White Ashes. Sidney R. Kennedy
such a Pan-Hellenic meeting occurred, Mr. Cuyler rose to his highest triumphs. It was perhaps a frame celluloid goods factory in Long Island City, which some soul-compelling voice had just finished describing, accoutering the grisly thing in all the garments of verbal glory. One gathered that the Guardian's fate hung on the acceptance of this translucent risk, that it was a prize saved from the clutches of a hundred grasping competitors and brought to the counter of the Guardian like a pure white lamb to the altar of the gods. When it was all over, and nothing was wanting except Mr. Cuyler's signature to the binder—then Mr. Cuyler came into his own.
"Joe," the organ note would start—"Joe, that looks as if it might be a first-rate risk of its class, and some folks think it's not a bad class, too, when the hazards are properly arranged. I've always thought myself that the bad record on celluloid workers was largely accidental. And I don't see how I can turn down anything that comes from your office—I guess I'll have to help you out with a small line, anyway. Where's your binder? Wait a second, though. Let me look at that map again—I forgot my exposing lines. Well! we seem to be pretty full in that block—eighty-five, ten, twelve-five, sixteen—by Jove! I'm afraid I'll have to pass that up, after all—I didn't think I had so much around there. Awfully sorry, old man; I'd take it for you if I could for any man in the world."
And the binder was affably passed back over the counter. But when, as probably developed at this point, Mr. Cuyler was advised that his remarks bore convincing traces of the proximity of an active steam-radiator and that the broker knew perfectly well that the Guardian hadn't a dollar at risk within three blocks—it was then that the real contest began. Celluloid was a mighty hazardous article—was Joe aware that in New York State alone the losses had been nearly three times the premiums on the class? Perhaps this was accidental, but it was a fact just the same. But after all, what else could one expect? Celluloid was very much like gun-cotton—made out of practically the same constituents—and only a little less dangerous to handle. It also appeared that celluloid works all over the country had for the last year been unusually disastrous to the underwriters, and that the President himself had written a letter on the subject to the various rating bureaus. Honestly, it would be more than Cuyler, with all his extreme desire to oblige, would dare do—to tell the old man that the local department had written a celluloid factory. His good friend, the caller, Mr. Cuyler felt certain, would not wish to see the venerable hairs of the Guardian's local secretary trampled into the dust by the infuriate heels of the board of directors, led by the outraged President Wintermuth himself. No, he was extremely sorry, but he simply—could not—take—the risk.
And take it he would not. Such was James Cuyler. For thirty years he had stood at the Guardian's local threshold, fidelity personified, a watch-dog extraordinary that could not have been duplicated in all watchdogdom. He had but one superstition and but one grievance.
His superstition was that he would not allow a customer to enter the office after the clock struck the first blow of five. At that moment, if no employee was at hand, he himself would step out from behind the counter, close the door, and turn the key in the lock. And the best friend of the office could not have gained admission once the key was turned.
"Why do I do it?" he would say. "My boy, at about half-past five P.M. on June fourteenth, eighteen eighty-nine, I was alone in the office, and Herman White, who used to be placer for Schmidt and Sulzbacher, came in with a ten thousand dollar line on coffee in one of those Brooklyn shorefront warehouses. I guess all the other offices must have shut up, for Herman never gave me anything he didn't have to. He banged on the door, and I let him in, and the risk was all right and we were wide open, and I took his ten thousand. … And about twenty minutes later, as I stood on the front deck of the Wall Street ferryboat crossing the river, the flames burst out of the roof of that warehouse, and we paid nine thousand two hundred and thirty-seven dollars for that coffee. … This office closes at five P.M."
This was his superstition, and he lived up to it with absolute consistency. His one grievance was not quite so deep, which probably explained his lesser insistence upon it. This grievance was simply that the conservative policy of the company would not let him accept more than a fraction of what he would have wished to write on the island of Manhattan. Like all men who constantly live in the presence of a peril and grow thus to minimize it, Mr. Cuyler had grown to think and to feel that New York, his New York, could never have a serious, sweeping fire, a conflagration. This being so, and the local business being profitable, to write so small an amount in the city was equivalent to throwing money sinfully away. Why, companies not half so large were doing double the Guardian's business, and with golden results. But only at long intervals did he permit himself the luxury of articulately bemoaning his fate, for in spite of his own conviction he felt that any implied criticism of his chief was disloyal. Occasionally, however, his feelings would overcome him, and then he would burst forth into a hurricane of lamentations.
"The finest town in the country," he would say; "and look at what we write! I could double our income in a week if the old man would let me. But he won't. He keeps talking 'conflagration hazard' and 'keep your lines down in the dry goods district' and 'aggregate liability,' and I can't get him to loosen up a particle. He always says we have enough at risk now. Enough at risk! Look at what the company writes in Boston! Why, the Guardian must have half as much at risk in the congested district of Boston as I write here! And Boston! Of all towns in the world!"
Mr. Cuyler was not a Bostonian.
It was perfectly true; Mr. Wintermuth was not a strictly consistent underwriter, and perhaps some day he would adopt Mr. Cuyler's viewpoint. And then, the flood-gates open, the local secretary would come into his metropolitan own. Certainly, if the Guardian's line in Boston was safe, its liability in New York was small indeed. But the Boston business had always shown a profit, and James Wintermuth and Silas Osgood had grown up together in the insurance world; and so for the present the Boston line would stand. And it was impossible to satisfy Mr. Cuyler—he was continually moaning about the restrictions under which he labored—and so it was likely that nothing would be done in New York, either. James Wintermuth was a conservative man.
One could have told it at his first glance about the President's office, on the top floor of the Guardian building. In the first place, the office, although it was located in the sunniest corner of the building, preserved nevertheless a kind of cathedral gloom. Dark shades in the windows reduced the light across Mr. Wintermuth's obsolete roll-top desk to never more than that of a dull afternoon. No impertinent rays of the sun could further fade the faded rug which clothed the center of the room. On the wall hung likenesses of the former heads of the company, now long since in their graves. Over the desk was an old print of the Lisbon earthquake; the germaneness of this did not at once appear—in fact, it never appeared—but the picture had always hung there, and in Mr. Wintermuth's opinion that was ample cause and justification.
Only in the corner, almost out of sight behind the desk, was the room's single absolute incongruity. There the surprised visitor saw, reposing quietly in its shadowy retreat, a hundred pound dumb-bell. This was the President's sole remaining animal joy, the presence of this dumb-bell. He rarely touched it now, although the colored janitor's assistant scrupulously dusted it each morning, but it was an agreeable reminder of the days when the old lion was young and when his teeth, metaphorically speaking, were new and sharp. For years it had been his custom to lift this ponderous object three times above his head before opening his mail in the morning—and he would never hire a field man or inspector who could not do likewise.
Now, of course, these trials of strength were over for Mr. Wintermuth—and what he no longer did himself he asked none other to do. But there the relic lay, a substantial memorial of Spring in the veins. Once in a while, at long intervals, Smith, in whom the old man had a sort of shamefaced pride, would eye the thing respectfully.
"Put it up, Richard," Mr. Wintermuth would direct; "I used to do it every morning for twenty years." And Smith—with considerable effort—would put it up.
"I'd never have let you go to work for the Guardian, when you came and struck me for a position, if you hadn't been able to do that, my boy," said the President, reflectively.
And Smith would listen patiently to the oft-told tale. He was sincerely fond of the