Success, A Novel

Looking out of the front window, into the decorum of Grove Street, Mrs. Brashear could hardly credit the testimony of her glorified eyes.  Could the occupant of the taxi indeed be Mr. Banneker whom, a few months before and most sorrowfully, she had sacrificed to the stern respectability of the house?  And was it possible, as the very elegant trunk inscribed “E.B.—­New York City” indicated, that he was coming back as a lodger?  For the first time in her long and correct professional career, the landlady felt an unqualified bitterness in the fact that all her rooms were occupied.

The occupant of the taxi jumped out and ran lightly up the steps.

“How d’you do, Mrs. Brashear.  Am I still excommunicated?”

“Oh, Mr. Banneker!  I’m so glad to see you.  If I could tell you how often I’ve blamed myself—­”

“Let’s forget all that.  The point is I’ve come back.”

“Oh, dear!  I do hate not to take you in.  But there isn’t a spot.”

“Who’s got my old room?”

“Mr. Hainer.”

“Hainer?  Let’s turn him out.”

“I would in a minute,” declared the ungrateful landlady to whom Mr. Hainer had always been a model lodger.  “But the law—­”

“Oh, I’ll fix Hainer if you’ll fix the room.”

“How?” asked the bewildered Mrs. Brashear.

“The room?  Just as it used to be.  Bed, table, couple of chairs, bookshelf.”

“But Mr. Hainer’s things?”

“Store ’em.  It’ll be for only a month.”

Leaving his trunk, Banneker sallied forth in smiling confidence to accost and transfer the unsuspecting occupant of his room.  To achieve this, it was necessary only to convince the object of the scheme that the incredible offer was made in good faith; an apartment in the “swell” Regalton, luxuriously furnished, service and breakfast included, rent free for a whole month.  A fairy-tale for the prosaic Hainer to be gloated over for the rest of his life!  Very quietly, for this was part of the bargain, the middle-aged accountant moved to his new glories and Banneker took his old quarters.  It was all accomplished that evening.  The refurnishing was finished on the following day.

“But what are you doing it for, if I may be so bold, Mr. Banneker?” asked the landlady.

“Peace, quiet, and work,” he answered gayly.  “Just to be where nobody can find me, while I do a job.”

Here, as in the old, jobless days, Banneker settled down to concentrated and happy toil.  Always a creature of Spartan self-discipline in the matter of work, he took on, in this quiet and remote environment, new energies.  Miss Westlake, recipient of the output as it came from the hard-driven pen, was secretly disquieted.  Could any human being maintain such a pace without collapse?  Day after day, the devotee of the third-floor-front rose at seven, breakfasted from a thermos bottle and a tin box, and set upon his writing; lunched hastily around the corner, returned with armfuls of newspapers which he skimmed as a preliminary to a second long bout with his pen; allowed himself an hour for dinner, and came back to resume the never-ending task.  As in the days of the “Eban” sketches, now on the press for book publication, it was write, rewrite, and re-rewrite, the typed sheets coming back to Miss Westlake amended, interlined, corrected, but always successively shortened and simplified.  Profitable, indeed, for the solicitous little typist; but she ventured, after a fortnight of it, to remonstrate on the score of ordinary prudence.  Banneker laughed, though he was touched, too, by her interest.

“I’m indestructible,” he assured her.  “But next week I shall run around outside a little.”

“You must,” she insisted.

“Field-work, I believe they call it.  The Elysian Fields of Manhattan Island.  Perhaps you’ll come with me sometimes and see that I attend properly to my recreation.”

Curiosity as well as a mere personal interest prompted her to accept.  She did not understand the purpose of these strange and vivid writings committed to her hands, so different from any of the earlier of Mr. Banneker’s productions; so different, indeed, from anything that she had hitherto seen in any print.  Nor did she derive full enlightenment from her Elysian journeys with the writer.  They seemed to be casual if not aimless.  The pair traveled about on street-cars, L trains, Fifth Avenue buses, dined in queer, crowded restaurants, drank in foreign-appearing beer-halls, went to meetings, to Cooper Union forums, to the Art Gallery, the Aquarium, the Museum of Natural History, to dances in East-Side halls:  and everywhere, by virtue of his easy and graceful good-fellowship, Banneker picked up acquaintances, entered into their discussions, listened to their opinions and solemn dicta, agreeing or controverting with equal good-humor, and all, one might have carelessly supposed, in the idlest spirit of a light-minded Haroun al Raschid.

“What is it all about, if you don’t mind telling?” asked his companion as he bade her good-night early one morning.

“To find what people naturally talk about,” was the ready answer.

“And then?”

“To talk with them about what interests them.  In print.”

“Then it isn’t Elysian-fielding at all.”

“No.  It’s work.  Hard work.”

“And what do you do after it?”

“Oh, sit up and write for a while.”

“You’ll break down.”

“Oh, no!  It’s good for me.”

And, indeed, it was better for him than the alternative of trying to sleep without the anodyne of complete exhaustion.  For again, his hours were haunted by the not-to-be-laid spirit of Io Welland.  As in those earlier days when, with hot eyes and set teeth, he had sent up his nightly prayer for deliverance from the powers of the past—­

“Heaven shield and keep us free
From the wizard, Memory
And his cruel necromancies!”—­

she came back to her old sway over his soul, and would not be exorcised.—­So he drugged his brain against her with the opiate of weariness.

Three of his four weeks had passed when Banneker began to whistle at his daily stent.  Thereafter small boys, grimy with printer’s ink, called occasionally, received instructions and departed, and there emanated from his room the clean and bitter smell of paste, and the clip of shears.  Despite all these new activities, the supply of manuscript for Miss Westlake’s typewriter never failed.  One afternoon Banneker knocked at the door, asked her if she thought she could take dictation direct, and on her replying doubtfully that she could try, transferred her and her machine to his den, which was littered with newspapers, proof-sheets, and foolscap.  Walking to and fro with a sheet of the latter inscribed with a few notes in his hand, the hermit proceeded to deliver himself to the briskly clicking writing machine.

“Three-em dash,” said he at the close.  “That seemed to go fairly well.”

“Are you training me?” asked Miss Westlake.

“No.  I’m training myself.  It’s easier to write, but it’s quicker to talk.  Some day I’m going to be really busy”—­Miss Westlake gasped—­“and time-saving will be important.  Shall we try it again to-morrow?”

She nodded.  “I could brush up my shorthand and take it quicker.”

“Do you know shorthand?” He looked at her contemplatively.  “Would you care to take a regular position, paying rather better than this casual work?”

“With you?” asked Miss Westlake in a tone which constituted a sufficient acceptance.

“Yes.  Always supposing that I land one myself.  I’m in a big gamble, and these,” he swept a hand over the littered accumulations, “are my cards.  If they’re good enough, I’ll win.”

“They are good enough,” said Miss Westlake with simple faith.

“I’ll know to-morrow,” replied Banneker.

For a young man, jobless, highly unsettled of prospects, the ratio of whose debts to his assets was inversely to what it should have been, Banneker presented a singularly care-free aspect when, at 11 A.M. of a rainy morning, he called at Mr. Tertius Marrineal’s Fifth Avenue house, bringing with him a suitcase heavily packed.  Mr. Marrineal’s personal Jap took over the burden and conducted it and its owner to a small rear room at the top of the house.  Banneker apprehended at the first glance that this was a room for work.  Mr. Marrineal, rising from behind a broad, glass-topped table with his accustomed amiable smile, also looked workmanlike.

“You have decided to come with us, I hope,” said he pleasantly enough, yet with a casual politeness which might have been meant to suggest a measure of indifference.  Banneker at once caught the note of bargaining.

“If you think my ideas are worth my price,” he replied.

“Let’s have the ideas.”

“No trouble to show goods,” Banneker said, unclasping the suitcase.  He preferred to keep the talk in light tone until his time came.  From the case he extracted two close-packed piles of news-print, folded in half.

“Coals to Newcastle,” smiled Marrineal.  “These seem to be copies of The Patriot.”

“Not exact copies.  Try this one.”  Selecting an issue at random he passed it to the other.

Marrineal went into it carefully, turning from the front page to the inside, and again farther in the interior, without comment.  Nor did he speak at once when he came to the editorial page.  But he glanced up at Banneker before settling down to read.

“Very interesting,” he said presently, in a non-committal manner.  “Have you more?”

Silently Banneker transferred to the table-top the remainder of the suitcase’s contents.  Choosing half a dozen at random, Marrineal turned each inside out and studied the editorial columns.  His expression did not in any degree alter.

“You have had these editorials set up in type to suit yourself, I take it,” he observed after twenty minutes of perusal; “and have pasted them into the paper.”

“Exactly.”

“Why the double-column measure?”

“More attractive to the eye.  It stands out.”

“And the heavy type for the same reason?”

“Yes.  I want to make ’em just as easy to read as possible.”

“They’re easy to read,” admitted the other.  “Are they all yours?”

“Mine—­and others’.”

Marrineal looked a bland question.  Banneker answered it.

“I’ve been up and down in the highways and the low-ways, Mr. Marrineal, taking those editorials from the speech of the ordinary folk who talk about their troubles and their pleasures.”

“I see.  Straight from the throbbing heart of the people. 
Jones-in-the-street-car.”

“And Mrs. Jones.  Don’t forget her.  She’ll read ’em.”

“If she doesn’t, it won’t be because they don’t bid for her interest.  Here’s this one, ‘Better Cooking Means Better Husbands:  Try It.’  That’s the argumentum ad feminam with a vengeance.”

“Yes.  I picked that up from a fat old party who was advising a thin young wife at a fish-stall.  ‘Give’m his food right an’ he’ll come home to it, ‘stid o’ workin’ the free lunch.’”

“Here are two on the drink question.  ’Next Time Ask the Barkeep Why He Doesn’t Drink,’ and, ’Mighty Elephants Like Rum—­and Are Chained Slaves.’”

“You’ll find more moralizing on booze if you look farther.  It’s one of the subjects they talk most about.”

“’The Sardine is Dead:  Therefore More Comfortable Than You, Mr. Straphanger,’” read Marrineal.

“Go up in the rush-hour L any day and you’ll hear that editorial with trimmings.”

“And ‘Mr. Flynn Owes You a Yacht Ride’ is of the same order, I suppose.”

“Yes.  If it had been practicable, I’d have had some insets with that:  a picture of Flynn, a cut of his new million-dollar yacht, and a table showing the twenty per cent dividends that the City Illuminating Company pays by over-taxing Jones on his lighting and heating.  That would almost tell the story without comment.”

“I see.  Still making it easy for them to read.”

Marrineal ran over a number of other captions, sensational, personal, invocative, and always provocative:  “Man, Why Hasn’t Your Wife Divorced You?” “John L. Sullivan, the Great Unknown.”  “Why Has the Ornithorhyncus Got a Beak?” “If You Must Sell Your Vote, Ask a Fair Price For It.”  “Mustn’t Play, You Kiddies:  It’s a Crime:  Ask Judge Croban.”  “Socrates, Confucius, Buddha, Christ; All Dead, But—!!!” “The Inventor of Goose-Plucking Was the First Politician.  They’re At It Yet.”  “How Much Would You Pay a Man to Think For You?” “Air Doesn’t Cost Much:  Have You Got Enough to Breathe?”

“All this,” said the owner of The Patriot, “is taken from what people talk and think about?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t some of it reach out into the realm of what Mr. Banneker thinks they ought to talk and think about?”

Banneker laughed.  “Discovered!  Oh, I won’t pretend but what I propose to teach ’em thinking.”

“If you can do that and make them think our way—­”

“‘Give me place for my fulcrum,’ said Archimedes.”

“But that’s an editorial you won’t write very soon.  One more detail.  You’ve thrown up words and phrases into capital letters all through for emphasis.  I doubt whether that will do.”

“Why not?”

“Haven’t you shattered enough traditions without that?  The public doesn’t want to be taught with a pointer.  I’m afraid that’s rather too much of an innovation.”

“No innovation at all.  In fact, it’s adapted plagiarism.”

“From what?”

“Harper’s Monthly of the seventy’s.  I used to have some odd volumes in my little library.  There was a department of funny anecdote; and the point of every joke, lest some obtuse reader should overlook it, was printed in italics.  That,” chuckled Banneker, “was in the days when we used to twit the English with lacking a sense of humor.  However, the method has its advantages.  It’s fool-proof.  Therefore I helped myself to it.”

“Then you’re aiming at the weak-minded?”

“At anybody who can assimilate simple ideas plainly expressed,” declared the other positively.  “There ought to be four million of ’em within reaching distance of The Patriot’s presses.”

“Your proposition—­though you haven’t made any as yet—­is that we lead our editorial page daily with matter such as this.  Am I correct?”

“No.  Make a clean sweep of the present editorials.  Substitute mine.  One a day will be quite enough for their minds to work on.”

“But that won’t fill the page,” objected the proprietor.

“Cartoon.  Column of light comment.  Letters from readers.  That will,” returned Banneker with severe brevity.

“It might be worth trying,” mused Marrineal.

“It might be worth, to a moribund paper, almost anything.”  The tone was significant.

“Then you are prepared to join our staff?”

“On suitable terms.”

“I had thought of offering you,” Marrineal paused for better effect, “one hundred and fifty dollars a week.”

Banneker was annoyed.  That was no more than he could earn, with a little outside work, on The Ledger.  He had thought of asking two hundred and fifty.  Now he said promptly: 

“Those editorials are worth three hundred a week to any paper.  As a starter,” he added.

A pained and patient smile overspread Marrineal’s regular features.  “The Patriot’s leader-writer draws a hundred at present.”

“I dare say.”

“The whole page costs barely three hundred.”

“It is overpaid.”

“For a comparative novice,” observed Marrineal without rancor, “you do not lack self-confidence.”

“There are the goods,” said Banneker evenly.  “It is for you to decide whether they are worth the price asked.”

“And there’s where the trouble is,” confessed Marrineal.  “I don’t know.  They might be.”

Banneker made his proposition.  “You spoke of my being a novice.  I admit the weak spot.  I want more experience.  You can afford to try this out for six months.  In fact, you can’t afford not to.  Something has got to be done with The Patriot, and soon.  It’s losing ground daily.”

“You are mistaken,” returned Marrineal.

“Then the news-stands and circulation lists are mistaken, too,” retorted the other.  “Would you care to see my figures?”

Marrineal waved away the suggestion with an easy gesture which surrendered the point.

“Very well.  I’m backing the new editorial idea to get circulation.”

“With my money,” pointed out Marrineal.

“I can’t save you the money.  But I can spread it for you, that three hundred dollars.”

“How, spread it?”

“Charge half to editorial page:  half to the news department.”

“On account of what services to the news department?”

“General.  That is where I expect to get my finishing experience.  I’ve had enough reporting.  Now I’m after the special work; a little politics, a little dramatic criticism; a touch of sports; perhaps some book-reviewing and financial writing.  And, of course, an apprenticeship in the Washington office.”

“Haven’t you forgotten the London correspondence?”

Whether or not this was sardonic, Banneker did not trouble to determine.  “Too far away, and not time enough,” he answered.  “Later, perhaps, I can try that.”

“And while you are doing all these things who is to carry out the editorial idea?”

“I am.”

Marrineal stared.  “Both?  At the same time?”

“Yes.”

“No living man could do it.”

“I can do it.  I’ve proved it to myself.”

“How and where?”

“Since I last saw you.  Now that I’ve got the hang of it, I can do an editorial in the morning, another in the afternoon, a third in the evening.  Two and a half days a week will turn the trick.  That leaves the rest of the time for the other special jobs.”

“You won’t live out the six months.”

“Insure my life if you like,” laughed Banneker.  “Work will never kill me.”

Marrineal, sitting with inscrutable face turned half away from his visitor, was beginning, “If I meet you on the salary,” when Banneker broke in: 

“Wait until you hear the rest.  I’m asking that for six months only.  Thereafter I propose to drop the non-editorial work and with it the salary.”

“With what substitute?”

“A salary based upon one cent a week for every unit of circulation put on from the time the editorials begin publication.”

“It sounds innocent,” remarked Marrineal.  “It isn’t as innocent as it sounds,” he added after a penciled reckoning on the back of an envelope.  “In case we increase fifty thousand, you will be drawing twenty-five thousand a year.”

“Well?  Won’t it be worth the money?”

“I suppose it would,” admitted Marrineal dubiously.  “Of course fifty thousand in six months is an extreme assumption.  Suppose the circulation stands still?”

“Then I starve.  It’s a gamble.  But it strikes me that I’m giving the odds.”

“Can you amuse yourself for an hour?” asked Marrineal abruptly.

“Why, yes,” answered Banneker hesitantly.  “Perhaps you’d turn me loose in your library.  I’d find something to put in the time on there.”

“Not very much, I’m afraid,” replied his host apologetically.  “I’m of the low-brow species in my reading tastes, or else rather severely practical.  You’ll find some advertising data that may interest you, however.”

From the hour—­which grew to an hour and a half—­spent in the library, Banneker sought to improve his uncertain conception of his prospective employer’s habit and trend of mind.  The hope of revelation was not borne out by the reading matter at hand.  Most of it proved to be technical.

When he returned to Marrineal’s den, he found Russell Edmonds with the host.

“Well, son, you’ve turned the trick,” was the veteran’s greeting.

“You’ve read ’em?” asked Banneker, and Marrineal was shrewd enough to note the instinctive shading of manner when expert spoke to expert.  He was an outsider, being merely the owner.  It amused him.

“Yes.  They’re dam’ good.”

“Aren’t they dam’ good?” returned Banneker eagerly.

“They’ll save the day if anything can.”

“Precisely my own humble opinion if a layman may speak,” put in Marrineal.  “Mr. Banneker, shall I have the contract drawn up?”

“Not on my account.  I don’t need any.  If I haven’t made myself so essential after the six months that you have to keep me on, I’ll want to quit.”

“Still in the gambling mood,” smiled Marrineal.

The two practical journalists left, making an appointment to spend the following morning with Marrineal in planning policy and methods.  Banneker went back to his apartment and wrote Miss Camilla Van Arsdale all about it, in exultant mood.

“Brains to let!  But I’ve got my price.  And I’ll get a higher one:  the highest, if I can hold out.  It’s all due to you.  If you hadn’t kept my mind turned to things worth while in the early days at Manzanita, with your music and books and your taste for all that is fine, I’d have fallen into a rut.  It’s success, the first real taste.  I like it.  I love it.  And I owe it all to you.”

Camilla Van Arsdale, yearning over the boyish outburst, smiled and sighed and mused and was vaguely afraid, with quasi-maternal fears.  She, too, had had her taste of success; a marvelous stimulant, bubbling with inspiration and incitement.  But for all except the few who are strong and steadfast, there lurks beneath the effervescence a subtle poison.