David Lockwin--The People's Idol.

by John McGovern.

BOOK I

DAVY

CHAPTER I

HARPWOOD AND LOCKWIN

Esther Wandrell, of Chicago, will be worth millions of dollars.

It is a thought that inspires the young men of all the city with momentous ambitions. Why does she wait so long? Whom does she favor?

To-night the carriages are trolling and rumbling to the great mansion of the Wandrells on Prairie Avenue. The women are positive in their exclamations of reunion, and this undoubted feminine joy exhilarates, and entertains the men. The lights are brilliant, the music is far away and clever, the flowers and decorations are novel.

If you look in the faces of the guests you shall see that the affair cannot fail. Everybody has personally a.s.sured the success of the evening.

Many times has this hospitable home opened to its companies of selected men, and women. Often has the beautiful Esther Wandrell smiled upon the young men--upon rich and poor alike. Why is she, at twenty-seven years of age, rich, magnificent and unmarried?

Ask her mother, who married at fifteen. Ask the father, who for ten years worried to think his only child might go away from him at any day.

"I tell you," says Dr. Tarpion, "Harpwood will get her, and get her to-night. That is what this party is for. I've seen them together, and I know what's in the air."

"Is that so?" says David Lockwin.

"Yes, it is so, and you know you don't like Harpwood any too well since he got your primary in the Eleventh."

"I should say I didn't!" says Lockwin, half to himself.

At a distance, Esther Wandrell pa.s.ses on Harpwood's arm.

"Who is Harpwood?" asks Lockwin.

"I'm blessed if I know," answers Dr. Tarpion.

"How long has he been in town?"

"Not over two years."

"Do you know anybody who knows him?"

"He owes me a bill."

"What was he sick of?"

"Worry."

The man and woman repa.s.s. The woman looks toward Lockwin and his dear friend the renowned Dr. Irenaeus Tarpion. Guests speak of Harpwood.

His suit is bold. The lady is apparently interested.

"I should not think you would like that?" says the doctor.

"Why should I care, after all?" asks Lockwin.

"Well, if ever I have seen two men whose destinies are hostile, it seems to me that you and Harpwood fill the condition. If he gets into Wandrell's family you might as well give up politics."

"Perhaps I might do that anyhow."

"Well, you are an odd man. I'll not dispute that. What you will do at any given time I'll not try to prophesy."

The twain separate. However, of any two men in Chicago, perhaps David Lockwin and Dr. Tarpion are most agreeable to each other. From boyhood they have been familiar. If one has said to the other, "Do that!" it has been done.

"I fear you cannot be spared from your other guests, Esther," says Lockwin.

"I fear you are trying to escape to that dear doctor of yours. Now, are you not?"

"No. I have been with him for half an hour already. Esther, you are a fine-looking woman. Upon my honor, now--"

She will not tolerate it, yet she never looked so pleased before.

"Tell me," she says, "of your little boy."

"Of my foundling?"

"Yes, I love to hear you speak of him."

"Well, Esther, the truest thing I have heard of my boy was said by old Richard Tarbelle. He stopped me the other day. You know our houses adjoin. 'Mr. Lockwin,' said he, as he came home with his basket--he goes to his son's hotel each day for family stores--'I often say to Mary that the happiest moment in my day is when I give an apple or an orange to your boy, for the look on that child's face is the nearest we ever get to heaven on this earth."

"O, beautiful! beautiful! Mr. Lockwin."

"Yes, indeed, Esther. I took that little fellow three years ago. I had no idea he would grow so pretty. Folks said it was the oddest of pranks, but if I had bought fifteen more horses than I could use, or dogs enough to craze the neighborhood, or even a parrot, like my good neigbor Tarbelle, everybody would have been satisfied. Of course, I had to take a house and keep a number of people for whom a bachelor has no great need. But, Esther, when I go home there is framed in my window the most welcome picture human eye has ever seen--that little face, Esther!"

The man is enwrapped. The woman joins in the man's exaltation.

"He is the most beautiful child I have ever seen anywhere. It is the talk of everybody. You are so proud of him when you ride together!"

"Esther, I have seen him in the morning when he came to rouse me--his face as white as his gown; his golden hair long, and so fleecy that it would stand all about his head; his mouth arched like the Indian's bow; his great blue eyes bordered with dark brows and lashed with jet-black hairs a half-inch long. That picture, Esther, I fear no painter can get. I marvel why I do not make the attempt."

"He is as bright as he is beautiful," she says.

"Yes, Esther, I have looked over this world. Childhood is always beautiful--always sweet to me--but my boy is without equal, and nearly everybody admits it."

"He is not yours, David."

The man looks inquiringly.