[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 inst.i.tution 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-cla.s.s 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 fort.i.tude 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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing 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 fict.i.tious 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.