Jimmy and me. He gives us the glad hand and never the marble heart."
"It's no matter about Suydam," said the Judge, with an impatient
gesture; "he's a foolish young fellow and he doesn't know any better. I
suppose he expects to be a colonel on the staff of the first governor
they elect. But you--"
It was with a hint of bravado that Van Dyne returned: "I don't see that
I'm any better than Jimmy. He hasn't committed any crime that I know
of--except the deadly sin of inheriting a fortune. And as far as that
goes, I wish old man Suydam had adopted me and divided his money between
us. Then I could have that steam-yacht and take Martha down to Jekyll
Island next month."
The Judge hesitated again, and then he said: "Curtis, I suppose you
think I have no right to speak to you about this, and perhaps I haven't.
But I have known you since you were born, and I went to school with your
father. We were classmates in college, and I was his best man when he
married your mother. You know his record in the war, and you are proud
of it, of course. He left you--you will excuse my putting it
plainly?--he left you an honorable name."
"And that was about all he did leave me!" the young man returned. "I
want to leave my children something more."
"If you join the organization, if you are a hail-fellow-well-met with
all the Pat McCanns of the city," retorted the Judge, sternly--"if you
sink to that level, you would certainly leave your children something
very different from what your father left you. If you do, I doubt
whether the organization will go out of its way to offer inducements to
your son. It will expect to get him cheap."
The young lawyer flushed again, and then he laughed uneasily.
"You are hard on me, Judge," he said at last.
"I want you to be hard on yourself now," the older man returned. "I know
you, Curtis; I know the stock you come of, and I am sure you will be
hard enough on yourself--when it is too late."
"I'm not going to rob a bank, am I?" urged the younger man.
"You are going to rob yourself," was the swift answer. "You are going to
rob your children, if you ever have any, of what your father left
you--the priceless heritage of an honored name."
"Come, now, Judge," said Van Dyne, "is that quite fair? You speak as if
I were going to enroll in the Forty Thieves."
"If I thought you capable of doing that I should not be speaking to you
at all," was the reply.
"Pat McCann isn't a bad fellow really," the young man declared. "He
means well enough. And the rest of them are not rascals, either; they
are not the crew of pirates the papers call them. They are giving the
city as good a government now as our mixed population will stand. They
have their ambition to do right; and I sincerely believe that they mean
to do the best they know how."
"That's it precisely," the Judge asserted. "They mean to do the best
they know how. But how much do they know?"
"Well, they are not exactly fools, are they?" was the evasive answer.
"Don't misunderstand me," the elder man continued. "I am perfectly
aware that the organization is not so black as it is painted. The men at
the head of it are not a crew of pirates, as you say--of course not; if
they were they would have been made to walk the plank long ago. Probably
they mean well, as you say again. I should be sorry to believe that they
do not."
"Well, then--" returned Van Dyne.
But the Judge went on, regardless of what the young lawyer was going to
say:
"They may mean well, but what of it if the result is what we see? The
fact is that the men at the head of the organization are of an arrested
type of civilization. They are two or three hundred years behind the
age. They have retained the methods--perhaps not of Claude Duval, as
their enemies allege, but of Sir Robert Walpole, as their friends could
not deny. Here in America to-day they are anachronisms. They stand
athwart our advance. I have no wish to call them names or to think them
worse than they are; but I know that association with them is not good
for you or for me. It is our duty--your duty and mine, and the duty of
all who have a little enlightenment--to arouse the public against these
survivals of a lower stage, and to fight them incessantly, and now and
then to beat them, so that they may be made to respect our views. You
say they are giving the city as good a government as our mixed
population will stand. Well, that may be true; I don't think it is
quite true; but even if it is, what of it? Are we to be satisfied with
that? The best way to educate our mixed population to stand a better
government is to fight these fellows steadily. Nothing educates them
more than an election, followed by an object lesson."
"That's all very well," responded Van Dyne, when the Judge had made an
end of his long speech. "But I don't believe the organization leaders
are really so far behind other people, or so much worse. They're not
hypocrites, that's all. They know what they want, and they take it the
easiest way they can."
"If that is the best defense you can make for them, they are worse than
I thought," retorted the Judge. "Sometimes the easiest way to take what
you want is to steal it."
"I don't claim that they are perfect, all of them," the younger man
declared. "I suppose they are all sorts--good, bad, and indifferent. But
we are all miserable sinners, you know--at least we say so every Sunday.
And I have known bad men in the church."
"Come, come, Curtis," the Judge replied, "that's unworthy of you, isn't
it? You would not be apologizing to me for joining the church, would
you?"
Van Dyne was about to answer hastily, but he checked the words on his
lips. He looked away and across the frozen park to the pushing crowd on
Broadway; but he did not really see the huge wagons rumbling in and out
of Mail Street, nor did he hear the insistent clang of the cable-car.
His tone was deprecatory when he spoke at last.
"I suppose you are right," he began, "and I don't quite see myself in
that company. I'll be frank, Judge, for you are an old friend, and I
know you wish me well, and I'd be glad to stand well in your eyes. I
don't really want to join the organization; I don't like the men in it
any more than you do; and I don't know that I approve of their ways much
more than you do. But I've got to do it."
"Got to?" echoed the Judge, in surprise. "Why have you got to? They
can't force you to join if you don't wish it."
"I've got to do it because I've got to have money," was the young man's
explanation.
"Do you mean that you are to be paid for associating with these people?"
the Judge asked.
"That's about it," was the answer. "I wouldn't do it if I wasn't going
to make something out of it, would I? Not that there is any bargain, of
course; but Pat McCann has dropped hints, and I know how easy it will be
for them to throw things my way."
"I didn't know you needed money so badly," said the Judge. "I thought
you were doing well at the bar."
"I'm doing well enough, I suppose," Van Dyne explained; "but I could do
better. In fact, I must do better. I must have money. There's--well,
there's Martha. She came out last fall, and I gave her a coming-out tea,
of course. Well, I want her to have a good time. Mother had a good time
when she was a girl, and why shouldn't Martha? She won't be nineteen
again."
"Yes," said the Judge, "your mother had a good time when she was a girl.
Your father and I saw to that."
"Martha's just got her first invitation to the Assembly," Van Dyne went
on. "You should have seen how delighted she was, too; it did me good to
see it. Mrs. Jimmy Suydam sent it to her. But all that will cost money;
of course, she's got to have a new gown and gloves and flowers and a
carriage and so on. I don't begrudge it to her. I'm only too glad to
give it to her. But I'm in debt now for that coming-out tea and for
other things. I ran behind last year, and this year I shall spend more.
That's why I've got to join the organization and pick up a reference now
and then, and maybe a receivership by and by; and perhaps they'll elect
me to an office, sooner or later. I know I'm too young yet, but I'd like
to be a judge, too."
"So it is for your sister you are selling yourself, is it?" asked the
elder man. "Do you think she would be willing if she knew?"
"I'm not selling myself!" declared the young man, laughing a little
nervously. "I haven't signed any compact with my own blood amid a blaze
of red fire."
"Do you think your sister would approve if she knew?" persisted the
Judge.
"Oh, but she won't know!" was the answer. "I'll admit she wouldn't like
it overmuch. She takes after father, and she has very strict ideas. You
ought to hear her talk about the corruption of our politics!"
"Curtis," said the Judge, earnestly, "if _you_ take after your father,
you ought to be able to look things in the face. That's what I want you
to do now. Have you any right to sacrifice yourself for your sister's
sake in a way she would not like?"
"I'm not sacrificing myself at all," the young man declared. "I want
some of the good things of life for myself. Besides, what do girls know
about politics? They are always dreamy and impracticable. If they had
their noses down to the grindstone of life for a little while it would
sharpen their eyes, and they would see things differently."
"It will be a sad world when women like your sister and your mother see
things differently, as you put it," the elder man retorted.
"If I want more money, I don't admit that it is any of Martha's business
how I make it," Van Dyne asserted. "I'll let her have the spending of
some of it--that will be her duty. I want her to have a summer in
Europe, too. She knows that mother was abroad a whole year when she was
eighteen."
"I know that, too," said the Judge. "It was in Venice that your father
and I first met her; she was feeding the pigeons in front of St. Mark's,
and--"
The Judge paused a moment, and then he laid his hand on Van Dyne's
shoulder.
"Curtis," he continued, "if a thousand dollars now will help you out, or
two thousand, or even five, if you need it, I shall be glad to let you
have the money."
"Thank you, Judge," was the prompt reply. "I can't take your money,
because I don't know how or when I could pay you back."
"What matter about that?" returned the other. "I have nobody to leave it
to."
"You were my father's friend and my mother's," said Van Dyne. "I would
take money from you if I could take it from anybody. But I can't do
that. You wouldn't in my place, would you?"
The Judge did not answer this directly. "It is not easy to say what we
should do if one were to stand in the other's place," he declared. "And
if you change your mind, the money is ready for you whenever you want
it."
"You are very good to me, Judge," said the young man, "and I appreciate
your kindness--"
"Then don't say anything more about it," the elder man interrupted. "And
you must forgive me for my plain speaking about that other matter."
"About my joining the organization?" said Van Dyne. "Well, I'll think
over what you have said. I don't want you to believe that I don't
understand the kindness that prompted you to say what you did. I haven't
really decided absolutely what I had best do."
"It is a decision you must make for yourself, after all," the Judge
declared. "I will not urge you further."
He held out his hand once more, and the young man grasped it heartily.
"Perhaps you and Martha and 'Aunt Mary' could come and dine with me some
night next week," the Judge suggested. "I should like to hear about your
sister's first experience in society."
"Of course we will all come, with pleasure," said Van Dyne.
As the elder man walked away, the younger followed him with his eyes.
Then he turned and went up the steps of the City Hall.
Almost at the top of the flight stood two men, who parted company as Van
Dyne drew near. One of them waited for him to come up. The other started
down, smiling at the young lawyer as they met, and saying: "Good
morning, Mr. Van Dyne. It's rain we're going to have, I'm thinking."
"Good morning, Mr. O'Donnell," returned Van Dyne, roused from his
reverie.
"There's Mr. McCann waiting to have a word with you," cried O'Donnell
over his shoulder, as he passed.
The young lawyer looked up and saw the other man at the top of the
steps. He wanted time to think over his conversation with Judge
Jerningham, and he had no desire for a talk just then with the district
leader. Perhaps he unconsciously revealed this feeling in the coolness
with which he returned the other's greeting, courteous as he always was,
especially toward those whom he did not consider his equal.
"It's glad I am to see you, Mr. Van Dyne," said the politician, patting
the young man on the shoulder as they shook hands.
Van Dyne drew back instinctively. Never before had Pat McCann's high hat
seemed so very shiny to him, or Pat McCann's fur overcoat so very furry.
The big diamond in Pat McCann's shirt-front was concealed by the tightly
buttoned coat; but Van Dyne knew that it was there all the same, and he
detested it more than ever before.
"It's a dark morning it is," said McCann. "Will we take a little drop of
something warm?"
"Thank you," returned the young lawyer, somewhat stiffly; "I never drink
in the morning."
"No more do I," declared the other; "but it's a chill day this is. Well,
and when are you coming round to see the boys? Terry O'Donnell and me,
we was just talking about you and Mr. Suydam."
Van Dyne did not see why it should annoy him to know that he had been
the subject of conversation between Pat McCann and Terry O'Donnell, but
he was instantly aware of the annoyance. If he intended to throw in his
lot with these people, he must look forward to many intimacies not quite
to his liking.
"Oh, you were talking about me, were you?" he said.
"We was that," continued the district leader. "We want you to meet the
boys and let them know you, don't you see? We want you to give them the
glad hand."
When Van Dyne had used this slang phrase to the Judge, it had seemed to
him amusing; now it struck him as vulgar.
"We want you to jolly them up a bit," McCann went on. "The boys will be
glad to know you better."
"Yes," was the monosyllabic response to this invitation.
The district leader looked at the young lawyer, and his manner changed.
"We'd like to get acquainted with you, Mr. Van Dyne," he said, "if
you're going to be one of us."
"If I'm going to be one of you," Van Dyne repeated. "That's just the
question. Am I going to be one of you?"
"I thought we had settled all that last week," cried McCann.
"I don't think I told you that I would join you," Van Dyne declared,
wondering just how far he had committed himself at that last interview.
"You told me you thought you would," McCann declared.
"Oh, maybe I thought so then," Van Dyne answered.
The district leader was generally wary and tactful. Among people of his
own class he was a good judge of men; and he owed his position largely
to his persuasive powers. But on this occasion he made a mistake, due
perhaps in some measure to his perception of the other's assumption of
superiority.
"And now you don't think so?" he retorted, swiftly. "Is that what it is?
Well, it's for you to say, not me. I'm not begging any man to come into
the organization if they don't want. But I can't waste my time any more
on them that don't want. It's for you to say the word, and it's now or
never."
"Since you put it that way, Mr. McCann," said Van Dyne, "it's never."
"Then you don't want to join the organization?" asked the district
leader, a little taken aback by the other's sudden change of
determination.
"No," Van Dyne replied, "I don't."
And when he was left alone on the top of the City Hall steps, the young
lawyer was puzzled to know whether it was Judge Jerningham or Pat McCann
that had most influenced his decision.
(1898)
[Illustration: "Sisters
Under Their Skins"]
The light March rain, which had been intermittent all the morning,
ceased falling before Minnie Henryson and her mother had reached Sixth
Avenue. The keen wind sprang up again, and a patch of blue sky appeared
here and there down the vista of Twenty-third Street, as they were
walking westward. There was even a suggestion of sunshine far away over
the Jersey hills.
The two ladies closed their umbrellas, which the west wind had made it
hard for them to hold.
"I believe we are going to have a pleasant afternoon, after all," said
Mrs. Henryson. "Perhaps we had better lunch down here and get all our
shopping done to-day."
"Just as you say, mamma," the daughter answered, a little listlessly,
accustomed to accept all her mother's sudden changes of plans.
They turned the corner and went a little way down the avenue, as the
brakes of an up-town train scraped and squeaked when it stopped at the
station high above their heads.
Mrs. Henryson paused to look into one of the broad windows of a gigantic
store.
"Minnie," she said, solemnly, "I don't believe hats are going to be any
smaller this summer, in spite of all they say in the papers."
"It doesn't seem like it," responded her daughter, perfunctorily. She
had already bought her own hat for the spring, and just then her mind
was wandering far afield. She was dutifully accompanying her mother for
a morning's shopping, although she would rather have had the time to
herself, so that she could think out the question that was puzzling her.
Her mother continued to peer into the window, comparing the hats with
one another, and Minnie's attention was arrested by a little girl of
eight who stopped almost at her side and stamped three times on the iron
cover of an opening in the sidewalk, nearly in front of the window where
the two ladies were standing. After giving this signal the child drew
back; and in less than a minute the covers opened wide, and then an
elevator began to rise, bringing up a middle-aged man begrimed with oil
and coal-dust.
"Hello, dad," cried the child.
"Hello, kid!" he answered. "How's mother?"
"She's better," the girl answered. "Not so much pain."
"That's good," the man responded.
"An' the doctor's been, an' he says she's doin' fine," the child
continued. "Maybe she can get up for good next week."
"That'll be a sight for sore eyes, won't it, kid?" the father asked.
"What you got for me to-day?"
Minnie was listening, although she was apparently gazing intently at the
shop-window. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the child hand a tin
dinner-pail to the man who had risen from the depths below. Then she
heard the young voice particularize its contents.
"There's roast-beef sandwiches--I made 'em myself--and pie, apple pie--I
got that at the bakery--and coffee."
"Coffee, eh?" said the man. "That's what I want most of all. My throat's
all dried up with the dust. Guess I'd better begin on that now." He
opened the dinner-pail and took a long drink out of it. "That's pretty
good, that coffee. That went right to the spot!"
"I made it," the child explained, proudly.
"Did you now?" he answered. "Well, it's as good as your mother's." Then
a bell rang down below; he pulled on one of the chains and the elevator
began to go down slowly.
"So-long, kid," he called, as his head sank to the level of the
sidewalk.
"Good-by, dad," she answered, leaning forward; "come home as early as
you can. Mother'll be so glad to see you."
The child waited until the covers had again closed over her father, and
then she started away. Minnie Henryson turned and watched her as she
slipped across the avenue, avoiding the cars and the carts with the
skill born of long experience.
At last Mrs. Henryson tore herself away from the window with its
flamboyant head-gear. "No," she said, emphatically, "I don't believe
really they're going to be any smaller."
The daughter did not answer. She was thinking of the little domestic
episode she had just witnessed; and her sympathy went out to the sick
woman, laid up in some dark tenement and waiting through the long hours
for her husband's return. Her case was sad; and yet she had a husband
and a child and a home of her own; her life was fuller than the empty
existence of a girl who had nothing to do but to go shopping with her
mother and to gad about to teas, with now and then a dinner or a dance
or the theater. A home of her own and a husband!--what was a woman's
life without them? And so it was that what Minnie had just seen tied
itself at once into the subject of her thoughts as she walked silently
down the avenue by the side of her mother.
The trains rattled and ground on the Elevated almost over their heads;
the clouds scattered and a faint gleam of pale March sunshine at last
illumined the grayness of the day. The noon-hour rush was at its height,
and the sidewalks were often so thronged that mother and daughter were
separated for a moment as they tried to pick their way through the
crowd.
When they came to the huge department-store they were seeking, Mrs.
Henryson stood inside the vestibule as though deciding on her plan of
campaign.
"Minnie," she promulgated at last, "you had better try and match those
ribbons, and I'll go and pick out the rug for your father."
"Shall I wait for you at the ribbon-counter?" the daughter asked.
"Just sit down, and I'll come back as soon as I can. You look a little
tired this morning, anyhow."
"I'm not the least tired, I assure you--but I didn't sleep well last
night," she answered, as she went with her mother to the nearest
elevator.
When she was left alone, she had a little sigh of relief, as though she
was glad to be able to let her thoughts run where they would without
interruption. She walked slowly to the ribbon-counter in a far corner of
the store, unconscious of the persons upon whom her eyes rested. She was
thinking of herself and of her own future. She wondered whether that
future was then hanging in the balance.
She had early discovered that she was not very pretty, although her
mother was always telling her that she had a good figure; and she had
reached the age of twenty-two without having had any particular
attention from any man. She had begun to ask herself whether any man
ever would single her out and make her interested in him and implore her
to be his wife. And now in the past few months it seemed to her as if
this dream might come true. There was no doubt that Addison Wyngard had
been attentive all through the winter. Other girls had noticed it, too,
and had teased her about it. He had been her partner three times at the
dances of the Cotillion of One Hundred. And when some of the men of that
wide circle had got up the Thursday Theater Club, he had joined only
after he had found out that she was going to be a member. She recalled
that he had told her that he did not care for the theater, and that he
was so busy he felt he had no right to go out in the evening. The
managing clerk of a pushing law firm could not control his own time even
after office hours; and there had been one night when he was to be her
escort at the Theater Club a box of flowers had come at six o'clock,
with a note explaining that unexpected business forced him to break the
engagement. And the seat beside her had been vacant all the evening.
Even when she came to the ribbon-counter she did what she had to do
mechanically, with her thoughts ever straying from her duty of matching
widths and tints. Her mind kept escaping from the task in hand and
persisted in recalling the incidents of her intimacy with him.
After she had made her purchases she took a seat at the end of the
counter, which happened to be more or less deserted just then. Three
shop-girls, who had gathered to gossip during the noon lull in trade,
looked at her casually as she sat down, and then went on with their own
conversation, which was pitched in so shrill a key that she could not
help hearing it.
"She says to him, she says, 'Willy, I'll report you every time I catch
you, see?' and she's reported him three times this morning already. That
ain't what a real lady ought to do, I don't think."
"Who'd she report him to?" one of the other salesladies asked.
"Twice to Mr. Maguire. Once she reported him to Mr. Smith, and he didn't
take no notice. He just laughed. But Mr. Maguire, he talked to Willy
somethin' fierce. And you know Willy's got to stand it, for he's got
that cross old mother of his to keep; he has to get her four quarts of
paralyzed milk every day, Sundays too."