Читать книгу The Best Policy - Flower Elliott - Страница 1

Naturally, when Harry Beckford married he began to take a more serious view of life. If there is anything at all of thoughtfulness and consideration in a man, marriage brings it out: he begins to plan. He has some one dependent upon him, some one for whom he must provide. That he should trust to luck before was solely his affair; that he should trust to luck now is quite another matter.

In the case of Beckford, as in the cases of most other young men, this feeling was of gradual growth. He was optimistic and happy; his future looked long and bright; he had ample time in which to accumulate a comfortable fortune; but – he wasn’t even beginning. He and his wife so enjoyed life that they were spending all he made. It wasn’t a large sum, but it was enough to make them comfortable and contented, enough to give them all reasonable pleasures. Later – he thought of this only in a hazy, general sort of way – they would begin to save. There was plenty of time for this, for they were both young, and he had proved himself of sufficient value to his employer to make his rapid advancement practically certain. The employer was a big corporation, the general manager of which had taken a deep personal interest in him, and the opportunities were limitless.

But the feeling of responsibility that came to him with marriage gradually took practical form, perhaps because the girl who sat opposite him at the breakfast-table was so very impractical. She was loving, lovable, delightfully whimsical, but also unreasoningly impractical in many ways. Before marriage she never had known a care; after marriage her cares were much like those of a child with a doll-house – they gave zest to life but could be easily put aside. If the maid proved recalcitrant, it was annoying, but they could dine at a restaurant and go to the theater afterward, and Harry would help her with breakfast the next morning. Harry was so awkward, but so willing, that it all became a huge joke. Harry had not passed the stage where he would “kiss the cook” in these circumstances, and an occasional hour in the kitchen is not so bad when there is a fine handsome young man there, to be ordered about and told to “behave himself.” So even marriage had not yet awakened Isabel Beckford to the stern realities of life.

It was her impracticalness, her delightful dependence, that finally brought Harry to the point of serious thought. What would she do, if anything happened to him? Her father had been successful but improvident: he would leave hardly enough for her mother alone to live in modest comfort; and, besides, Harry was not the kind of youth to put his responsibilities on another. He began to think seriously about cutting expenses and putting something aside, even at this early day. The really successful men had begun at the beginning to do this. Then there came to his notice the sad case of Mrs. Baird, who was left with nothing but a baby. Baird had been a young man of excellent promise and a good income, but he had left his widow destitute. He had put nothing aside, intending, doubtless, to begin that later.

“Just like me,” thought Harry, as he looked at his girl-wife across the table.

“Isn’t it frightful?” she asked, referring to the little tragedy contained in the item he had just read to her from the morning paper. “Every one thought the Bairds were so prosperous, too.”

“Every one thinks we are prosperous,” he commented thoughtfully.

“Oh, that’s different!” she exclaimed. “You mustn’t talk like that or you’ll make me gloomy for the whole day! Why, it sounds as if you were expecting to die!”

“Not at all,” he replied, “but neither was Baird.”

“Please don’t!” she pleaded. “I shan’t have another happy minute – until I’ve forgotten what you said.”

He laughed at the ingenuousness of this and blew her a kiss across the table; but he did not abandon the subject.

“Baird was a young man,” he persisted, “but, with a little care and forethought, he could have left things in fair shape.”

“Perhaps we ought to be saving a little,” she admitted in a tone of whimsical protest. “I’ll help you do it, if you just won’t make me blue.”

“He hadn’t even life insurance,” he remarked, “and neither have I.”

“Oh, not insurance!” she cried. “I wouldn’t like that at all.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Why – why, think how much you could do with the money you’d be paying to the old life insurance company!”

“Wouldn’t it be just the same if you were saving it?” he argued.

“Oh, no; not at all,” she asserted. “Why, you can get money that you’re saving whenever you want it, but life insurance money is clear out of your reach.”

“A policy has a cash surrender value,” he explained. “Every cent paid in premiums adds to its value, if you want to give it up.”

“But then you lose the insurance,” she argued with feminine inconsistency.

“Of course,” he admitted, “just as you lose your savings when you spend them.”

“Oh, but you can get at your savings easier, and it’s easier to start again, if you happen to use them,” she insisted.

“The very reason why life insurance is better for us,” he said. “I want to make sure of something for you that we’re certain not to touch while I live.”

But she took the unreasonable view of insurance that some young women do take, and refused to be convinced.

“If I should die first,” she said, with a little shudder at the very thought of death for either of them, “all the money you’d paid the company would be wasted.”

“Not necessarily,” he returned. “There might be – ”

“Hush!” she interrupted, blushing so prettily that he went over and kissed her. Then he dropped the subject temporarily, which was the wisest thing he could have done. She had the feminine objection to paying out money for which she got no immediate return, but she wanted to please her husband. She was capricious, imperious at times and then meekly submissive – a spoiled child who surrendered to the emotion of the moment, but whose very inconsistencies were captivating. So when she decided that victory was hers, she also decided to be generous: to please him she would make a concession.

“I’ve changed my mind about insurance,” she told him a few days later. As a matter of fact, she had changed her mind, but not her opinions: she was not convinced, but she would please him by accepting his plan – with a slight modification.

“I knew you would see the wisdom of it!” he exclaimed joyously.

“How much insurance did you plan to get?” she asked, with a pretty assumption of business ways.

“Ten thousand dollars,” he replied.

“Well, we’ll divide it,” she said, “and each get five thousand dollars.”

“You mean that you’ll be insured, too?” he asked doubtfully.

“Of course. Isn’t my life worth as much as yours?”

“More! a thousand times more!” he cried, “but – but – ”

Her eyes showed her indignation, and he stopped short.

“You don’t want me to be insured!” she exclaimed hotly. “You don’t think I’m worth it!”

“Why, dearest,” he protested, “you’re worth all the insurance of all the people in the world, but it isn’t necessary in your case. It’s my earning capacity that – ”

Unfortunate suggestion! There was an inference that she considered uncomplimentary.

“Haven’t I any earning capacity?” she demanded. “Don’t I earn every cent I get? Isn’t the home as important as the office?”

“Surely, surely, darling, but – ”

“Doesn’t a good wife earn half of the income that she shares?” she persisted.

“More than half, sweetheart.”

“Don’t say ‘sweetheart’ to me in the same breath that you tell me I’m not worth being insured!” she cried. “It’s positively insulting, and – and – you always said you loved me.”

Her voice broke a little, and he was beside her in an instant.

“You don’t understand,” he explained. “Insurance has nothing to do with your value to me or my value to you, but there is a more worldly value – ”

“Oh, you’re of some account in the world and I’m not!” she broke in, her indignation driving back the tears.

“Isabel, you’re simply priceless to me!”

“But, if I hadn’t happened to meet you, I suppose I’d be a nonentity!” she flashed back at him. “I’m just a piece of property that you happen to like, and – why, Harry Beckford, men insure property, don’t they?”

“Of course, but – ”

“And I’m not worth insuring, even as property!” she wailed. “Oh, I didn’t think you could ever be so cruel, so heartless! You might at least let me think I’m worth something.”

The young husband was in despair. He argued, pleaded, explained in vain; she could only see that he put a value on his life that he did not put on hers, and it hurt her pride. Besides, they were partners in everything else, so why not in insurance?

“But I wouldn’t want the insurance on your life,” he urged.

“Do you think I’m any more mercenary than you?” she retorted. “I don’t want the insurance, either; I want you – when you’re nice to me.”

“We’ll think it over,” he said wearily.

“I’ve thought,” she returned decisively. “If it’s such a good thing, I think you’re mean not to let me share it with you.” Then, with sudden cheerfulness: “It would be rather jolly and exciting to go together, just as we go to the theater and – and – all other amusements.”

He laughed at her classification of life insurance among the pleasures of life, and then he kissed her again. Her unreasoning opposition distressed him, but resentment was quite out of the question. There was momentary exasperation, and then a little love-making, to bring the smiles back to her face. All else could wait.

It is a noteworthy fact, however, that life insurance takes a strong hold on a man the moment he really decides he ought to have it, and opposition only adds to his determination. He who finds that, because of some unsuspected physical failing, he can not get it, immediately is possessed with a mania for it. So long as he considered it within his reach, he turned the agents away; now he goes to them and lies and pleads and tries desperately to gain that which he did not want until he found he could not get it.

Thus, in a minor degree, the opposition of Beckford’s wife served only to impress on Beckford’s mind the necessity and advantage of some such provision for the future. Perhaps the explanation of this is that in trying to convince her he had convinced himself. At any rate, the subject, at first taken up in a desultory way, became one of supreme importance to him, and he went to see Dave Murray. Dave, he was solemnly informed by a friend who claimed to know, probably had been christened David, but the last syllable of the name had not been able to stand the wear and tear of a strenuous life, in addition to which Murray was not the kind of man to invite formality. He was “Dave” to every one who got past the “Mr. Murray” stage, and it never took long to do that. “Anyhow,” his informant concluded, “you have a talk with him. There isn’t a better fellow or a more upright man in the city. The only thing I’ve got against him is that he’ll insure a fellow while he isn’t looking and then make him think he likes it. But if you want insurance, go to him.” So Beckford went, and presently he found himself telling Murray a great deal more than he had intended to tell him.

“The fact is,” he explained, “my wife was violently opposed to the idea at first.”

“Not unusual,” said Murray, and then he added sententiously: “Wives don’t care for insurance, but widows do.”

Beckford smiled as he saw the point.

“It doesn’t do a widow much good to care for insurance, if she objected to it as a wife,” he suggested.

“It may,” returned Murray. “It isn’t at all necessary that a wife should know what’s coming to her when she becomes a widow. She may be provided for in spite of herself.”

“That would be rather difficult in my case,” said Beckford, “for my wife knows just what my salary is, and we plan our expenditures together. It’s a pretty good salary, but we have been living right up to the limit of it, so I can’t provide for premiums without her knowledge, although I can do it easily with it.”

“That complicates matters a little,” remarked Murray.

“Besides,” Beckford added, “we have been so frank with each other that I should be unhappy with such a life-secret, and, if I acted on my own judgment and took the policy home to her, she says she would tear it up and throw it away.”

“I knew a woman to do that once,” said Murray reflectively. “Her husband insured his life before going on the excursion that ended in the Ashtabula disaster. A few days later her little boy came in to ask if anything could be done about the policy that she had destroyed.”

“I don’t think Isabel would really destroy it,” said the troubled Beckford, “but it would distress her very much to have me go so contrary to her wishes in a matter that we had discussed.”

“It would distress her very much to be left penniless,” remarked Murray.

“I think,” said Beckford thoughtfully, “I really think, if I had known that she was going to take this view of the matter, I would have insured myself first and talked to her about it afterward. Then the situation wouldn’t be so awkward. But I thought that all women favored life insurance.”

“Not at first,” returned Murray, “but usually there comes a change.”

“When?” asked Beckford hopefully.

“When they begin to think of the needs and the future and the possible hardships of the first baby,” replied Murray, whereat Beckford blushed a little, even as his wife had done a few days before, for young people do not consider and discuss prospective family problems with the same candor that their elders do.

“Woman, the true woman,” Murray continued, “is essentially unselfish; she thinks of others. Careless for her own future, she plans painstakingly for those she loves. The insurance premium that is for her own benefit she would rather have to spend now, but you never hear her object to the investment of any money that is to benefit her husband or children, even when she has to make sacrifices to permit it.”

“But that doesn’t help me,” complained Beckford. “I don’t want any insurance on her life; I don’t need it, and there is no reason to think that I ever shall need it. It’s for her that I am planning, but she won’t listen to anything but this dual arrangement.”

“I quite understand the situation,” returned Murray. “What insurance you are able to take out must be to protect her.”

“Precisely; and I never knew before that a woman could be so unreasoningly wilful in opposition to her own interests.”

“My dear sir,” said Murray, with some feeling, “you have a great deal to learn about women. I have more than twenty thousand dollars charged up to them in commissions that I have lost, after convincing the men interested. But if I can help you to provide for this one perverse sample of femininity, in spite of herself, I shall feel that I have taken a Christian revenge on the whole sex.” Beckford rather objected to this reference to his wife, but there was nothing of disrespect in the tone, and somehow the quaintness of the sentiment made him smile.

“I wonder,” Murray went on, “if we could refuse the risk without frightening her.”

“I’m afraid not,” returned Beckford, “but” – and a sudden inspiration lighted his face, “couldn’t you put in some restrictions that would frighten her away?”

Murray leaned back in his chair and gave the matter thoughtful consideration. Somehow he had become unusually interested in this young man’s effort to do a wise and generous thing for his wife in the face of her opposition. If the man had been seeking to gain some benefit for himself, Murray would not have listened to even a suggestion of deceit. But the aim was entirely unselfish, and Beckford had brought a letter of introduction that left no doubt as to his responsibility and integrity. Then, too, the situation was amusing. Here were two business men plotting – what? Why, the welfare of their opponent, and that only.

“So many women have beaten me,” said Murray at last, “that I should really like to beat one of them, especially when it’s for her own good. Bring your wife up here, and I’ll see what I can do.”

But here again feminine capriciousness was exemplified. Having apparently won her point, Isabel Beckford began to wish she had lost it.

“I’m afraid,” she said. “Suppose I should find that something frightful was the matter with me? Those insurance doctors are awfully particular, and – and – I’d rather not know it, if I’m going to die very soon.”

“Oh, very well,” acquiesced her husband. “We’ll go back to my original plan and put the whole ten thousand dollars on my life.”

“No, no, no!” she protested. “It would be even worse, if I learned that there was anything wrong with you. I couldn’t bear it, Harry; I couldn’t, really! There wouldn’t be anything left in life for me. Let’s not go at all.”

“That’s foolish, Isabel,” he argued. “I’m all right, and the very fact that I am accepted as a good risk will remove every doubt.”

“That’s so,” she admitted. “We’ll be sure, then, won’t we?”

“Of course.”

“Then we’ll both go,” she announced, with a sudden reversal of judgment. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I’ll feel a lot better and stronger when I’m insured, because the companies are so particular, and it will be comforting to know that you are all right. It’s worth something to find that out, isn’t it? And sometimes a family physician won’t tell you the truth, because it won’t do any good and he doesn’t want to frighten you. We’ll go right away and see about it now.”

“Hardly this evening,” he answered, smiling, although he was sorely troubled. “We’ll go to-morrow afternoon.”

“But it’s so long to wait until to-morrow,” she pouted.

He regretted the delay quite as much as she did, for his experience up to date led him to think that there might be another change. First she had refused to consider the matter at all; then she had insisted they should go together; after that she had backed out; next she had demanded he should give up the idea, also; and now she was again determined it should be a joint affair.

“No man,” he muttered, as he dropped off to sleep, “knows anything about a woman until he marries, and then he only learns enough to know that he knows nothing at all.”

Then he mentally apologized to his wife for even this mild criticism, and dreamed that, through some complication, he had to insure the cook and the janitor and the grocer’s boy before he could take out a policy on his own life, and that, when he had attended to the rest, he had no money left for his own premiums, so he made all the other policies in favor of his wife and hoped to thunder that the cook and the janitor and the grocer’s boy would die a long time before he did.

However, she was still of the same mind the next day, so they went to see Murray.

“Of course,” she said, as they were on the way, “if this thing wrecks our happiness by showing that the grave is yawning for either of us, it will be all your fault.”

That made him feel nice and comfortable – so nice and comfortable that he heartily wished he never had mentioned life insurance. Still, he cheered up a little when Murray took charge of matters in a masterly, confident way.

“I understand, Mrs. Beckford,” said Murray, “that both you and your husband wish to have your lives insured.”

“Yes,” she replied, “and for some reason he has selfishly wanted to put all the insurance we can afford on his own life.”

“So he has told me.”

“What right had he to discuss family matters with you?” she demanded with asperity.

Thus Murray was jarred out of his air of easy confidence the first thing.

“Why – why, he didn’t exactly tell me,” he explained, “but my experience enabled me to surmise as much. Most men are like that.”

“I never thought Harry would be,” she said, looking at him reproachfully. “But it’s all right now,” she added.

“Yes, it’s all right now,” repeated Murray. He had intended to argue first the advisability of accepting her husband’s plan, but he deemed it unwise. He had suddenly lost faith in his powers of persuasion, so he resorted to guile. “Of course, you understand that life insurance is hedged about by many annoying restrictions,” he went on.

“I didn’t know it,” she returned.

“Oh, yes,” he said glibly, with a wink at Beckford. “Do you use gasoline at all?”

“Why, I have used it occasionally to take a spot out of a gown,” she admitted.

“Barred!” asserted Murray.

“I can’t do even the least little mite of cleaning with gasoline!” she exclaimed in dismay.

“None at all! It’s dangerous! Might just as well fool with nitroglycerin. People who handle it at all become careless.”

There were indications of a rising temper. That a mean old insurance company should have the audacity to tell her what she could or could not do was an outrage!

“And you can’t use street-cars,” added Murray.

“Can’t use street-cars!” she cried. “What will Harry do?”

“Oh, that rule doesn’t apply to men,” returned Murray calmly, “for men don’t get off the cars backward and all that sort of thing. Street-cars are considered, in our business, a danger only for women.”

“Well, it’s a hateful, insulting, unfair business!” she cried, rising in her indignation. “I wouldn’t let such a contemptible lot of people insure me for anything in the world.”

“But please don’t blame me,” urged Murray insinuatingly. “I want to do the best I can for you.”

“Oh, I don’t blame you,” she returned magnanimously.

“I admit that it sounds unfair,” Murray persisted, “but there was a time when we wouldn’t take risks on women at all, so, even with the restrictions, it’s quite a concession.”

“Oh, very likely, very likely,” she admitted, “but I have too much pride to accept any such humiliating conditions. Harry can do as he pleases,” with dignity, “but nothing could induce me to be insured now. I’m going home.”

Harry took her to a cab, and then returned to Murray’s office.

“Well, it’s settled,” said Murray, with a sigh of relief.

“Yes, it’s settled,” returned Beckford, “but I don’t feel just comfortable about it.”

“She sort of bowled me over the first thing,” commented Murray. “I haven’t quite recovered yet. But it’s her welfare that we’re considering. Better put in your application and take the examination before there are any more complications.”

“Perhaps that’s wise,” admitted Beckford gloomily, for he was not at all at ease about the matter. She had said he could do as he pleased, but there had been something in her tone that was disquieting; she might think there was disloyalty in his patronage of a company that had so offended her. And this was the first cloud that had appeared in the matrimonial sky; in all else there had been mutual concession and perfect agreement.

He was thinking of this when he went home – and found her in tears.

“I know what’s the matter,” she wailed. “I didn’t think of it at first, but I did afterward, and I’ve been crying ever since. I have heart trouble; that’s why he didn’t want to give me a policy.”

“Nonsense!” he protested vigorously.

“Oh, I know it! I know it!” she cried. “He didn’t want to tell me, so he put in all that about street-cars and gasoline. But it’s heart trouble or consumption! Those insurance men are so quick to see things that no one else notices. Why, I could see that he was worried the very first thing!”

Beckford got on his knees beside the bed on which she was lying and tried to comfort her, but she was inconsolable. He insisted that she was the strongest and healthiest woman of her size in the world; that he knew it; that Murray himself had commented on it later; that the company physician, who happened to be in the outer office as they passed through, had spoken of it; that even the clerks were impressed; but he failed to shake her conviction that she had some fatal, and hitherto unsuspected, malady. Finally, assuring her that he would have that matter settled in thirty minutes, he rushed to the nearest cab-stand and gave the driver double fare to run his horse all the way to Murray’s house.

Murray was just sitting down to dinner, but Beckford insisted that he should return with him immediately.

“You’ve got to straighten this matter out!” he told him excitedly. “You’ve got to give her all the insurance she wants without any restrictions! Make it fifty thousand dollars if she wants it! I’ll pay the premiums, if we have to starve!”

“But I can’t give her a policy to-night!” protested Murray.

“You can tell her about it to-night, can’t you?” demanded Beckford. “And you can take her application to-night, can’t you? Why, man, she has convinced herself that she’s going to die in a week! We can settle the details later, but we’ve got to do something to-night.”

“Oh, well, I’ll come immediately after dinner,” said Murray.

“You come now!” cried Beckford. “If you talk dinner to me, I’ll brain you! Insurance has made a wreck of me already.”

“I haven’t been getting much joy out of this particular case myself,” grumbled Murray, but he went along.

The moment he reached home, Beckford rushed to his wife’s room.

“It’s all a mistake!” he exclaimed joyfully. “You – you mustn’t cry any more, dearest, for it’s all right now. Mr. Murray didn’t understand at first – thought you were one of these capricious, careless, thoughtless women that do all sorts of absurd and foolish things on impulse – but he knows better now. There aren’t any more restrictions for you than for me, and he’s waiting in the parlor to take your application for all the insurance you want.”

“Really?” she asked, as the sobs began to subside.

“Really.”

“And there isn’t anything the matter with me?”

“Of course not, sweetheart.”

“Well,” she said, after a pause, “I can’t see him now, because my eyes are all red, but I wish he’d write that out for me. I’d feel so much more comfortable.”

“Indeed he will,” asserted Beckford, “and we can fill out the application in here, and I’ll take it back to him.”

Hopefully and happily the young husband returned to Murray and told him what was wanted. Murray sighed dismally. He had missed his dinner for a woman’s whim, and the woman was merely humiliating him. Still, he felt in a measure responsible for the trouble; he ought never to have resorted to duplicity, even for so laudable a purpose. So he wrote the following: “Investigation has convinced me that the restrictions mentioned this afternoon are unnecessary in your case, and I shall be glad to have your application for insurance on the same terms as your husband’s.”

Mrs. Beckford read this over carefully. Then she read the application blank with equal care. After that she wrote at the bottom of the note: “Insurance has almost given me nervous prostration now, and I don’t want to have anything more to do with it. If Harry can stand the strain, let him have it all.”

“Give him that, Harry,” she said, “and get rid of him as soon as possible, for I want you to come back and comfort me. I’m completely upset.”

Murray lit a cigar when he reached the street, and puffed at it meditatively as he walked in the direction of the nearest street-car line.

“What’s the matter with nervous prostration for me?” he muttered. “One more effort to defeat a woman who is fighting against her own interests will make me an impossible risk in any company; two more will land me in a sanatorium.”