There is a click at the door-latch. The patient starts. Corkey looks out into the store.

"Here she is!" whispers Corkey, smoothing the coverlet. "How d'ye do, Mrs. Lockwin? Just step in here. Mr. Chalmers is not able to sit up."

"I heard he was hurt," says Esther. "Poor man! I owe him so much!"

It is perhaps well that David Lockwin has had no warning of this supreme event. It seems to him like the last day. It is the Second Coming. A hundred little wounds set up their stings, for which the husband is ever thankful. He can hear her out there in the store. He can feel her presence. She appears at his door! She stands at the foot of his couch! She, the ineffable!

"Oh!" she exclaims, not expecting to see a man so badly wounded, so highly bandaged.

"Nothing at all serious, Mrs. Lockwin," explains Corkey.

"Oh, I am so very sorry," says the lady. "Mr. Chalmers, you find me unable to express my feelings. I cannot tell you how many things I should like to explain, and how seriously I am embarra.s.sed by the evils I have brought on you. I dare say only that I am a person of large means, and am sensible that I cannot repay you. I owe my life to your n.o.ble act. If I can ever be of service to you, please to command me.

I shall certainly testify my regard for you in some proper way, but it afflicts me to feel that you are so much worse hurt than I was by the runaway. I lost a n.o.ble husband. If he had been alive you would not have been left unthanked and unserved for so long a time."

It distresses Corkey.

"That's what he was--a white man!"

David Lockwin is dumb. But he thinks he is saying: "I am David Lockwin! I am David Lockwin!"

"It is a sweet remembrance, now." Her voice grows clearer. "They tell me I did wrong to mourn so bitterly. I suppose I did. Mr. Chalmers, I should like to entertain you on your recovery. How singular! This is our old family drug store! Didn't Dr. Floddin keep here? Poor Dr.

Floddin! Oh! David! David! Good-bye, Mr. Chalmers."

"He's not badly hurt at all," says Corkey, "you mustn't worry over that."

"I'm so glad, Mr. Corkey."

It is the autumn of a great misery. The woman is righting herself.

She is trying to listen to the advice of society. Lockwin, by dying, committed a crime against the first circles. "A failure to live is a gigantic failure," says Mrs. Grundy.

David Lockwin listens to every movement. The widow tarries.

"Send me a dozen large bottles of that extract," she says, choosing a variety of odors. She orders a munificent bill of fancy goods. The clerk moves with astonishing celerity.

The patient suppresses his groans.

"Oh! Chalmers is well off," says Corkey.

"I'm glad," says Esther, "poor man! Good-bye, Mr. Corkey. You are neglecting me lately. I hope you will be elected. I wish I could vote. Oh, yes, I guess the clerk may give me a stock of white notepaper. Do you believe it, Mr. Corkey, I haven't a sc.r.a.p about the house that isn't mourning paper! Yes, that will do. Send plenty.

Good-bye. Come over and tell me about politics. Tell me something that will make life seem pleasant. I'm tired of my troubles. I think I'm forgetting David. Good-bye."

BOOK IV

GEORGE HARPWOOD

CHAPTER I

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 fort.i.tude 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 pa.s.s a dreary day while Mr. Harpwood is necessarily absent, n.o.body 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 grat.i.tude in a substantial manner.