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The Best Policy
AN INCIDENTAL COMEDY
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