this young insurance man. But Miss
Wardrop had long since ceased to care what the world said, and her
satisfaction with her own views was sufficient to permit her ignoring
those who disagreed with them. She saw nothing objectionable in Smith,
and if she speculated on the affair at all, she probably reflected that
Miss Maitland was now twenty-five years old and if she didn't know her
own mind at that age, it didn't much matter what happened to her.
So Smith, who was blandly ignorant of the fact that propriety as
strictly measured in Boston would have been aghast at his candid manner
of following his inclinations, met with no obstacles save from Miss
Maitland herself. She, it is true, now and again drew back when it
seemed to her that their friendship was perhaps progressing too
rapidly; but she was not used to men like Smith. There was nothing of
the Puritan about him, nothing of the false idea that if a thing is
pleasant, it must therefore be somehow sinful. On the contrary, Smith
believed that with a normal person the gratification of wishes was the
natural result of their possession. If he felt hungry, he ate; if he
wanted to see Helen, he went and saw her. Against this hopeless lack
of affectation ordinary feminine weapons were badly blunted; in fact,
they came to strike Miss Maitland as rather silly. After all, if he
wished to see her, why shouldn't he do so? The mere fact that he had
seen her the day before was not germane. The one germane thing would
have been a lack of inclination on her part to see Smith--and curiously
enough, this lack did not manifest itself.
Thus it was that only a few days after their long talk about O'Connor,
the same fire saw them together once more. It was Thanksgiving Eve.
"Please don't tell me you have any engagement to-night," said Smith;
"for by almost superhuman effort and influence I have managed to
reserve a table for three at the Café Turin at eight o'clock. May I
call the Honorable Jinks and request Miss Wardrop to come and be
invited to dine with me?"
"You might try," said Miss Maitland, smiling.
"Then I will."
When the dignified Jenks had limped upward on his mission, the
conversation took another turn.
"You are looking very cheerful to-night," Helen remarked.
"More so than I usually do when you see me?"
"More so than the last time I saw you, at all events. Does this mean
that you have correctly solved the O'Connor mystery? You really got me
very much interested in it."
"No, I haven't solved it. But I have a clew--the one you gave me. If
it is the right one, we shall learn very soon."
On the stairs came the sound of Jenks's returning feet, followed a
moment later by the rumor of Miss Wardrop's own approach.
"Good evening," she greeted Smith.
"I've come to ask you a favor," he answered. "I once happened to save
the life of a head waiter, and he has now repaid the obligation by
reserving a table for me to-night at the Café Turin, and I want you and
Miss Maitland to come and dine with me."
Miss Wardrop wavered; she looked at her niece inquiringly.
"Then you'll come," Smith said.
The old lady laughed.
"Apparently I will, if Miss Maitland has no other plan for the evening."
Helen signified that she had none; and thus it was that eight o'clock
found them seated in an eligible corner of the big, gay restaurant,
watching the animated holiday crowd, and themselves in no somber or
taciturn mood.
A restaurant may be the resort of strange people, but it is an
institution of peculiar attractiveness, for all that. All the other
tables in the room were occupied by merry parties, jewels and demigems
glinted back a thousand lights, men and women of society and out of it
laughed and talked, there was the clink of a myriad of glasses, the
hurrying of anxious and expectant waiters, the tinkle of silverware on
china, mingled with the ignored strains of an orchestra invisible and
sufficiently remote not to dictate offensively the tempo of mastication
of the diners. It was nothing if not a cosmopolitan gathering. In the
crowd were, to judge from appearances, foreigners of many races; but
all were masquerading as citizens of the world.
"A conglomerate crew," Smith observed. "They like to convey the
impression that last week they dined on the terrace at Bertolini's in
Naples, or at Claridge's, or Shepheard's at Cairo, or the Madrid in the
Bois, or the Poinciana; while as a matter of fact most of them are like
myself and get into this sort of game about twice a year."
"Where do you suppose they all come from?" Miss Wardrop inquired. She
affected the newer haunts of modern society very little, and this sort
of gathering was strange to her.
"Nobody knows," said her host, lightly. "Rahway, Yonkers, Flushing.
Probably Harlem would actually account for the majority, if my theory
is correct that most of them are as new to this as I am myself."
"Why don't you include Boston in your humble category?" Miss Maitland
asked, laughing.
"Because I would be surprised if there were another Bostonian in this
room this evening."
"But why do you think so?" the girl persisted.
"Oh, this isn't their style; they don't like this sort of business.
No, I'll wager you three macaroons against a lump of sugar that you are
the only child of the Back Bay in this place to-night."
"Done!" declared the girl.
"How can the question be decided?" Miss Wardrop inquired. "I don't see
how you can either of you prove your contention."
"I will show you," replied her niece. She turned to a waiter, hovering
paternally near by, and said, "Will you please go over to that third
table where the very light-haired young lady in the blue gown is
sitting, and say to the young gentleman whose back is turned toward us
that Miss Maitland wishes to speak with him?"
Smith turned, in time to see the young gentleman in question rise at
the waiter's message, cast a look at Miss Maitland, and then come
cheerfully forward.
"Do you know, I never dine at a place where I hope and expect--and
select--to be absolutely unknown, without meeting anywhere from five to
nineteen friends, relations, and acquaintances of various degrees of
intimacy," he said, shaking hands. "I'm really delighted to see you,
Helen--upon my word, I am; but I sincerely hope you are discretion
itself."
"Mr. Wilkinson," said the girl, introducing him to her aunt; and with
the briefest of glances at Smith, she added, "of Boston."
"I remember Mr. Smith," said Charlie, easily. "There is an epic
quality of justice in his being here, because he is indirectly
responsible for my presence. At least," he explained, turning to
Smith, "if you hadn't made a certain pregnant suggestion of the
susceptibility of a trolley magnate to the opinion of the stock
market--"
"You don't mean--?" Helen exclaimed.
"As sure as eggs is incubator's children! They hatched. My esteemed
uncle listened to my siren voice--and here I am on a celebration trip!
By the way," he said to the underwriter, "I asked Bennington Cole,
who's handling the schedule for me, to put as much of it as he could in
your company."
"That's very good of you," Smith replied; "but it will be a
comparatively trifling amount, I'm afraid. The Guardian has just about
as much as it is willing to risk in the congested district of Boston,
and Silas Osgood and Company are under instructions to keep our
liability down to its present amount and take little new business."
"I congratulate you, Charlie," Helen said. "But why did you come here,
hoping to be unknown? Is it your beautiful lady? Is she some one you
shouldn't know?"
"Well, hardly that. She's not precisely an undesirable citizen--she's
all right enough--but you scarcely want to meet her, I'm afraid. You
see, Isabel went South and left me in the lurch, and I had to celebrate
somehow--hence Amye."
"Amye?" said Smith, with amusement.
"Yes. With an ultimate 'e.' Amye Sinclair on the program; Minnie
Schottman in the Hoboken family Bible. She's a nice girl but a trifle
unintellectual. She threw me a papier maché orchid once in Boston."
"Young man," said Miss Wardrop, speaking for the first time, "are you a
typical example of the young men of to-day?"
"I am," Wilkinson promptly answered. "I am energetic, entertaining, an
opportunist, a eudaimonist, and a baseball fan. Yes, I think I may
concede I am typical. Do you agree with me, Helen?"
"I always agree with you, Charlie," said the girl, with a smile. "What
possible good would it do me if I didn't?"
"Oh, you could--but you'll excuse me, I'm sure. I see the waiter is
preparing to serve my table with real food, which is something I have a
confessed predilection for. Good-by--I'm perfectly charmed to have
seen you all."
And Mr. Wilkinson returned to Amye and the Cotuits.
"Don't look so scandalized, Aunt Mary," said Helen to her relation.
"He is really much less abandoned than he would have people believe;
and I think Isabel will bring him out all right yet. I rather fancy
she has decided to."
"Isabel Hurd, you mean?" responded Miss Wardrop. "You don't mean to
say so! But, bless your heart, I'm not scandalized--I've heard boys
talk before. Still, if your friend Isabel knows what she is about, she
won't stay South too long; she'll come North and let Amye go back to
Hoboken."
"Probably she will. But I have not seen the three macaroons which I
won with such ease and finesse."
"Waiter," said Smith, disregarding the fact that they had not finished
the entrée, "bring three macaroons--exactly three--right away."
An expression of slight mystification appeared on the broad brow of the
waiter, but he was inured to eccentric gastronomic requests, and
fulfilled this one with his accustomed dignity.
"There!" said Smith. "There's my bet paid, though strictly speaking
you couldn't have held me for it, since you were betting on a
certainty."
"May I pass the spoils?" replied the girl, with a laugh.
The memory of those three macaroons had to stand Smith in the stead of
other things for the last days of November. On his arrival at the
office on the morning following Thanksgiving Day, Mr. O'Connor
requested him to go down to Baltimore on company business requiring
some little time to transact, and not until after the first of December
did he set foot again in New York.
He arrived at about eight o'clock in the morning; and as he was obliged
to go home first, he did not reach William Street until nearly ten. As
he entered the Guardian office, he was aware that something unusual had
happened. Business seemed somehow to have been oddly interrupted.
Around the map desks and file cases little groups of clerks were
gathered, talking in low tones.
Smith watched them in silence for a moment, and as no one volunteered
to enlighten him as to what had occurred, he walked over to Mr.
Bartels's office and went in.
"What's the matter here this morning? Is there a conflagration
anywhere?" he asked the stolid personage at the desk, who barely ceased
his figuring to make response:--
"Go and see the boss. He and O'Connor have had a quarrel--funny
business--I don't know anything about it, that's all."
Smith went. Mr. O'Connor was in his room, busily engaged at his desk;
the table beside him was heaped high with papers and books, which was
an unusual sight, for O'Connor was a methodical man and the room was
customarily bare of litter. The General Agent walked thoughtfully over
to the other side of the office, and glanced through the President's
door. Mr. Wintermuth was walking up and down, his hands behind him and
his face a little flushed. Smith hesitated, then deliberately opened
the door and entered.
"Good morning, sir. I have--" he began, but his chief, with an
expression in which anger was still the predominant characteristic,
said abruptly:--
"Do you know what has happened?"
"No, sir, I do not."
"Mr. O'Connor has tendered his resignation, as Vice-President of the
Guardian!"
Smith stood still a long minute without answering, and then he saw
suddenly and clearly all that for so many weeks the darkness had hidden
from him.
"And did you accept his resignation, sir?" he asked at last.
The President turned swiftly to face the question.
"He tendered his resignation as of December thirty-first. I told him
his resignation was accepted as of nine-forty-five this morning. And I
told him to pack up his stuff and get out of here and never show
himself in the Guardian office again."