David Lockwin—The People's Idol. John McGovern
That was nine days before. Why is Dr. Tarpion absent? What a good fortune, however, that Dr. Floddin can be given charge. And if the disease be diphtheria, whisky will alleviate and possibly cure the patient. It is a hobby with Lockwin.
Dr. Floddin has come rather oddly by this practice. Who he is, no other regular doctor knows. But Dr. Floddin has an honest face, and keeps a little drug store on State street below Eighteenth. He usually charges fifty cents a visit, which is all he believes his services to be worth. This piece of quackery would ruin his name with Lockwin, were it known to him, or had Dr. Tarpion been consulted.
The regular fee is two dollars.
The poor come daily to Dr. Floddin's, and his fame is often in their mouths.
Why is Davy white and beautiful? Why is he gentle and so marvelously intelligent?
A year back, when his tonsils swelled, Dr. Tarpion said they must be cut out. The house-keeper said it was the worst possible thing to do. The cook said it should never be done. The peddling huckster's son said Dr. Floddin didn't believe in it.
Then Davy would wake in the night. "I tan't breathe," he would complain.
"Yes, you can, Davy. Papa's here. Lie down, Davy. Here's a drink."
And in the morning all would be well. Davy would be in the library preparing for a great article.
The tribe on the other street, back, played ball from morning until night. The toddler of the lot was no bigger than Davy. Every face was as round and red as a Spitzbergen apple.
Last summer Lockwin and Davy went for a ball and bat, the people along the cross-street as usual admiring the boy. A blacksmith shop was on the way. A white bulldog was at the forge. He leaped away from his master, and was on the walk in an instant. With a dash he was on Davy, his heavy paw in the neat little pocket, bursting it and strewing the marbles and the written articles. Snap! went the mouth on the child's face, but it was merely a caprice.
"Bulldog never bite a child," observed the blacksmith.
But Lockwin had time only to take his baby between his legs. "Please call in your dog," he said to the blacksmith. "Please call him in. Please call him in."
The dog was recalled. The child smiled, and yet he felt he had been ill served. The little hanging pocket testified that Lockwin must tarry in that hateful locality and pick up the treasure and documents.
Trembling in every joint, he called at the house of an acquaintance. "I dislike to keep you here," said the friend, "if you are afraid of the whooping-cough. We have it here in the house."
It seemed to David Lockwin that the city was an inhospitable place for childhood. The man and child traveled on and on. They reached the toy store. They stood before the soda fountain. They bought bat and ball.
It was too far. They rode by street car three miles in order to return the half mile. The child was asleep when they reached home.
"I drank sewer water," he observed to the housekeeper, speaking of the soda fountain, for sewer gas is a thing for Chicagoans to discuss with much learning.
So Davy and David went on the rear lot to play ball. The neighboring tribe offered their services for two-old-cat. The little white boy with the golden curls made a great hit.
"Bully for the codger!" quoth all the red-cheeked.
"We will cut off his curls and make him as healthy as those young ones," said Lockwin.
"You'll never do it!" said the housekeeper.
"Such as him do be too pretty for this life," said the cook, almost with tears in her eyes.
And just at this epoch of new hygiene Davy's eyes grew sore. "Take him to a specialist," said Dr. Tarpion.
The specialist made the eyes a little worse.
"Them's just such eyes as Dr. Floddin cured on my sister," said the peddling huckster's son at the kitchen door.
The housekeeper could say as much for a relative whom the cheap druggist had served.
"Can you cure my boy?" was Lockwin's question to Dr. Floddin.
"I think so," said the good man. He was gratified to be called to the relief of a person of so much consequence. Thereupon began a patient treatment of Davy's tonsils, his nose, and his eyes. As if Dr. Floddin knew all things, he foretold the day when the boy would reappear in his own countenance.
"Bless your little soul," the housekeeper would say, "I can't for the life of me laugh at you. But you do look so strange!"
"I thought," Lockwin would say, "I loved you for your beauty, Davy, but I guess it was for yourself."
"I guess you will love me better when I can play ball with the swear boys, won't you, papa?"
"Yes, you must get strong. We will cut off your curls then."
"And may I sit in your library and write articles if I will be very still and not get mud on me? They throwed mud on me once, papa."
Poor little swollen-eyed Davy! Yet richer than almost any other living thing in Chicago. None knew him but to love him. "I didn't think it would hit him," said even the barbarian who shied the clod at Davy.
When Esther Lockwin took charge of that home she found Davy all issued from the chrysalis of sores and swellings. If he had once been beautiful, he was now more lovely. The union of intelligence, affection, and seemliness was startling to Esther's mind.
It was a dream. It knit her close to her husband. The child talked of his papa all day. Because his new mother listened so intently, he found less time to write his articles, and no time at all out-doors.
"Don't let him study if you can help it," said Dr. Floddin.
The child stood at his favorite place in the window, waiting for old Richard Tarbelle to come home.
"'Bon-Ton Grocery,' mamma; what is 'Bon-Ton?'"
"That is the name of the grocery."
"Yes, I see that. It's on the wagon, of course, but does Mr. Bon-Ton keep your grocery?"
How, therefore, shall the book of this world be shut from Davy? But, is it not a bad thing to see the child burst out crying in the midst of an article?
"Don't write any more to-day, baby," the housekeeper would say.
"Come down and get the elephant I baked for yez, pet," the cook would beg.
And then Richard Tarbelle would come around the corner with his basket, his eye fastened on that window where the smiling child was pictured.
"Here, Davy. There was a banquet at the hotel last night. See that bunch of grapes, now!"
"You are very kind, Mr. Tarbelle."
"Mrs. Lockwin, I have been a hard man all my life. When I had my argument with the bishop on baptism--"
"Yes, Mr. Tarbelle, you are very kind."
"Mrs. Lockwin, as I said, I have been a hard man all my life, but your little boy has enslaved me. Sixty-three years! I don't believe I looked twice at my own three boys. But they are great men. Big times at the ho-tel, Mrs. Lockwin. Four hundred people on cots. Here, Davy, you can carry an orange, too. Well, Mary will be waiting for me. Your servant, madam. Good day. I hear your husband is up for Congress. Tell him he has my vote. Good day, madam. Yes, Mary, yes, yes. Good-bye, Davy. Good-bye, madam."
CHAPTER VI
A REIGN OF TERROR
When a man is in politics--when the party is intrusting