On Friday I began my study of the farm appliance business while the two women did the necessary shopping and organizing attendant to setting up housekeeping. I spent the entire day with Herman Gwynn and his two clerks, going over the books for several years past, making a detailed examination of the stock and listening to the three of them explain the details of the business.
During the next few weeks our lives settled into pretty much of a pattern. I spent a good deal of time studying the business, meeting other local businessmen and generally getting acquainted with the community. One of the businessmen I particularly cultivated was an insurance agent named Richard Slack.
I never mentioned the subject of insurance to him, however, leaving it to him to bring it up at the proper time, as I knew he would. But I did arrange for the proper time. I invited him to dinner.
No insurance man ever deliberately sidesteps a possible sale. After dinner when we were all seated in the front room and I dropped the remark that I didn’t have any life insurance on myself, Slack went to work at once.
“Now that you’re married, you certainly ought to have some protection for your wife, Mr. Howard,” he said. “Not that I’m trying to sell you a policy. I don’t believe in taking advantage of people’s hospitality to talk business. But as a matter of principle I’m naturally a strong believer in insurance.”
Despite his avowed reluctance to take advantage of our hospitality, it didn’t take much urging for him to go out to his car and bring in his brief case. Within an hour of the time we had gotten up from dinner he had me signed up for a ten-thousand-dollar straight life policy.
Then he suggested, “How about your wife, Mr. Howard. Has she any insurance?”
Chuckling, I told him I wasn’t interested in betting on my wife’s death.
“That’s not the way to look at insurance,” he said seriously. “It’s not a gamble. It’s an investment. She ought to have at least enough to cover funeral expenses.”
He went to work on both me and Helen then, and ended up selling me a five-thousand-dollar policy on her life, to go in force in thirty days. After that he made a stab at selling policies to Mavis and Dewey without getting anywhere with either. Mavis told him she had a five-hundred-dollar policy to cover her funeral expenses and wasn’t interested in any more, and Dewey didn’t even seem to know what he was talking about. Finally he gave up on both of them.
I was satisfied with the whole evening. When it came time for the insurance company to pay off, there wasn’t likely to be much suspicion when the agent recalled that he had considerable difficulty convincing me my wife should be insured as well as myself, and instead of insuring her for the largest amount I could get, he had trouble getting me up to a five-thousand-dollar policy.
Chapter XVII
While I busied myself with studying the farm appliance business and getting acquainted with the community, Mavis spent enough time ostensibly looking for a job to create the impression that she really wanted one, though she would have been considerably put out if anyone had actually offered her a position. Dewey seemed content to loll around the house waiting for the expected opening at the store to develop.
Helen threw herself wholeheartedly into housekeeping duties.
We discovered that Westfield was a charming village. There were many lovely old homes, and most streets were lined with ancient elms. At the moment these were bare, but it wasn’t hard to visualize that when the winter passed, the streets would be beautiful green-roofed arcades. While it was an old town, there seemed to be some money in it, for most of the large old frame buildings were well kept up.
Mixed with the old-fashioned element which made the town so comfortable was a good deal of modernism, too. The stores of the shopping center were as streamlined as any in large cities, there was an excellent first-run movie theater, and even one or two glittering cocktail lounges. The net effect was of a wealth of tradition, which still reached over into modern times to give the town its pleasant flavor, without the natives allowing it to sap their vitality. For despite its quietly homey atmosphere, I sensed a good deal of vitality and forward thinking among Westfield’s businessmen.
It wasn’t hard to fall in love with the town.
My relationship with Helen developed very pleasantly, too. She was an excellent housewife. As we grew to know each other better she developed into a more and more vivacious companion, and she seemed to be pouring out to me all the passionate love which had been bottled up within her for thirty-two years.
Sometimes, in my enjoyment of our day-to-day life, I would forget the eventual plans Mavis and I had for Helen and Dewey to the extent that I would find myself seriously looking forward to the moment when we would take over the Farmer’s Appliance Store and become permanent members of the community. Then it was like a dash of cold water in the face when I jerked myself back to reality.
As Christmas neared, Mavis began to grow a little impatient as to when I intended to act. One afternoon while Helen was shopping and Dewey, for a change, was out of the house too, we nearly had a fight.
“Hasn’t the insurance been in force long enough?” Mavis demanded.
“Only three weeks,” I said. “We’ll wait until after the first of the year.”
“You mean you expect to spend Christmas as that woman’s husband?”
“I certainly don’t expect to spend it in mourning,” I snapped at her. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing with me,” she said. “I’m beginning to wonder what’s the matter with you.”
I discovered what was the matter with me Christmas Eve. We had a tree with the usual exchange of presents, and Helen acted as delighted as a child. She had given me a new robe and slippers. My gift to her, which made Mavis stare at me balefully, was a tiny gold wrist-watch for which I had paid the unnecessary price of seventy-five dollars.
I had given Mavis a scarf and a pair of gloves.
In bed that night Helen was still showering me with excited thanks for the watch. And as she whispered into my ear, I suddenly realized something I must have known subconsciously for some time.
I was in love with Helen.
As I lay there with Helen in my arms, thinking about my new discovery, I realized not only that I was in love with her, but that it was the first time in my life I had ever been really in love. Whatever it was I had felt for Mavis, it had no comparison to this overwhelming desire to protect and live the rest of my life with the soft creature lying next to me.
All at once, I knew with great certainty that all Mavis’s and my plans were off. I intended to take over Gwynn’s store, I intended to make it pay, and I intended to live in this town with Helen as my wife permanently.
The decision involved considerable alternate planning. I knew it was no use trying to explain it to Mavis, for she would never accept a simple ultimatum to get out of my life and stay out. I remembered a scene a year or two back when Mavis had suspected I was carrying on a flirtation with a blonde during one of our periodic vacations. It was one of the few times I ever saw her really angry, and the only time she ever dared talk to me in the tone she used that night.
She had said, “I’ve let you push me around since the day we met, Sam. I’ve done everything you told me. I’ve let you make a killer out of me. I’ve watched you live with other women, burning with jealousy, even though I knew they meant nothing to you. I would have let you push me into bed with other men, if you’d wanted to run that kind of a racket. There isn’t anything in the world I wouldn’t do for you. Except one thing. Give you up.” Then she had screamed in complete rage, “That blonde’s no mark. You stay away from her!”