The Best Policy. Flower Elliott
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“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