Success, A Novel

Sound though Mr. Gordon’s suggestion was, Banneker after the interview did not go home to think it over.  He went to a telephone booth and called up the Avon Theater.  Was the curtain down?  It was, just.  Could he speak to Miss Raleigh?  The affair was managed.

“Hello, Bettina.”

“Hello, Ban.”

“How nearly dressed are you?”

“Oh—­half an hour or so.”

“Go out for a bite, if I come up there?”

The telephone receiver gave a transferred effect of conscientious consideration.  “No:  I don’t think so.  I’m tired.  This is my night for sleep.”

To such a basis had the two young people come in the course of the police investigation and afterward, that an agreement had been formulated whereby Banneker was privileged to call up the youthful star at any reasonable hour and for any reasonable project, which she might accept or reject without the burden of excuse.

“Oh, all right!” returned Banneker amiably.

The receiver produced, in some occult manner, the manner of not being precisely pleased with this.  “You don’t seem much disappointed,” it said.

“I’m stricken but philosophical.  Don’t you see me, pierced to the heart, but—­”

“Ban,” interrupted the instrument:  “you’re flippant.  Have you been drinking?”

“No.  Nor eating either, now that you remind me.”

“Has something happened?”

“Something is always happening in this restless world.”

“It has.  And you want to tell me about it.”

“No.  I just want to forget it, in your company.”

“Is it a decent night out?”

“Most respectable.”

“Then you may come and walk me home.  I think the air will do me good.”

“It’s very light diet, though,” observed Banneker.

“Oh, very well,” responded the telephone in tones of patient resignation.  “I’ll watch you eat.  Good-bye.”

Seated at a quiet table in the restaurant, Betty Raleigh leaned back in her chair, turning expectant eyes upon her companion.

“Now tell your aged maiden auntie all about it.”

“Did I say I was going to tell you about it?”

“You said you weren’t.  Therefore I wish to know.”

“I think I’m fired.”

“Fired?  From The Ledger?  Do you care?”

“For the loss of the job?  Not a hoot.  Otherwise I wouldn’t be going to fire myself.”

“Oh:  that’s it, is it?”

“Yes.  You see, it’s a question of my doing my work my way or The Ledger’s way.  I prefer my way.”

“And The Ledger prefers its way, I suppose.  That’s because what you call your work, The Ledger considers its work.”

“In other words, as a working entity, I belong to The Ledger.”

“Well, don’t you?”

“It isn’t a flattering thought.  And if the paper wants me to falsify or suppress or distort, I have to do it.  Is that the idea?”

“Unless you’re big enough not to.”

“Being big enough means getting out, doesn’t it?”

“Or making yourself so indispensable that you can do things your own way.”

“You’re a wise child, Betty,” said he.  “What do you really think of the newspaper business?”

“It’s a rotten business.”

“That’s frank, anyway.”

“Now I’ve hurt your feelings.  Haven’t I?”

“Not a bit.  Roused my curiosity:  that’s all.  Why do you think it a rotten business?”

“It’s so—­so mean.  It’s petty.”

“As for example?” he pressed.

“See what Gurney did to me—­to the play,” she replied naively.  “Just to be smart.”

“Whew!  Talk about the feminine propensity for proving a generalization by a specific instance!  Gurney is an old man reared in an old tradition.  He isn’t metropolitan journalism.”

“He’s dramatic criticism,” she retorted.

“No.  Only one phase of it.”

“Anyway, a successful phase.”

“He wants to produce his little sensation,” ruminated Banneker, recalling Edmonds’s bitter diagnosis.  “He does it by being clever.  There are worse ways, I suppose.”

“He’d always rather say a clever thing than a true one.”

Banneker gave her a quick look.  “Is that the disease from which the newspaper business is suffering?”

“I suppose so.  Anyway, it’s no good for you, Ban, if it won’t let you be yourself.  And write as you think.  This isn’t new to me.  I’ve known newspaper men before, a lot of them, and all kinds.”

“Weren’t any of them honest?”

“Lots.  But very few of them independent.  They can’t be.  Not even the owners, though they think they are.”

“I’d like to try that.”

“You’d only have a hundred thousand bosses instead of one,” said she wisely.

“You’re talking about the public.  They’re your bosses, too, aren’t they?”

“Oh, I’m only a woman.  It doesn’t matter.  Besides, they’re not.  I lead ’em by the ear—­the big, red, floppy ear.  Poor dears!  They think I love ’em all.”

“Whereas what you really love is the power within yourself to please them.  You call it art, I suppose.”

“Ban!  What a repulsive way to put it.  You’re revenging yourself for what I said about the newspapers.”

“Not exactly.  I’m drawing the deadly parallel.”

She drew down her pretty brows in thought.  “I see.  But, at worst, I’m interpreting in my own way.  Not somebody else’s.”

“Not your author’s?”

“Certainly not,” she returned mutinously.  “I know how to put a line over better than he possibly could.  That’s my business.”

“I’d hate to write a play for you, Bettina.”

“Try it,” she challenged.  “But don’t try to teach me how to play it after it’s written.”

“I begin to see the effect of the bill-board’s printing the star’s name in letters two feet high and the playwright’s in one-inch type.”

“The newspapers don’t print yours at all, do they?  Unless you shoot some one,” she added maliciously.

“True enough.  But I don’t think I’d shine as a playwright.”

“What will you do, then, if you fire yourself?”

“Fiction, perhaps.  It’s slow but glorious, I understand.  When I’m starving in a garret, awaiting fame with the pious and cocksure confidence of genius, will you guarantee to invite me to a square meal once a fortnight?  Think what it would give me to look forward to!”

She was looking him in the face with an expression of frank curiosity.  “Ban, does money never trouble you?”

“Not very much,” he confessed.  “It comes somehow and goes every way.”

“You give the effect of spending it with graceful ease.  Have you got much?”

“A little dribble of an income of my own.  I make, I suppose, about a quarter of what your salary is.”

“One doesn’t readily imagine you ever being scrimped.  You give the effect of pros—­no, not of prosperity; of—­well—­absolute ease.  It’s quite different.”

“Much nicer.”

“Do you know what they call you, around town?”

“Didn’t know I had attained the pinnacle of being called anything, around town.”

“They call you the best-dressed first-nighter in New York.”

“Oh, damn!” said Banneker fervently.

“That’s fame, though.  I know plenty of men who would give half of their remaining hairs for it.”

“I don’t need the hairs, but they can have it.”

“Then, too, you know, I’m an asset.”

“An asset?”

“Yes.  To you, I mean.”  She pursed her fingers upon the tip of her firm little chin and leaned forward.  “Our being seen so much together.  Of course, that’s a brashly shameless thing to say.  But I never have to wear a mask for you.  In that way you’re a comfortable person.”

“You do have to furnish a diagram, though.”

“Yes?  You’re not usually stupid.  Whether you try for it or not—­and I think there’s a dash of the theatrical in your make-up—­you’re a picturesque sort of animal.  And I—­well, I help out the picture; make you the more conspicuous.  It isn’t your good looks alone—­you’re handsome as the devil, you know, Ban,” she twinkled at him—­“nor the super-tailored effect which you pretend to despise, nor your fame as a gun-man, though that helps a lot….  I’ll give you a bit of tea-talk:  two flappers at The Plaza.  ’Who’s that wonderful-looking man over by the palm?’—­’Don’t you know him?  Why, that’s Mr. Banneker.’—­’Who’s he; and what does he do?  Have I seen him on the stage?’—­’No, indeed!  I don’t know what he does; but he’s an ex-ranchman and he held off a gang of river-pirates on a yacht, all alone, and killed eight or ten of them.  Doesn’t he look it!’”

“I don’t go to afternoon teas,” said the subject of this sprightly sketch, sulkily.

“You will!  If you don’t look out.  Now the same scene several years hence.  Same flapper, answering same question:  ’Who’s Banneker?  Oh, a reporter or something, on one of the papers.’ Et voila tout!”

“Suppose you were with me at the Plaza, as an asset, several years hence?”

“I shouldn’t be—­several years hence.”

Banneker smiled radiantly.  “Which I am to take as fair warning that, unless I rise above my present lowly estate, that waxing young star, Miss Raleigh, will no longer—­”

“Ban!  What right have you to think me a wretched little snob?”

“None in the world.  It’s I that am the snob, for even thinking about it.  Just the same, what you said about ‘only a reporter or something’ struck in.”

“But in a few years from now you won’t be a reporter.”

“Shall I still be privileged to invite Miss Raleigh to supper—­or was it tea?”

“You’re still angry.  That isn’t fair of you when I’m being so frank.  I’m going to be even franker.  I’m feeling that way to-night.  Comes of being tired, I suppose.  Relaxing of the what-you-callems of inhibition.  Do you know there’s a lot of gossip about us, back of stage?”

“Is there?  Do you mind it?”

“No.  It doesn’t matter.  They think I’m crazy about you.”  Her clear, steady eyes did not change expression or direction.

“You’re not; are you?”

“No; I’m not.  That’s the strange part of it.”

“Thanks for the flattering implication.  But you couldn’t take any serious interest in a mere reporter, could you?” he said wickedly.

This time Betty laughed.  “Couldn’t I!  I could take serious interest in a tumblebug, at times.  Other times I wouldn’t care if the whole race of men were extinct—­and that’s most times.  I feel your charm.  And I like to be with you.  You rest me.  You’re an asset, too, in a way, Ban; because you’re never seen with any woman.  You’re supposed not to care for them….  You’ve never tried to make love to me even the least little bit, Ban.  I wonder why.”

“That sounds like an invitation, but—­”

“But you know it isn’t.  That’s the delightful part of you; you do know things like that.”

“Also I know better than to risk my peace of mind.”

“Don’t lie to me, my dear,” she said softly.  “There’s some one else.”

He made no reply.

“You see, you don’t deny it.”  Had he denied it, she would have said:  “Of course you’d deny it!” the methods of feminine detective logic being so devised.

“No; I don’t deny it.”

“But you don’t want to talk about her.”

“No.”

“It’s as bad as that?” she commiserated gently.  “Poor Ban!  But you’re young.  You’ll get over it.”  Her brooding eyes suddenly widened.  “Or perhaps you won’t,” she amended with deeper perceptiveness.  “Have you been trying me as an anodyne?” she demanded sternly.

Banneker had the grace to blush.  Instantly she rippled into laughter.

“I’ve never seen you at a loss before.  You look as sheepish as a stage-door Johnnie when his inamorata gets into the other fellow’s car.  Ban, you never hung about stage-doors, did you?  I think it would be good for you; tame your proud spirit and all that.  Why don’t you write one of your ‘Eban’ sketches on John H. Stage-Door?”

“I’ll do better than that.  Give me of your wisdom on the subject and I’ll write an interview with you for Tittle-Tattle.”

“Do!  And make me awfully clever, please.  Our press-agent hasn’t put anything over for weeks.  He’s got a starving wife and seven drunken children, or something like that, and, as he’ll take all the credit for the interview and even claim that he wrote it unless you sign it, perhaps it’ll get him a raise and he can then buy the girl who plays the manicure part a bunch of orchids. He’d have been a stage-door Johnnie if he hadn’t stubbed his toe and become a press-agent.”

“All right,” said Banneker.  “Now:  I’ll ask the stupid questions and you give the cutie answers.”

It was two o’clock when Miss Betty Raleigh, having seen the gist of all her witty and profound observations upon a strange species embodied in three or four scrawled notes on the back of a menu, rose and observed that, whereas acting was her favorite pastime, her real and serious business was sleep.  At her door she held her face up to him as straightforwardly as a child.  “Good luck to you, dear boy,” she said softly.  “If I ever were a fortune-teller, I would say that your star was for happiness and success.”

He bent and kissed her cheek lightly.  “I’ll have my try at success,” he said.  “But the other isn’t so easy.”

“You’ll find them one and the same,” was her parting prophecy.

Inured to work at all hours, Banneker went to the small, bare room in his apartment which he kept as a study, and sat down to write the interview.  Angles of dawn-light had begun to irradiate the steep canyon of the street by the time he had finished.  He read it over and found it good, for its purposes.  Every line of it sparkled.  It had the effervescent quality which the reading public loves to associate with stage life and stage people.  Beyond that, nothing.  Banneker mailed it to Miss Westlake for typing, had a bath, and went to bed.  At noon he was at The Ledger office, fresh, alert, and dispassionately curious to ascertain the next resolution of the mix-up between the paper and himself.

Nothing happened; at least, nothing indicative.  Mr. Greenough’s expression was as flat and neutral as the desk over which he presided as he called Banneker’s name and said to him: 

“Mr. Horace Vanney wishes to relieve his soul of some priceless information.  Will you call at his office at two-thirty?”

It was Mr. Vanney’s practice, whenever any of his enterprises appeared in a dubious or unfavorable aspect, immediately to materialize in print on some subject entirely unrelated, preferably an announcement on behalf of one of the charitable or civic organizations which he officially headed.  Thus he shone forth as a useful, serviceable, and public-spirited citizen, against whom (such was the inference which the newspaper reader was expected to draw) only malignancy could allege anything injurious.  In this instance his offering upon the altar of publicity, carefully typed and mimeographed, had just enough importance to entitle it to a paragraph of courtesy.  After it was given out to those who called, Mr. Vanney detained Banneker.

“Have you read the morning papers, Mr. Banneker?”

“Yes.  That’s my business, Mr. Vanney.”

“Then you can see, by the outbreak in Sippiac, to what disastrous results anarchism and fomented discontent lead.”

“Depends on the point of view.  I believe that, after my visit to the mills for you, I told you that unless conditions were bettered you’d have another and worse strike.  You’ve got it.”

“Fortunately it is under control.  The trouble-makers and thugs have been taught a needed lesson.”

“Especially the six-year-old trouble-making thug who was shot through the lungs from behind.”

Mr. Vanney scowled.  “Unfortunate.  And the papers laid unnecessary stress upon that.  Wholly unnecessary.  Most unfair.”

“You would hardly accuse The Ledger, at least, of being unfair to the mill interests.”

“Yes.  The Ledger’s handling, while less objectionable than some of the others, was decidedly unfortunate.”

Banneker gazed at him in stupefaction.  “Mr. Vanney, The Ledger minimized every detail unfavorable to the mills and magnified every one which told against the strikers.  It was only its skill that concealed the bias in every paragraph.”

“You are not over-loyal to your employer, sir,” commented the other severely.

“At least I’m defending the paper against your aspersions,” returned Banneker.

“Most unfair,” pursued Mr. Vanney.  “Why publish such matter at all?  It merely stirs up more discontent and excites hostility against the whole industrial system which has made this country great.  And I give more copy to the newspaper men than any other public man in New York.  It’s rank ingratitude, that’s what it is.”  He meditated upon the injurious matter.  “I suppose we ought to have advertised,” he added pensively.  “Then they’d let us alone as they do the big stores.”

Banneker left the Vanney offices with a great truth illuminating his brain; to wit, that news, whether presented ingenuously or disingenuously, will always and inevitably be unpopular with those most nearly affected.  For while we all read avidly what we can find about the other man’s sins and errors, we all hope, for our own, the kindly mantle of silence.  And because news always must and will stir hostility, the attitude of a public, any part of which may be its next innocent (or guilty) victim, is instinctively inimical.  Another angle of the pariahdom of those who deal in day-to-day history, for Banneker to ponder.

Feeling a strong desire to get away from the troublous environment of print, Banneker was glad to avail himself of Densmore’s invitation to come to The Retreat on the following Monday and try his hand at polo again.  This time he played much better, his mallet work in particular being more reliable.

“You ride like an Indian,” said Densmore to him after the scratch game, “and you’ve got no nerves.  But I don’t see where you got your wrist, except by practice.”

“I’ve had the practice, some time since.”

“But if you’ve only knocked about the field with stable-boys—­”

“That’s the only play I’ve ever had.  But when I was riding range in the desert, I picked up an old stick and a ball of the owner’s, and I’ve chased that ball over more miles of sand and rubble than you’d care to walk.  Cactus plants make very fair goal posts, too; but the sand is tricky going for the ball.”

Densmore whistled.  “That explains it.  Maitland says you’ll make the club team in two years.  Let us get together and fix you up some ponies,” invited Densmore.

Banneker shook his head, but wistfully.

“Until you’re making enough to carry your own.”

“That might be ten years, in the newspaper business.  Or never.

“Then get out of it.  Let Old Man Masters find you something in the Street.  You could get away with it,” persuaded Densmore.  “And he’ll do anything for a polo-man.”

“No, thank you.  No paid-athlete job for mine.  I’d rather stay a reporter.”

“Come into the club, anyway.  You can afford that.  And at least you can take a mount on your day off.”

“I’m thinking of another job where I’ll have more time to myself than one day a week,” confessed Banneker, having in mind possible magazine work.  He thought of the pleasant remoteness of The Retreat.  It was expensive; it would involve frequent taxi charges.  But, as ever, Banneker had an unreasoning faith in a financial providence of supply.  “Yes:  I’ll come in,” he said.  “That is, if I can get in.”

“You’ll get in, with Poultney Masters for a backer.  Otherwise, I’ll tell you frankly, I think your business would keep you out, in spite of your polo.”

“Densmore, there’s something I’ve been wanting to put up to you.”

Densmore’s heavy brows came to attention.  “Fire ahead.”

“You were ready to beat me up when I came here to ask you certain questions.”

“I was.  Any fellow would be.  You would.”

“Perhaps.  But suppose, through the work of some other reporter, a divorce story involving the sister and brother-in-law of some chap in your set had appeared in the papers.”

“No concern of mine.”

“But you’d read it, wouldn’t you?”

“Probably.”

“And if your paper didn’t have it in and another paper did, you’d buy the other paper to find out about it.”

“If I was interested in the people, I might.”

“Then what kind of a sport are you, when you’re keen to read about other people’s scandals, but sore on any one who inquires about yours?”

“That’s the other fellow’s bad luck.  If he—­”

“You don’t get my point.  A newspaper is simply a news exchange.  If you’re ready to read about the affairs of others, you should not resent the activity of the newspaper that attempts to present yours.  I’m merely advancing a theory.”

“Damned ingenious,” admitted the polo-player.  “Make a reporter a sort of public agent, eh?  Only, you see, he isn’t.  He hasn’t any right to my private affairs.”

“Then you shouldn’t take advantage of his efforts, as you do when you read about your friends.”

“Oh, that’s too fine-spun for me.  Now, I’ll tell you; just because I take a drink at a bar I don’t make a pal of the bartender.  It comes to about the same thing, I fancy.  You’re trying to justify your profession.  Let me ask you; do you feel that you’re within your decent rights when you come to a stranger with such a question as you put up to me?”

“No; I don’t,” replied Banneker ruefully.  “I feel like a man trying to hold up a bigger man with a toy pistol.”

“Then you’d better get into some other line.”

But whatever hopes Banneker may have had of the magazine line suffered a set-back when, a few days later, he called upon the Great Gaines at his office, and was greeted with a cheery though quizzical smile.

“Yes; I’ve read it,” said the editor at once, not waiting for the question.  “It’s clever.  It’s amazingly clever.”

“I’m glad you like it,” replied Banneker, pleased but not surprised.

Mr. Gaines’s expression became one of limpid innocence.  “Like it?  Did I say I liked it?”

“No; you didn’t say so.”

“No.  As a matter of fact I don’t like it.  Dear me, no!  Not at all.  Where did you get the idea?” asked Mr. Gaines abruptly.

“The plot?”

“No; no.  Not the plot.  The plot is nothing.  The idea of choosing such an environment and doing the story in that way.”

“From The New Era Magazine.”

“I begin to see.  You have been studying the magazine.”

“Yes.  Since I first had the idea of trying to write for it.”

“Flattered, indeed!” said Mr. Gaines dryly.  “And you modeled yourself upon—­what?”

“I wrote the type of story which the magazine runs to.”

“Pardon me.  You did not.  You wrote, if you will forgive me, an imitation of that type.  Your story has everything that we strive for except reality.”

“You believe that I have deliberately copied—­”

“A type, not a story.  No; you are not a plagiarist, Mr. Banneker.  But you are very thoroughly a journalist.”

“Coming from you that can hardly be accounted a compliment.”

“Nor is it so intended.  But I don’t wish you to misconstrue me.  You are not a journalist in your style and method; it goes deeper than that.  You are a journalist in your—­well, in your approach.  ’What the public wants.’”

Inwardly Banneker was raging.  The incisive perception stung.  But he spoke lightly.  “Doesn’t The New Era want what its public wants?”

“My dear sir, in the words of a man who ought to have been an editor of to-day, ‘The public be damned!’ What I looked to you for was not your idea of what somebody else wanted you to write, but your expression of what you yourself want to write.  About hoboes.  About railroad wrecks.  About cowmen or peddlers or waterside toughs or stage-door Johnnies, or ward politicians, or school-teachers, or life.  Not pink teas.”

“I have read pink-tea stories in your magazine.”

“Of course you have.  Written by people who could see through the pink to the primary colors underneath.  When you go to a pink tea, you are pink.  Did you ever go to one?”

Still thoroughly angry, Banneker nevertheless laughed, “Then the story is no use?”

“Not to us, certainly.  Miss Thornborough almost wept over it.  She said that you would undoubtedly sell it to The Bon Vivant and be damned forever.”

“Thank her on my behalf,” returned the other gravely.  “If The Bon Vivant wants it and will pay for it, I shall certainly sell it to them.”

“Out of pique?...  Hold hard, young sir!  You can’t shoot an editor in his sanctum because of an ill-advised but natural question.”

“True enough.  Nor do I want—­well, yes; I would rather like to.”

“Good!  That’s natural and genuine.”

“What do you think The Bon Vivant would pay for that story?” inquired Banneker.

“Perhaps a hundred dollars.  Cheap, for a career, isn’t it!”

“Isn’t the assumption that there is but one pathway to the True Art and but one signboard pointing to it a little excessive?”

“Abominably.  There are a thousand pathways, broad and narrow.  They all go uphill….  Some day when you spin something out of your own inside, Mr. Banneker, forgive the well-meaning editor and let us see it.  It might be pure silk.”

All the way downtown, Banneker cursed inwardly but brilliantly.  This was his first set-back.  Everything prior which he had attempted had been successful.  Inevitably the hard, firm texture of his inner endurance had softened under the spoiled-child treatment which the world had readily accorded him.  Even while he recognized this, he sulked.

To some extent he was cheered up by a letter from the editor of that lively and not too finicky publication, Tittle-Tattle.  The interview with Miss Raleigh was acclaimed with almost rapturous delight.  It was precisely the sort of thing wanted.  Proof had already been sent to Miss Raleigh, who was equally pleased.  Would Mr. Banneker kindly read and revise enclosed proof and return it as soon as possible?  Mr. Banneker did better than that.  He took back the corrected proof in person.  The editor was most cordial, until Banneker inquired what price was to be paid for the interview.  Then the editor was surprised and grieved.  It appeared that he had not expected to pay anything for it.

“Do you expect to get copy for nothing?” inquired the astonished and annoyed Banneker.

“If it comes to that,” retorted the sharp-featured young man at the editorial desk, “you’re the one that’s getting something for nothing.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Come off!  This is red-hot advertising matter for Betty Raleigh, and you know it.  Why, I ought to charge a coupla hundred for running it at all.  But you being a newspaper man and the stuff being so snappy, I’m willing to make an exception.  Besides, you’re a friend of Raleigh’s, ain’t you?  Well—­’nuff said!”

It was upon the tip of Banneker’s tongue to demand the copy back.  Then he bethought himself of Betty’s disappointment.  The thing was well done.  If he had been a thousand miles short of giving even a hint of the real Betty—­who was a good deal of a person—­at least he had embodied much of the light and frivolous charm which was her stage stock-in-trade, and what her public wanted.  He owed her that much, anyhow.

“All right,” he said shortly.

He left, and on the street-car immersed himself in some disillusioning calculations.  Suppose he did sell the rejected story to The Bon Vivant.  One hundred dollars, he had learned, was the standard price paid by that frugal magazine; that would not recompense him for the time bestowed upon it.  He could have made more by writing “specials” for the Sunday paper.  And on top of that to find that a really brilliant piece of interviewing had brought him in nothing more substantial than congratulations and the sense of a good turn done for a friend!

The magazine field, he began to suspect, might prove to be arid land.