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 institution 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-class 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!