Success, A Novel

Life was broadening out before Banneker into new and golden persuasions.  He had become a person of consequence, a force to be reckoned with, in the great, unheeding city.  By sheer resolute thinking and planning, expressed and fulfilled in unsparing labor, he had made opportunity lead to opportunity until his position was won.  He was courted, sought after, accepted by representative people of every sort, their interest and liking answering to his broad but fine catholicity of taste in human relationships.  If he had no intimates other than Russell Edmonds, it was because he felt no need of them.

He had found Io again.

Prophecies had all failed in the matter of his rise.  He thought, with pardonable exultation, of how he had confuted them, one after another.  Cressey had doubted that one could be at the same time a successful journalist and a gentleman; Horace Vanney had deemed individuality inconsistent with newspaper writing; Tommy Burt and other jejune pessimists of the craft had declared genuine honesty incompatible with the higher and more authoritative phases of the profession.  Almost without set plan and by an inevitable progress, as it now seemed to him, he had risen to the most conspicuous, if not yet the most important, position on Park Row, and had suffered no conscious compromise of standards, whether of self-respect, self-assertion, or honor.

Had he ever allowed monetary considerations seriously to concern him, he might have been troubled by an untoward and not easily explicable phenomenon.  His bank account consistently failed to increase in ratio to his earnings.  In fact, what with tempting investments, the importunities of a highly luxurious taste in life hitherto unsuspected, and an occasional gambling flyer, his balance was precarious, so to speak.  With the happy optimism of one to whom the rosy present casts an intensified glow upon the future, he confidently anticipated a greatly and steadily augmented income, since the circulation of The Patriot was now the terror of its rivals.  That any radical alteration could be made in his method of recompense did not occur to him.  So completely had he identified himself with The Patriot that he subconsciously regarded himself as essential to its prosperity if not to its actual existence.  Therein he was supported by all the expert opinion of Park Row.  Already he had accepted one modification of his contract, and his takings for new circulation were now twenty-five cents per unit per year instead of fifty cents as formerly.

But Tertius Marrineal and his business manager, a shrewd and practical gentleman named Haring, had done a vast deal of expert figuring, as a result of which the owner strolled into his editor’s office one noon with his casual air of having nothing else to do, and pleasantly inquired: 

“Busy?”

“If I weren’t, I wouldn’t be worth much,” returned Banneker, in a cheerful tone.

“Well, if you can spare me fifteen minutes—­”

“Sit down.”  Banneker swiveled his chair to face the other.

“I needn’t tell you that the paper is a success; a big success,” began Marrineal.

“You needn’t.  But it’s always pleasant to hear.”

“Possibly too big a success.  What would you say to letting circulation drop for a while?”

“What!” Banneker felt a momentary queer sensation near the pit of his stomach.  If the circulation dropped, his income followed it.  But could Marrineal be serious?

“The fact is we’ve reached the point where more circulation is a luxury.  We’re printing an enormous paper, and wood-pulp prices are going up.  If we could raise our advertising rates;—­but Mr. Haring thinks that three raises a year is all the traffic will bear.  The fact is, Mr. Banneker, that the paper isn’t making money.  We’ve run ahead of ourselves.  You’re swallowing all the profits.”

Banneker’s inner voice said warningly to Banneker, “So that’s it.”  Banneker’s outer voice said nothing.

“Then there’s the matter of advertising.  Your policy is not helping us much there.”

“The advertising is increasing.”

“Not in proportion to circulation.  Nothing like.”

“If the proper ratio isn’t maintained, that is the concern of the advertising department, isn’t it?”

“Very much the concern.  Will you talk with Mr. Haring about it?”

“No.”

Early in Banneker’s editorship it had been agreed that he should keep free of any business or advertising complications.  Experience and the warnings of Russell Edmonds had told him that the only course of editorial independence lay in totally ignoring the effect of what he might write upon the profits and prejudices of the advertisers, who were, of course, the principal support of the paper.  Furthermore, Banneker heartily despised about half of the advertising which the paper carried; dubious financial proffers, flamboyant mercantile copy of diamond dealers, cheap tailors, installment furniture profiteers, the lure of loan sharks and race-track tipsters, and the specious and deadly fallacies of the medical quacks.  Appealing as it did to an ignorant and “easy” class of the public (“Banneker’s First-Readers,” Russell Edmonds was wont to call them), The Patriot offered a profitable field for all the pitfall-setters of print.  The less that Banneker knew about them the more comfortable would he be.  So he turned his face away from those columns.

The negative which he returned to Marrineal’s question was no more or less than that astute gentleman expected.

“We carried an editorial last week on cigarettes, ’There’s a Yellow Stain on Your Boy’s Fingers—­Is There Another on his Character?’”

“Yes.  It is still bringing in letters.”

“It is.  Letters of protest.”

“From the tobacco people?”

“Exactly.  Mr. Banneker, don’t you regard tobacco as a legitimate article of use?”

“Oh, entirely.  Couldn’t do without it, myself.”

“Why attack it, then, in your column?”

“Because my column,” answered Banneker with perceptible emphasis on the possessive, “doesn’t believe that cigarettes are good for boys.”

“Nobody does.  But the effect of your editorial is to play into the hands of the anti-tobacco people.  It’s an indiscriminate onslaught on all tobacco.  That’s the effect of it.”

“Possibly.”

“And the result is that the tobacco people are threatening to cut us off from their new advertising appropriation.”

“Out of my department,” said Banneker calmly.

Marrineal was a patient man.  He pursued.  “You have offended the medical advertisers by your support of the so-called Honest Label Bill.”

“It’s a good bill.”

“Nearly a quarter of our advertising revenue is from the patent-medicine people.”

“Mostly swindlers.”

“They pay your salary,” Marrineal pointed out.

“Not mine,” said Banneker vigorously.  “The paper pays my salary.”

“Without the support of the very advertisers that you are attacking, it couldn’t continue to pay it.  Yet you decline to admit any responsibility to them.”

“Absolutely.  To them or for them.”

“I confess I can’t see your basis,” said the reasonable Marrineal.  “Considering what you have received in income from the paper—­”

“I have worked for it.”

“Admitted.  But that you should absorb practically all the profits—­isn’t that a little lopsided, Mr. Banneker?”

“What is your proposition, Mr. Marrineal?”

Marrineal put his long, delicate fingers together, tip to tip before his face, and appeared to be carefully reckoning them up.  About the time when he might reasonably have been expected to have audited the total and found it to be the correct eight with two supplementary thumbs, he ejaculated: 

“Cooeperation.”

“Between the editorial page and the advertising department?”

“Perhaps I should have said profit-sharing.  I propose that in lieu of our present arrangement, based upon a percentage on a circulation which is actually becoming a liability instead of an asset, we should reckon your salary on a basis of the paper’s net earnings.”  As Banneker, sitting with thoughtful eyes fixed upon him, made no comment, he added:  “To show that I do not underestimate your value to the paper, I propose to pay you fifteen per cent of the net earnings for the next three years.  By the way, it won’t be necessary hereafter, for you to give any time to the news or Sunday features.”

“No.  You’ve got out of me about all you could on that side,” observed Banneker.

“The policy is established and successful, thanks largely to you.  I would be the last to deny it.”

“What do you reckon as my probable income under the proposed arrangement?”

“Of course,” answered the proprietor apologetically, “it would be somewhat reduced this year.  If our advertising revenue increases, as it naturally should, your percentage might easily rise above your earnings under the old arrangement.”

“I see,” commented Banneker thoughtfully.  “You propose to make it worth my while to walk warily.  As the pussy foots it, so to speak.”

“I ask you to recognize the fairness of the proposition that you conduct your column in the best interests of the concern—­which, under the new arrangement, would also be your own best interests.”

“Clear.  Limpidly clear,” murmured Banneker.  “And if I decline the new basis, what is the alternative?”

“Cut down circulation, and with it, loss.”

“And the other, the real alternative?” queried the imperturbable Banneker.

Marrineal smiled, with a touch of appeal in his expression.

“Frankness is best, isn’t it?” propounded the editor.  “I don’t believe, Mr. Marrineal, that this paper can get along without me.  It has become too completely identified with my editorial idea.  On the other hand, I can get along without it.”

“By accepting the offer of the Mid-West Evening Syndicate, beginning at forty thousand a year?”

“You’re well posted,” said Banneker, startled.

“Of necessity.  What would you suppose?”

“Your information is fairly accurate.”

“I’m prepared to make you a guarantee of forty thousand, as a minimum.”

“I shall make nearer sixty than fifty this year.”

“At the expense of a possible loss to the paper.  Come, Mr. Banneker; the fairness of my offer is evident.  A generous guarantee, and a brilliant chance of future profits.”

“And a free hand with my editorials?”

“Surely that will arrange itself.”

“Precisely what I fear.”  Banneker had been making some swift calculations on his desk-blotter.  Now he took up a blue pencil and with a gesture, significant and not without dramatic effect, struck it down through the reckoning.  “No, Mr. Marrineal.  It isn’t good enough.  I hold to the old status.  When our contract is out—­”

“Just a moment, Mr. Banneker.  Isn’t there a French proverb, something about no man being as indispensable as he thinks?” Marrineal’s voice was never more suave and friendly.  “Before you make any final decision, look these over.”  He produced from his pocket half a dozen of what appeared to be Patriot editorial clippings.

The editor of The Patriot glanced rapidly through them.  A puzzled frown appeared on his face.

“When did I write these?”

“You didn’t.”

“Who did?”

“I”

“They’re dam’ good.”

“Aren’t they!”

“Also, they’re dam’ thievery.”

“Doubtless you mean flattery.  In its sincerest form.  Imitation.”

“Perfect.  I could believe I’d written them myself.”

“Yes; I’ve been a very careful student of The Patriot’s editorial style.”

“The Patriot’s!  Mine!”

“Surely not.  You would hardly contend seriously that, having paid the longest price on record for the editorials, The Patriot has not a vested right in them and their style.”

“I see,” said Banneker thoughtfully.  Inwardly he cursed himself for the worst kind of a fool; the fool who underestimates the caliber of his opponent.

“Would you say,” continued the smooth voice of the other, “that these might be mistaken for your work?”

“Nobody would know the difference.  It’s robbery of the rankest kind.  But it’s infernally clever.”

“I’m not going to quarrel with you over a definition, Mr. Banneker,” said Marrineal.  He leaned a little forward with a smile so frank and friendly that it quite astonished the other.  “And I’m not going to let you go, either,” he pursued.  “You need me and I need you.  I’m not fool enough to suppose that the imitation can ever continue to be as good as the real thing.  We’ll make it a fifty thousand guarantee, if you say so.  And, as for your editorial policy—­well, I’ll take a chance on your seeing reason.  After all, there’s plenty of earth to prance on without always treading on people’s toes….  Well, don’t decide now.  Take your time to it.”  He rose and went to the door.  There he turned, flapping the loose imitations in his hands.

“Banneker,” he said chuckling, “aren’t they really dam’ good!” and vanished.

In that moment Banneker felt a surge of the first real liking he had ever known for his employer.  Marrineal had been purely human for a flash.

Nevertheless, in the first revulsion after the proprietor had left, Banneker’s unconquered independence rose within him, jealous and clamant.  He felt repressions, claims, interferences potentially closing in upon his pen, also an undefined dread of the sharply revealed overseer.  That a force other than his own mind and convictions should exert pressure, even if unsuccessful, upon his writings, was intolerable.  Better anything than that.  The Mid-West Syndicate, he knew, would leave him absolutely untrammeled.  He would write the general director at once.

In the act of beginning the letter, the thought struck and stunned him that this would mean leaving New York.  Going to live in a Middle-Western city, a thousand miles outside of the orbit in which moved Io Eyre!

He left the letter unfinished, and the issue to the fates.