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 old autocrat, and able to bear with his growing acerbity better than he could have done had he not known the real spirit of the man. During the past year or two it seemed to Smith that his chief was showing his age more plainly than ever before. He was still under sixty-five, but he was coming to live more than ever in the past, and was growing more and more impervious to the new ideas and new methods which modern conditions constantly brought.