IT was by the suggestion of young Van Flange himself that he became a broker. His argument I think was sound; he had been bred to no profession, and the floor of the Exchange, if he would have a trade, was all that was left him. No one could be of mark or consequence in New York who might not write himself master of millions. Morton himself said that; and with commerce narrowing to a huddle of mammoth corporations, how should anyone look forward to the conquest of millions save through those avenues of chance which Wall Street alone provided? The Stock Exchange was all that remained; and with that, I bought young Van Flange a seat therein, and equipped him for a brokerage career. I harbored no misgivings of his success; no one could look upon his clean, handsome outlines and maintain a doubt.
Those were our happiest days—Blossom's and mine. In her name, I split my fortune in two, and gave young Van Flange a million and a half wherewith to arm his hands for the fray of stocks. Even now, as I look backward through the darkness, I still think it a million and a half well spent. For throughout those slender months of sunshine, Blossom went to and fro about me, radiating a subdued warmth of joy that was like the silent glow of a lamp. Yes, that money served its end. It made Blossom happy, and it will do me good while I live to think how that was so.
Morton, when I called young Van Flange from his Mulberry desk to send him into Wall Street, was filled with distrust of the scheme.
“You should have him stay with Mulberry,” said he. “If he do no good, at least he will do no harm, and that, don't y' know, is a business record far above the average. Besides, he's safer; he is, really!”
This I did not like from Morton. He himself was a famous man of stocks, and had piled millions upon millions in a pyramid of speculation. Did he claim for himself a monopoly of stock intelligence? Van Flange was as well taught of books as was he, and came of a better family. Was it that he arrogated to his own head a superiority of wit for finding his way about in those channels of stock value? I said something of this sorb to Morton.
“Believe me, old chap,” said he, laying his slim hand on my shoulder, “believe me, I had nothing on my mind beyond your own safety, and the safety of that cub of yours. And I think you will agree that I have exhibited a knowledge of what winds and currents and rocks might interrupt or wreck one in his voyages after stocks.”
“Admitting all you say,” I replied, “it does not follow that another may not know or learn to know as much.”
“But Wall Street is such a quicksand,” he persisted. “Gad! it swallows nine of every ten who set foot in it. And to deduce safety for another, because I am and have been safe, might troll you into error. You should consider my peculiar case. I was born with beak and claw for the game. Like the fish-hawk, I can hover above the stream of stocks, and swoop in and out, taking my quarry where it swims. And then, remember my arrangements. I have an agent at the elbow of every opportunity. I have made the world my spy, since I pay the highest price for information. If a word be said in a cabinet, I hear it; if a decision of court is to be handed down, I know it; if any of our great forces or monarchs of the street so much as move a finger, I see it. And yet, with all I know, and all I see, and all I hear, and all my nets and snares as complicated as the works of a watch, added to a native genius, the best I may do is win four times in seven. In Wall Street, a man meets with not alone the foreseeable, but the unforeseeable; he does, really! He is like a man in a tempest, and may be struck dead by some cloud-leveled bolt while you and he stand talking, don't y' know!”
Morton fell a long day's journey short of convincing me that Wall Street was a theater of peril for young Van Flange. Moreover, the boy said true; it offered the one way open to his feet. Thus reasoning, and led by my love for my girl and my delight to think how she was happy, I did all I might to further the ambitions of young Van Flange, and embark him as a trader of stocks. He took office rooms in Broad Street; and on the one or two occasions when I set foot in them, I was flattered as well as amazed by the array of clerks and stock-tickers, blackboards, and tall baskets, which met my untaught gaze. The scene seemed to buzz and vibrate with prosperity, and the air was vital of those riches which it promised.
It is scarce required that I say I paid not the least attention to young Van Flange and his business affairs. I possessed no stock knowledge, being as darkened touching Wall Street as any Hottentot. More than that, my time was taken up with Tammany Hall. The flow of general feeling continued to favor a return of the machine, for the public was becoming more and sorely irked of a misfit “reform” that was too tight in one place while too loose in another. There stood no doubt of it; I had only to wait and maintain my own lines in order, and the town would be my own again. It would yet lie in my lap like a goose in the lap of a Dutch woman; and I to feather-line my personal nest with its plumage to what soft extent I would. For all that, I must watch lynx-like my own forces, guarding against schism, keeping my people together solidly for the battle that was to be won.
Much and frequently, I discussed the situation with Morton. With his traction operations, he had an interest almost as deep as my own. He was, too, the one man on whose wisdom of politics I had been educated to rely. When it became a question of votes and how to get them, I had yet to meet Morton going wrong.
“You should have an issue,” said Morton. “You should not have two, for the public is like a dog, don't y' know, and can chase no more than just one rabbit at a time. But one you should have—something you could point to and promise for the future. As affairs stand—and gad! it has been that way since I have had a memory—you and the opposition will go into the campaign like a pair of beldame scolds, railing at one another. Politics has become a contest of who can throw the most mud. Really, the town is beastly tired of both of you—it is, 'pon my word!”
“Now what issue would you offer?”
“Do you recall what I told our friend Bronson? Public Ownership should be the great card. Go in for the ownership by the town of street railways, water works, gas plants, and that sort of thing, don't y' know, and the rabble will trample on itself to vote your ticket.”
“And do you shout 'Municipal Ownership!'—you with a street railway to lose?”
“But I wouldn't lose it. I'm not talking of anything but an issue. It would be a deuced bore, if Public Ownership actually were to happen. Besides, for me to lose my road would be the worst possible form! No, I'm not so insane as that. But it doesn't mean, because you make Public Ownership an issue, that you must bring it about. There are always ways to dodge, don't y' know. And the people won't care; the patient beggars have been taught to expect it. An issue is like the bell-ringing before an auction; it is only meant to call a crowd. Once the auction begins, no one remembers the bell-ringing; they don't, really!”
“To simply shout 'Public Ownership:'” said I, “would hardly stir the depths. We would have to get down to something practical—something definite.”
“It was the point I was approaching. Really! what should be better now than to plainly propose—since the route is unoccupied, and offers a field of cheapest experiment—a street railway with a loop around Washington Square, and then out Fifth Avenue to One Hundred and Tenth Street, next west on One Hundred and Tenth Street to Seventh Avenue, and lastly north on Seventh Avenue until you strike the Harlem River at the One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street bridge?”
“What a howl would go up from Fifth Avenue!” said I.
“If it were so, what then? You are not to be injured by silk-stocking clamor. For each cry against you from the aristocrats, twenty of the peasantry would come crying to your back; don't y', know! Patrician opposition, old chap, means ever plebeian support, and you should do all you may, with wedge and maul of policy, to split the log along those lines. Gad!” concluded Morton, bursting suddenly into self-compliments; “I don't recall when I was so beastly sagacious before—really!”
“Now I fail to go with you,” I returned. “I have for long believed that the strongest force with which the organization had to contend, was its own lack of fashion. If Tammany had a handful or two of that purple and fine linen with which you think it so wise to quarrel, it might rub some of the mud off itself, and have quieter if not fairer treatment from a press, ever ready to truckle to the town's nobility. Should we win next time, it is already in my plans to establish a club in the very heart of Fifth Avenue. I shall attract thither all the folk of elegant fashion I can, so that, thereafter, should one snap a kodak on the machine, the foreground of the picture will contain a respectable exhibition of lofty names. I want, rather, to get Tammany out of the gutter, than arrange for its perpetual stay therein.”
“Old chap,” said Morton, glorying through his eyeglass, “I think I shall try a cigarette after that. I need it to resettle my nerves; I do, really. Why, my dear boy! do you suppose that Tammany can be anything other than that unwashed black sheep it is? We shall make bishops of burglars when that day dawns. The thing's wildly impossible, don't y' know! Besides, your machine would die. Feed Tammany Hall on any diet of an aristocracy, and you will unhinge its stomach; you will, 'pon my faith!”
“You shall see a Tammany club in fashion's center, none the less.”
“Then you don't like 'Public Ownership?'” observed Morton, after a pause, the while twirling his eyeglass. “Why don't you then go in for cutting the City off from the State, and making a separate State of it? You could say that we suffer from hayseed tyranny, and all that. Really! it's the truth, don't y' know; and besides, we City fellows would gulp it down like spring water.”
“The City delegation in Albany,” said I, “is too small to put through such a bill. The Cornfields would be a unit to smother it.”
“Not so sure about the Cornfields!” cried Morton. “Of course it would take money. That provided, think of the wires you could pull. Here are a half-dozen railroads, with their claws and teeth in the country and their tails in town. Each of them, don't y' know, as part of its equipment, owns a little herd of rustic members. You could step on the railroad tail with the feet of your fifty city departments, and torture it into giving you its hayseed marionettes for this scheme of a new State. Pon my word! old chap, it could be brought about; it could, really!”
“I fear,” said I banteringly, “that after all you are no better than a harebrained theorist. I confess that your plans are too grand for my commonplace powers of execution. I shall have to plod on with those moss-grown methods which have served us in the past.”
It would seem as though I had had Death to be my neighbor from the beginning, for his black shadow was in constant play about me. One day he would take a victim from out my very arms; again he would grimly step between me and another as we sat in talk. Nor did doctors do much good or any; and I have thought that all I shall ask, when my own time comes, is a nurse to lift me in and out of bed, and for the rest of it, why! let me die.
It was Anne to leave me now, and her death befell like lightning from an open sky. Anne was never of your robust women; I should not have said, however, that she was frail, since she was always about, taking the whole weight of the house to herself, and, as I found when she was gone, furnishing the major portion of its cheerfulness. That was what misled me, doubtless; a brave smile shone ever on her face like sunlight, and served to put me off from any thought of sickness for her.
It was her heart, they said; but no such slowness in striking as when Big Kennedy died. Anne had been abroad for a walk in the early cool of the evening. When she returned, and without removing her street gear, she sank into a chair in the hall.
“What ails ye, mem?” asked the old Galway wife that had been nurse to Blossom, and who undid the door to Anne; “what's the matter of your pale face?”
“An' then,” cried the crone, when she gave me the sorry tale of it, “she answered wit' a sob. An' next her poor head fell back on the chair, and she was by.”
Both young Van Flange and I were away from the house at the time of it; he about his business, which kept him often, and long, into the night; and I in the smothering midst of my politics. When I was brought home, they had laid Anne's body on her bed. At the foot on a rug crouched the old nurse, rocking herself forward and back, wailing like a banshee. Blossom, whose cheek was whitened with the horror of our loss, crept to my side and stood close, clutching my hand as in those old terror-ridden baby days when unseen demons glowered from the room-comers. It was no good sight for Blossom, and I led her away, the old Galway crone at the bed's foot keening her barbarous mourning after us far down the hall.
Blossom was all that remained with me now. And yet, she would be enough, I thought, as I held her, child-fashion, in my arms that night to comfort her, if only I might keep her happy.
Young Van Flange worked at his trade of stocks like a horse. He was into it early and late, sometimes staying from home all night. I took pride to think how much more wisely than Morton I had judged the boy.
Those night absences, when he did not come in until three of the morning, and on occasion not at all, gave me no concern. My own business of Tammany was quite as apt to hold me; for there are events that must be dealt with in the immediate, like shooting a bird on the wing. A multitude of such were upon me constantly, and there was no moment of the day or night that I could say beforehand would not be claimed by them. When this was my own case, it turned nothing difficult to understand how the exigencies of stocks might be as peremptory.
One matter to promote a growing fund of confidence in young Van Flange was his sobriety. The story ran—and, in truth, his own mother had told it—of his drunkenness, when a boy fresh out of his books, and during those Barclay Street days when he went throwing his patrimony to the vultures. That was by and done with; he had somehow gotten by the bottle. Never but once did he show the flush of liquor, and that fell out when he had been to a college dinner. I had always understood how it was the custom to retire drunk from such festivals, wherefore that particular inebriety gave me scant uneasiness. One should not expect a roaring boy about town to turn deacon in a day.
Blossom was, as I've said, by nature shy and secret, and never one to relate her joys or griefs. While she and he were under the same roof with me, I had no word from her as to her life with young Van Flange, and whether it went bright, or was blurred of differences. Nor do I believe that in those days there came aught to harrow her, unless it were the feeling that young Van Flange showed less the lover and more like folk of fifty than she might have wished.
Once and again, indeed, I caught on her face a passing shade; but her eyes cleared when I looked at her, and she would come and put her arms about me, and by that I could not help but see how her marriage had flowered life's path for her. This thought of itself would set off a tune in my heart like the songs of birds; and I have it the more sharply upon my memory, because it was the one deep happiness I knew. The shadows I trapped as they crossed the brow of Blossom, I laid to a thought that young Van Flange carried too heavy a load of work. It might break him in his health; and the fear had warrant in hollow eyes and a thin sallowness of face, which piled age upon him, and made him resemble twice his years.
Towards me, the pose of young Van Flange was that one of respectful deference which had marked him from the start. Sometimes I was struck by the notion that he was afraid of me; not with any particularity of alarm, but as a woman might fear a mastiff, arguing peril from latent ferocities and a savagery of strength.
Still, he in no wise ran away; one is not to understand that; on the contrary he would pass hours in my society, explaining his speculations and showing those figures which were the record of his profits. I was glad to listen, too; for while I did not always grasp a meaning, being stock-dull as I've explained, what he said of “bull” and “bear” and “short” and “long,” had the smell of combat about it, and held me enthralled like a romance.
There were instances when he suggested speculations, and now and then as high as one thousand shares. I never failed to humor him, for I thought a negative might smack of lack of confidence—a thing I would not think of, if only for love of Blossom. I must say that my belief in young Van Flange was augmented by these deals, which turned unflaggingly, though never largely, to my credit.
It was when I stood waist-deep in what arrangements were preliminary to my battle for the town, now drawing near and nearer, that young Van Flange approached me concerning Blackberry Traction.
“Father,” said he—for he called me “father,” and the name was pleasant to my ear—“father, if you will, we may make millions of dollars like turning hand or head.”
Then he gave me a long story of the friendship he had scraped together with the president of Blackberry—he of the Hebrew cast and clutch, whom I once met and disappointed over franchises.
“Of course,” said young Van Flange, “while he is the president of Blackberry, he has no sentimental feelings concerning the fortunes of the company. He is as sharp to make money as either you or I. The truth is this: While the stock is quoted fairly high, Blackberry in fact is in a bad way. It is like a house of cards, and a kick would collapse it into ruins. The president, because we are such intimates, gave me the whole truth of Blackberry. Swearing me to secrecy, he, as it were, lighted a lantern, and led me into the darkest corners. He showed me the books. Blackberry is on the threshold of a crash. The dividends coming due will not be paid. It is behind in its interest; and the directors will be driven to declare an immense issue of bonds. Blackberry stock will fall below twenty; a receiver will have the road within the year. To my mind, the situation is ready for a coup. We have but to sell and keep selling, to take in what millions we will.”
There was further talk, and all to similar purpose. Also, I recalled the ease with which Morton and I, aforetime, took four millions between us out of Blackberry.
“Now I think,” said I, in the finish of it, “that Blackberry is my gold mine by the word of Fate itself. Those we are to make will not be the first riches I've had from it.”
Except the house we stood in, I owned no real estate; nor yet that, since it was Blossom's, being her marriage gift from me. From the first I had felt an aversion for houses and lots. I was of no stomach to collect rents, squabble with tenants over repairs, or race to magistrates for eviction. This last I should say was the Irish in my arteries, for landlords had hectored my ancestors like horseflies. My wealth was all in stocks and bonds; nor would I listen to anything else. Morton had his own whimsical explanation for this:
“There be those among us,” said he, “who are nomads by instinct—a sort of white Arab, don't y' know. Not intending offense—for, gad! there are reasons why I desire to keep you good-natured—every congenital criminal is of that sort; he is, really! Such folk instinctively look forward to migration or flight. They want nothing they can't pack up and depart with in a night, and would no more take a deed to land than a dose of arsenic. It's you who are of those migratory people. That's why you abhor real estate. Fact, old chap! you're a born nomad; and it's in your blood to be ever ready to strike camp, inspan your teams, and trek.”
Morton furnished these valuable theories when he was investing my money for me. Having no belief in my own investment wisdom, I imposed the task upon his good nature. One day he brought me my complete possessions in a wonderful sheaf of securities. They were edged, each and all, with gold, since Morton would accept no less.
“There you are, my boy,” said he, “and everything as clean as running water, don't y' know. Really, I didn't think you could be trusted, if it came on to blow a panic, so I've bought for you only stuff that can protect itself.”
When young Van Flange made his Blackberry suggestions, I should say I had sixteen hundred thousand dollars worth of these bonds and stocks—mostly the former—in my steel box. I may only guess concerning it, for I could not reckon so huge a sum to the precise farthing. It was all in the same house with us; I kept it in a safe I'd fitted into the walls, and which was so devised as to laugh at either a burglar or a fire. I gave young Van Flange the key of that interior compartment which held these securities; the general combination he already possessed.
“There you'll find more than a million and a half,” said I, “and that, with what you have, should make three millions. How much Blackberry can you sell now?”
“We ought to sell one hundred and fifty thousand shares. A drop of eighty points, and it will go that far, would bring us in twelve millions.”
“Do what you think best,” said I. “And, mind you: No word to Morton.”
“Now I was about to suggest that,” said young Van Flange.
Morton should not know what was on my slate for Blackberry. Trust him? yes; and with every hope I had. But it was my vanity to make this move without him. I would open his eyes to it, that young Van Flange, if not so old a sailor as himself, was none the less his equal at charting a course and navigating speculation across that sea of stocks, about the treacherous dangers whereof it had pleased him so often to patronize me.
SINCE time began, no man, not even a king, has been better obeyed in his mandates, than was I while Chief of Tammany Hall. From high to low, from the leader of a district to the last mean straggler in the ranks, one and all, they pulled and hauled or ran and climbed like sailors in a gale, at the glance of my eye or the toss of my finger. More often than once, I have paused in wonder over this blind submission, and asked myself the reason. Particularly, since I laid down my chiefship, the query has come upon my tongue while I remembered old days, to consider how successes might have been more richly improved or defeats, in their disasters, at least partially avoided.
Nor could I give myself the answer. I had no close friendships among my men; none of them was my confidant beyond what came to be demanded of the business in our hands. On the contrary, there existed a gulf between me and those about me, and while I was civil—for I am not the man, and never was, of wordy violences—I can call myself nothing more.
If anything, I should say my people of politics feared me, and that a sort of sweating terror was the spur to send them flying when I gave an order. There was respect, too; and in some cases a kind of love like a dog's love, and which is rather the homage paid by weakness to strength, or that sentiment offered of the vine to the oak that supports its clamberings.
Why my men should stand in awe of me, I cannot tell. Certainly, I was mindful of their rights; and, with the final admonitions of Big Kennedy in my ears, I avoided favoritisms and dealt out justice from an even hand. True, I could be stern when occasion invited, and was swift to destroy that one whose powers did not match his duty, or who for a bribe would betray, or for an ambition would oppose, my plan.
No; after Big Kennedy's death, I could name you none save Morton whose advice I cared for, or towards whom I leaned in any thought of confidence. Some have said that this distance, which I maintained between me and my underlings, was the secret of my strength. It may have been; and if it were I take no credit, since I expressed nothing save a loneliness of disposition, and could not have borne myself otherwise had I made the attempt. Not that I regretted it. That dumb concession of themselves to me, by my folk of Tammany, would play no little part in pulling down a victory in the great conflict wherein we were about to engage.
Tammany Hall was never more sharply organized. I worked over the business like an artist over an etching. Discipline was brought to a pitch never before known. My district leaders were the pick of the covey, and every one, for force and talents of executive kind, fit to lead a brigade into battle. Under these were the captains of election precincts; and a rank below the latter came the block captains—one for each city block. Thus were made up those wheels within wheels which, taken together, completed the machine. They fitted one with the other, block captains with precinct captains, the latter with district leaders, and these last with myself; and all like the wheels and springs and ratchets and regulators of a clock; one sure, too, when wound and oiled and started, to strike the hours and announce the time of day in local politics with a nicety that owned no precedent.
There would be a quartette of tickets; I could see that fact of four corners in its approach, long months before the conventions. Besides the two regular parties, and the mugwump-independents—which tribe, like the poor, we have always with us—the laborites would try again. These had not come to the field in any force since that giant uprising when we beat them down with the reputable old gentleman. Nor did I fear them now. My trained senses told me, as with thumb on wrist I counted the public pulse, how those clans of labor were not so formidable by three-fourths as on that other day a decade and more before.
Of those three camps of politics set over against us, that one to be the strongest was the party of reform. This knowledge swelled my stock of courage, already mounting high. If it were no more than to rout the administration now worrying the withers of the town, why, then! the machine was safe to win.
There arose another sign. As the days ran on, rich and frequent, first from one big corporation and then another—and these do not give until they believe—the contributions of money came rolling along. They would buy our favor in advance of victory. These donations followed each other like billows upon a beach, and each larger than the one before, which showed how the wind of general confidence was rising in our favor. It was not, therefore, my view alone; but, by this light of money to our cause, I could see how the common opinion had begun to gather head that the machine was to take the town again.
This latter is often a decisive point, and one to give victory of itself. The average of intelligence and integrity in this city of New York is lower than any in the land. There are here, in proportion to a vote, more people whose sole principle is the bandwagon, than in any other town between the oceans. These “sliders,” who go hither and yon, and attach themselves to this standard or ally themselves with that one, as the eye of their fancy is caught and taught by some fluttering signal of the hour to pick the winning side, are enough of themselves to decide a contest. Wherefore, to promote this advertisement among creatures of chameleon politics, of an approaching triumph for the machine, and it being possible because of those contributed thousands coming so early into my chests, I began furnishing funds to my leaders and setting them to the work of their regions weeks before the nearest of our enemies had begun to think on his ticket.
There was another argument for putting out this money. The noses of my people had been withheld from the cribs of office for hungry months upon months. The money would arouse an appetite and give their teeth an edge. I looked for fine work, too, since the leanest wolves are ever foremost in the hunt.
Emphatically did I lay it upon my leaders that, man for man, they must count their districts. They must tell over each voter as a churchman tells his beads. They must give me a true story of the situation, and I promised grief to him who brought me mistaken word. I will say in their compliment that, by the reports of my leaders on the day before the poll, I counted the machine majority exact within four hundred votes; and that, I may tell you, with four tickets in the conflict, and a whole count which was measured by hundreds of thousands, is no light affair. I mention it to evidence the hair-line perfection to which the methods of the machine had been brought.
More than one leader reported within five votes of his majority, and none went fifty votes astray.
You think we overdid ourselves to the point ridiculous, in this breathless solicitude of preparation? Man! the wealth of twenty Ophirs hung upon the hazard. I was in no mood to lose, if skill and sleepless forethought, and every intrigue born of money, might serve to bring success.
Morton—that best of prophets!—believed in the star of the machine.
“This time,” said he, “I shall miss the agony of contributing to the other fellows, don't y' know. It will be quite a relief—really! I must say, old chap, that I like the mugwump less and less the more I see of him. He's so deucedly respectable, for one thing! Gad! there are times when a mugwump carries respectability to a height absolutely incompatible with human existence. Besides, he is forever walking a crack and calling it a principle. I get tired of a chalkline morality. It's all such deuced rot; it bores me to death; it does, really! One begins to appreciate the amiable, tolerant virtues of easy, old-shoe vice.”
Morton, worn with this long harangue, was moved to recruit his moody energies with the inevitable cigarette. He puffed recuperative puffs for a space, and then he began:
“What an angelic ass is this city of New York! Why! it doesn't know as much as a horse! Any ignorant teamster of politics can harness it, and haul with it, and head it what way he will. I say, old chap, what are the round-number expenses of the town a year?”
“About one hundred and twenty-five millions.”
“One hundred and twenty-five millions—really! Do you happen to know the aggregate annual profits of those divers private companies that control and sell us our water, and lighting, and telephone, and telegraph, and traction services?—saying nothing of ferries, and paving, and all that? It's over one hundred and fifty millions a year, don't y' know! More than enough to run the town without a splinter of tax—really! That's why I exclaim in rapture over the public's accommodating imbecility. Now, if a private individual were to manage his affairs so much like a howling idiot, his heirs would clap him in a padded cell, and serve the beggar right.”
“I think, however,” said I, “that you have been one to profit by those same idiocies of the town.”
“Millions, my boy, millions! And I'm going in for more, don't y' know. There are a half-dozen delicious things I have my eye on. Gad! I shall have my hand on them, the moment you take control.”
“I make you welcome in advance,” said I. “Give me but the town again, and you shall pick and choose.”
In season, I handed my slate of names to the nominating committee to be handed by them to the convention.
At the head, for the post of mayor, was written the name of that bold judge who, in the presence of my enemies and on a day when I was down, had given my Sicilian countenance. Such folk are the choice material of the machine. Their characters invite the public; while, for their courage, and that trick to be military and go with closed eyes to the execution of an order, the machine can rely upon them through black and white. My judge when mayor would accept my word for the last appointment and the last contract in his power, and think it duty.
And who shall say that he would err? It was the law of the machine; he was the man of the machine; for the public, which accepted him, he was the machine. It is the machine that offers for every office on the list; the ticket is but the manner or, if you please, the mask. Nor is this secret. Who shall complain then, or fasten him with charges, when my judge, made mayor, infers a public's instruction to regard himself as the vizier of the machine?—its hand and voice for the town's government?
It stood the day before the polls, and having advantage of the usual lull I was resting myself at home. Held fast by the hooks of politics, I for weeks had not seen young Van Flange, and had gotten only glimpses of Blossom. While lounging by my fire—for the day was raw, with a wind off the Sound that smelled of winter—young Van Flange drove to the door in a brougham.
That a brisk broker should visit his house at an hour when the floor of the Exchange was tossing with speculation, would be the thing not looked for; but I was too much in a fog of politics, and too ignorant of stocks besides, to make the observation. Indeed, I was glad to see the boy, greeting him with a trifle more warmth than common.
Now I thought he gave me his hand with a kind of shiver of reluctance. This made me consider. Plainly, he was not at ease as we sat together. Covering him with the tail of my eye, I could note how his face carried a look, at once timid and malignant.
I could not read the meaning, and remained silent a while with the mere riddle of it. Was he ill? The lean yellowness of his cheek, and the dark about the hollow eyes, were a hint that way, to which the broken stoop of the shoulders gave added currency.
Young Van Flange continued silent; not, however, in a way to promise sullenness, but as though his feelings were a gag to him. At last I thought, with a word of my own, to break the ice.
“How do you get on with your Blackberry?” said I.
It was not that I cared or had the business on the back of my mind; I was too much buried in my campaign for that; but Blackberry, with young Van Flange, was the one natural topic to propose.
As I gave him the name of it, he started with the sudden nervousness of a cat. I caught the hissing intake of his breath, as though a knife pierced him. What was wrong? I had not looked at the reported quotations, such things being as Greek to me. Had he lost those millions? I could have borne it if he had; the better, perhaps, since I was sure in my soul that within two days I would have the town in hand, and I did not think to find my old paths so overgrown but what I'd make shift to pick my way to a second fortune.
I was on the hinge of saying so, when he got possession of himself. Even at that he spoke lamely, and with a tongue that fumbled for words.
“Oh, Blackberry!” cried he. Then, after a gulping pause: “That twist will work through all right. It has gone a trifle slow, because, by incredible exertions, the road did pay its dividends. But it's no more than a matter of weeks when it will come tumbling.”
This, in the beginning, was rambled off with stops and halts, but in the wind-up it went glibly enough.
What next I would have said, I cannot tell; nothing of moment, one may be sure, for my mind was running on other things than Blackberry up or down. It was at this point, however, when we were interrupted. A message arrived that asked my presence at headquarters.
As I was about to depart, Blossom came into the room.
I had no more than time for a hurried kiss, for the need set forth in the note pulled at me like horses.
“Bar accidents,” said I, as I stood in the door, “tomorrow night we'll celebrate a victory.”
Within a block of my gate, I recalled how I had left certain papers I required lying on the table. I went back in some hustle of speed, for time was pinching as to that question of political detail which tugged for attention.
As I stepped into the hallway, I caught the tone of young Van Flange and did not like the pitch of it. Blossom and he were in the room to the left, and only a door between us.
In a strange bristle of temper, I stood still to hear. Would the scoundrel dare harshness with my girl? The very surmise turned me savage to the bone!
Young Van Flange was speaking of those two hundred thousand dollars in bonds with which, by word of Big Kennedy, I had endowed Blossom in a day of babyhood. When she could understand, I had laid it solemnly upon her never to part with them. Under any stress, they would insure her against want; they must never be given up. And Blossom had promised.
These bonds were in a steel casket of their own, and Blossom had the key. As I listened, young Van Flange was demanding they be given to him; Blossom was pleading with him, and quoting my commands. My girl was sobbing, too, for the villain urged the business roughly. I could not fit my ear to every word, since their tones for the most were dulled to a murmur by the door. In the end, with a lift of the voice, I heard him say:
“For what else should I marry you except money? Is one of my blood to link himself with the daughter of the town's great thief, and call it love? The daughter of a murderer, too!” he exclaimed, and ripping out an oath. “A murderer, yes! You have the red proof about your throat! Because your father escaped hanging by the laws of men, heaven's law is hanging you!”
As I threw wide the door, Blossom staggered and fell to the floor. I thought for the furious blink of the moment, that he had struck her. How much stronger is hate than love! My dominant impulse was to avenge Blossom rather than to save her. I stood in the door in a white flame of wrath that was like the utter anger of a tiger. I saw him bleach and shrink beneath his sallowness.
As I came towards him, he held up his hands after the way of a boxing school. That ferocious strength, like a gorilla's, still abode with me. I brushed away his guard as one might put aside a trailing vine. In a flash I had him, hip and shoulder. My fingers sunk into the flesh like things of steel; he squeaked and struggled as does the rabbit when crunched up by the hound.
With a swing and a heave that would have torn out a tree by its roots, I lifted him from his feet. The next moment I hurled him from me. He crashed against the casing of the door; then he slipped to the floor as though struck by death itself.
Moved of the one blunt purpose of destruction, I made forward to seize him again. For a miracle of luck, I was withstood by one of the servants who rushed in.
“Think, master; think what you do!” he cried.
In a sort of whirl I looked about me. I could see how the old Galway nurse was bending over Blossom, crying on her for her “Heart's dearie!” My poor girl was lying along the rug like some tempest-broken flower. The stout old wife caught her up and bore her off in her arms.
The picture of my girl's white face set me ablaze again. I turned the very torch of rage!
“Be wise, master!” cried that one who had restrained me before. “Think of what you do!”
The man's hand on my wrist, and the earnest voice of him, brought me to myself. A vast calm took me, as a storm in its double fury beats flat the surface of the sea. I turned my back and walked to the window.
“Have him away, then!” cried I. “Have him out of my sight, or I'll tear him to rags and ribbons where he lies!”
FOR all the cry and call of politics, and folk to see me whom I would not see, that night, and throughout the following day—and even though the latter were one of election Fate to decide for the town's mastery—I never stirred from Blossom's side. She, poor child! was as one desolate, dazed with the blow that had been dealt her. She lay on her pillow, silent, and with the stricken face that told of the heart-blight fallen upon her.
Nor was I in much more enviable case, although gifted of a rougher strength to meet the shock. Indeed, I was taught by a despair that preyed upon me, how young Van Flange had grown to be the keystone of my arch of single hope, now fallen to the ground. Blossom's happiness had been my happiness, and when her breast was pierced, my own brightness of life began to bleed away. Darkness took me in the folds of it as in a shroud; I would have found the grave kinder, but I must remain to be what prop and stay I might to Blossom.
While I sat by my girl's bed, there was all the time a peril that kept plucking at my sleeve in a way of warning. My nature is of an inveterate kind that, once afire and set to angry burning, goes on and on in ever increasing flames like a creature of tow, and with me helpless to smother or so much as half subdue the conflagration. I was so aware of myself in that dangerous behalf that it would press upon me as a conviction, even while I held my girl's hand and looked into her vacant eye, robbed of a last ray of any peace to come, that young Van Flange must never stray within my grasp. It would bring down his destruction; it would mean red hands for me and nothing short of murder. And, so, while I waited by Blossom's side, and to blot out the black chance of it, I sent word for Inspector McCue.
The servants, on that day of awful misery, conveyed young Van Flange from the room. When he had been revived, and his injuries dressed—for his head bled from a gash made by the door, and his shoulder had been dislocated—he was carried from the house by the brougham that brought him, and which still waited at the gate. No one about me owned word of his whereabouts. It was required that he be found, not more for his sake than my own, and his destinies disposed of beyond my reach.
It was to this task I would set Inspector McCue. For once in a way, my call was for an honest officer. I would have Inspector McCue discover young Van Flange, and caution him out of town. I cared not where he went, so that he traveled beyond the touch of my fingers, already itching for the caitiff neck of him.
Nor did I think young Van Flange would resist the advice of Inspector McCue. He had reasons for flight other than those I would furnish. The very papers, shouted in the streets to tell how I had re-taken the town at the polls, told also of the failure of the brokerage house of Van Flange; and that young Van Flange, himself, was a defaulter and his arrest being sought by clients on a charge of embezzling the funds which had been intrusted to his charge. The man was a fugitive from justice; he lay within the menace of a prison; he would make no demur now when word and money were given him to take himself away.
When Inspector McCue arrived, I greeted him with face of granite. He should have no hint of my agony. I went bluntly to the core of the employ; to dwell upon the business would be nothing friendly to my taste.
“You know young Van Flange?” Inspector McCue gave a nod of assent.
“And you can locate him?”
“The proposition is so easy it's a pushover.”
“Find him, then, and send him out of the town; and for a reason, should he ask one, you may say that I shall slay him should we meet.”
Inspector McCue looked at me curiously. He elevated his brow, but in the end he said nothing, whether of inquiry or remark. Without a reply he took himself away. My face, at the kindliest, was never one to speak of confidences or invite a question, and I may suppose the expression of it, as I dealt with Inspector McCue, to have been more than commonly repellent.
There abode another with whom I wanted word; that one was Morton; for hard by forty years he had not once failed me in a strait. I would ask him the story of those Blackberry stocks. A glance into my steel box had showed me the bottom as bare as winter boughs. The last scrap was gone; and no more than the house that covered us, and those two hundred thousand dollars in bonds that were Blossom's, to be left of all our fortune.
My temper was not one to mourn for any loss of money; and yet in this instance I would have those steps that led to my destruction set forth to me. If it were the president of Blackberry Traction who had taken my money, I meditated reprisal. Not that I fell into any heat of hatred against him; he but did to me what Morton and I a few years further back had portioned out to him. For all that, I was coldly resolved to have my own again. I intended no stock shifts; I would not seek Wall Street for my revenge. I knew a sharper method and a surer. It might glisten less with elegance, but it would prove more secure. But first, I would have the word of Morton.
That glass of exquisite fashion and mold of proper form, albeit something grizzled, and like myself a trifle dimmed of time, tendered his congratulations upon my re-conquest of the town. I drew him straight to my affair of Blackberry.
“Really, old chap,” said Morton, the while plaintively disapproving of me through those eyeglasses, so official in his case, “really, old chap, you walked into a trap, and one a child should have seen. That Blackberry fellow had the market rigged, don't y' know. I could have saved you, but, my boy, I didn't dare. You've such a beastly temper when anyone saves you. Besides, it isn't good form to wander into the stock deals of a gentleman, and begin to tell him what he's about; it isn't, really.”
“But what did this Blackberry individual do?” I persisted.
“Why, he let you into a corner, don't y' know! He had been quietly buying Blackberry for months. He had the whole stock of the road in his safe; and you, in the most innocent way imaginable, sold thousands of shares. Now when you sell a stock, you must buy; you must, really! And there was no one from whom to buy save our sagacious friend. Gad! as the business stood, old chap, he might have had the coat off your back!” And Morton glared in horror over the disgrace of the situation.
While I took no more than a glimmer of Morton's meaning, two things were made clear. The Blackberry president had stripped me of my millions; and he had laid a snare to get them.
“Was young Van Flange in the intrigue?”
“Not in the beginning, at least. There was no need, don't y' know. His hand was already into your money up to the elbow.”
“What do you intend by saying that young Van Flange was not in the affair in the beginning?”
“The fact is, old chap, one or two things occurred that led me to think that young Van Flange discovered the trap after he'd sold some eight or ten thousand shares. There was a halt, don't y' know, in his operations. Then later he went on and sold you into bankruptcy. I took it from young Van Flange's manner that the Blackberry fellow might have had some secret hold upon him, and either threatened him, or promised him, or perhaps both, to get him to go forward with his sales; I did, really. Young Van Flange didn't, in the last of it, conduct himself like a free moral or, I should say, immoral agent.”
“I can't account for it,” said I, falling into thought; “I cannot see how young Van Flange could have been betrayed into the folly you describe.”
“Why then,” said Morton, a bit wearily, “I have but to say over what you've heard from me before. Young Van Flange was in no sort that man of gifts you held him to be; now really, he wasn't, don't y' know! Anyone might have hoodwinked him. Besides, he didn't keep up with the markets. While I think it beastly bad form to go talking against a chap when he's absent, the truth is, the weak-faced beggar went much more to Barclay than to Wall Street. However, that is only hearsay; I didn't follow young Van Flange to Barclay Street nor meet him across a faro layout by way of verification.”
Morton was right; and I was to hear a worse tale, and that from Inspector McCue.
“Would have been here before,” said Inspector McCue when he came to report, “but I wanted to see our party aboard ship, and outside Sandy Hook light, so that I might report the job cleaned up.”
Then clearing his throat, and stating everything in the present tense, after the police manner, Inspector McCue went on.
“When you ask me can I locate our party, I says to myself, 'Sure thing!' and I'll put you on to why. Our party is a dope fiend; it's a horse to a hen at that very time he can be turned up in some Chink joint.”
“Opium?” I asked in astonishment. I had never harbored the thought.
“Why, sure! That's the reason he shows so sallow about the gills, and with eyes like holes burnt in a blanket. When he lets up on the bottle, he shifts to hop.”
“Go on,” said I.
“Now,” continued Inspector McCue, “I thought I knew the joint in which to find our party. One evenin', three or four years ago, when the Reverend Bronson and I are lookin' up those Barclay Street crooks, I see our party steerin' into Mott Street. I goes after him, and comes upon him in a joint where he's hittin' the pipe. The munk who runs it has just brought him a layout, and is cookin' the pill for him when I shoves in.
“Now when our party is in present trouble, I puts it to myself, that he's sure to be goin' against the pipe. It would be his idea of gettin' cheerful, see! So I chases for the Mott Street hang-out, and there's our party sure enough, laid out on a mat, and a roll of cotton batting under his head for a pillow. He's in the skies, so my plan for a talk right then is all off. The air of the place is that thick with hop it would have turned the point of a knife, but I stays and plays my string out until he can listen and talk.
“When our party's head is again on halfway straight, and he isn't such a dizzy Willie, I puts it to him that he'd better do a skulk.
“'You're wanted,' says I, 'an' as near as I make the size-up, you'll take about five spaces if you're brought to trial. You'd better chase; and by way of the Horn, at that. If you go cross-lots, you might get the collar on a hot wire from headquarters, and be taken off the train. Our party nearly throws a faint when I says 'embezzlement.' It's the first tip he'd had, for I don't think he's been made wise to so much as a word since he leaves here. It put the scare into him for fair; he was ready to do anything I say.'
“'Only,' says he, 'I don't know what money I've got. And I'm too dippy to find out.'
“With that, I go through him. It's in his trousers pocket I springs a plant—fifteen hundred dollars, about.
“'Here's dough enough and over,' says I; and in six hours after, he's aboard ship.
“She don't get her lines off until this morning, though; but I stays by, for I'm out to see him safe beyond the Hook.”
“What more do you know of young Van Flange?” I asked. “Did you learn anything about his business habits?”
“From the time you start him with those offices in Broad Street, our party's business habits are hop and faro bank. The offices are there; the clerks and the blackboards and the stock tickers and the tape baskets are there; but our party, more'n to butt in about three times a week and leave some crazy orders to sell Blackberry Traction, is never there. He's either in Mott Street, and a Chink cookin' hop for him; or he's in Barclay Street with those Indians, and they handin' him out every sort of brace from an 'end-squeeze' or a 'balance-top,' where they give him two cards at a clatter, to a 'snake' box, where they kindly lets him deal, but do him just the same. Our party lose over a half-million in that Barclay Street deadfall during the past Year.”
“I must, then,” said I, and I felt the irony of it, “have been indirectly contributing to the riches of our friend, the Chief of Police, since you once told me he was a principal owner of the Barclay Street place.”
Inspector McCue shrugged his shoulders professionally, and made no response. Then I questioned him as to the charge of embezzlement; for I had not owned the heart to read the story in the press.
“It's that Blackberry push,” replied Inspector McCue, “and I don't think it's on the level at that. It looks like the Blackberry president—and, by the way, I've talked with the duffer, and took in all he would tell—made a play to get the drop on our party. And although the trick was put up, I think he landed it. He charges now that our party is a welcher, and gets away with a bunch of bonds—hocked 'em or something like that—which this Blackberry guy gives him to stick in as margins on some deal. As I say, I think it's a put-up job. That Blackberry duck—who is quite a flossy form of stock student and a long shot from a slouch—has some game up his sleeve. He wanted things rigged so's he could put the clamps on our party, and make him do as he says, and pinch him whenever it gets to be a case of must. So he finally gets our party where he can't holler. I makes a move to find out the inside story; but the Blackberry sport is a thought too swift, and he won't fall to my game. I gives it to him dead that he braced our party, and asks him, Why? At that he hands me the frozen face, springs a chest, and says he's insulted.
“But the end of it is this: Our party is now headed for Frisco. When he comes ashore, the cops out there will pick him up and keep a tab on him; we can always touch the wire for his story down to date. Whenever you say the word, I can get a line on him.”
“Bring me no tales of him!” I cried. “I would free myself of every memory of the scoundrel!”
That, then, was the story—a story of gambling and opium! It was these that must account for the sallow face, stooped shoulders, hollow eyes, and nights away from home. And the man of Blackberry, from whom Morton and I took millions, had found in the situation his opportunity. He laid his plans and had those millions back. Also, it was I, as it had been others, to now suffer by Barclay Street.
“And now,” observed Inspector McCue, his hand on the door, but turning with a look at once inquisitive and wistful—the latter, like the anxious manner of a good dog who asks word to go upon his hunting—“and now, I suppose, you'll be willin' to let me pull that outfit in Barclay Street. I've got 'em dead to rights!” The last hopefully.
“If it be a question,” said I, “of where a man shall lose His money, for my own part, I have no preference as to whether he is robbed in Barclay Street or robbed in Wall. We shall let the Barclay Street den alone, if you please. The organization has its alliances. These alliances cannot be disturbed without weakening the organization. I would not make the order when it was prayed for by the mother of young Van Flange, and she died with the prayer on her lips. I shall not make it now when it is I who am the sufferer. It must be Tammany before all; on no slighter terms can Tammany be preserved.”
Inspector McCue made no return to this, and went his way in silence. It was a change, however, from that other hour when I had been with him as cold and secret as a vault. He felt the flattery of my present confidence, and it colored him with complacency as he took his leave.
Roundly, it would be two months after the election before Tammany took charge of the town. The eight weeks to intervene I put in over that list of officers to be named by me through the mayor and the various chiefs of the departments. These places—and they were by no means a stinted letter, being well-nigh thirty thousand—must be apportioned among the districts, each leader having his just share.
While I wrought at these details of patronage, setting a man's name to a place, and all with fine nicety of discrimination to prevent jealousies and a thought that this or that one of my wardogs had been wronged, a plan was perfecting itself in my mind. The thought of Blossom was ever uppermost. What should I do to save the remainder of her life in peace? If she were not to be wholly happy, still I would buckler her as far as lay with me against the more aggressive darts of grief. There is such a word as placid, and, though one be fated to dwell with lasting sorrow, one would prefer it as the mark of one's condition to others of tumultuous violence. There lies a choice, and one will make it, even among torments. How could I conquer serenity for Blossom?—how should I go about it to invest what further years were hers with the restful blessings of peace? That was now the problem of my life, and at last I thought it solved.
My decision was made to deal with the town throughout the next regime as with a gold mine. I would work it night and day, sparing neither conscience nor sleep; I would have from it what utmost bulk of treasure I might during the coming administration of the town's affairs. The game lay in my palm; I would think on myself and nothing but myself; justice and right were to be cast aside; the sufferings of others should be no more to me than mine had been to them. I would squeeze the situation like a sponge, and for its last drop. Then laying down my guiding staff as Chief, I would carry Blossom, and those riches I had heaped together, to regions, far away and new, where only the arch of gentle skies should bend above her days! She should have tranquillity! she should find rest! That was my plan, my hope; I kept it buried in my breast, breathed of it to no man, not even the kindly Morton, and set myself with all of that ferocious industry which was so much the badge of my nature to its carrying forth. Four years; and then, with the gold of a Monte Cristo, I would take Blossom and go seeking that repose which I believed must surely wait for us somewhere beneath the sun!
While I was engaged about those preliminaries demanded of me if the machine were to begin its four-years' reign on even terms of comfort, Morton was often at my shoulder with a point or a suggestion. I was glad to have him with me; for his advice in a fog of difficulty such as mine, was what chart and lighthouse are to mariners.
One afternoon while Morton and I were trying to hit upon some man of education to take second place and supplement the ignorance of one whom the equities of politics appointed to be the head of a rich but difficult department, the Reverend Bronson came in.
We three—the Reverend Bronson, Morton, and myself—were older now than on days we could remember, and each showed the sere and yellow of his years. But we liked each other well; and, although in no sort similar in either purpose or bent, I think time had made us nearer friends than might have chanced with many who were more alike.
On this occasion, while I engaged myself with lists of names and lists of offices, weighing out the spoils, Morton and the Reverend Bronson debated the last campaign, and what in its conclusion it offered for the future.
“I shall try to be the optimist,” said the Reverend Bronson at last, tossing up a brave manner. “Since the dying administration was not so good as I hoped for, I trust the one to be born will not be so bad as I fear. And, as I gather light by experience, I begin to blame officials less and the public more. I suspect how a whole people may play the hypocrite as much as any single man; nor am I sure that, for all its clamors, a New York public really desires those white conditions of purity over which it protests so much.”
“Really!” returned Morton, who had furnished ear of double interest to the Reverend Bronson's words, “it is an error, don't y' know, to give any people a rule they don't desire. A government should always match a public. What do you suppose would become of them if one were to suddenly organize a negro tribe of darkest Africa into a republic? Why, under such loose rule as ours, the poor savage beggars would gnaw each other like dogs—they would, really! It would be as depressing a solecism as a Scotchman among the stained glasses, the frescoes, and the Madonnas of a Spanish cathedral; or a Don worshiping within the four bare walls and roof of a Highland kirk. Whatever New York may pretend, it will always be found in possession of that sort of government, whether for virtue or for vice, whereof it secretly approves.” And Morton surveyed the good dominie through that historic eyeglass as though pleased with what he'd said.
“But is it not humiliating?” asked the Reverend Bronson. “If what you say be true, does it not make for your discouragement?”
“No more than does the vulgar fact of dogs and horses, don't y' know! Really, I take life as it is, and think only to be amused. I remark on men, and upon their conditions of the moral, the mental, and the physical!—on the indomitable courage of restoration as against the ceaseless industry of decay!—on the high and the low, the good and the bad, the weak and the strong, the right and the wrong, the top and the bottom, the past and the future, the white and the black, and all those other things that are not!—and I laugh at all. There is but one thing real, one thing true, one thing important, one thing at which I never laugh!—and that is the present. But really!” concluded Morton, recurring to affectations which for the moment had been forgot, “I'm never discouraged, don't y' know! I shall never permit myself an interest deep enough for that; it wouldn't be good form. Even those beastly low standards which obtain, as you say, in New York do not discourage me. No, I'm never discouraged—really!”
“You do as much as any, by your indifference, to perpetuate those standards,” remarked the Reverend Bronson in a way of mournful severity.
“My dear old chap,” returned Morton, growing sprightly as the other displayed solemnity, “I take, as I tell you, conditions as I find them, don't y' know! And wherefore no? It's all nature: it's the hog to its wallow, the eagle to its crag;—it is, really! Now an eagle in a mud-wallow, or a hog perching on a crag, would be deuced bad form! You see that yourself, you must—really!” and our philosopher glowered sweetly.
“I shall never know,” said the Reverend Bronson, with a half-laugh, “when to have you seriously. I cannot but wish, however, that the town had better luck about its City Hall.”
“Really, I don't know, don't y' know!” This deep observation Morton flourished off in a profound muse. “As I've said, the town will get what's coming to it, because it will always get what it wants. It always has—really! And speaking of 'reform' as we employ the term in politics: The town, in honesty, never desires it; and that's why somebody must forever attend on 'reform' to keep it from falling on its blundering nose and knees by holding it up by the tail. There are people who'll take anything you give them, even though it be a coat of tar and feathers, and thank you for it, too,—the grateful beggars! New York resembles these. Some chap comes along, and offers New York 'reform.' Being without 'reform' at the time, and made suddenly and sorrowfully mindful of its condition, it accepts the gift just as a drunkard takes a pledge. Like the drunkard, however, New York is apt to return to its old ways—it is, really!”
“One thing,” said the Reverend Bronson as he arose to go, and laying his hand on my shoulder, “since the Boss of Tammany, in a day of the machine, is the whole government and the source of it, I mean to come here often and work upon our friend in favor of a clean town.”
“And you will be welcome, Doctor, let me say!” I returned.
“Now I think,” said Morton meditatively, when the Reverend Bronson had departed, “precisely as I told our excellent friend. A rule should ever fit a people; and it ever does. A king is as naturally the blossom of the peasantry he grows on as is a sunflower natural to that coarse stem that supports its royal nod-dings, don't y' know. A tyranny, a despotism, a monarchy, or a republic is ever that flower of government natural to the public upon which it grows. Really!—Why not? Wherein lurks the injustice or the inconsistency of such a theory? What good is there to lie hidden in a misfit? Should Providence waste a man's government on a community of dogs? A dog public should have dog government:—a kick and a kennel, a chain to clank and a bone to gnaw!”
With this last fragment of wisdom, the cynical Morton went also his way, leaving me alone to chop up the town—as a hunter chops up the carcass of a deer among his hounds—into steak and collop to feed my hungry followers.
However much politics might engage me, I still possessed those hundred eyes of Argus wherewith to watch my girl. When again about me she had no word for what was past. And on my side, never once did I put to her the name of young Van Flange. He was as much unmentioned by us as though he had not been. I think that this was the wiser course. What might either Blossom or I have said to mend our shattered hopes?
Still, I went not without some favor of events. There came a support to my courage; the more welcome, since the latter was often at its ebb. It was a strangest thing at that! While Blossom moved with leaden step, and would have impressed herself upon one as weak and wanting sparkle, she none the less began to gather the color of health. Her cheeks, before of the pallor of snow, wore a flush like the promise of life. Her face gained rounder fullness, while her eyes opened upon one with a kind of wide brilliancy, that gave a look of gayety. It was like a blessing! Nor could I forbear, as I witnessed it, the dream of a better strength for my girl than it had been her luck to know; and that thought would set me to my task of money-getting with ever a quicker ardor.