Vistas of New York Part 4

"Yes," responded the young man. "Pat McCann has taken quite a s.h.i.+ne to 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 cla.s.smates 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 a.s.serted. "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 a.s.sociation 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sociating 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 a.s.sembly," 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 receivers.h.i.+p 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 a.s.serted. "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."