“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.”
“And there you are mistaken,” I replied. “But if it were so, why should I be held for his ruin? 'I am not my brother's keeper.'”
“And so Cain said,” responded the Reverend Bronson. Then, as he was departing: “I do not blame you too much, for I can see that you are the slave of your position. But do not shield yourself with the word that you are not your brother's keeper. You may be made grievously to feel that your brother's welfare is your welfare, and that in his destruction your own destruction is also to be found.”
Men have rallied me as superstitious, and it may be that some grains of truth lie buried in that charge. Sure it is, that this last from the Reverend Bronson was not without its uncomfortable effect. It pressed upon me in a manner vaguely dark, and when he was gone, I caught myself regretting the “cleaning up,” as Gothecore expressed it, of the dissolute young Van Flange.
And yet, why should one feel sympathy for him who, by his resolute viciousness, struck down his own mother? If ever rascal deserved ruin, it was he who had destroyed the hopes of one who loved him before all! The more I considered, the less tender for the young Van Flange I grew. And as to his destruction carrying personal scathe for me, it might indeed do, as a flourish of the pulpit, to say so, but it was a thought too far fetched, as either a warning or a prophecy, to justify one in transacting by its light his own existence, or the affairs of a great organization of politics. The end of it was that I smiled over a weakness that permitted me to be disturbed by mournful forebodes, born of those accusing preachments of the Reverend Bronson.
For all that my reverend mentor was right; the sequel proved how those flames which licked up young Van Flange were to set consuming fire to my own last hope.
It would seem that young Van Flange, as a topic, was in everybody's mouth. Morton, having traction occasion for calling on me, began to talk of him at once.