The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York

There are no words to tell the horror that swallowed me up. I turned ill; my reason stumbled on its feet. Anne led me from the room.

“The mark of the rope!” I gasped. “It is the mark of the rope!”

CHAPTER XXI – THE REVEREND BRONSON’S REBELLION

WHAT should it be? – this gallows-brand to show like a bruised ribbon of evil about the throat of Blossom! Anne gave me the story of it. It was a birthmark; that hangman fear which smote upon the mother when, for the death of Jimmy the Blacksmith, I was thrown into a murderer’s cell, had left its hideous trace upon the child. In Blossom’s infancy and in her earliest childhood, the mark had lain hidden beneath the skin as seeds lie buried and dormant in the ground. Slowly, yet no less surely, the inveterate years had quickened it and brought it to the surface; it had grown and never stopped – this mark! and with each year it took on added sullenness. The best word that Anne could give me was that it would so continue in its ugly multiplication until the day of Blossom’s death. There could be no escape; no curing change, by any argument of medicine or surgery, was to be brought about; there it glared and there it would remain, a mark to shrink from! to the horrid last. And by that token, my plans of a drawing room for Blossom found annihilation. Anne had said the truth; those dreams that my girl should shine, starlike, in the firmament of high society, must be put away.

It will have a trivial sound, and perchance be scoffed at, when I say that for myself, personally, I remember no blacker disappointment than that which overtook me as I realized how there could come none of those triumphs of chandeliers and floors of wax. Now as I examine myself, I can tell that not a little of this was due to my own vanity, and a secret wish I cherished to see my child the equal of the first.

And if it were so, why should I be shamed? Might I not claim integrity for a pride which would have found its account in such advancement? I had been a ragged boy about the streets. I had grown up ignorant; I had climbed, if climbing be the word, unaided of any pedigree or any pocketbook, into a place of riches and autocratic sway. Wherefore, to have surrounded my daughter with the children of ones who had owned those advantages which I missed – folk of the purple, all! – and they to accept her, would have been a victory, and to do me honor. I shall not ask the pardon of men because I longed for it; nor do I scruple to confess the blow my hopes received when I learned how those ambitions would never find a crown.

Following my sight of that gallows mark, I sat for a long time collecting myself. It was a dreadful thing to think upon; the more, since it seemed to me that Blossom suffered in my stead. It was as if that halter, which I defeated, had taken my child for a revenge.

“What can we do?” said I, at last.

I spoke more from an instinct of conversation, and because I would have the company of Anne’s sympathy, than with the thought of being answered to any purpose. I was set aback, therefore, by her reply.

“Let Blossom take the veil,” said Anne. “A convent, and the good work of it, would give her peace.”

At that, I started resentfully. To one of my activity, I, who needed the world about me every moment – struggling, contending, succeeding – there could have come no word more hateful. The cell of a nun! It was as though Anne advised a refuge in the grave. I said as much, and with no special choice of phrases.

“Because Heaven in its injustice,” I cried, “has destroyed half her life, she is to make it a meek gift of the balance? Never, while I live! Blossom shall stay by me; I will make her happy in the teeth of Heaven!” Thus did I hurl my impious challenge. What was to be the return, and the tempest it drew upon poor Blossom, I shall unfold before I am done. I have a worm of conscience whose slow mouth gnaws my nature, and you may name it superstition if you choose. And by that I know, when now I sit here, lonesome save for my gold, and with no converse better than the yellow mocking leer of it, that it was this, my blasphemy, which wrought in Heaven’s retort the whole of that misery which descended to dog my girl and drag her down. How else shall I explain that double darkness which swallowed up her innocence? It was the bolt of punishment, which those skies I had outraged, aimed at me.

Back to my labors of politics I went, with a fiercer heat than ever. My life, begun in politics, must end in politics. Still, there was a mighty change. I was not to look upon that strangling mark and escape the scar of it. I settled to a savage melancholy; I saw no pleasant moment. Constantly I ran before the hound-pack of my own thoughts, a fugitive, flying from myself.

Also, there came the signs visible, and my hair was to turn and lose its color, until within a year it went as white as milk. Men, in the idleness of their curiosity, would notice this, and ask the cause. They were not to know; nor did Blossom ever learn how, led by Anne, I had crept upon her secret. It was a sorrow without a door, that sorrow of the hangman’s mark; and because we may not remedy it, we will leave it, never again to be referred to until it raps for notice of its own black will.

The death of the Widow Van Flange did not remove from before me the question of young Van Flange and his degenerate destinies. The Reverend Bronson took up the business where it fell from the nerveless fingers of his mother on that day she died.

“Not that I believe he can be saved,” observed the Reverend Bronson; “for if I am to judge, the boy is already lost beyond recall. But there is such goods as a pious vengeance – an anger of righteousness! – and I find it in my heart to destroy with the law, those rogues who against the law destroy others. That Barclay Street nest of adders must be burned out; and I come to you for the fire.”

In a sober, set-faced way, I was amused by the dominie’s extravagance. And yet I felt a call to be on my guard with him. Suppose he were to dislodge a stone which in its rolling should crash into and crush the plans of the machine! The town had been lost before, and oftener than once, as the result of beginnings no more grave. Aside from my liking for the good man, I was warned by the perils of my place to speak him softly.

“Well,” said I, trying for a humorous complexion, “if you are bound for a wrestle with those blacklegs, I will see that you have fair play.”

“If that be true,” returned the Reverend Bronson, promptly, “give me Inspector McCue.”

“And why Inspector McCue?” I asked. The suggestion had its baffling side. Inspector McCue was that honest one urged long ago upon Big Kennedy by Father Considine. I did not know Inspector McCue; there might lurk danger in the man. “Why McCue?” I repeated. “The business of arresting gamblers belongs more with the uniformed police. Gothecore is your proper officer.”

“Gothecore is not an honest man,” said the Reverend Bronson, with sententious frankness. “McCue, on the other hand, is an oasis in the Sahara of the police. He can be trusted. If you support him he will collect the facts and enforce the law.”

“Very well,” said I, “you shall take McCue. I have no official control in the matter, being but a private man like yourself. But I will speak to the Chief of Police, and doubtless he will grant my request.”

“There is, at least, reason to think so,” retorted the Reverend Bronson in a dry tone.

Before I went about an order to send Inspector McCue to the Reverend Bronson, I resolved to ask a question concerning him. Gothecore should be a well-head of information on that point; I would send for Gothecore. Also it might be wise to let him hear what was afoot for his precinct. He would need to be upon his defense, and to put others interested upon theirs.

Melting Moses, who still stood warder at my portals, I dispatched upon some errand. The sight of Gothecore would set him mad. I felt sorrow rather than affection for Melting Moses. There was something unsettled and mentally askew with the boy. He was queer of feature, with the twisted fantastic face one sees carved on the far end of a fiddle. Commonly, he was light of heart, and his laugh would have been comic had it not been for a note of the weird which rang in it. I had not asked him, on the day when he went backing for a spring at the throat of Gothecore, the reason of his hate. His exclamation, “He killed me mudder!” told the story. Besides, I could have done no good. Melting Moses would have given me no reply. The boy, true to his faith of Cherry Hill, would fight out his feuds for himself; he would accept no one’s help, and regarded the term “squealer” as an epithet of measureless disgrace.

When Gothecore came in, I caught him at the first of it glowering furtively about, as though seeking someone.

“Where is that Melting Moses?” he inquired, when he saw how I observed him to be searching the place with his eye.

“And why?” said I.

“I thought I’d look him over, if you didn’t mind. I can’t move about my precinct of nights but he’s behind me, playin’ th’ shadow. I want to know why he pipes me off, an’ who sets him to it.”

“Well then,” said I, a bit impatiently, “I should have thought a full-grown Captain of Police was above fearing a boy.”

Without giving Gothecore further opening, I told him the story of the Reverend Bronson, and that campaign of purity he would be about.

“And as to young Van Flange,” said I. “Does he still lose his money in Barclay Street?”

“They’ve cleaned him up,” returned Gothecore. “Billy Van Flange is gone, hook, line, and sinker. He’s on his uppers, goin’ about panhandlin’ old chums for a five-dollar bill.”

“They made quick work of him,” was my comment.

“He would have it,” said Gothecore. “When his mother died th’ boy got his bridle off. Th’ property – about two hundred thousand dollars – was in paper an’ th’ way he turned it into money didn’t bother him a bit. He came into Barclay Street, simply padded with th’ long green – one-thousand-dollar bills, an’ all that – an’ them gams took it off him so fast he caught cold. He’s dead broke; th’ only difference between him an’ a hobo, right now, is a trunk full of clothes.”

“The Reverend Bronson,” said I, “has asked for Inspector McCue. What sort of a man is McCue?” Gothecore wrinkled his face into an expression of profound disgust.

“Who’s McCue?” he repeated. “He’s one of them mugwump pets. He makes a bluff about bein’ honest, too, does McCue. I think he’d join a church, if he took a notion it would stiffen his pull.”

“But is he a man of strength? Can he make trouble?”

“Trouble?” This with contempt. “When it comes to makin’ trouble, he’s a false alarm.”

“Well,” said I, in conclusion, “McCue and the dominie are going into your precinct.”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” returned Gothecore, his face clouding up, “I think it’s that same Reverend Bronson who gives Melting Moses th’ office to dog me. I’ll put Mr. Whitechoker onto my opinion of th’ racket, one of these days.”

“You’d better keep your muzzle on,” I retorted. “Your mouth will get you into trouble yet.”

Gothecore went away grumbling, and much disposed to call himself ill-used.

During the next few days I was to receive frequent visits from the Reverend Bronson. His mission was to enlist me in his crusade against the gamblers. I put him aside on that point.

“You should remember,” said I, as pleasantly as I well could, “that I am a politician, not a policeman. I shall think of my party, and engage in no unusual moral exploits of the sort you suggest. The town doesn’t want it done.”

“The question,” responded the Reverend Bronson warmly, “is one of law and morality, and not of the town’s desires. You say you are a politician, and not a policeman. If it comes to that, I am a preacher, and not a policeman. Still, I no less esteem it my duty to interfere for right. I see no difference between your position and my own.”

“But I do. To raid gamblers, and to denounce them, make for your success in your profession. With me, it would be all the other way. It is quite easy for you to adopt the path you do. Now I am not so fortunately placed.”

“You are the head of Tammany Hall,” said the Reverend Bronson solemnly. “It is a position which loads you with responsibility, since your power for good or bad in the town is absolute. You have but to point your finger at those gambling dens, and they would wither from the earth.”

“Now you do me too much compliment,” said I. “The Chief of Tammany is a much weaker man than you think. Moreover, I shall not regard myself as responsible for the morals of the town.”

“Take young Van Flange,” went on the Reverend Bronson, disregarding my remark. “They’ve ruined the boy; and you might have saved him.”