CHAPTER V

After the first two weeks Fred Starratt's business venture went forward amazingly. His application for membership in the Insurance Broker's Exchange was rushed through by influential friends and he became, through this action, a full-fledged fire insurance broker. He did not need this formality, however, to qualify him as a solicitor in other insurance lines. There was a long list of free lances, where the only seal of approval was an ability to get the business. Automobile liability, personal accident, marine, life--underwriters representing such insurances shared commissions with any and all who had a reasonable claim to prospective success. Therefore, while he was waiting for his final confirmation from fire-insurance circles he took a flyer at these more liberal forms. There seemed no end to this miscellaneous business which, he came to the conclusion, could be had almost for the asking. And all the time he had fancied that the field was overworked! He mentioned this one day to a seasoned veteran in the brokerage world.

"Writing up policies is one thing," this friend had a.s.sured him, emphatically; "collecting the premiums is another matter... If your fire-insurance premiums aren't paid up inside of two months, the policies are canceled. But they let the others drag on until the cows come home. There's nothing so intangible in this world as insurance.

And people hate to pay for intangibilities."

Starratt refused to be forewarned. The people he went after were personal friends or gilt-edged business men. _They_ wouldn't deny their obligations when the premiums fell due.

But the greatest rallying point for his business enthusiasm proved to be Hilmer. It seemed that scarcely a day went by that Hilmer did not drop a new piece of business Fred's way. Returning to the office at four o'clock on almost any afternoon, he grew to feel almost sure that he would find Hilmer there, bending over Helen's shoulder as he pointed out some vital point in the contract they were both examining.

He was a trifle uneasy at first--dreading the day when Hilmer would approach him on the matter of sharing commissions. It was a generally a.s.sumed fact that Kendrick, the man who handled practically all of Hilmer's business, was a notorious rebater--that he divided commissions with his clients in the face of his sworn agreement with the Broker's Exchange not to indulge in such a practice. Obviously, then, Hilmer would not be a man to throw away chances to turn such an easy trick.

Starratt voiced these fears to Brauer.

"Sure he expects a rake-off," Starratt's silent partner had said.

"Everybody gets it ... if they've got business enough to make it worth while."

"Well, he won't get it from me," Fred returned, decisively. "I've signed my name to an agreement and that agreement will stick if I starve doing it!"

Brauer, disconcerted by his friend's vehemence, merely had shrugged, but at another time he said, craftily:

"If Hilmer wants to break even on the fire business he gives us, why can't we make it up some other way?... There's nothing against giving him _all_ the commissions on that automobile liability policy we placed the other day. We can do what we please with _that_ profit."

Starratt flushed. "Can't you see, Brauer, that the principle is the same?"

"Principle! Oh, shoot!... We're out to make money, not to reform business methods."

Starratt made no further reply, but Brauer's att.i.tude rankled. He began to wish that he hadn't allowed Brauer to go in on his venture.

'But it had taken money ... more than he had imagined. They had to put a good deposit down on the office furniture, and the rent was, of course, payable in advance. Then came the fee for joining the Broker's Exchange, and he had to borrow money for his personal expenses in the face of his diminished salary check from Ford, Wetherbee & Co. He realized, too, that the difficulties would scarcely decrease, even in the face of brisk business. The office furnishings would one day have to be met in full, the typewriting machine paid for, the stationery and printing bills settled. During all this time he and Helen would have to live and keep up a decent, not to say prosperous, appearance.

Yes, even with Helen saving the price of a stenographer, the problem would not be easy. A day would come finally when he would feel compelled to provide Helen with a fair salary. A man couldn't expect even his own wife to go on pounding a typewriting machine for nothing.

What he really hoped was that when things began to run smoothly Helen would retire... He had heard her in the old days voice her scorn of the married woman who went out to earn a salary.

"I wouldn't marry a man who couldn't support me!" she used to blaze.

As a matter of fact, he had felt the same way about it--he felt that way still. It hurt him to think that Helen should be wearing the badge of his inefficiency. And then, deep down, he had a masculine distaste for sharing his workday world with a woman. He liked to preserve the mystery of those hours spent in the fight for existence, because he knew instinctively that battle grounds lost their glamour at close range. His Californian inheritance had fostered the mining-camp att.i.tude toward females--they were one of two things: men's moral equals or men's moral superiors. It was well enough to meet an equal on common ground, but one felt in duty bound to enshrine a superior being in reasonable seclusion.

At first he had been doubtful of Helen's ability to adapt herself to such a radical change. Her performance soon set his mind at rest on that score, but he still could not recover quite from the surprise of her unexpected decision. Indifference, amazement, opposition--nothing seemed able to sway her from her purpose. In the end he had been too touched by her att.i.tude to put his foot down firmly against the move... She got on well with Hilmer, too, he noticed. Usually at the end of one of these late afternoon conferences with their chief patron Fred and Hilmer ended up by shaking for an early evening c.o.c.ktail at Collins & Wheeland's, just around the corner. Hilmer always saw to it that Fred returned to the office with something for Helen--a handful of ginger-snaps from the free-lunch counter, a ham sandwich, or a paper of ripe olives. Once he stopped in a candy shop on Leidesdorff Street and bought two ice-cream cornucopias. Fred used to shake a puzzled head as he deposited these gastronomic trifles upon Helen's desk as he said:

"I don't get this man Hilmer... One minute he insults you and the next minute he's as considerate as a canteen worker... What's he throwing business my way for?"

Helen, munching a gingersnap, would go on with her laborious typewriting, and return:

"Why look a gift horse in the mouth, Freddie?... Women aren't the only riddles in the world."

"I think he comes to see you," he used to throw out in obvious jest.

"That's the only way I can figure it."

"He's like every man ... he wants an audience... I guess Mother Hilmer is tired of hearing him rave."

And so the banter would go on until Fred would pull up with a round turn, realizing quite suddenly that he was talking to his wife and not just to his stenographer.

"He'll be at me one of these days on that commission question, you mark my words," he would venture.

"And what are you going to do?"

"Why, refuse, of course, and lose the business."

"Well, don't cross the bridge till you come to it."

She puzzled him more and more. She seemed disturbed at nothing, and yet she glowed with a leashed restlessness that he could not define.

"It's the strain," he would conclude. "She's putting more into this venture of mine than she's willing to admit... After all, women are amazing... They pull and cling at you and drag you back ... and then, all of a sudden, they take the bit in their teeth and you can't hold them in... Who would have thought that Helen..."

And here he would halt, overcome with the soft wonder of it.

Business began to pour in from Brauer and, frankly, Fred was disturbed. He wasn't sure of Brauer's business scruples.

"I wonder if he's promising these people rebates," he said to Helen one day, following an avalanche of new risks.

"Well, you'll know soon enough when he begins to collect the premiums," she replied, indifferently.

"But I don't want to wait until then... They tell me this man Kendrick is getting awfully sore at losing so much of Hilmer's business. He'd like nothing better than to hop on to some irregularity in my methods and get me fired from the Exchange... It takes a thief to catch one, you know."

"Oh, why worry?" Helen almost snapped at him. "If Brauer gets us into a mess we can always throw him out."

Starratt's eyes widened. Where did Helen get this ruthless philosophy?

Had it always lain dormant in her, or was this business life already putting a ragged edge upon her finer perceptions? But he made no answer. He had never admitted to Helen that Brauer had insisted upon drawing up a hard-and-fast partnership agreement, and taking his note for half of the money advanced in the bargain. It was one of the business secrets which he decided he would not share with anybody--he had a childish wish to preserve some mystery in connection with his venture against the soft and dubious encroachments of his wife.

"Anyway," Helen went on, "as soon as we get running smoothly we can split. No doubt _he'll_ want to pull out when he sees that he can get along without us... Just now he isn't taking any chances. He's holding down his own job and letting us do all the work and the worrying...

Oh, he's German, all right, from the ground up."

Fred had often shared this same hope, although he had never voiced it.

When the time came, no doubt Brauer would eliminate himself--for a consideration--and set up his own office. But it amazed him to find how swiftly and completely Helen had figured all these things out. Had her mind always worked so coldly and logically under her rather indifferent surface? He still wondered, too, at her efficiency. Was this a product of her social service with the Red Cross during war times?... Being a man, he couldn't concede that a proper domestic training was a pretty good schooling in any direction. He didn't see any relationship between a perfectly baked apple pie and a neatly kept cash book. He had expected his wife to fall down on the mechanical aspects of typewriting, but he forgot that she had been running a sewing machine since she was fifteen years old. And even in his wife's early childhood people were still using lamps for soft effects and intensive reading. Any woman who knew the art of keeping a kerosene lamp in shape must of necessity find the oiling and cleaning of a typewriting machine mere child's play. He didn't realize the affinities of training. It would never have occurred to him to fancy that because he kept his office desk in perfect order he was qualified to do the same thing with a kitchen stove, or that the method he had acquired as office boy, copying letters in the letterpress, would have stood him in good stead if he suddenly had been called upon to make up his own bed. What he did realize was that the leveling process which goes hand in hand with the mingling of s.e.xes in a workday world was setting in. And he resented it. He wanted to coddle illusion ... he had no wish for a world practical to the point of bleakness.

One afternoon Hilmer came in at the usual time with a handful of memoranda. It was a violently rainy day--an early March day, to be exact--the sort that refused to be softened even by the beguilements of California. The rain wind, generally warm and humid, had been chilled in its flight over the snow-piled Sierras, and it had pelted down in a wintry flood, banking up piles of stinging hail between warmer showerings. Fred had decided to forgo his soliciting and stay indoors instead. Hilmer greeted him with biting raillery.

"Well, I should think this was a good day to bag a prospective customer," he flung out as he laid his umbrella aside. "Or is business swamping you?"

Fred tossed back a trite rejoinder. Helen went on pounding her machine ... she did not even lift her eyes.

"I've got something for you to-day," Hilmer went on, as he unbound the bundle of papers and sat down beside Fred.

Starratt saw the edge of a blue print in Hilmer's hand. This spelled all manner of possibilities, but he checked a surge of illogical hope.

"That's fine," he answered, heartily. "But why didn't you send for me?

I could have come over. It's bad enough to take your business without letting you bring it in on a day like this..."

Hilmer made a contemptuous gesture. "Wind and weather never made any difference to me... I've traveled twenty miles in a blizzard to court a girl."