Success, A Novel

Ten days’ leeway before entering upon the new work.  To which of scores of crowding purposes could Banneker best put the time?  In his offhand way the instructive Mallory had suggested that he familiarize himself with the topography and travel-routes of the Island of Manhattan.  Indefatigably he set about doing this; wandering from water-front to water-front, invading tenements, eating at queer, Englishless restaurants, picking up chance acquaintance with chauffeurs, peddlers, street-fakers, park-bench loiterers; all that drifting and iridescent scum of life which variegates the surface above the depths.  Everywhere he was accepted without question, for his old experience on the hoof had given him the uncoded password which loosens the speech of furtive men and wise.  A receptivity, sensitized to a high degree by the inspiration of new adventure, absorbed these impressions.  The faithful pocket-ledger was filling rapidly with notes and phrases, brisk and trenchant, set down with no specific purpose; almost mechanically, in fact, but destined to future uses.  Mallory, himself no mean connoisseur of the tumultuous and flagrant city, would perhaps have found matter foreign to his expert apprehension could he have seen and translated the pages of 3 T 9901.

Banneker would go forward in the fascinating paths of exploration; but there were other considerations.

The outer man, for example.  The inner man, too; the conscious inner man strengthened upon the strong milk of the philosophers, the priests, and the prophets so strangely mingled in that library now stored with Camilla Van Arsdale; exhilarated by the honey-dew of “The Undying Voices,” of Keats and Shelley, and of Swinburne’s supernal rhythms, which he had brought with him.  One visit to the Public Library had quite appalled him; the vast, chill orderliness of it.  He had gone there, hungry to chat about books!  To the Public Library!  Surely a Homeric joke for grim, tomish officialdom.  But tomish officialdom had not even laughed at him; it was too official to appreciate the quality of such side-splitting innocence….  Was he likely to meet a like irresponsiveness when he should seek clothing for the body?

Watch the clubs, young Wickert had advised.  Banneker strolled up Fifth Avenue, branching off here and there, into the more promising side streets.

It was the hour of the First Thirst; the institutions which cater to this and subsequent thirsts drew steadily from the main stream of human activity flowing past.  Many gloriously clad specimens passed in and out of the portals, socially sacred as in the quiet Fifth Avenue clubs, profane as in the roaring, taxi-bordered “athletic” foundations; but there seemed to the anxious observer no keynote, no homogeneous character wherefrom to build as on a sure foundation.  Lacking knowledge, his instinct could find no starting-point; he was bewildered in vision and in mind.  Just off the corner of the quietest of the Forties, he met a group of four young men, walking compactly by twos.  The one nearest him in the second line was Herbert Cressey.  His heavy and rather dull eye seemed to meet Banneker’s as they came abreast.  Banneker nodded, half checking himself in his slow walk.

“How are you?” he said with an accent of surprise and pleasure.

Cressey’s expressionless face turned a little.  There was no response in kind to Banneker’s smile.

“Oh!  H’ware you!” said he vaguely, and passed on.

Banneker advanced mechanically until he reached the corner.  There he stopped.  His color had heightened.  The smile was still on his lips; it had altered, taken on a quality of gameness.  He did not shake his fist at the embodied spirit of metropolitanism before him, as had a famous Gallic precursor of his, also a determined seeker for Success in a lesser sphere; but he paraphrased Rastignac’s threat in his own terms.

“I reckon I’ll have to lick this town and lick it good before it learns to be friendly.”

A hand fell on his arm.  He turned to face Cressey.

“You’re the feller that bossed the wreck out there in the desert, aren’t you?  You’re—­lessee—­Banneker.”

“I am.”  The tone was curt.

“Awfully sorry I didn’t spot you at once.”  Cressey’s genuineness was a sufficient apology.  “I’m a little stuffy to-day.  Bachelor dinner last night.  What are you doing here?  Looking around?”

“No.  I’m living here.”

“That so?  So am I. Come into my club and let’s talk.  I’m glad to see you, Mr. Banneker.”

Even had Banneker been prone to self-consciousness, which he was not, the extreme, almost monastic plainness of the small, neutral-fronted building to which the other led him would have set him at ease.  It gave no inkling of its unique exclusiveness, and equally unique expensiveness.  As for Cressey, that simple, direct, and confident soul took not the smallest account of Banneker’s standardized clothing, which made him almost as conspicuous in that environment as if he had entered clad in a wooden packing-case.  Cressey’s creed in such matters was complete; any friend of his was good enough for any environment to which he might introduce him, and any other friend who took exceptions might go farther!

“Banzai!” said the cheerful host over his cocktail.  “Welcome to our city.  Hope you like it.”

“I do,” said Banneker, lifting his glass in response.

“Where are you living?”

“Grove Street.”

Cressey knit his brows.  “Where’s that?  Harlem?”

“No.  Over west of Sixth Avenue.”

“Queer kind of place to live, ain’t it?  There’s a corkin’ little suite vacant over at the Regalton.  Cheap at the money.  Oh!-er-I-er-maybe—­”

“Yes; that’s it,” smiled Banneker.  “The treasury isn’t up to bachelor suites, yet awhile.  I’ve only just got a job.”

“What is it?”

“Newspaper work.  The Morning Ledger.”

“Reporting?” A dubious expression clouded the candid cheerfulness of the other’s face.

“Yes.  What’s the matter with that?”

“Oh; I dunno.  It’s a piffling sort of job, ain’t it?”

“Piffling?  How do you mean?”

“Well, I supposed you had to ask a lot of questions and pry into other people’s business and—­and all that sorta thing.”

“If nobody asked questions,” pointed out Banneker, remembering Gardner’s resolute devotion to his professional ideals, “there wouldn’t be any news, would there?”

“Sure!  That’s right,” agreed the gilded youth.  “The Ledger’s the decentest paper in town, too.  It’s a gentleman’s paper.  I know a feller on it; Guy Mallory; was in my class at college.  Give you a letter to him if you like.”

Informed that Banneker already knew Mr. Mallory, his host expressed the hope of being useful to him in any other possible manner—­“any tips I can give you or anything of that sort, old chap?”—­so heartily that the newcomer broached the subject of clothes.

“Nothin’ easier,” was the ready response.  “I’ll take you right down to Mertoun.  Just one more and we’re off.”

The one more having been disposed of:  “What is it you want?” inquired Cressey, when they were settled in the taxi which was waiting at the club door for them.

“Well, what do I want?  You tell me.”

“How far do you want to go?  Will five hundred be too much?”

“No.”

Cressey lost himself in mental calculations out of which he presently delivered himself to this effect: 

“Evening clothes, of course.  And a dinner-jacket suit.  Two business suits, a light and a dark.  You won’t need a morning coat, I expect, for a while.  Anyway, we’ve got to save somethin’ out for shirts and boots, haven’t we?”

“I haven’t the money with me” remarked Banneker, his innocent mind on the cash-with-order policy of Sears-Roebuck.

“Now, see here,” said Cressey, good-humoredly, yet with an effect of authority.  “This is a game that’s got to be played according to the rules.  Why, if you put down spot cash before Mertoun’s eyes he’d faint from surprise, and when he came to, he’d have no respect for you.  And a tailor’s respect for you,” continued Cressey, the sage, “shows in your togs.”

“When do I pay, then?”

“Oh, in three or four months he sends around a bill.  That’s more of a reminder to come in and order your fall outfit than it is anything else.  But you can send him a check on account, if you feel like it.”

“A check?” repeated the neophyte blankly.  “Must I have a bank account?”

“Safer than a sock, my boy.  And just as simple.  To-morrow will do for that, when we call on the shirt-makers and the shoe sharps.  I’ll put you in my bank; they’ll take you on for five hundred.”

Arrived at Mertoun’s, Banneker unobtrusively but positively developed a taste of his own in the matter of hue and pattern; one, too, which commanded Cressey’s respect.  The gilded youth’s judgment tended toward the more pronounced herringbones and homespuns.

“All right for you, who can change seven days in the week; but I’ve got to live with these clothes, day in and day out,” argued Banneker.

To which Cressey deferred, though with a sigh.  “You could carry off those sporty things as if they were woven to order for you,” he declared.  “You’ve got the figure, the carriage, the—­the whatever-the-devil it is, for it.”

Prospectively poorer by something more than four hundred dollars, Banneker emerged from Mertoun’s with his mentor.

“Gotta get home and dress for a rotten dinner,” announced that gentleman cheerfully.  “Duck in here with me,” he invited, indicating a sumptuous bar, near the tailor’s, “and get another little kick in the stomach.  No?  Oh, verrawell.  Where are you for?”

“The Public Library.”

“Gawd!” said his companion, honestly shocked.  “That’s a gloomy hole, ain’t it?”

“Not so bad, when you get used to it.  I’ve been putting in three hours a day there lately.”

“Whatever for?”

“Oh, browsing.  Book-hungry, I suppose.  Carnegie hasn’t discovered Manzanita yet, you know; so I haven’t had many library opportunities.”

“Speaking of Manzanita,” remarked Cressey, and spoke of it, reminiscently and at length, as they walked along together.  “Did the lovely and mysterious I.O.W. ever turn up and report herself?”

Banneker’s breath caught painfully in his throat.

“D’you know who she was?” pursued the other, without pause for reply to his previous question; and still without intermission continued:  “Io Welland. That’s who she was.  Oh, but she’s a hummer!  I’ve met her since.  Married, you know.  Quick work, that marriage.  There was a dam’ queer story whispered around about her starting to elope with some other chap, and his going nearly batty because she didn’t turn up, and all the time she was wandering around in the desert until somebody picked her up and took care of her.  You ought to know something of that.  It was supposed to be right in your back-yard.”

“I?” said Banneker, commanding himself with an effort; “Miss Welland reported in with a slight injury.  That’s all.”

One glance at him told Cressey that Banneker did indeed “know something” of the mysterious disappearance which had so exercised a legion of busy tongues in New York; how much that something might be, he preserved for future and private speculation, based on the astounding perception that Banneker was in real pain of soul.  Tact inspired Cressey to say at once:  “Of course, that’s all you had to consider.  By the way, you haven’t seen my revered uncle since you got here, have you?”

“Mr. Vanney?  No.”

“Better drop in on him.”

“He might try to give me another yellow-back,” smiled the ex-agent.

“Don’t take Uncle Van for a fool.  Once is plenty for him to be hit on the nose.”

“Has he still got a green whisker?”

“Go and see.  He’s asked about you two or three times in the last coupla months.”

“But I’ve no errand with him.”

“How can you tell?  He might start something for you.  It isn’t often that he keeps a man in mind like he has you.  Anyway, he’s a wise old bird and may hand you a pointer or two about what’s what in New York.  Shall I ’phone him you’re in town?”

“Yes.  I’ll get in to see him some time to-morrow.”

Having made an appointment, in the vital matter of shirts and shoes, for the morning, they parted.  Banneker set to his browsing in the library until hunger drove him forth.  After dinner he returned to his room, cumbered with the accumulation of evening papers, for study.

Beyond the thin partition he could hear Miss Westlake moving about and humming happily to herself.  The sound struck dismay to his soul.  The prospect of work from him was doubtless the insecure foundation of that cheerfulness.  “Soon” he had said; the implication was that the matter was pressing.  Probably she was counting on it for the morrow.  Well, he must furnish something, anything, to feed the maw of her hungry typewriter; to fulfill that wistful hope which had sprung in her eyes when he spoke to her.

Sweeping his table bare of the lore and lure of journalism as typified in the bulky, black-faced editions, he set out clean paper, cleansed his fountain pen, and stared at the ceiling.  What should he write about?  His mental retina teemed with impressions.  But they were confused, unresolved, distorted for all that he knew, since he lacked experience and knowledge of the environment, and therefore perspective.  Groping, he recalled a saying of Gardner’s as that wearied enthusiast descanted upon the glories of past great names in metropolitan journalism.

“They used to say of Julian Ralph that he was always discovering City Hall Park and getting excited over it; and when he got excited enough, he wrote about it so that the public just ate it up.”

Well, he, Banneker, hadn’t discovered City Hall Park; not consciously.  But he had gleaned wonder and delight from other and more remote spots, and now one of them began to stand forth upon the blank ceiling at which he stared, seeking guidance.  A crowded corner of Essex Street, stewing in the hard sunshine.  The teeming, shrill crowd.  The stench and gleam of a fish-stall offering bargains.  The eager games of the children, snatched between onsets of imminent peril as cart or truck came whirling through and scattering the players.  Finally the episode of the trade fracas over the remains of a small and dubious weakfish, terminating when the dissatisfied customer cast the delicacy at the head of the stall-man and missed him, the corpus delicti falling into the gutter where it was at once appropriated and rapt away by an incredulous, delighted, and mangy cat.  A crude, commonplace, malodorous little street row, the sort of thing that happens, in varying phases, on a dozen East-Side corners seven days in the week.

Banneker approached and treated the matter from the viewpoint of the cat, predatory, philosophic, ecstatic.  One o’clock in the morning saw the final revision, for he had become enthralled with the handling of his subject.  It was only a scant five pages; less than a thousand words.  But as he wrote and rewrote, other schemata rose to the surface of his consciousness, and he made brief notes of them on random ends of paper; half a dozen of them, one crowding upon another.  Some day, perhaps, when there were enough of them, when he had become known, had achieved the distinction of a signature like Gardner, there might be a real series….  His vague expectancies were dimmed in weariness.

Such was the genesis of the “Local Vagrancies” which later were to set Park Row speculating upon the signature “Eban.”