Chapter 20

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.