The March winds blustered over Boston, and the cold salt smell of the
ocean was borne tempestuously in upon the shivering city. Chill and
keen out of the northeast came the air that hinted not at all of
spring, but urgently of winter. The people in the streets walked
briskly, with no laggard steps; they were accustomed to this sort of
untimely treatment from the New England climate, and they had no
intention of being betrayed thereby into pondering over southern lands
or sunny vineclad hillsides where summer always lingered. Boston might
not be climatically Utopian, but there was at all events something
virile, something manly and admirable about a sort of weather for which
no other good word could be used.
Between the tall buildings in Kilby Street, where now for three weeks
the current of the insurance world had been flowing with quickened,
almost feverish pulse, the activity on this blustering day in middle
March was undiminished. Of the hastily arranged adjustment offices
which the magnitude of the conflagration had made necessary, nearly all
had been given up, and the comparatively few uncompleted adjustments of
losses were now being handled through the regular offices.
It had been a titanic task, that of adjusting fire losses extending in
the aggregate to between one and two hundred millions of dollars--for
there were some indications that the Boston property damage would reach
the latter figure. But after three weeks of steady work, when the
lines of claimants before the adjusters' doors had hardly slackened a
moment, the worst was over. Three fourths of the claims had been
settled; satisfactorily to all concerned by the larger and more
responsible companies; on a basis of offered compromise by those
institutions tottering on the brink of insolvency; dubiously, or with
craven and flagrant unfairness by the stricken "wildcats," the
irresponsible undergrounders of America and Europe. For every great
fire unearths the fact that there are always companies who will gladly
accept premiums,--often at surprisingly low rates,--although they are
only mildly addicted to the payment of losses. And every conflagration
also uncovers the fact that there are many penny-wise citizens who
purchase this class of indemnity. A great fire cleans, as nothing else
does, the fire insurance stage of all but the fittest.
From this calamity, the greatest which had ever visited the city,
Boston had, after a timeless period of uncomprehending and demoralized
helplessness, leaped anew into activity and life. From all over the
country, almost from all over the world, the need of the stricken city
was met by a magnificent and human response. A vast catastrophe
becomes nearly worth while by virtue of the humanity it discovers.
Food, clothing, money--all were donated with lavish hands, and aid was
rushed to Boston by a hundred trains. In comparison with the area
burned over, the number of people made homeless was not great; and in
three weeks the city had somehow managed to drink up and absorb this
surplus without leaving a sign.
Life had now begun to move more normally again; and already the city's
gaze went forward toward what was to be, rather than backward at what
had been. But in a certain Kilby Street office two men were talking,
one of whom still looked somewhat gloomily back, while the other, with
a smile of transcendent optimism, was engaged in the cosmic process of
turning Boston's holocaust into a fiery but triumphant feather for his
own cap.
"Has that draft come in yet, Benny?" he was demanding.
"Came this morning," answered Cole, a trifle sourly. "Here it is."
"Would you mind letting me have it? Thanks. This is the last one,
isn't it? They're all here now?"
"Yes," said Cole, curtly; "this is the last."
"If you'll give me a large envelope, I'll take them with me, then,"
returned the first speaker. "With a golden touch like Midas of old
will I go forth into the presence of my distinguished relation. Benny,
you are a base soul with no instincts above the commercial. You do not
appreciate the situation. We are rapidly approaching what is vulgarly
termed the psychological moment. If you had any more feeling than a
dying invertebrate, you would want to come along and witness the
ceremony, which is entirely private and visitors admitted by card only."
"Thanks, but I don't care to," said Cole, shortly.
Since the change which came over the complexion of matters in his
world, Cole was much less assured and less assertive than before. The
receipt this morning of the Salamander's final and largest loss draft
marked the last public connection between that company and the Osgood
office. The Salamander had reinsured, and the news of its fall was
abroad on the streets of Boston as in New York, the insurance talk of
all the towns. O'Connor, temporarily at least, had disappeared, and no
man knew what chasm had swallowed him up. So far as Osgood and Company
were concerned, he and his company were both dead issues; and once more
in the old office in the corner Mr. Osgood could be seen in his wonted
place.
Immediately following the conflagration Mr. Osgood had quietly resumed
his authority as active head of the firm; and the Guardian, having
taken over the Salamander's unburned business, which was in reality its
own, once more acknowledged as its Boston representatives Messrs. Silas
Osgood and Company. Of course the separation rule of the Boston Board
was still nominally in force; but with the legal decision pending there
was no disposition on the part of any agency or of any company to force
an action of any sort. In the face of a matter so great as the
conflagration had been, the smaller things, the lesser animosities,
were allowed to slip peacefully into forgotten limbo. In due time the
separation rule, its chief protagonist discredited and gone none knew
where, would be repealed, either under legal compulsion or without.
When that day came, the Guardian would be back in the position it had
always enjoyed until Mr. O'Connor played--and lost--his meteoric game.
In Mr. Cole's office, meanwhile, the small pile of checks and drafts
was being counted over with scrupulous care by Mr. Wilkinson.
"They seem to be in order," he said. "Three hundred and fifty-five
thousand, six hundred and eighty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents.
Benny, a thought strikes me! Why should not an insurance broker get a
commission on losses as well as premiums? It seems to me that that is
a very reasonable idea--I wonder it has never occurred to anybody
before."
"You get your commission when the line is rewritten, of course," Cole
responded. "What more do you want?"
"Why, that's so; I hadn't thought of that. I presume that such an
operation will be more or less lucrative--unless my sagacious though
unwilling father-in-law executes his sometime threat."
"Oh, I don't believe even John M. Hurd would be such a jackal without
benefit of clergy as to do that."
"Well, perhaps not. Do you think of anything else, Benny, before I
depart?"
"Absolutely nothing. And for heaven's sake get out!--I'm busy, and you
lend an atmosphere of inertia to the whole place."
"And yet," returned Mr. Wilkinson, suavely, rising, nevertheless,--"and
yet this is, in the plebeian phrase of the world of trade, my busy day.
To be sure I have other occasional days when I handle transactions that
run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars; but I don't mind
admitting to you that these usually take place in the last ineffable
hour of slumber preceding the dawn. But to-day--to-day it is true!
Benny, I will go to the length of buying you a drink, a short and
frugal drink."
"At eleven A.M.? Not for me," responded Cole. "Run along."
"I go," rejoined the other, gracefully, and the door swung shut behind
his debonaire retreat.
A few minutes later to the youth from South Framingham he spoke
nonchalantly:--
"Mr. Hurd?"
The calm presumption of that rising inflection seemed to indicate the
absence of all doubt as to whether Mr. Hurd would receive him. The
South Framingham scion regarded him with bovine gaze.
"Yes, I guess he's in," he said dubiously.
"Then tell him, if you please, that Mr. Charles Wilkinson wishes to see
him on a matter of important business." The sentence ended so
incisively that South Framingham blinked. Any display of emotion more
significant was not, perhaps, to be expected. The messenger and his
message started vaguely toward the door of Mr. Hurd's private office,
and for an awkward moment no sound came forth.
"He says to come in," said South Framingham, reappearing.
"With alacrity but dignity," said Charles to himself; and found himself
in another moment in the presence of Mr. Hurd. The traction magnate
did not rise. He laid the paper which he had been reading on the desk
before him, and looked fixedly across it at the intruder.
"Good-morning, sir," said Mr. Wilkinson, cheerfully.
Mr. Hurd's response to this greeting could only be denominated a grunt,
but his visitor had no desire to force an issue of cordiality, so,
waiving the doubtful courtesy of this reply, he continued:--
"Mrs. Hurd is well, I trust?"
"Mrs. Hurd is quite well, thank you. Did you come here through any
apprehension about her health?" inquired the gentleman at the desk,
with some degree of asperity to be detected in his tone by one as well
acquainted with him as was Charlie. "I understood from my clerk that
you came on business."
"And so I did," said the unruffled Wilkinson, "although I always
endeavor that business and courtesy shall not necessarily exclude one
another."
The financier looked sharply at the young man; but he felt that he was
scarcely in a position to take offense at such a commendable statement.
"My business," continued the visitor, "deals with one of the best
single pieces of business you ever did for the Massachusetts Light,
Heat, and Traction Company."
"Is the loss finally closed up?" said Mr. Hurd, curtly.
His son-in-law stood dramatically before him; he slipped his left hand
into the inner breast pocket where reposed the documents with which his
coup was to be made.
"Mr. Hurd," he said impressively, "you permitted me to place the
insurance on your trolley system because I convinced you that it ought
to be insured. Do you recall what I said about the conflagration
hazard in the congested district of Boston? Well, I won't repeat it,
but until I called it to your notice you had never given it serious
consideration. And even after the schedule was placed, you said that
another year you would not carry insurance. You may also recall that
you withheld your consent to a certain marriage, which I proposed to
contract with a member of your family, and which--"
"Stick to the matter in hand," suggested the traction magnate, tartly.
"I am doing so, because the point I want to make is this. On both
these matters, if you'll pardon my saying so, you were equally wrong.
You were afraid that as a son-in-law all my entries would be on the
wrong side of your ledger. Well, I don't believe I'll overdraw my
account with you for some little time, Mr. Hurd, for I hand you
herewith--as we say to our stenographers--to the order of the
Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company, checks and drafts to
the amount of three hundred and fifty-five thousand, six hundred and
eighty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents, in payment of the loss on
your Pemberton Street car barn and power house and a few minor items.
Here they are, and, to use a colloquialism, I want to rub them in. Not
to glorify my own acumen or to minimize yours,--you showed good
judgment to insure your property,--but to prove to you that you made a
mistake about me."
"A mistake?" said the other man.
"A colossal mistake. Your only objection to me as a son-in-law was on
financial grounds. Show me, if you can, any young man you could have
picked out as a husband for your daughter, who within a few months
could have saved your company three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
No, Mr. Hurd, you've done me a very great injustice. And now, I'm
going to ask two things of you."
"And what are they?" inquired Mr. Hurd.
"The first is your order for rewriting the schedule on the traction
properties. We'll take up the second when we've finished that."
John M. Hurd gave a half hitch in his chair, and turned his face toward
the window, the very casement out of which he had gazed on the day when
the fate of Mr. Wilkinson's scheme was first decided. Thoughtfully he
looked out and down the busy street. His visitor, by way of gently
stimulating his reverie, laid the companies' loss drafts within an inch
of his unmoving fingers. Unconsciously those fingers, which had
through the long years acquired an inalienable tendency toward the
acquisition of legal tender in whatever form proffered--those fingers
slowly, almost automatically, but irrevocably, closed upon the little
packet.
It seemed as though, from the contact, a soothing hint of balsam-laden
pines, of comfort and satisfaction for the soul, must have proceeded
from those oblong papers. Charlie, keenly watching, beheld the stony
countenance in front of him, as if permeated by some ineffable warmth,
stir and become human. The miracle of Galatea was worked in this face
before the very gaze of him who had dispensed the beneficent influence.
The grim lines around the mouth lost their inflexible rigor; and
slowly, unwillingly, almost shamefacedly there stole into the hard old
visage the hint, the wraith, the shadow of a smile.
Wise in his generation, Wilkinson left the work to the magic and
sovereign forces now at play; he did not risk marring the alchemy by a
single word. After a moment which seemed an hour he found himself once
more confronted by the direct observation of his step-uncle.
"You can have your trolley schedule," said John M. Hurd. "You are
certainly entitled to it. What else you want I dare say I can
guess. . . . Suppose you bring Isabel up to Beacon Street this
afternoon to take tea with her mother--and me."
If Mr. Wilkinson cut a pigeon wing in the outer office, it was only the
scion of South Framingham whose amazement is recorded. John M. Hurd,
still smiling faintly, sat reflectively eyeing the little pile of
checks which his visitor had left, until at last he rang for his
cashier.
"Endorse these and have them deposited immediately, Mr. Walsh," he said.
Meanwhile the telephone wires were buzzing under Mr. Wilkinson's
energetic advertisement of the latest society note.
"Extry! Extry!" he announced to Isabel. "All about the reconciliation
of trust magnate with beautiful though erring daughter! Extry! All
about the soothing and emollient influence of a little packet of
stamped paper! No, I've not gone suddenly insane, and I'll come home
about four, for we are due for tea at the residence of Mr. and Mrs.
John M. Hurd."
To Deerfield Street, also, the glad word presently went, to meet there
the sincere congratulations of Miss Helen Maitland, who held the other
end of the jubilant telephone.
"You'd better come, too, Helen. We'll stop for you. I really think it
would be much smoother if you were along. And besides, Charlie says we
ought to get father on record before a witness in case a conservative
turn takes him again."
"I was rather expecting to have tea here," Miss Maitland confessed,
after a moment's hesitancy. "Yes, Mr. Smith said he would probably
come. Very well--I will bring him along, if you'd really like to have
him, with great pleasure. You'll call for us, Isabel? Au revoir,
then."
It was shortly after five o'clock when the Hurds' butler opened the
front door to admit a company of four. These intruders, waiting no
bidding and ignoring altogether the fact that one of their number had
been forbidden the house, made their cheerful way, headed by Mrs.
Wilkinson, into the drawing room, there to greet with effusive welcome
a stern-faced, elderly lady, who met them with a broad smile, but who
almost instantly, to her own infinite surprise and discomfiture, burst
into tears. These rapidly abated, when there was heard a sound in the
hall, a sound which the quick ears of Mr. Wilkinson distinguished at
once.
"The lion comes!" he murmured in Isabel's ear; and an involuntary hush
descended upon the company. Thud, thud, thud--the firm steps
approached; the arras was drawn back by a deliberate hand; and into the
drawing room, his manner as easy and composed as ever, came Mr. Hurd.
Two steps he made inside the room, then stopped. His glance instantly
comprehended the little company, and just for a moment the old, cold
light shot into his eye. But it was only for a moment.
"My dear Isabel, I am very glad to see you home again."
The greeting which the financier would have extended to his other
guests was lost forever in the impulsive rush which landed Mrs.
Wilkinson in her father's arms. Any regret which may have lingered was
banished in the shock of this impact; and it was a resigned parent who
emerged from this embrace to resume his corner in the reunited world.
It remained for his son-in-law to pronounce the valedictory over the
vanishing fragments of the family breach.
"Mr. Hurd, ever since the day you flung in my astounded face my
character and attainments, depicted in simple but effective words of
one syllable, I have felt that there was not only force, but a good
deal of truth, in your pungent observations. As I remember telling you
at the time, had I appreciated the disgraceful facts as you summed them
up, I could only in justice to Isabel have joined my efforts to your
own in endeavoring to prevent so fatal an alliance. But it was too
late. And now that the thing is done, the child of Mr. Hurd, having
inherited some of that gentleman's fixity of purpose and tenacity of
idea, is still of the opinion--Isabel, even if I am wrong, please do
not contradict me--that she needs the stimulus of my desultory presence
to keep her en rapport with life. Isabel has come to find strangely
piquant the sensation of uncertainty as to the approaching meal. She
has come to feel that certainty in such a matter is a species of
bourgeoisie. At all events we are now Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson; and
however deeply we regret the lack of enthusiasm in that connection of
my esteemed father-in-law, I can only suggest to him that, although
probably no one in the world has as poor an opinion of me as he has, if
he keeps that opinion to himself there is no reason why the world in
general should ever learn the truth. Certainly it shall be my life
work to prevent it; and maybe when in the years to come I am passing
the plate in some far suburban tabernacle of worship, all will be
forgotten. Helen, may I trouble you to hand me those sandwiches?"
Mr. Hurd emitted a dry chuckle.
"For the honor of the family, Charlie, I'll never tell," he said.
It was dark when at last Miss Maitland, under the escort of Smith,
started homeward toward Deerfield Street. And even then, not so
directly homeward lay their course as the hour might have warranted.
By an impulse which neither resisted, their footsteps turned
southeastward toward the place where they had first viewed the land of
the fire's reaping. On the steel bridge over the railroad tracks they
found themselves at last.
"We didn't really intend to come here, did we?" asked the girl, with a
smile.
"Somebody must have intended it," argued her companion; "although I
confess that my part in it seemed entirely a passive one. Still, it is
a good place to come, excepting for the cinders which fly into one's
eyes--as one did then."
Northward, under the pale light of the stars, the barren acres
stretched away till they reached the point where the builded city
recommenced. The wind, fallen to a breeze, brought still a faint hint
of smoke out of the ground, as though in insistent reminiscence of the
fire's breath. On the edge of this zone gleamed the city's lights, and
Smith was vaguely reminded of the lights on the Jersey shore as he
could see them from his window.
"Do you remember the night you showed me the lights of New York?" asked
Helen, softly.
"I shall never stop remembering it," he answered. "Some day, when I
get to be so valuable or valueless that I can be spared from the
Guardian, we will go and see the lights of all the other cities of the
world. Shall we?"
"There will be none like yours--like ours."
"As there are no lights for me like those within your eyes."
"But I thought we were going to Robbinsville!" said the girl, "to see a
harness shop."
"We will go there, too," he answered. "Oh, life will be all too short
for you and me!"
It was some time later when the little bridge was left once more to the
cinders and to itself. Behind the backs of the two who walked slowly
homeward, the plain, which once had been a city, lay gray-black in its
ashes beneath the black and gold of the cloud-flecked sky.