Success, A Novel

Dust was the conspicuous attribute of the place.  It lay, flat and toneless, upon the desk, the chairs, the floor; it streaked the walls.  The semi-consumptive office “boy’s” middle-aged shoulders collected it.  It stirred in the wake of quiet-moving men, mostly under thirty-five, who entered the outer door, passed through the waiting-room, and disappeared behind a partition.  Banneker felt like shaking himself lest he should be eventually buried under its impalpable sifting.  Two hours and a half had passed since he had sent in his name on a slip of paper, to Mr. Gordon, managing editor of the paper.  On the way across Park Row he had all but been persuaded by a lightning printer on the curb to have a dozen tasty and elegant visiting-cards struck off, for a quarter; but some vague inhibition of good taste checked him.  Now he wondered if a card would have served better.

While he waited, he checked up the actuality of a metropolitan newspaper entrance-room, as contrasted with his notion of it, derived from motion pictures.  Here was none of the bustle and hurry of the screen.  No brisk and earnest young figures with tense eyes and protruding notebooks darted feverishly in and out; nor, in the course of his long wait, had he seen so much as one specimen of that invariable concomitant of all screen journalism, the long-haired poet with his flowing tie and neatly ribboned manuscript.  Even the office “boy,” lethargic, neutrally polite, busy writing on half-sheets of paper, was profoundly untrue to the pictured type.  Banneker wondered what the managing editor would be like; would almost, in the wreckage of his preconceived notions, have accepted a woman or a priest in that manifestation, when Mr. Gordon appeared and was addressed by name by the hollow-chested Cerberus.  Banneker at once echoed the name, rising.

The managing editor, a tall, heavy man, whose smoothly fitting cutaway coat seemed miraculously to have escaped the plague of dust, stared at him above heavy glasses.

“You want to see me?”

“Yes.  I sent in my name.”

“Did you?  When?”

“At two-forty-seven, thirty,” replied the visitor with railroad accuracy.

The look above the lowered glasses became slightly quizzical.  “You’re exact, at least.  Patient, too.  Good qualities for a newspaper man.  That’s what you are?”

“What I’m going to be,” amended Banneker.

“There is no opening here at present.”

“That’s formula, isn’t it?” asked the young man, smiling.

The other stared.  “It is.  But how do you know?”

“It’s the tone, I suppose.  I’ve had to use it a good deal myself, in railroading.”

“Observant, as well as exact and patient.  Come in.  I’m sorry I misplaced your card.  The name is—?”

“Banneker, E. Banneker.”

Following the editor, he passed through a large, low-ceilinged room, filled with desk-tables, each bearing a heavy crystal ink-well full of a fluid of particularly virulent purple.  A short figure, impassive as a Mongol, sat at a corner desk, gazing out over City Hall Park with a rapt gaze.  Across from him a curiously trim and graceful man, with a strong touch of the Hibernian in his elongated jaw and humorous gray eyes, clipped the early evening editions with an effect of highly judicious selection.  Only one person sat in all the long files of the work-tables, littered with copy-paper and disarranged newspapers; a dark young giant with the discouraged and hurt look of a boy kept in after school.  All this Banneker took in while the managing editor was disposing, usually with a single penciled word or number, of a sheaf of telegraphic “queries” left upon his desk.  Having finished, he swiveled in his chair, to face Banneker, and, as he spoke, kept bouncing the thin point of a letter-opener from the knuckles of his left hand.  His hands were fat and nervous.

“So you want to do newspaper work?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I think I can make a go of it.”

“Any experience?”

“None to speak of.  I’ve written a few things.  I thought you might remember my name.”

“Your name?  Banneker?  No.  Why should I?”

“You published some of my things in the Sunday edition, lately.  From Manzanita, California.”

“No.  I don’t think so.  Mr. Homans.”  A graying man with the gait of a marionnette and the precise expression of a rocking-horse, who had just entered, crossed over.  “Have we sent out any checks to a Mr. Banneker recently, in California?”

The new arrival, who was copy-reader and editorial selecter for the Sunday edition, repeated the name in just such a wooden voice as was to be expected.  “No,” he said positively.

“But I’ve cashed the checks,” returned Banneker, annoyed and bewildered.  “And I’ve seen the clipping of the article in the Sunday Sphere of—­”

“Just a moment.  You’re not in The Sphere office.  Did you think you were?  Some one has directed you wrong.  This is The Ledger.”

“Oh!” said Banneker.  “It was a policeman that pointed it out.  I suppose I saw wrong.”  He paused; then looked up ingenuously.  “But, anyway, I’d rather be on The Ledger.”

Mr. Gordon smiled broadly, the thin blade poised over a plump, reddened knuckle.

“Would you!  Now, why?”

“I’ve been reading it.  I like the way it does things.”

The editor laughed outright.  “If you didn’t look so honest, I would think that somebody of experience had been tutoring you.  How many other places have you tried?”

“None.”

“You were going to The Sphere first?  On the promise of a job?”

“No.  Because they printed what I wrote.”

“The Sphere’s ways are not our ways,” pronounced Mr. Gordon primly.  “It’s a fundamental difference in standards.”

“I can see that.”

“Oh, you can, can you?” chuckled the other.  “But it’s true that we have no opening here.”

(The Ledger never did have an “opening”; but it managed to wedge in a goodly number of neophytes, from year to year, ninety per cent of whom were automatically and courteously ejected after due trial.  Mr. Gordon performed a surpassing rataplan upon his long-suffering thumb-joint and wondered if this queer and direct being might qualify among the redeemable ten per cent.)

“I can wait.” (They often said that.) “For a while,” added the youth thoughtfully.

“How long have you been in New York?”

“Thirty-three days.”

“And what have you been doing?”

“Reading newspapers.”

“No!  Reading—­That’s rather surprising.  All of them?”

“All that I could manage.”

“Some were so bad that you couldn’t worry through them, eh?” asked the other with appreciation.

“Not that.  But I didn’t know the foreign languages except French, and Spanish, and a little Italian.”

“The foreign-language press, too.  Remarkable!” murmured the other.  “Do you mind telling me what your idea was?”

“It was simple enough.  As I wanted to get on a newspaper, I thought I ought to find out what newspapers were made of.”

“Simple, as you say.  Beautifully simple!  So you’ve devised for yourself the little job of perfecting yourself in every department of journalism; politics, finances, criminal, sports, society; all of them, eh?”

“No; not all,” replied Banneker.

“Not?  What have you left out?”

“Society news” was the answer, delivered less promptly than the other replies.

Bestowing a twinkle of mingled amusement and conjecture upon the applicant’s clothing, Mr. Gordon said: 

“You don’t approve of our social records?  Or you’re not interested?  Or why is it that you neglect this popular branch?”

“Personal reasons.”

This reply, which took the managing editor somewhat aback, was accurate if not explanatory.  Miss Van Arsdale’s commentaries upon Gardner and his quest had inspired Banneker with a contemptuous distaste for this type of journalism.  But chiefly he had shunned the society columns from dread of finding there some mention of her who had been Io Welland.  He was resolved to conquer and evict that memory; he would not consciously put himself in the way of anything that recalled it.

“Hum!  And this notion of making an intensive study of the papers; was that original with you?”

“Well, no, not entirely.  I got it from a man who made himself a bank president in seven years.”

“Yes?  How did he do that?”

“He started by reading everything he could find about money and coinage and stocks and bonds and other financial paper.  He told me that it was incredible the things that financial experts didn’t know about their own business—­the deep-down things—­and that he guessed it was so with any business.  He got on top by really knowing the things that everybody was supposed to know.”

“A sound theory, I dare say.  Most financiers aren’t so revealing.”

“He and I were padding the hoof together.  We were both hoboes then.”

The managing editor looked up, alert, from his knuckle-tapping.  “From bank president to hobo.  Was his bank an important one?”

“The biggest in a medium-sized city.”

“And does that suggest nothing to you, as a prospective newspaper man?”

“What?  Write him up?”

“It would make a fairly sensational story.”

“I couldn’t do that.  He was my friend.  He wouldn’t like it.”

Mr. Gordon addressed his wedding-ring finger which was looking a bit scarified.  “Such an article as that, properly done, would go a long way toward getting you a chance on this paper—­Sit down, Mr. Banneker.”

“You and I,” said Banneker slowly and in the manner of the West, “can’t deal.”

“Yes, we can.”  The managing editor threw his steel blade on the desk.  “Sit down, I tell you.  And understand this.  If you come on this paper—­I’m going to turn you over to Mr. Greenough, the city editor, with a request that he give you a trial—­you’ll be expected to subordinate every personal interest and advantage to the interests and advantages of the paper, except your sense of honor and fair-play.  We don’t ask you to give that up; and if you do give it up, we don’t want you at all.  What have you done besides be a hobo?”

“Railroading.  Station-agent.”

“Where were you educated?”

“Nowhere.  Wherever I could pick it up.”

“Which means everywhere.  Ever read George Borrow?”

“Yes.”

The heavy face of Mr. Gordon lighted up.  “Ree-markable!  Keep on.  He’s a good offset to—­to the daily papers.  Writing still counts, on The Ledger.  Come over and meet Mr. Greenough.”

The city editor unobtrusively studied Banneker out of placid, inscrutable eyes, soft as a dove’s, while he chatted at large about theaters, politics, the news of the day.  Afterward the applicant met the Celtic assistant, Mr. Mallory, who broadly outlined for him the technique of the office.  With no further preliminaries Banneker found himself employed at fifteen dollars a week, with Monday for his day off and directions to report on the first of the month.

As the day-desk staff was about departing at six o’clock, Mr. Gordon sauntered over to the city desk looking mildly apologetic.

“I practically had to take that young desert antelope on,” said he.

“Too ingenuous to turn down,” surmised the city editor.

“Ingenuous!  He’s heir to the wisdom of the ages.  And now I’m afraid I’ve made a ghastly mistake.”

“Something wrong with him?”

“I’ve had his stuff in the Sunday Sphere looked up.”

“Pretty weird?” put in Mallory, gliding into his beautifully fitting overcoat.

“So damned good that I don’t see how The Sphere ever came to take it.  Greenough, you’ll have to find some pretext for firing that young phenomenon as soon as possible.”

Perfectly comprehending his superior’s mode of indirect expression the city editor replied: 

“You think so highly of him as that?”

“Not one of our jobs will be safe from him if he once gets his foot planted,” prophesied the other with mock ruefulness.  “Do you know,” he added, “I never even asked him for a reference.”

“You don’t need to,” pronounced Mallory, shaking the last wrinkle out of himself and lighting the cigarette of departure.  “He’s got it in his face, if I’m any judge.”

Highly elate, Banneker walked on springy pavements all the way to Grove Street.  Fifteen a week!  He could live on that.  His other income and savings could be devoted to carrying out Miss Camilla’s advice.  For he need not save any more.  He would go ahead, fast, now that he had got his start.  How easy it had been.

Entering the Brashear door, he met plain, middle-aged little Miss Westlake.  A muffler was pressed to her jaw.  He recalled having heard her moving about her room, the cheapest and least desirable in the house, and groaning softly late in the night; also having heard some lodgers say that she was a typist with very little work.  Obviously she needed a dentist, and presumably she had not the money to pay his fee.  In the exultation of his good luck, Banneker felt a stir of helpfulness toward this helpless person.

“Oh!” said he.  “How do you do!  Could you find time to do some typing for me quite soon?”

It was said impulsively and was followed by a surge of dismay.  Typing?  Type what?  He had absolutely nothing on hand!

Well, he must get up something.  At once.  It would never do to disappoint that pathetic and eager hope, as of a last-moment rescue, expressed in the little spinster’s quick flush and breathless, thankful affirmative.