Read Ebook: White Ashes by Kennedy Sidney R Sidney Robinson Noble Alden Charles

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Ebook has 2182 lines and 114386 words, and 44 pages

me 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.

"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."

"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."

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, outr? 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.

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