CHAPTER II
CORKEY'S FEAR OF A WIDOW'S GRIEF
Corkey and Noah are nearing the residence of Esther Lockwin.
"You bet your sweet life I don't want to see her nibs. It just breaks me all up to hear 'em take on, rip and snort and beller. Now, see here, you moke, when we git in you stand behind where I stand, and don't you begin to beller, too. If you do I'll shake you--I'll give you the clean lake breeze. If you walk up to the mark I'll get you into the league nine. You'll be their man to hoodoo the other ball clubs."
"Yessah!"
"You can't say nothing nohow, so all you've got to do is to see me face the music."
"Yessah!"
"There's the house now. They say he thought a powerful lot of her. Is there a saloon anywhere near?"
The twain look in vain for a beer sign, and resume their journey. They ascend the steps.
"There ain't no yawl up here! This is worse than the Africa. I believe I ain't so solid with myself as I was before she founder. Open that valve!"
Noah pulls the bell. There is no retreat now. Faces are peering from every window. Museum managers are on guard at the ends of the street. The story of Corkey and his mascot is on every tongue in Chicago.
Esther Lockwin opens the door. Corkey had hoped he might have a moment of grace. At best there is a hindrance in his voice. Now he is speechless.
"Step in," she says.
He rolls a huge quid of tobacco to the other side of his face, and then falls in a second panic. He introduces his first finger in his mouth as if it were a grappling iron and extracts the black tobacco. He trots down a step or two and heaves the tobacco into the street, resisting, at the last moment, a temptation to hit a mark. He returns up the steps, a bunchy figure, in an enormously heavy, chinchilla, short coat, with blue pantaloons,
"Step in," says the voice pleasantly.
The action has begun as Corkey has not wished. He is both angry and contused. A spasm seizes his throat. He strangles. He coughs. He sneezes.
There is an opening of street doors on this alarming report, and Corkey pushes Noah before him into Esther Lockwin's parlors. The man's jet-black hair is wet with perspiration. The boy strives to stand behind, but Corkey feels more secure if the companion be held in front.
"Let me take your hats," she says calmly. She goes to the hall-tree with the hats. She shuts the door as she re-enters.
"Take those seats," she says.
But Corkey must pull himself together. This affair is compromising the great Corkey himself. He does not sit. He must begin.
"Me and this coon, madam, we suppose you want to hear how Mr. Lockwin cashed in--how he--"
"You, of course, are Mr. Corkey, my husband's political opponent?"
"That's what I am, or was, madam; and you ain't no sorrier for that than me."
"The boy and you escaped?"
"I guess so."
"Now, Mr. Corkey, tell me why Mr. Lockwin went to Owen Sound?"
"I can't do that, nohow; and the less said about it the better. It would let a big political cat out of the bag."
"Politics! Was that the reason?"
"That's what it was, your honor, madam."
"Can you tell me something about my poor husband?"
It is a figure that by its mere presence over-awes Corkey. Of all women, he admires the heroic mold. The garb is black beyond the man's conception of mourning. The face is chastened with days of mental torture. There is an intoxication of grief in the aspect of the woman that hangs the house in woe.
The mascot slips away from Corkey. The Special Survivor is drifting into an open sea of sentiment. He feels he shall drown.
Yet the beautiful face seems to take pity on him--seems to read the heart which beats under that burry, bristly form--seems to reach forth a hand.
"Exactly as we catched onto Lockwin," thinks the grateful Corkey.
"It comes mighty hard for me, Mrs. Lockwin, for I never expected to be his friend, nohow. He was an aristocratic duck, and I will say that I thought it was his bar'l that beat me."
The widow is striving so hard to understand that the man speaks more slowly.
"But I meet him at Owen Sound. Between you and me he was to fix me--see?"
The woman does not see.
"You mustn't say it to nobody, but I went to Georgian Bay to show him my slate."
"Is it politics?"
"That's what it is, and it's mighty dirty work. But I don't think your husband was no politician."
It is a compliment, and the woman so receives it.
"He was late, and the old tub was rubbing the pier away when the jackleg train arrive."
"The st-st-steamer was wa-wa-waiting," explained the boy.
"Ah! yes," nods the listener.
"You see, the coon can't talk," says Corkey, "but he's got any number of points. Well, we wet our whistles, and it's raw stuff they sell over there--but you don't know nothing about that. I introduce him to the outfit, and we go aboard. We eat, but he don't eat nothing. I notice that. We take the lounge in the fore-cabin. You know where that would be?"
A nod, and Corkey is well pleased.
"We sit there all the time. I want to tell you just how he did. He sit back, out straight, like this, his hands deep in his pockets, his legs crossed onto each other, his hat down, and his chin way down--see?"
Corkey is regaining his presence of mind.
The widow attests the correctness of Corkey's illustration.
"You bet your sweet life, nobody could get nothing out of him, then. What ailded him I don't know, and I ain't calling the turn, but nobody could get nothing out of him, I know that. I talk and talk. I slap him on the shoulder, and pull his leg and sing to him--"
"S-s-say it over," suggests the mascot.
The widow cannot understand.
"Why, don't you know, I was expecting him to fix me?"
"Is it politics?"
"That's what it is. So I guess I sing to him an hour--two hours--I can't tell--when he comes to. 'Mr. Corkey,' says that feller--says Mr. Lockwin--'you don't get nothing; You don't get the light at Ozaukee.'
"'There ain't no lamp at Ozaukee,' says I.
"'That's what the First High said,' says he. So you see I was whipsawed. I get nothing."
"P-p-politics!" interprets the mascot."
"Perhaps I understand," says the widow. Withal, she can see David Lockwin sitting his last hours on that lounge. How unhappy he was! Ah! could he only have read her letter!
"I don't just remember what I did after I found I wasn't fixed. It flabbergasted me, don't you forget it! I know I sneezed--and you must excuse me out there a while ago--and a big first mate he tried to put the hoodoo on me. No, that's not politics, but life is too short. We go out on deck."
"To make the raft?"
"Oh, that's all poppycock! Don't you believe no newspaper yarn. You just listen to me. I'm giving it to you straight. We go out on deck, and then I don't see Lockwin till we git the wood-choppers. How many of them wood-choppers, Noey?"
"Ei-ei-eight!"
"Mrs. Lockwin, them wood-choppers was no earthly use. It didn't pay to pull 'em in. I know it was me who hurt Lockwin with the oars. I didn't know for hours that he was aboard. He showed up at daybreak, you see. I tell you he was awfully hurt."
The face of Esther is again miserably expectant. There will be no mystery of politics in it now. "I wouldn't know him, either by face or voice, Mrs. Lockwin. He lie in the stern and Noey try to help him, but the sea was fearful. I couldn't hear him speak. Noey--the coon here--hear him speak.
"'Are you a-dying, old man?' I asks.
"Noey says he answer that he was."
"Yessah, h-h-he done spoke that he w-w-was."
"'Want to send some word home, old man?' says I, to cheer him up; for don't you see, I allowed we was all in the drink--just tumble to what an old tub she was--117 of us at the start, and we all croak but me and the moke--the coon, I should say."
The woman is afraid to interrupt.
Suddenly the eye of Corkey moistens. He has escaped a great error. "I didn't hear his last words, nohow."
"He said to p-p-put a st-st-stone over D-Davy's grave," says the lad
The man turns on the boy. The brows beetle. The mouth gives a squaring movement, significant beyond words.
The listener still waits.
"And then," says Corkey, "he whisper his good-bye to you. 'Tell her good-bye for me.' That's what he said, you moke!"
"Yessah."
Esther Lockwin grasps those short hands. She thanks the commodore for saving her husband, for living to tell her his last words. She can herself live to find her husband's body.
But it is far too much for the navigator.
His sobs resound through the room. The woman cannot weep. Her eyes are dry,
"I had such feelings as no decent man ever gits," he explains, "but I'll never forgive myself that it was me who steered him agin it."
"You have a better heart than most men, Mr. Corkey."
"I'd give seven hundred cases in bar gelt if he was in Congress to-day, Mrs. Lockwin."
"I know you would, you poor man. God bless you for it!"
Corkey is feeling in all his pockets.
"Take this handkerchief, Mr. Corkey, if it will help you. God bless you always! God bless you always! Come and see me often. I shall never get tired of hearing how my husband died. He must have been brave to cling to the boat."
"You bet he was, and if ever you need money, you come to me, for I'm the boy that's got it in the yellow!"
Corkey bows himself down the steps. There two managers of museums implore a few moments' conversation. They tender their cards.
"Naw!" says Corkey, "we don't want no museum."
The managers persist.
"No use o' your chinning us! Go on, now!"
The heroes escape from their persecutors. The mind of Corkey reverts to the parlors of Esther Lockwin.
"Great Caesar!" he exclaims.
"Yessah!"
"Steer me to a bar!"
A few moments later Corkey leans sidewise against a whisky counter, his left foot on the iron rail, his hand on the glass. A mouthful of tobacco is gnawed from the biggest and blackest of plugs. The mascot stands by the stove.
The bartender is proud to serve the only Corkey, the most famous man on the whole "Levee." While the bartender burns incense, the square mouth grows scornful, laconic, boastful. Corkey is himself again. The barkeeper goes to the oil-room for a small bottle.
The handsome eyes of the navigator rest on his protege. The head sets up a vibration something like the movement of a rattlesnake before it strikes. The little tongue plays about the black tobacco. The speech comes forth.
"It's a great act I play on the widow about the 'last words'. He didn't say nothing of the kind. I come near putting my foot right into it."
"Yessah!"
Corkey's right hand is in his side pocket. He ruminates. He feels an unfamiliar thing in his pocket. He draws out a dainty white-and-black handkerchief. There is a painful reaction in his mind.
"I'll burn that female wipe right now!" he says.
"Yessah."
The stove is for soft coal and stands open. Corkey advances to toss the handkerchief in the fire.
His eyes meet the crooked and quizzical orbs of the mascot.
"You mourning-colored moke!"
There is a huge threat in the deliverance.
The hook-like finger tears the black tobacco out of the choking mouth. The great quid is thrown in the fire. The proposed motion is made, and the handkerchief is not burned. Down it goes in the hip pocket beside Corkey's revolver, out of harm's way.
Corkey started to throw something in the fire, and has kept to his purpose.
"Yessah!" says the mascot, sagaciously.
"Bet your black life!" vows Corkey, as if great things hung by it.
He looks with renewed affection on his protege. "I git you into the league nine, sure, Noey!"
"Yessah!"
It is plain that the mascot will preserve an admirable reticence.
CHAPTER III
THE CENOTAPH
"TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD.--This sum of money will be paid for the recovery of the body of the Hon. David Lockwin, lost in Georgian Bay the morning of Oct. 17. When last seen the body was afloat in the yawl of the propeller Africa, off Cape Croker. For full particulars and suggestions, address H. M. H. Wandrell, Chicago, Ill."
This advertisement may be seen everywhere. It increases the public excitement attending the death of the people's idol. There is a ferment of the whole body politic.
Of all the popular pastors who turn the catastrophe to their account the famous preacher at Esther Lockwin's church makes the most of it. To a vast gathering of the devout and the curious he dwells upon the uncertainties of life. Here, indeed, was a Chicagoan who but yesterday was almost certain to be President of the United States.
"Now his beloved body, my dear brethren and fellow-citizens, lies buried in the sands of an unfrequented sea."
There is suppressed emotion.
"And as for man," chants the harmonious choir, "his days are as grass."
"As a flower of the field," sounds the bass.
"So he flourisheth," answers the soft alto.
"For the wind passeth over it," sings the tenor.
"And it is gone," proclaims the treble.
"And the place thereof shall know it no more," breathes the full choir, preparing to shout that the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him.
It is found that Lockwin had hosts of friends. There is so much inquiry on account of that strange journey to Owen Sound that the political boss is grievously disturbed.
Corkey is not blind to this general uneasiness. He reads the posters and the advertisements. He whistles. It is a sum of money worthy of deep consideration.
"You offered to l-le-end to her," observes the mascot.
"Well, if she had needed the stuff she'd a been after it soon enough, wouldn't she? I don't offer it to everybody. But that ain't the point. I'm going after that roll--ten thousand dollars! You want to come? If I win, you git $500. I reckon that's enough for a kid."
It is a project which is well conceived, for Corkey may easily arrange for a salary from his great newspaper. To find Lockwin's body would be a clever feat of journalism, inasmuch as the search has been abandoned by the other papers.
A delegation of dock-frequenters waits on Corkey to demand that he shall stand for Congress in the second special election, made necessary by the death of Lockwin.
"Gentlemen, I'm off on business. I beg to de--de--re--re--drop out! Please excuse me, and take something."
The touching committees cannot touch Corkey.
"The plant has been sprung," they comment, "His barrel is empty."
Corkey had once been rich when he did not know the value of wealth. He had been reduced to poverty. On becoming a reporter, he had laboriously saved $1,000 in gold coins. In a few weeks $300 of this store had been dissipated.
"And all the good work didn't cost nothing, either," thinks Corkey.
Would it not be wise now to keep the $700 that remain? When the vision of a contest, with Emery Storrs as advocate, had crossed poor Corkey's mind on the Africa, the Contestant could see that his gold was to be lost. He could not retreat without disgrace. Now he need not advance.
"You bet I won't!" thinks Corkey, as he expresses his regrets that enforced absence from Chicago will prevent his candidacy.
"You'd be elected!" chime the touching committees.
"You bet I would," says Corkey.
"Corkey is too smart," say the touching committees. "Wait till he gets into politics from the inside. Won't he wolf the candidates!"
Corkey is at last on the shores of Georgian Bay. The weather soon interferes with the search. But there are no signs of either body or yawl.
The wreck of the Africa, followed by daily conventional catastrophes, soon fades from public recollection. The will of David Lockwin is brought into court. The estate is surprisingly small.
It had been supposed that Lockwin was worth half a million. Wise men said Lockwin was probably good for $200,000. The probate shows that barely $75,000 have been left to the wife, and the estate thus bequeathed is in equities on mortgaged property. Mills that had always been clear of incumbrances are found to have been used for purposes of money-raising at the time of the election, or shortly thereafter.
The public conclusion is quick and unfavorable.
Lockwin ruined himself in carrying the primaries! The opposition papers, while professing the deepest pity for the dead, dip deep into the scandals of the election. "It is well the briber is out of the reach of further temptation," say they.
This tide of opprobrium would go higher but for the brave efforts of a single woman. She visits the political boss.
"You killed my husband!" she says deliberately.
The leader protests.
"Now you let these hyenas bark every day at his grave. And he has no grave!"
The woman grows white. The leader expostulates, The woman regains her anger.
"He has no grave, and yet your hyenas are barking, and barking. Do you think I do not read it? Do you think I intend to endure it?"
The leader makes his peace.
As a result there is a return to the question in the party press. Long eulogies of Lockwin appear. There is a movement for a monument. The memory of the dead man's oratory stirs the community. Several prominent citizens subscribe--when they learn that their subscriptions, however meager, will be made noteworthy from a source where money is not highly valued. The poor on every side touch the widow's heart with their sincere and generous offerings.
The philosophic discuss the character of Esther Lockwin.
"Her troubles have brought her out. These cold women are slow to strike fire, but I admire them," says the first philosopher.
"Don't you think our American widows make too much ado?" asks the second philosopher.
"They at least do not ascend the burning pyre of their dead husbands."
"To be sure. That's so. I don't know but I like Esther Lockwin the better. I never knew a man to lose so much as Lockwin did by dying."
"She declares his death was due to the little boy's death."
"Odd thing, wasn't it?"
"Yes, but he was a beautiful child. What was his name, now?"
"It was Lockwin's name--let me see--David."
"Oh, yes, Davy, they called him."
"Well, she has erected the prettiest sarcophagus in the whole cemetery for Davy. I tell you Esther Lockwin is a magnificent woman."
"She would have more critics, though, if she were not Wandrell's only daughter."
"Wandrell's only daughter! You don't tell me so! Ah, yes, yes! That accounts for it."
So, while the philosophers account for it, Esther Lockwin goes on with the black business of life. Every week she waits impatiently for news from Corkey. Every week he gives notice that he has found nothing.
"When spring comes, I'll find that yawl," he promises. He knows he can do that much with time.
How often has Esther Lockwin thrown herself on a couch, weeping and moaning as if her body would not hold her rebellious heart--as when Corkey left her in those black and earliest days of the great tempest of woe!
"It is marvelous that it is held to be dishonorable to die, and honorable to live," she cries.
"Oh, David, David, come back! come back! so noble, so good, so great! You who loved little Davy so! You who kissed his blessed little feet! Oh, my own! my husband!"
A fond old mother, knocking on the door, comes always in time to stop these brain-destroying paroxysms.
"And to think, mother, that they shall asperse his name! The people's idol! Faugh! The people! Oh, mother, mother!"
The mother deplores these months of persistent brooding. It is wrong.
"So they always say, who have not suffered, mother. How fortunate you are."
But the daughter must recollect that to-day is the dedication. A band has marched past. Kind friends have carried the subscription to undoubted success. Emery Storrs will deliver the oration. The papers are full of the programme, the line of march, the panegyric. There are many delicate references to the faithful widow, who has devoted her husband's estate and as much more to the erection of a vast fire-proof annex at a leading hospital.
The public ear is well pleased. The names of the men who have led in the memorial of to-day are rolled on everybody's tongue.
There appears at the scene of dedication a handsome woman. Her smile, though wofully sad, is sweet and sympathetic. She humbly and graciously thanks all the prominent citizens, who receive her assurances as so much accustomed tribute. The trowel rings. The soprano sings. The orator is at his best. Band after band takes up its air. The march begins again. Chicago is gratified. The great day ends with a banquet to the prominent citizens by the political leader.
The slander that republics and communities are ungrateful is hurled in the faces of the base caitiffs who have given it currency.
Behind all the gratulations of conventionality--in the unprinted, unreported, unconventional world--the devotion of Esther Lockwin is universally remarked upon.
Learned editors, noting this phase of the matter, discuss the mausoleums of Asia erected by loving relicts and score a point in journalism.
"The widow of the late Hon. David Lockwin, M. C., will soon sail for Europe," says the society paper.
But she will do no such thing. She will spend her nights and mornings lamenting her widowhood. She will be present every day to see that the work goes forward on the monument.
"I might die," she says, moodily.
There will be no cessation of labor at the ascending column. It is not in the order of things here that a committee should go to Springfield to urge an unwilling public conclusion of a grateful private beginning. Money pours like water. The memorial rises. It becomes a city lion. It is worth going to see.
Society waits with becoming patience. "Inasmuch as the prominent citizens saw fit to render Esther's sorrow conspicuous," says Mrs. Grundy, "it is perfectly decent that she should remain in complete retirement."
Nevertheless notice is secretly served on the entire matrimonial world.
Esther Lockwin will soon be worth not a penny less than five million dollars!
CHAPTER IV
A KNOLLING BELL
It seems to Esther Lockwin that her night of sorrow grows heavier. The books open to her a new world of emotions. Ere her bridal veil was dyed black she had read of life and creation as inexpressibly joyous. The lesson was always that she should look upon the glories of nature and give thanks.
Now the title of each chapter is "Sorrow." The omniscient Shakespeare preaches of sorrow. The tender and beautiful Richter teaches of the nightingale. Tennyson, Longfellow, Carlyle, Beecher, Bovee, the great ancient stoics, the Bible itself, becomes a discourse on that tragic phenomenon of the soul, where peace goes out, where longing takes the place of action, where the will sets itself against the universe.
"Sorrow," she reads, "like a heavy hanging bell, once set on ringing, with his own weight goes."
"How true! How true!" she weeps. She turns to "Hamlet." She reads that drama of sorrow. She accepts that eulogium of the dead as something worthy of her lost husband.
She gloomily reviews the mistakes of her earlier life. She had been restricted in nature to the attentions of a few men. She had found her lord and master. The sublime selfishness of human pride had driven her on the rocks of destruction. This she can now charge to herself. Had she sufficiently valued David Lockwin; had she counseled him to live for himself, to study those inclinations which she secretly understood and never encouraged--had she begged him to turn student rather than to court politics and popularity--then she might yet have had him with her.
The heavy bell of sorrow clangs loudly upon this article of her pride, ambition and lack of address to the true interests of her dead lord.
"Davy would not have died if politics had not been in the way. And then that dreadful fever! That month of vigil! How strangely he spoke in his delirium! How lonesome he was! How he begged for a companion to share his grief! Oh, David! David! David! Come back! Come back! Let me lay my head on your true heart and tell you how I love you. Let me tell you how I honor you above all men! You who had so much love for a foundling--oh, God bless you! Keep you in heaven for me! Forgive the hard heart of a foolish woman whose love was so slow! Come, holy spirit, heavenly dove, with all thy quickening power! Our Father, which art in heaven, which art in heaven!"
The knolling of the heavy bell grows softer. The paroxysm passes. Religion, the early refuge of the sex--the early refuge, too, of the higher types of the masculine sex--this solace has lit the taper of hope, the taper of hope that emits the brighter ray.
Esther Lockwin will meet her lord again. She will dwell with him where the clouds of pride and ambition do not obscure the path of duty.
She who a half hour ago could not live on must now live at all cost. She has other labors. She must visit the portrait painter's to-day. She would that the gifted orator might be portrayed as standing before the immense audiences which used to greet his voice, but it cannot be done. She must be contented with the posthumous portraits which forever gratify and disturb the lovers of the dead.
It is a day's labor done. The portrait will be praised on all hands, but it has not come without previous failures and despairs.
To return to the house out of which the light has gone--how Esther Lockwin dreads that nightly torment! Shall she linger at the parental home? Is it not the bitterer to feel that here the selfish life grew to the full? Is it not worse than sorrow to discover in this abode the same influences of estrangement? What is David Lockwin in the old home?
A dead man, to be forgotten as soon as possible!
No! no! Better to enter the door where the white arm reached out for the message of blackness. Better to go up and down the stairs searching for David, listening for Davy's organ--better to fling one's self on the couch, abandoning all to the tempest of regret and disappointment; to cry out to David; to apostrophize the unseen; to fall into the hideous abyss of hopelessness; to see once again the north star of religion; to call upon God for help; to doze; to awaken to the abominations of the reality; to remember the escape from perdition; to hasten to the duties of the day!
So goes the night. So comes the morning. She who would not live the evening before is terrified now for fear of death ere her last great labor shall be done.
She calls her carriage. She rides but a few squares. Every block in that noble structure represents a pang in her heart. Some of those great stones below must have been heavier than these sobs she now feels. "Oh, David! David! Every iron beam; every copestone, every coigne of vantage, every oriel window in this honorable edifice is for you! Every element has cost an agony in her who weeps for you."
The widow gazes far aloft. It has been promised for this date, and it is done. Something of the old look of pride comes to the calm and beautiful face which the architect and the workmen have always seen.
The vari-colored slate shingles are going on the roof.
Her eye returns in satisfaction to the glittering black granite letters over the portal. She reads:
THE DAVID LOCKWIN ANNEX
[Illustration: Her eye returns in satisfaction to the glittering black granite letters over the portal.]
"A magnificent hospital," says an approving press, "the very dream of an intelligent philanthropy."
BOOK III
ROBERT CHALMERS
CHAPTER I
A DIFFICULT PROBLEM
David Lockwin is not dead.
Look into his heart and see what was there while he sat beside Corkey on the lounge in the forecabin of the Africa.
The time has come for momentous action. It is settled that at the other end of this journey David Lockwin shall cease to exist. Now, how to do it.
He may commit suicide.
He may disappear.
In furtherance of the latter plan there awaits the draft of Robert Chalmers, who bears letters from David Lockwin, the sum of $75,000. This deposit is in the Coal and Oil Trust Company's institution at New York. The amount is half of Lockwin's estate. Esther shall have the rest.
Serious matters are these, for a man to consider, who sits stretched out on a seat, one ankle over the other, his hands deep in pocket, his chin far down on his chest; and Corkey appealing in his dumb, yet eloquent way, for a share of the spoils of office.
This life of David Lockwin, the people's idol, is an unendurable fiasco.
David Lockwin is disconsolate. Davy is no more.
David Lockwin is sick and weak. Whether he be sane or daft, he scarcely knows, and he cares not at all.
He recoils from politics.
He loathes the reputation of a rich man with ambition--a rich man with a barrel.
He does not believe himself to be a true orator.
He is urged forward by unknown interests over which he has no control. He is morally and publicly responsible for the turpitude of the party leaders and the party hacks.
He is married to a cold and unsympathetic woman. Did he not wed her as a part of the political bargain?
Is life sweet? No. Then let Davy's path be followed. Now, therefore, let this affair of suicide be discussed.
Can David Lockwin, the people's idol, commit suicide? Does he desire to pay the full earthly penalty of that act? He is of first-class family. There has never been a suicide in the records.
His self-slaughter will be the first scandal in his strain.
He is happily married, so far as this world knows. If he be bored with the presence of Esther he alone possesses that secret. She does not. He is the husband of a lady to whom there will some day come an added fortune which will make her the richest woman in the West.
He is the reliance of the party. He is the one orator who remains unanswered in joint debate. Quackery as it is, no opponent dares to cross the path of David Lockwin. It is a common saying that to give an opponent a date with Lockwin is to foretell the serious illness of the opponent. It is a sham--this oratory--but it befools the city.
Can the fashionable church to which Esther belongs sustain the shock of Lockwin's suicide? Behold the funeral of such a wight, once the particular credit of the congregation, now the particular disgrace!
That forthcoming contest with Corkey!
Is it not uncomfortable? What is it Corkey is saying? Oh! yes, Corkey, to be sure! "Mr. Corkey, I should have told you they will do nothing. You must contest."
Here, therefore, are two men who are plunged into the deepest seethings of mental action. The one has missed greatness by the distance of a mere hand's grasp; the other is half crazed to find himself so fatally conspicuous in society.
Let the rich, respectable, beloved, ambitious and eloquent Lockwin hurry back to that problem: What to do when he shall arrive in Chicago?
Can the community be deceived? Let us see how it fared with Lockwin's friend Orthwaite, who found life to be insupportable. The respectability which so beclogs Lockwin had been secretly lost by Orthwaite.
His shame would soon be exposed. Orthwaite returned to his home on the last suburban train. He purposely appeared gay before his train-acquaintances. He left the train in high spirits. He pursued a lonely path toward home. He reached a stream. He set to work making many marks of a desperate struggle. He placed a revolver at his heart and fired. Then with unusual fortitude he threw the weapon in the stream.
But the ruse was ineffectual. The keen eyes of the detectives and the keener ear of scandal had the whole truth in a week's time. It was suicide, said the press--bald, cowardly, pitiful.
How difficult! How difficult! Now let us set at that device of mysterious disappearance. How far is that fair to a young wife? Why should she wait and search and hope, although Esther would not disturb herself much! She is too cold for that.
How difficult! How difficult! But why do the eyes of Corkey bulge with excitement? Oh, yes, the ship is foundering because Corkey is in the way of this great business. Corkey should be flung in the sea and well rid of him. As the ship is foundering we will go on deck, but when a man is so conspicuous as David Lockwin, how can he commit suicide--how can he disappear?
There are words, indistinctly heard. It is Corkey crying to Lockwin to climb up the steps to the hurricane deck. Indeed it is a clever riddance of that uncomfortable man. Ouf! that brutal sneeze, that jargon, that tobacco, that quaking of head and hesitancy of expression! It distracts one's thoughts from an insoluble problem; How to shuffle off this coil--not of life, but of respectability, conspicuity, environment!
But what is this? This is not a wave. If David Lockwin hold longer to this stanchion, he will go to the bottom of the sea. This must be what excited Corkey. Something has happened.
The red fire of drowning sets up its conflagration.
Lockwin has time for one regret. His estate has lost $75,000. He enters the holocaust and passes into nothingness, feeling heavy blows.
He awakes to find himself still with Corkey. His brain is dizzy and he relapses into lethargy. In the faint light of the dawn, totally benumbed by the night's exposure, he is again passing into nothingness.
Corkey questions the sinking man, and Lockwin tries to tell of the money--the deposit of $75,000 to the order of a fictitious person. He cannot do it.
"Put a stone over Davy's grave," he says, and goes into a region which seems still more cold, more desolate, more terrible.
There is a knocking, knocking, knocking. He hears it long before he replies to it. Let them knock! Let a man sleep a little longer! It is probably the chambermaid at the hotel in Washington.
But it is a persistent chambermaid. Ah, now the bed is lifted up and down. This must be seen to. We will open our eyes.
What a world of light and shimmer! The couch is the yawl of the Africa. The persistent chambermaid is the Georgian Bay.
The gale has subsided. The sun shines. Blackbirds are singing. The yawl is dancing on the waves near the shore.
David Lockwin sits up. How warm and pleasant to be alive!
Alive! Oh, yes! Chicago! The Africa! Is it not better?
Has he any face left? His nose seems flat. He must be desperately wounded. His eyes grow dim. He must be dying again.
He sleeps and is once more gently awakened by the sea--so fond now, so terrible last night.
He sits upright in the yawl, wet, sore, and yet whole in limb. He gathers his scattered faculties. He finds a handkerchief and ties up his face. He muses.
"I am the sole survivor! I, Robert Chalmers, of New York City, am the sole survivor, and nobody shall know even that. Corkey--let me see--Corkey and a boy--they must be at the bottom of Georgian Bay!"
He muses again. His face hurts him once more. He sees a cabin at a distance. He finds he has money in plenty. To heal his wounds will be easy. He must be greatly changed if his feelings may be credited. Two of his teeth are broken, and harass his curious tongue.
What plotter, cunning in exploits, could so well plan an honorable discharge from the bitterness of life in Chicago?
"Sing on, you birds! Fly off to Cuba! I am as free!"
The man is startled by his own voice. It sounds as if some one else were talking. Yet this surprise only increases his joy.
"Free! Free! Free!" The word has a complete charm. It is like the shimmer of the waters. All this expanse of hammered silver is free!
"I am as free!" exclaims Robert Chalmers, of New York City.
And again starting at the sound of his own voice, he seeks the cabin of a hospitable trapper, where his wounds healing without surgical attention, may disguise him all the better.
CHAPTER II
A COMPLETE DISGUISE
David Lockwin has undertaken that Robert Chalmers shall have no trouble. It was David Lockwin, in theory, who suffered all the ills of life. In this theory David Lockwin has seriously erred. Robert Chalmers must bear burdens.
The first burden is a broken nose and a facial appearance strangely inferior to the look of David Lockwin, the orator. Robert Chalmers need not disguise himself. He will never be identified. That broken nose is a distortion that no detective could fathom. Those scarlet fimbrications under the skin proclaim the toper. Those missing teeth complete a picture which men do not admire.
David Lockwin was courted. Robert Chalmers is shunned. It wounds a personal vanity that in David Lockwin's philosophy had not existed. It is the ideal of disguises, but it does not make Robert Chambers happy.
Why, too, should Robert Chalmers desire so many appurtenances of life that were in David Lockwin's quarters? If we find Chalmers housed in comfortable apartments at Gramercy Square, is it not inconsistent that he should gradually supply himself with cough medicine, turpentine, alcohol, ammonia, niter, mentholine, camphor spirits, cholagogue, cholera mixture, whisky, oil, acid, salves and all the aids to health and cleanliness by which David Lockwin flourished? How slight an annoyance is the lack of that old-time prescription of Dr. Tarpion, which alone will relieve the melancholia!
For Robert Chalmers finds that the weather still gives him a turn. If the lost prescription will alone lift the oppression, is not the annoyance considerable, providing Dr. Tarpion cannot be seen?
Robert Chalmers had planned a life at Florence. But now he is a man without a body. It is enough. He will not also be a man without a country. He will stay in New York.
In fact, a fortune of $75,000 is not so much! It will be well to husband it. The books must be bought. Day after day the search must go forward for copies like those in Chicago. Josephus! What other copy will satisfy Robert Chalmers? Here is a handsome Josephus--as fine as the one in Chicago. But did Davy's head ever lie on it?
Well, bear up then, Robert Chalmers. You are free at least. You need not lie and cheat at elections. You need not live with a woman whose heart is as cold as ice and whose pride is like the pride of an Egyptian Pharaoh. You sunk that yawl well in the sands of Georgian Bay! You filled it with stones!
You thought you were the sole survivor, yet how admirably the rescue of Corkey and the boy abetted your escape, Robert Chalmers. They saw David Lockwin die. They took his dying wishes. Fortunate that he could not mention the deposit at New York!
But why is David Lockwin so dear? Why not forget him?
Did he play a part that credits him? Why stop at Washington and take the mail that awaited in that long-advertised list? Truly, Robert Chalmers was strong enough to lay those letters aside without reading. That, at least, was prudent.
Let us read these newspaper accounts. There is intense excitement at Chicago. Lockwin is libeled. The election briberies are exposed. David Lockwin had spent nearly $200,000 to go to Congress, it is stated.
"Infamous!" cries Robert Chalmers, and vows he is glad he is out of a world so base. He puts forth for books.
Search as he may, he cannot find the editions that have grown dear to David Lockwin. He cannot abstain from more purchases of Chicago papers. They are familiar--like the books in David Lockwin's library at Chicago.
This is a dreary life, without a friend. He dares not to seek acquaintances. Not a soul, not even a restaurant keeper, has ventured to be familiar. The man with a broken nose and missing teeth--the man with a grotesque voice--is scarcely desired as a customer at select places on the avenues and Broadway. Let him find better accommodations among the Frenchmen and Italians on Sixth avenue.
"Probably," they say, "he has fallen in a duel."
But there are fits of melancholia. Return, Robert Chalmers, to your handsome apartments. Draw down your folding-bed, turn on the heat, study those Chicago papers. Live once again! What is this? A reaction at Chicago. Why, here is a page of panegyric. Here is a large portrait of the late Hon. David Lockwin, lost in Georgian Bay!
The man whisks off his bed, and runs it up to the wall, whereupon he may confront a handsome mirror. He compares the two faces.
"A change. A change, indeed!" he exclaims sadly. It is not alone in the features. The new man is growing meager. He is an inconsequential person. He is a character to be kept waiting in an ante-room while strutting personages walk into the desired presence.
He pulls the bed down. He cannot lie on it now. He takes a chair and greedily reads the apotheosis of David Lockwin.
As he reads he is seized with a surprising feeling. In all this eulogium he sees the hand of Esther Lockwin. Without her aid this great biography could not have been collated.
The sweat stands on his brow. He studies the type, to learn those confessions that the publishers make, one to another, but not to the world.
"It is paid for," he groans. He is wounded and unhappy.
"It is her cursed pride," he says. "I'm glad I'm out of it all."
He sits, week after week, hands deep in pockets, his legs stretched out, one ankle over the other, his chin far down on his chest.
"Funny man in the east parlor!" says the chambermaid.
"Isn't he ugly!" says her fellow-chambermaid.
But after this long discontent, Robert Chalmers finds that Chicago mourns for him. He is flattered. "I earned it!" he cries, and goes in search of the books that once eased him--the identical copies.
The movement for a cenotaph makes him smile. On the whole, he is glad men are so sentimental about monuments. He is glad, however, that no monument will be erected.
It is undoubtedly embarrassing.
He is thinking too much of Chicago. He must begin this second life on a new principle. He must forget David Lockwin. It grows apparent to the man that his brain will not bear the load which now rests upon it. He must rather dwell upon the miseries that he has escaped He must canvass the good fortune of a single and irresponsible citizen, Robert Chalmers, who has no less than $74,500 in bank. He must put his mind on business.
No!
One reason for quitting the old life was the desire to pass a studious life.
Well, then, he must wait patiently for that period when his mind will be quiet. A certain thought at last reanimates him.
Would it not be well to act as a clerk until the weariness of servitude should make freedom pleasing? This is both philosophical and thrifty.
Robert Chalmers therefore advertises for a situation as book-keeper. This occupation will support him in his determination to neglect the Chicago newspapers.
"Greatest man I ever saw to sit stretched out, his hands deep in his pockets, his feet crossed, his head far down on his shirt bosom," says the chambermaid at Gramercy Square. "He must be an inventor. He thinks, and thinks, and thinks. Dear sakes, but he is homely."
An advertisement secures to Robert Chalmers a book-keeper's place in a dry-goods agency on Walker street. The move is a wise one. The labor occupies his time, improves his spirits and emancipates him from the unpleasant conclusions that were forcing themselves on him. He is not liked by the other clerks because he is not social, but he is able to consider, once more, the humiliations which he escaped by avoiding a contested election, and by a successful evasion of a wedding compact which was a part of his foolish political ambition.
Several months pass away. If Chalmers is to be anything better than a book-keeper at nine hours' work each day he must move, but he who so willingly took the great step is now afraid to resign his book-keepership. He dreads life away from his tall desk. This problem is engaging his daily attention. This afternoon the clerks are arguing about Chicago. He cannot avoid hearing. He is the only party not engaged in the debate. They desire his arbitration. Does Clark street run both north and south of the river in Chicago? Here, for instance, is the route of a procession. Is it not clear that Clark street must run north if the procession shall follow this route?
They lay a Chicago Sunday paper on his desk. The portrait of David Lockwin confronts Robert Chalmers. There is a page of matter concerning the dedication of a monument on the following Saturday.
The arbiter stammers so wretchedly that the losing side withdraw their offer of arbitration.
"Chalmers doesn't know," they declare, and take away the paper while Chalmers strives to read to the last syllable.
He is sick. He cannot conclude his day's work. His evident distress secures a leave for the day.
"Get somebody in my place if I am not here tomorrow," he says, thoughtfully, for they have been his only friends, little as they suspect it. "Chicago in mourning for David Lockwin!" he cries in astonishment, as he purchases great files of old Chicago papers. "Chicago dedicating a monument to David Lockwin! It is beyond conception! And so soon! The monument of Douglas waited for twenty years."
The air and the ride revive the man. He even enters a restaurant and tries to eat a table d'hote dinner with a bottle of Jersey wine, all for 50 cents, To do a perfunctory act seems to resuscitate him. He takes up his heavy load of newspapers and finds a boy to carry them. He remembers that he is a book-keeper on a small salary, and discharges the boy at half-way.
He reaches his apartments and prepares for the long perusal of his files of Chicago news. Each item seems to feed his self-love. He is not Robert Chalmers. He is David Lockwin.
Hour by hour the reader goes on. Paper after paper falls aside, to be followed by the succeeding issue. At last the tale is complete. David Lockwin, dead, is the idol of the day at Chicago.
The man stretches his legs, puts one ankle over the other, sinks his hands deep in his pockets, a newspaper entering with the left arm, and lowers his head far down on his chest. The clock strikes and recalls him to action.
"I can reach Chicago in time for that dedication," he says. "I guess, after all, that I am David Lockwin's chief mourner."
Ah, yes! Why has not this second life brought more joy? The man ponders and questions himself.
"I am Davy's chief mourner, too!" he says, and sobs. "By heaven, it is Davy that has made me unhappy! I thought it was Chicago. I thought it was politics. I thought it was Esther. It must have been Davy!"
"If it were Davy," he says, an hour later, "I have made a mistake."
Down he looks into his heart, whither he has not dared to search before. He is homesick. Nobody loves Robert Chalmers. Nobody respects Robert Chalmers. David Lockwin dead is great and good. How about David Lockwin living?
His hands go deeper in his pockets at this. The motion rustles the newspaper. He strives to shake free of the sheet. His eye rests on the railway timetables.
He falls into profound meditation again. He considers himself miserable. He is, in fact, happy, if absence of dreadful pain and turmoil be a human blessing. At last his eye lights up, and the heavy face grows cheerful.
"I will go to Chicago!" he says.