CHAPTER III
BEFORE THE TELEGRAPH OFFICE
Robert Chalmers is in Chicago this morning of the dedication, and has slept well. He tossed in his bed at New York. He snores at the Western inn.
He asks himself why this is so, and his logic tells him that nature hopes to re-establish him as David Lockwin. There is a programme in such a course. At New York there was neither chart nor compass. It was like the Africa in mid-sea, foundering.
Now Robert Chalmers is nearing land. And the land is David Lockwin. The welcoming shore is the old life of respectability. Banish the difficulties! They will evaporate. Listen to the bands, and the marching of troops!
He goes to the window. The intent of these ceremonies smites him and he falls on the bed. But nature restores him. Bad as it is, here is Chicago. David Lockwin is not dead. That is certain. He is not pursued by the law, for another congressman has been chosen. David Lockwin has tried to kill himself, but he has not committed murder.
Is it not bravado to return and court discovery? But is not Robert Chalmers in the mood to be discovered? "What disguise is so real as mine?" he asks, as friend after friend passes him by.
True, he wears a heavy watch-chain and a fashionable collar. His garb was once that of a professional man. Now his face is entirely altered. Gouts of carmine are spotted over his cheeks; wounds are visible on his forehead. His nose is crooked and his teeth are misshapen. His voice is husky.
He enters a street-car for the north. It startles him somewhat to have Corkey take a seat beside him.
"Will this car take me to the dedication?" Chalmers makes bold to ask the conductor.
"That's what it will!" answered Corkey. "Going there? I'm going up myself. I reckon it will be a big thing. Takes a big thing to git me out of bed this time of day. I'm a great friend of Mrs. Lockwin's!"
"You are?"
"That's what I am. I was on the old tub when she go down. May be you've heard of me. My name is Corkey."
"Clad to meet you. My name is Chalmers. I have read the account."
"Yes, I've got tired of telling it. But it's a singular thing, about Lockwin's yawl. Next week I go out again. I'll find that boat, you hear me? I'll find it. I tell the dame that, the other day."
"Mrs. Lockwin?"
"I tell her the other day that I find the yawl. I'll never forget that boat. Lord! how unsteady she was! I'm sorry for the dame. Women don't generally feel so bad as she does. It's a great act, this monument--all her--every bit! These prominent citizens--say, they make me weary! You've heard about the hospital--the memorial hospital. She blow hundred and fifty thousand straight cases against that hospital--the David Lockwin Annex. Oh, it's a cooler. It's all iron and stone and terra cotta. She's spent a fortune already. She doesn't cry much--none, I reckon. But no one can bluff her out."
Robert Chalmers is pleased in a thousand ways. He is so glad that he scarcely notes the facts about the annex. Since he was cast away no other person has talked freely with him. The open Western manner rejoices his very blood.
"Lockwin was a pretty fair-sized man, like you. I guess you remind me of him a trifle. They was a fine pair. I never was stuck on him, for I was in politics against him; but somehow or other I've hearn the dame praise him so much, and he die in the yawl, and so on, until I feel like a brother to him. Just cut across with me," as they leave the car. "Want a seat with the reporters? Oh, that will be all right out here. Say you're from the outside--where is it? Eau Claire? Say Eau Claire. Here is some copy paper. Sit side of me. Screw your nut out of my place, young feller," to a mere sight-seer. "Bet your life. Don't take that seat neither! Go on, now!"
David Lockwin is to report the dedication of his own monument. He trembles and grows thankful that Corkey has ceased to talk. The audience gathers slowly. David Lockwin wonders it he be a madman thus to expose himself. A memorial hospital! Did not Corkey speak of that? The David Lockwin Annex!
This is awful! Lockwin has not read a word of it. Ay, but the apartments are still at Gramercy Square. Why did he come? What fate led him away? What devil has lured him back? Hold! Hold! There is Esther! Lift her veil! Give her air! Esther, the beautiful!
The reporter for the Eau Claire paper groans with the people. His heart falls to the bottom of the sea. She loves him! God bless her! She loves him! Why did he not believe it at home? God bless her! Is she not noble?
"She's a great dame," Corkey whispers loudly. "Special friend of mine. You bet your sweet life I'd do anything for her. I'll find that yawl, too!"
"The late honorable David Lockwin," begins the pastor of the fashionable church.
"The late honorable David Lockwin," write the reporters.
"The late honorable David Lockwin," writes David Lockwin.
He grows ill and dizzy once more. The exercises proceed. He will fall if he do not look at Esther's face.
"I know," cries the shrill soprano, "that my--Redeemer liveth."
There comes upon the widow's face an ecstatic look of hope. She will meet her husband in heaven, and he will praise her love and fidelity.
"God bless her!" writes the Eau Claire reporter, and hastily scratches the sentence as he reads it.
A messenger approaches the reporters. A note is passed along.
"I got to go!" whispers Corkey, "you can stay. They sent for me at the office. I guess something's up."
David Lockwin is only too glad to escape. He dreads to leave Esther, yet what is Esther to him? He will hurry away to New York before he falls into the abyss that opens before him.
"Do you suppose she loved her husband as much as it seems?" he asks.
"I wish she'd love me a quarter as much, though I'm a married man. Love him! Well, I should say!"
Corkey tries to be loquacious. But his dark face grows darker.
"Oh! it's bad business. I'm sorry for her, and it knocks me out, I ain't my old self. I got up feeling beautiful, and it just knocks me. I don't think she ought to build no monument, nor no hospital, for it keeps her hoping. What's the use of hoping? I'll find that yawl. Curious about that yawl. Wouldn't it be great stuff if he should show up? Wonder what he'd think of his monument and his hospital? A hospital, now, ain't so bad. You could take his name off it. They'll do that some day, anyhow, I reckon. I've seen the name changed on a good many signs in Chicago. But what's a monument good for after the duck has showed up? Old man, wouldn't it be a sensation? Seven columns!"
Corkey slaps his leg. He quakes his head. The little tongue plays about the black tobacco. He sneezes. The passengers are generally upset.
A substantial woman of fifty, out collecting her rents, expostulates in a sharp voice.
A girl of seventeen laughs in a manner foreboding hysteria.
The conductor flies to the scene.
"None o' that in here!" he cries, frowning majestically on Corkey.
"Don't you be so gay, or I'll get you fired off the road," answers the cause of all the commotion.
"Randolph street!" yells the conductor in a great voice.
The irate and insulted Corkey debarks with Lockwin.
"Pardner, I wouldn't like to see him come back, though. I'd be sorry for him. Think of the racket he'd have to take!"
"What time does the train start for New York?" asks Lockwin.
"Panic! Panic! Panic!" is the deafening cry of the newsboys.
The two men join a crowd in front of a telegraph office. Bulletins are on a board and in the windows. Men are rushing about. The scene is in strange contrast with the sylvan drama which is closing far to the north, where the choir is singing "Asleep in Jesus."
There is a financial crash on the New York Stock Exchange. Bank after bank is failing. "The New State's Fund Closes," is the latest bulletin.
"I got pretty near a thousand cases," says Corkey, "but you bet your sweet life she ain't in no bank. I put my money in the vaults."
"Banks are better," says Lockwin. He has a bank-book somewhere in his pockets. He pulls forth a mass of letters gray with wear. The visible letter reads:
"HON. DAVID LOCKWIN,
Washington,
D. C."
His thought is that he should destroy these telltale documents. Then he wonders what may be in these envelopes. There flashes over him a new feeling--a sharp, lightning-like stroke passes across his shoulder-blade and down his arm.
It is Esther's handwriting, faded but familiar. The envelope is still sealed. It is a letter he got at Washington.
The man trembles violently.
"'Fraid you're stuck?" asks Corkey.
The man hurriedly separates his bank-book from the letters. He displays the fresh and legible name of Robert Chalmers on the bank-book.
"I have a little in a New York bank," he says.
Corkey looks on the book. "The Coal and Oil Trust Company's Institution," he reads, "in account with Robert Chalmers. Well, money is a good thing. Glad you're fixed. Glad to know you. I'm fixed myself."
Corkey examines the list of failures. "I'm glad you're heeled," he says.
A boy is fastening a new bulletin on the window.
"There you be, now!" says Corkey.
"The Coal and Oil Trust Company's Institution Goes Down," is on the bulletin.
"I'll lend you money enough to git home," says Corkey.
"Panic! Panic! Panic!!" bawls a large boy, who beats his small rivals ruthlessly aside and makes his way to Lockwin.
The man is still trembling. He is trying to put away his worthless bank-book and cannot gain the entrance of the pocket.
"'Ere's your panic! Buy of me, mister. Say, mister, won't you buy of me? Ah! git out, you great big coward!"
It is the sympathetic Corkey, smartly cuffing the invader.
"Strike somebody of your size, you great big coward! Ah! git out, you great big coward!"
CHAPTER IV
"A SOUND OF REVELRY BY NIGHT"
"Poverty," says Ben Franklin, "often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue. It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright."
David Lockwin has but one familiar acquaintance in the world and that is Corkey. Corkey will now start in search of the body of David Lockwin!
David Lockwin has but a few hundred dollars in cash. His fortune is in a ruined bank. He hopes to get something out of it. His experience tells him he may expect several thousand dollars.
Is it wise to return to New York? Yes. A situation awaits him there. He can protect his rights as a depositor. He can enjoy the pleasant apartments at Gramercy Park.
But the expense! Ah! yes, he must take cheaper quarters. It is the first act of despotism which poverty has ever ventured to impose on David Lockwin.
It makes New York seem inhospitable. It makes Chicago seem like home. Still, as David Lockwin seeks his hotel, noting always the complete solitude in which he dwells among the vast crowds that once knew him familiarly or by sight, it chills him to the marrow.
He enters the hotel dining-room. The head waiter seats his guest at a table where three men are eating. Every one of them is a business acquaintance of Lockwin.
The excitement of the moment drives away the brain terrors which were entering the man's head. The men regard the newcomer with that look which is given to an uninvited banqueter whose appearance is not imposing. The best-natured of the group, however, breaks the silence. He speaks to the diner on his left.
"Where did you get the stone for that sarcophagus you put up yesterday?"
"In Vermont."
"Who ordered the job--Lockwin or the widow?"
"She did."
"Well, it's a pretty thing. I wish I were rich. I lost a little boy too."
The monument-maker at this begins a discourse on the economies of his business and shows that he can meet the requirements of any income or purse.
"Did you see Lockwin's portrait at the institute?" asks the third party,
"No. Is it good?"
"I hardly think so. I don't remember that he ever looked just like it. Everybody knew Lockwin, yet I doubt if he had more than one close acquaintance and that was Tarpion--Doc. Tarpion."
"Does the doctor act as her adviser in all these affairs? Did you read about the dedication? Did you know about the hospital? She had better keep her money. She'll need it."
"She? Not much. She had a big estate from Judge Wandell's sister who died. The judge himself has no other heir. I shouldn't wonder if he advised the erection of the hospital to give her the credit of what he intended to do for himself."
"Well, I never knew a town to be so full of one man as this town is of Lockwin. You'd think he was Douglas or Lincoln."
"Worse than that! Douglas and Lincoln are way behind. Take this city to-day and it's all Lockwin. Going to the banquet to-night?"
David Lockwin has finished his meal. He rises.
"Coming back," says the monument-maker confidentially to his inquirer, "I can fix you a beautiful memorial for much less money and it will answer every purpose."
"I'll see you again," says the customer, cooling rapidly away from the business. "I must go to the North Side and get back here by 9 o'clock."
Why shall not David Lockwin take the night train and leave this living tomb in which the world has put him?
"In which I put myself!" he corrects.
It all hurts him yet it delights him. "She loved me after I was dead," he vows and forgets the sting of poverty.
Now about this going to New York to-night. He would like to be prevented from that journey. What shall do that for David Lockwin?
"Davy's sarcophagus!"
The thought seizes him with violence. Of course he cannot go. He seeks his room. He throws himself on his bed and gives way to all his grief. It takes the form of love for Davy. David Lockwin weeps for golden-head. He weeps for the past. He is living. He ought to be dead. He is poor. He is misshapen in feature. He is hungry for human sympathy. The world is giving him a stone. Oh, Davy! Davy!
The outside electric lights make a thousand monuments, hospitals, sarcophagi, portraits and panics on the chamber walls. The hours go past. There is a bustle in the hotel. There is a sound of merriment in the banqueting hall, directly below. The satisfaction of having dealt tenderly by the beloved dead is expressing itself in choice libations and eloquent addresses.
The man listens for these noises. There is a loud clapping of hands. An address has concluded.
The glasses tinkle. Doors open and shut. Waiters and servants run through the hall giving orders and carrying on those quarrels which pertain to the unseen parts of public festivities.
"Why did I not go?" David Lockwin asks. "Ah! yes. Davy! Davy's tomb. I will see it, if it shall kill me to live until then. But how shall I pass this night? What shall I do? What shall I do?"
The glasses tinkle. The laughter bursts forth unrestrainedly. The banquet is moving to the inn-keeper's taste.
The electric lights swing on long wires. The glass in the windows is full of imperfections and sooty. The phantasmagoria on the wall distracts the suffering man. Why not have a light? He rises and turns on the gas. Perhaps there will be a paper or a book in the room. That will help.
Poverty of hotel life! There is only the card of rules hung on the door. Lockwin reads the rules and is thankful. He studies the lock history of the door, as represented in the marks of old locks and staples. Here a burglar has bored. Here a chisel has penetrated to push back the bolt. Yes, it was a burglar, for there is now a brass sheath to prevent another entry. Most of these breakages, however, have been made by the hotel people, as can be seen by the transom locks.
That brings up suicides. David Lockwin has committed suicide once. The subject is odious.
The laughter below resounds. The man above will read from the lining of some bureau drawer.
He goes to that piece of furniture. The dressing-case is completely empty excepting a laundry bill on pink paper.
He clutches that. He examines the printer's mark. He strives to recall the particular printing-office.
He has not the courage to go forth into the street. He does not want to read, except as it shall ease him from the cruel torment which he feels.
The glasses jingle and chime. The stores across the street close their doors and darken their show windows. Why not go below and buy the latest novel?
The suggestion fairly sickens the man. He did not know he was so nervous. To read ror pastime while a great city is filled with his obsequies--he cannot do it!
There is but one course--to read the rules, to study the history of the door until it reaches the stage of suicide--ah! to feel in one's pockets! That is it! That is it!
David Lockwin cons his bank-book. He opens his worn letters---letters to the Hon. David Lockwin. He grows timid as he descends into the vale of despair.
Why did he do it? These details of the electoral campaign seem trivial now. Easy difficulties!
He reaches the last letter of the packet. Marvelous that he should wait to unseal it until an hour so fraught with need!
It is Esther's letter--probably some cold missive such as she wrote during their courtship and engagement.
David Lockwin is beginning to love his wife as a dog worships its master. He looks to her for safety. He wants to think of her as she is now--a sincere mourner for a dead friend, husband and protector; a superior being, capable of pity for David Lockwin.
"Is it wise to read it?" he asks in a dread. "But why should I not be generous? Why should I not love her--as I do love her? God forgive me! I do love her! I love her though she smite me now--cold, cold Esther!"
The man is crying. He cannot hear the banqueters. He has at last escaped from their world. His hands shake and he unseals the letter, careful to the last that no part of the envelope be torn.
He will read the cold letter. Cold, cold Esther! He kisses the envelope again and again. The sheets are drawn from the inclosure. She never wrote at such length before. He scans the first page. His face grows cold with the old look of disappointment. He wishes he had not read. He turns to the next page. The text changes in tone. There succeeds a warmth that heats the heart aglow.
David Lockwin passes his hands across his eyes. He is dazed. He reads on:
"Come back to me, my darling, and see how happy we shall be! Let the politics go--that killed Davy and makes us all so unhappy. You were created for something nobler. Let us go to Europe once more. Let's seek the places where we have met in the past."
How much more of this can David Lockwin endure?
His temples rise and grow blood-red. The gas seems to give no light. He reads like a man of short sight. His eyes kiss the sacred sheet.
"I love you! I love you! I shall die without you! Come home to me, and save me! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love--!"
David Lockwin has fainted.
The glasses chink, and heavy feet tramp on soft carpets, making a muffled sound.
"'Scuse me!" says a thick-voiced banqueter in the hall. "I thought it was my hat! Hooray! 'Scuse me! I know it's pretty late. Whoop! 'Scuse me!"
The waiters bicker hotly; the counting-room bell rings afar off. There is a smothered cry of "Front!"
"All trains for the East--" comes a monotonous announcement in the corridors.
"Sixty-six! Number sixty-six!" screeches the carriage-crier.
A drunken refrain floats on the air from Wabash avenue:
"We won't go home till morn-i-n-g,
T-i-l-l daylight doth appear."
CHAPTER V
LETTERS OF CONSOLATION
On the Africa David Lockwin loved but one person, and that was David Lockwin.
On this morning after the banquet David Lockwin hates but one person, and that is David Lockwin.
He had lately hungered for somebody more charitable to himself than he himself could be. He had experienced a mean, spiritless happiness in noting the honors which the widow was heaping on his memory. Now he is furiously in love with that widow. He sallies from the hotel in haste to her residence.
Three blocks away from his goal, with the old home in sight, he awakens to his danger. A moment more and the whole shameful truth had been known!
"No, base as I am, I cannot do that," he shudders.
Besides, he is a true lover, and what one ever dared to take the great risk?
Here she lives! And between her and her lover, her husband, yawns the chasm of death! Was it not a black act that could so enrobe a woman? He recalls her garb as she appeared at the dedication yesterday--solemn, solemn!
It is unsafe to stay in this neighborhood, yet let this man creep nearer and gaze on the house where Davy died.
The balcony--it seems to him, dimly, that he made a speech from that balcony. But Davy's death is not now the calamity it was yesterday. It seems more like a pleasant memory--a small memory. The gigantic thought is Esther, Esther--Esther the beautiful, the noble, the generous, the faithful. She shall be the wife of Ulysses, waiting for his return, and he shall return!
The husband again starts for Esther's door. There are two men within him--one is David Lockwin dead, the other is David Lockwin living. Once more the eminent man who is dead seizes the maddened lover who is living and prevents a disaster.
Love this house as he may, therefore, David Lockwin must avoid it until he can control himself. It is true his books are in there, his manuscripts, his chronicles, "Josephus," and a thousand things without which he cannot lay hold on the true dignity of life. It is true he is slipping down the declivity that invites the easy descent of the obscure and powerless citizen. If he have true hope--and what lover has it not--he must hurry away. He is not safe in Chicago just at present, because the abstraction of a lover, joined with the self-forgetfulness of a man in the second life, will assuredly lead him to ruin.
His eyes leave that house with utter regret. He makes the long ride to Davy's tomb and finds it covered with fresh flowers. The tenderest of care is visible. The lawn is perfect--not a leaf of plantain, not a spear of dandelion. Money will not produce such stewardship of the sepulcher. It is Esther's own devotion.
He goes to the site of the cenotaph. Is it not a difficulty for a lover? Yet love sustains him. His invention suggests method after method by which he may undo the past.
He visits the foundations of the David Lockwin Annex. He notes the character of the materials that are strewn over three streets. His love for Esther only increases.
Thence to the Art Institute he hastens. They said it was a poor likeness of Lockwin. He vows it is good. It is good because Esther has done it!
He has seen all--all but Esther. He starts blindly for Esther's house once more. As he walks rapidly southward, his own team comes up the avenue. It is Esther within the carriage. She looks at a man in gray business dress, with colored nose and a drunkard's complexion. She notes the large watch-chain. She finds him no different from all other living men. She is looking for David. "Come back, my noble husband," she sobs, "come back from the grave, or let me join you."
A moment afterward she fears she may die before her work shall be done. That was a sharp sting at her heart just then.
David Lockwin is frozen with that cold look. The carriage is past. He was on his way to Esther's to tell her all. If he had not risen out of his abstraction ere it should be too late, he would have confronted this cold lady--this mature builder of cenotaph and hospital.
He is terrified--a lover's panic. She does not love him, or she would have called to him as they passed.
So thinks David Lockwin, for he cannot see himself except as he once was. People call him Chalmers when they address him, which is not more than once a day, but it is like the salutation to Judge Wandrell. He does not call himself "Judge" nor sign himself "Judge." "My dear judge," writes a friend. "Your friend, H. M. H. Wandrell," answers the same man.
It is easy for David Lockwin to answer to the name of Robert Chalmers. He has found it totally impossible to become Robert Chalmers in fact. He is David Lockwin, disinherited--a picture of the prodigal son---but David Lockwin in every bone and muscle--no one else.
Esther Lockwin has refused to know David Lockwin.
Sharp as may be his hurt at this event, he is, nevertheless, once more recalled to the expediencies. If he shall be in hope of Esther, it would be well to escape from a situation so dangerous.
"And I am poor! Why did I not think of that? It was easy to marry her, because I was wealthy. I am a poor man now." He repeats it over and over.
It would be well to hurry to New York and attend to that matter of the Coal and Oil Trust Company institution. He could not go but for the lover's hope of preparing something for the reunion.
Between Chicago and New York one may fall into a wide abyss of despair. The late Honorable David Lockwin has tarried in Chicago, has assisted at the public dedication of his own cenotaph, has visited the David Lockwin Annex, has looked his own widow in the face. His pride is torn out by the roots. A man once exalted is now humbled. And, added to the horrors of his situation, every fiber of his body, every aspiration of his spirit, proclaims his love of the woman who once wearied him.
His dilemma is dreadful without this catastrophe of love. He thanks the fates that he is in love. It gives him business. He will not sell his claim against the ruined bank. He will work as book-keeper. He will wait and collect all. Patience shall be his motto. He will communicate with Esther through a spiritual medium. He will--better yet--write to her anonymously. Every day a type-written missive shall be sent to her. He will have her! It is all possible!
"It is all easy!" David Lockwin says, and goes resolutely at work to save the remnants of his fortune.
For a year he turns the inertia of his love into his daily business. Esther is building at Chicago, David will build at New York--a fabric of love, airy, it may be, but graceful and beautiful.
Each night he indites in type-writer and addresses to Esther Lockwin an essay on the value of hope in great afflictions. The tone grows familiar, as the weeks pass by. "My dear madam" becomes "my dear Mrs. Lockwin," and at last "my dear friend." To-night, far into the small hours, he pours out his advice and comfort:
"Be brave, my dear friend," he proceeds. "Undreamed-of happiness may still be yours, if you can but come to place confidence in your faithful correspondent. There are things more strange than anything which the books give us. As a matter of fact, dear friend, the writers do not dare to make life as it is, for fear of outrunning the bounds of fiction. Let me give you comfort, and at the proper time I shall be able, not to reveal myself, perhaps, but to offer you opportunity to give me a signal that my services are valuable to you.
"Preserve your health. This admonition has been iterated in the hundreds of different treatises I have placed before you. My diligence and patience must recommend themselves. My hope must reinspire your drooping energies. Until to-morrow at eventide, adieu!"
The time is ripe to learn the effect of these courteous ministrations. David Lockwin dares not intrust his secret to a chance acquaintance like Corkey, who is completely devoted to Mrs. Lockwin. What man can now be found who will support a possible relation of mutual friend in this singular case?
The thought of Dr. Tarpion comes again and again.
Clearly a lover cannot wait forever. And he must know whether or not Esther reads the letters. But, of course, she reads them!
"And they comfort her, God bless her!" cries the happy lover. But he must not wait too long. She needs him. She must be rescued from Chicago.
Why not write to Dr. Tarpion? He is a dear old friend.
He seems very dear, now that Lockwin needs him. The doctor is the administrator of the estate, if we come to recollect. Certainly!
Now, therefore, let David undertake an interrogatory, and tremblingly mail it to Dr. Tarpion. To be sure, this is better. Suppose David Lockwin the unknown monitor, had invited Esther to advertise in a newspaper, and the advertisement had been left out! Or, suppose he had suggested a certain signal at her house, or in New York--anywhere! It would be a chance too great to take. No lover should leave anything to fortune. Dr. Tarpion will give the information. He shall be the mutual friend--the go-between to unravel this tangled web of deception.
If David Lockwin shall in future discover himself to Esther, he must have the aid of a discreet and loving friend. Dr. Tarpion is the man. This letter will open the way for further disclosures. It is as follows:
PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL.
DEAR SIR:--For about a year I have seen fit to offer to Mrs. Lockwin such consolation as I thought might lessen her grief. Will you kindly inform me if my suggestions have at any time mitigated her sorrow? I shall be happy to know that an earnest and faithful labor has done some little good. You may inclose a letter to the care of Robert Chalmers, New York City, who will deliver it to me.
The reply is prompt:
CHICAGO, May 1.--I am in receipt of a type-written communication from an unknown party, and am not unwilling to inform the writer that Mrs. Lockwin's mail all comes to me. I have for a year burned every one of the consolatory letters alluded to, in common with thousands of other screeds, which I have considered as so many assaults on the charity of an unhappy lady.
The series of letters from New York have, however, been the most persistent of these demonstrations. I have expected that at the proper time we should have a claimant, like the Tichborne estate. Some experience in administrative affairs, together with the timely suggestions of a friend, lead me to note the opportunity for a claimant in our case. David Lockwin's body was not found. I have, therefore, kept a sharp eye out for claimants, and will say to the writer of the "consolatory letters" that our proofs of Lockwin's death are ample. Two persons saw him die. Mrs. Lockwin is a sagacious woman, keenly aware of the covetousness aroused by the public mention of her great wealth.
The writer will therefore, if wise, abandon his attentions and
intentions. If I receive any more of his "consolatory letters" I shall
look up Robert Chalmers with detectives. Respectfully,
IRENAEUS TARPION, M. D.
CHAPTER VI
THE YAWL
It is about 10 o'clock at night in the office of the great newspaper. The night editor sits at his desk reading the latest exchanges. The telegraph editor labors under a bright yellow light, secured by the use of a vast expanse of yellow paper.
The assistant telegraph editor is groaning over a fraudulent dispatch from a correspondent whose repute is the worst.
A place is still vacant at the tables. The marine dispatches are piling high.
"Where is the sea-dog?" asks the night editor, who is in command of the paper.
"Good evening, Corkey," says the telegraph editor. "I trust we are spared for another day of usefulness," says the night editor, with an unction which is famous in the office.
"How is the ooze of the salt deep, commodore?" asks the night editor.
"How is the coral and green amber?" asks the telegraph editor.
"Green nothing!" mutters Corkey. He feels weary.
"How did you leave great Neptune?" asks the assistant telegraph editor.
These questions are wholly perfunctory. The telegraph editor has dedicated five minutes to the history and diary of the triple alliance.
When Corkey is happy this inquisition flatters him. When he is black in the face there is an inclination to deal harshly with these wits. A thousand clever things flash into his black eyes but escape his tongue.
He struggles to say something that will put the laugh on the telegraph editor, and begins choking. The head vibrates, the little tongue plays about the black tobacco, the mouth grows square.
"Run for your lives, gentlemen," cries the assistant telegraph editor, making believe to hold down his shears. There is an explosion. It is accompanied with many distinguishable noises--the hissing of steam, the routing of hogs from their wallow, the screech of tug whistles and the yell of Indians.
The door stands open to the great composing-room, where eighty typesetters--eighty cynics--eighty nervous, high-strung, well-paid workmen--stand at their intellectual toil. They are all in a hurry, but each rasps his iron type-stick across a thin partition of his type case. It is a small horse-fiddle. The combined effect is impressive, chaotic.
The night foreman rages internally. He stalks about with baleful eye. "Buck in, you fellows," he says. "The paper is behind."
"I wish it would kill him," the night foreman says of Corkey.
There is silence in the telegraph-room. The tinkle of the horse-cars comes up audibly from the street. The night editor knows what has happened, to the slightest detail. He mentally sees the night foreman standing in the shadows of the parlor (wash-place) laughing to kill. The night editor grows still more unctuous.
"From earthquakes, hailstorms and early frosts," he prays, "good Lord, deliver us."
"Good Lord, deliver us!" comes the solemn antiphone of the telegraph editor, the assistant telegraph editor, Corkey and the copy boy.
The chinchilla coat is off. This is manifestly a hard way to earn a living for a candidate for Congress, a dark horse for the legislature and a marine editor who has run his legs off all day.
"He's been moving," the boy whispers to the night editor.
The night editor scans the dark face. It is serious enough. It is the night editor's method to rule his people by the moderation of his speech. In this way they do all the work and thank him for keeping his nose out of affairs.
"We hear, commodore, that you have moved your household gods."
"Yes," grunts Corkey. To the jam-jorum Corkey must be civil, as he will tell you.
"Where to?"
"Top flat, across the alley from the Grand Pacific."
"That's a five-story building, isn't it?"
"That's what it is."
Corkey is busy fixing his telegrams for the printer. He is trying to learn what the current date is, and is unwilling to ask.
The night editor is thinking of Mrs. Corkey, a handsome little woman, for whom the "boys in the office" have a pleasant regard.
"Is there an elevator?"
"I didn't see no elevator when I was carrying the kitchen stove in."
"How will Mrs. Corkey get up?"
This is too much. Corkey has made a hundred trips to the new abode, each time laden with some heavy piece of furniture or package of goods. How will Mrs. Corkey get there, when Corkey has been up and down the docks from the north pier to the lumber district on Ashland avenue, and all since supper?
The marine editor sits back rigidly in his chair. The head quakes, the tongue plays, he looks defiantly at the night editor.
"She's coming," says the assistant telegraph editor, holding down his shears and paste-pot.
The head quakes, but it is not a sneeze. It is a deliverance, ex cathedra. The night editor wants to hear it.
"You bet your sweet life, Mrs. Corkey," says the commodore, "screw her nut up four flight of stairs. That's what Mrs. Corkey do!"
The compliments of the evening are over. It is a straining of every nerve now to get a good first edition for the fast train.
"Gale to-night, Corkey," says the telegraph editor. "We've taken most of your stuff for the front page. The display head isn't long enough. Write me another line for it."
"Hain't got nothing to write," Corkey doesn't like to have his report taken out of its customary place. When there are blood-curdling wrecks he wants the news in small type along with his port list.
"Hain't got nothing to write," he repeats sullenly. He gapes and stretches. He knows he must obey the telegraph editor.
"Hurry! Give it to me. Give me the idea." Corkey's eye brightens. He is a man of ideas, not of words. He has an idea. His head quakes. The tongue begins its whirring like the fan-wheel before the clock strikes.
"You can say that the life-saving service display a great act," says the marine editor, relieved of a grievous duty.
His pile of telegrams grows smaller. The dreaded work will soon be over.
"How's your rich widow?"
Corkey has not failed to plume himself on his aristocratic and familiar acquaintance. His associates are themselves flattered. Corkey is to take the telegraph editor to call on Mrs. Lockwin. The night editor is jealously regarded as too smooth with the ladies. He will be left to his own devices.
"How's your rich widow?" is repeated. But Corkey cannot hear. He is reading a telegram that astonishes, electrifies and confuses him.
"COLLINGWOOD, 14.--After wading ten miles along shore found yawl Africa sunk in three feet water, filled with sand and hundreds stone. Can take you to spot. What reward? What shall we do?"
Corkey seizes the dispatch, puts on his coat, and rides downstairs. On the street he finds it is midnight. He looks for a carriage. He sets his watch by a jeweler's chronometer, over which a feeble gas flame burns all night.
He changes his mind and rides back upstairs. He enters the telegraph operators' room, where five men are at work receiving special intelligence.
"Get Collingwood, boys."
"That drops off at Detroit. Collingwood's a day job."
The instrument is clicking. The operator takes each word as the laborious Corkey, with short pencil, presses it into the buff-colored paper.
CHICAGO, 14.--Let it be! Will be at Collingwood to-morrow. CORKEY.
CHAPTER VII
A RASH ACT
David Lockwin reads the letter of Dr. Tarpion with horror.
"Heavens and earth!" he cries, and pulls at his hair, rubs his eyes and stamps on the floor. "Heavens and earth!" This, an edifice built with the patience and cunning of a lover, must fall to nothing.
He is as dead to Esther as on the day the yawl danced on the shining sands of Georgian Bay.
He is terrified to know his loss. To believe that he was in daily communication with Esther, and that she must ache to know him, has sustained David Lockwin in his penance.
The crime he committed, he feels, has been atoned in this year of lover's agony. That agony was necessary--in order that Esther might be gradually prepared for the revelation.
She has not been prepared. The labor must begin again, and on new lines.
The receiver of the Coal and Oil Trust Company's Institution this day declares a dividend of 10 per cent. The lover may draw over $7,000--a magnificent estate. It seems greater to him than the wealth of the Indies or the Peruvians seemed to the early navigators.
He sells his belongings to a second-hand dealer. He hastens his departure. The folks at Walker street can get another book-keeper. Robert Chalmers is going to San Francisco. Easy to lie now after the practice of nearly two years.
But to think that Esther has not read a word of all he has written! David Lockwin hisses the name of Dr. Tarpion. Many is the time they have tented together. But how did the doctor know? He had only a type-written anonymous communication.
Nevertheless this lover curses the administrator as the cause of the fiasco.
"But for him my path would be easy."
David Lockwin thinks of Tarpion's threat about a claimant. It grows clear to him that there is a Chicagoan alive who can view his own cenotaph, his own memorial hospital, his own home--who can proclaim himself to be the husband, and yet there will be men like Tarpion who will deny all.
Lockwin's face annoys him. "Why was I such a fool to go without the proper treatment in that outlandish region! Why was I so anxious to be disguised?"
Oh, it is all on account of the letters. That busybody of an administrator and censor has undone all! Better he had never been born. Why should a doctor neglect his patients to separate husband and wife? The wise way will be to march to the house at Chicago and take possession.
"That I will do!" the man at last declares. He is maddened. He cares nothing for reputation. He cannot bear the thought that Dr. Tarpion, an old friend, should day by day burn the epistles that evinced so much scholarship, charity and sympathy. The lover is not poor. No man with $7,000 in his pocket is poor. He is not driven back to Esther by want, as it was before. That stings the man to recall it. No, he has means. But if he were poor, he would work for the dear lady who loved him so secretly. He gloats over the letter of Esther. It is worn in pieces now, like so many cards. The train from New York enters the city of Chicago.
"That is the new David Lockwin Hospital," says a passenger.
"Why did I blunder in on this road?" the lover asks. He had not thought his situation so terrible as it seemed just now.
"I am doubtless the sorriest knave that ever lived here," he mourns, but it only increases his determination to go directly to Esther.
"I guess Dr. Tarpion will not throw me in the waste-basket! Seven thousand dollars!"
David Lockwin feels as rich as Corkey.
It is a mad thing he is doing, this pulling of the door-bell at the old home. The balcony is overhead. Never mind little Davy! We can live without him, but we cannot live without Esther. Ah that Tarpion! that base Tarpion! Probably he intends to marry her! It is none too soon to pull this bell. Now David Lockwin will enter, never to be driven forth. He will enter among his books. Never mind his books. It is she, SHE, SHE! Till death part them SHE is his. It is the seven thousand dollars that gives him this lion-like courage. Esther needs him. He has come.
The door opens. A pleasant-faced lady appears.
"Call Mrs. Lockwin, please."
"Mrs. Lockwin? Oh, yes. I believe she did live here. I do not know where she lives now, but it is on Prairie avenue. After her father died she went home to live."
Is Judge Wandrell dead? The caller is adding together the mills, pineries, elevators, hotels, steamers, steel mills, quarries and railroads that Judge Wandrell owned on the great lakes.
The pleasant-faced lady thinks her caller ought to go.
He is angry at her. He shows it. He blames her as much as he does Tarpion. He retreats reluctantly. A stranger is in possession of the home of David Lockwin.
He was foolhardy a moment before. He is timid now.
He was rich. He has seven thousand. Esther is rich. She has five millions.