Chapter 33

CORKEY'S GOOD SCHEME

The courtly and affable George Harpwood has fought the good fight and is finishing the course. It is he who has labored with the prominent citizens. It is he who has moved the great editors to place David Lockwin in the western pantheon--to pay him the honors due to Lincoln and Douglas. It is Harpwood who has carried the banquet to success. It is he who, in the midnight of Esther Lockwin's grief, prepared for her confidential reading those long and scholarly essays of consolation which she studied so gratefully. Mr. Harpwood did not put his lucubrations in the care of Dr. Tarpion. Each and every one was written for no other eye but Esther's.

While Dr. Tarpion was holding the husband at bay, Dr. Tarpion was rapidly overcoming a prejudice against Harpwood.

"Really, the man has been invaluable to me," the administrator now vows. "No one could deliberately and selfishly enter the grief-life of such a widow."

For Harpwood, smarting with a double defeat, in the loss of Esther and the election of Lockwin, has at once devoted himself to the saddest offices. He has been diligent in all kinds of weather. He has discreetly avoided the outer appearance of personal service. But he has filled the place of spiritual comforter to Esther Lockwin, and has filled it well.

If you ask what friends Mrs. Lockwin has, the servants will speak of Dr. Tarpion first, of the architects, and of Corkey. Harpwood they do not mention. He may have called--so have a thousand other gentlemen. They have rarely seen Mrs. Lockwin, for she has been at the cenotaph, the hospital, and the grave of little Davy.

So long as Harpwood's suit has flourished by letter, why should the less cautious method of speech be interposed? To-day, Esther could not sustain the intermission of the usual consolatory epistle.

George Harpwood is one of those characters who have many friends and are friends to few. Others need him--not he them. He can please if he attempt the task, and if the task be exceedingly difficult, he will become infatuated with it. He will then grow sincere. At least he believes he is sincere. Thus his patience is superb.

His manners are widely praised. If he have served Esther Lockwin with rare personal devotion, it cannot be denied that it has piqued many other beautiful, eligible and desirable women.

He can well support the air of a disinterested friend. The ladies generally bewail his absence from their society. Esther Lockwin must soon be warm in the praise of a gentleman who, divining the needs of a widow, has so chivalrously taken up her woes as his own. Tenderly--like a mother--he has touched upon her projects. Gladly he has accepted the mission she has given to him. At last when he brings Dr. Tarpion to the special censorship of Esther's mail, and to the fear of claimants, George Harpwood is in command of the situation.

When a man cultured in all the arts that please, gives himself to the fascinating of a particular person, male or female, that man does not often fail. Where the prize is five millions he ought to play his highest trumps.

This is what George Harpwood has done. Sometimes he has paused to admire his own unselfishness. Sometimes, after a drenching on account of the David Lockwin Annex--a costly fabric--Mr. Harpwood marvels that men should be created so for the solace of widows! The other ladies show their discontent. Fortunes are on every hand, and Esther is like Niobe, all tears. Why does Harpwood turn all tears, weeping for Lockwin? This causes Harpwood to be himself astonished.

It is only genius that can adapt itself to an environment so lugubrious. It is only genius that can unhorse suspicion itself, leaving even the would-be detractor to admit that Mr. Harpwood is a kind man--as he certainly is.

"Who would not be kind for five millions?" he asks, yet he the next moment may deny that he wants the five millions.

It is a fine fortitude that George Harpwood can show upon occasion. It was he who, lost in the opium habit, went to his room for two weeks, and kept the pieces of opium and bottles of morphine within sight on his mantel, touching none of the drug--curing himself.

He could serve Esther as long as Jacob served Laban. He could end by the conquest of himself. While he shall be doubtful of his own selfishness, all others must be glad that Esther is given into hands so gentle and intelligent.

Mrs. Grundy knows little about this. Esther Lockwin has offended Mrs. Grundy by a long absence from the world.

If Esther now feel a warm glow in her heart; if she pass a dreary day while Mr. Harpwood is necessarily absent, nobody suspects it--except Mr. Harpwood.

It has not displeased the disinterested friend of Esther Lockwin to note the upward drift of his political opportunities. It is silently taken for granted that he is a coming man. Whenever he shall cease his disinterested attentions to the widow it is clear he will be a paragon. And the critics who might aver as much, did they know the case, would be scandalized if he so mistreated the lady who has come to lean on him.

"In doing good to others," says George Harpwood, "we do the greatest good to ourselves."

Yet one must not devote himself to a rich lady beyond a period of reasonable length. One's own business must be rescued from neglect. If this doctrine be taught skillfully Esther Lockwin will learn that she must show her gratitude in a substantial manner.

Five millions, for instance.

After that crisis secrecy may be, less sternly imposed. If the lady, in her illness--ah! that was a shock to Harpwood, that runaway--if the lady, in her illness, demand personal calls, which must certainly let loose the gossips--after all, it is her matter. If Esther Lockwin desire to see George Harpwood in the day-time, in the evening--all the time--so be it.

Is it the bright face of Esther Lockwin that spurs Corkey to his grand enterprise? What has kept the short man so many months in silence? Why is it he has never gotten beyond the matter of the lounge in the fore-cabin of the Africa? This afternoon he will speak. It is a good scheme. It can be fixed--especially by a woman.

"She can stand it if he can," says Corkey, who reckons on the resurrection of David Lockwin.

So the face that was dark at State street becomes self-satisfied at Prairie avenue. Corkey is picturesque as he raps his cane on the marble stairs.

"Bet your sweet life none of this don't scare me!" he soliloquizes, touching the stateliness of the premises.

He enters. He comes forth later, meeting another caller in the vestibule. It is a dark face that the Commodore carries to the bedside of David Lockwin, around on State street.

Corkey sits down. Then he stands up. He concludes he will not talk, but it is a false conclusion. He will talk on the patient's case.

"How slow you git on, old man."

"Not at all. I am getting well," is the cheerful reply. Corkey is in trouble. It is, therefore, time for Lockwin to give him sympathy. "Corkey is a good fellow," thinks Lockwin, gazing contentedly on his caller.

"I'm afraid it ain't no use," says Corkey, half to himself. "I ain't had no luck since I let the mascot go to the league nine," he says, more audibly.

"I am quite happy," Lockwin says. "It will be a sufficient reward to look like other folks. Only a few weeks of this. But it is a trial."

"It's more of a trial, old man, than I like to see you undertake."

"Yet I am happy. It will be a success. Wonderful, isn't it?"

"Pretty wonderful!" Yet Corkey does not look it.

The man in the bandages thinks upon what he has suffered with his face. He blesses the day he was permitted by Providence to stop that runaway. All is coming about in good order. It needed the patience of love--of love, the impatient. He is so sanguine to-day that he must push Corkey a little regarding that scheme.

"Yes, it is wonderful!" says Corkey with affected animation, recovering his presence of mind.

"Have you been over at our friend's lately?" The question comes with the deepest excitement. The countenance of Corkey falls instantly.

"Yes, just come from there."

"Are things all smiling over there?"

"Yes. They're too smiling."

"Did you see Dr. Tarpion?"

"Oh, I never see him! Things are too smiling! You'll never catch me there again."

Lockwin starts.

"She can't play none of her high games onto me. Bet your sweet life! If she don't want to listen to reason, it's none of my funeral. I say to her--and I ought to say it afore--I say to her how would she like to see her old man."

The patient turns away from Corkey. The oldest wounds sting like a hive of hornets.

"Well, you ought to see the office she give me! She rip and stave and tear! She talk of political slander, and libel, and disgrace, and all that. She rise up big right afore me, and come nigh swearing she would kill such a David Lockwin on sight. There wasn't no such a David Lockwin at all. Her husband was a nobleman. She wished I was fit to black his boots--do you mind?--and you bet your sweet life I was gitting pretty hot myself!"

The thought of it sets Corkey coughing. A thousand wounds are piercing David Lockwin, yet he does not lose a word.

"Then she cool off a considerable, and ask me for to excuse her. 'Oh, it is all right,' says I, a little tart. 'That will be all right.'

"Then she fall right on her knees, and pray to David Lockwin to forgive her for even thinking he isn't dead.

"Now it was only Wednesday that a duck in this town knocked me out at the primaries--played the identical West Side car-barn game on me! Yes, sir, fetched over 500 street-sweepers to my primaries--machine candidate and all that--oh! he's a jim-dandy!"

"I'm sorry for you, Corkey," the wretched husband says, and thus escapes for a moment from his own terror.

"Yes, it was bad medicine. So I wasn't taking much off anybody. I gets up pretty stiff--this way, and says: 'Good day, Mrs. Lockwin. I guess I can't be no more use to you, nohow.' And just as I was pulling my hat off the peg there comes the very duck that knocked me out--right there! And she chipper to him as sweet as if David Lockwin had been dead twenty years. And he as sweet on her, and right before me! Ugh!"

"Weren't you mistaken, Corkey!" feebly asks the man in the bandages.

"Wasn't I mistaken? Oh, yes! I suppose I can't tell a pair that wants to bite each other! She that was a giving me the limit a minute before was as cunning as a kitten to that rooster. Ugh! it makes me ill!"

"Who is he?" asks David Lockwin.

"He's Mister George Harpwood," cries Corkey bitterly, "and if he aint no snooker, then you needn't tell me I ever see one!"