Success, A Novel

In the regular course of political events, Laird was renominated on a fusion ticket.  Thereupon the old ring, which had so long battened on the corruption or local government, put up a sleek and presentable figurehead.  Marrineal nominated himself amidst the Homeric laughter of the professional politicians.  How’s he goin’ to get anywhere, they demanded with great relish of the joke, when he ain’t got any organization at-tall!  Presently the savor oozed out of that joke.  Marrineal, it appeared, did have an organization, of sorts; worse, he had gathered to him, by methods not peculiarly his own, the support of the lesser East-Side foreign language press, which may or may not have believed in his protestations of fealty to the Common People, but certainly did appreciate the liberality of his political advertising appropriation, advertising, in this sense, to be accorded its freest interpretation.  Worst of all, he had Banneker.

Banneker’s editorials, not upon Marrineal himself (for he was too shrewd for that), but upon the cause of which Marrineal was standard-bearer, were persuasive, ingenious, forceful, and, to the average mind, convincing.  Was Banneker himself convinced?  It was a question which he resolutely refused to follow to its logical conclusion.  Of the justice of the creed which The Patriot upheld, he was perfectly confident.  But did Marrineal represent that creed?  Did he represent anything but Marrineal?  Stifling his misgivings, Banneker flung himself the more determinedly into the fight.  It became apparent that he was going to swing an important fraction of the labor vote, despite the opposition of such clear-eyed leaders as McClintick.  To this extent he menaced the old ring rather than the forces of reform, led by Laird and managed by Enderby.  On the other hand, he was drawing from Laird, in so far as he still influenced the voters who had followed The Patriot in its original support of the reform movement.  That Marrineal could not be elected, both of his opponents firmly believed; and in this belief, notwithstanding his claims of forthcoming victory, the independent candidate privately concurred.  It would be enough, for the time, to defeat decisively whichever rival he turned his heaviest guns upon in the final onset; that would insure his future political prestige.  Thus far, in his speeches, he had hit out impartially at both sides, denouncing the old ring for its corruption, girding at Laird as a fake reformer secretly committed to Wall Street through Judge Enderby, corporation lawyer, as intermediary.

Herein Banneker had refrained from following him.  Ever the cat at the hole’s mouth, the patient lurker, the hopeful waiter upon the event, the proprietor of The Patriot forbore to press his editorial chief.  He still mistrusted the strength of his hold upon Banneker; feared a defiance when he could ill afford to meet it.  What he most hoped was some development which would turn Banneker’s heavy guns upon Laird so that, with the defeat of the fusion ticket candidate, the public would say, “The Patriot made him and The Patriot broke him.”

Laird played into Marrineal’s hands.  Indignant at what he regarded as a desertion of principles by The Patriot, the fusion nominee, in one of his most important addresses, devoted a stinging ten minutes to a consideration of that paper, its proprietor, and its editorial writer, in its chosen role of “friend of labor.”  His text was the Veridian strike, his information the version which McClintick furnished him; he cited Banneker by name, and challenged him as a prostituted mind and a corrupted pen.  Though Laird had spoken as he honestly believed, he did not have the whole story; McClintick, in his account, had ignored the important fact that Marrineal, upon being informed of conditions, had actually (no matter what his motive) remedied them.  Banneker, believing that Laird was fully apprised, as he knew Enderby to be, was outraged.  This alleged reformer, this purist in politics, this apostle of honor and truth, was holding him up to contumely, through half-truths, for a course which any decent man must, in conscience, have followed.  He composed a seething editorial, tore it up, substituted another wherein he made reply to the charges, in a spirit of ingenuity rather than ingenuousness, for The Patriot case, while sound, was one which could not well be thrown open to The Patriot’s public; and planned vengeance when the time should come.

Io, on a brief trip from Philadelphia, lunched with him that week, and found him distrait.

“It’s only politics,” he said.  “You’re not interested in politics,” and, as usual, “Let’s talk about you.”

She gave him that look which was like a smile deep in the shadows of her eyes.  “Ban, do you know the famous saying of Terence?”

He quoted the “Homo sum.”  “That one?” he asked.

She nodded.  “Now, hear my version:  ’I am a woman; nothing that touches my man is alien to my interests.’”

He laughed.  But there was a note of gratitude in his voice, almost humble, as he said:  “You’re the only woman in the world, Io, who can quote the classics and not seem a prig.”

“That’s because I’m beautiful,” she retorted impudently. “Tell me I’m beautiful, Ban!”

“You’re the loveliest witch in the world,” he cried.

“So much for flattery.  Now—­politics.”

He recounted the Laird charges.

“No; that wasn’t fair,” she agreed.  “It was most unfair.  But I don’t believe Bob Laird knew the whole story.  Did you ask him?”

“Ask him?  I certainly did not.  You don’t understand much about politics, dearest.”

“I was thinking of it from the point of view of the newspaper.  If you’re going to answer him in The Patriot, I should think you’d want to know just what his basis was.  Besides, if he’s wrong, I believe he’d take it back.”

“After all the damage has been done.  He won’t get the chance.”  Banneker’s jaw set firm.

“What shall you do now?”

“Wait my chance, load my pen, and shoot to kill.”

“Let me see the editorial before you print it.”

“All right, Miss Meddlesome.  But you won’t let your ideas of fair play run away with you and betray me to the enemy?  You’re a Laird man, aren’t you?”

Her voice fell to a caressing half-note.  “I’m a Banneker woman—­in everything.  Won’t you ever remember that?”

“No.  You’ll never be that.  You’ll always be Io; yourself; remote and unattainable in the deeper sense.”

“Do you say that?” she answered.

“Oh, don’t think that I complain.  You’ve made life a living glory for me.  Yet”—­his face grew wistful—­“I suppose—­I don’t know how to say it—­I’m like the shepherd in the poem,

’Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade.’

Io, why do I always think in poetry, when I’m with you?”

“I want you always to,” she said, which was a more than sufficient answer.

Io had been back in Philadelphia several days, and had ’phoned Banneker that she was coming over on the following Tuesday, when, having worked at the office until early evening, he ran around the corner to Katie’s for dinner.  At the big table “Bunny” Fitch of The Record was holding forth.

Fitch was that invaluable type of the political hack-writer, a lackey of the mind, instinctively subservient to his paper’s slightest opinion, hating what it hates, loving what it loves, with the servile adherence of a medieval churchman.  As The Record was bitter upon reform, its proprietor having been sadly disillusioned in youth by a lofty but abortive experiment in perfecting human nature from which he never recovered, Bunny lost no opportunity to damn all reformers.

“Can’t you imagine the dirty little snob,” he was saying, as Banneker entered, “creeping and fawning and cringing for their favors?  Up for membership at The Retreat.  Dines with Poultney Masters, Jr., at his club.  Can’t you hear him running home to wifie all het up and puffed like a toad, and telling her about it?”

“Who’s all this, Bunny?” inquired Banneker, who had taken in only the last few words.

“Our best little society climber, the Honorable Robert Laird,” returned the speaker, and reverted to his inspirational pen-picture:  “Runs home to wifie and crows, ’What do you think, my dear!  Junior Masters called me ‘Bob’ to-day!”

In a flash, the murderous quality of the thing bit into Banneker’s sensitive brain.  “Junior Masters called me ‘Bob’ to-day.”  The apotheosis of snobbery!  Swift and sure poison for the enemy if properly compounded with printer’s ink.  How pat it fitted in with the carefully fostered conception, insisted upon in every speech by Marrineal, of the mayor as a Wall Street and Fifth Avenue tool and toady!

But what exactly had Bunny Fitch said?  Was he actually quoting Laird?  If so, direct or from hearsay?  Or was he merely paraphrasing or perhaps only characterizing?  There was a dim ring in Banneker’s cerebral ear of previous words, half taken in, which would indicate the latter—­and ruin the deadly plan, strike the poison-dose from his hand.  Should he ask Fitch?  Pin him down to the details?

The character-sketcher was now upon the subject of Judge Enderby.  “Sly old wolf!  Wants to be senator one of these days.  Or maybe governor.  A ‘receptive’ candidate!  Wah!  Pulls every wire he can lay hand on, and then waits for the honor to be forced upon him….  Good Lord!  It’s eight o’clock.  I’m late.”

Dropping a bill on the table he hurried out.  Half-minded to stop him, Banneker took a second thought.  Why should he?  His statement had been definite.  Anyway, he could be called up on the morrow.  Dining hastily and in deep, period-building thought, Banneker returned to the office, locked himself in, and with his own hand drafted the editorial built on that phrase of petty and terrific import:  “Junior Masters called me ‘Bob’ to-day.”

After it was written he would not for the world have called up Fitch to verify the central fact.  He couldn’t risk it.  He scheduled the broadside for the second morning following….  But there was Io!  He had promised.  Well, he was to meet her at a dinner party at the Forbes’s.  She could see it then, if she hadn’t forgotten….  No; that, too, was a subterfuge hope.  Io never forgot.

As if to assure the resumption of their debate, the talk of the Forbes dinner table turned to the mayoralty fight.  Shrewd judges of events and tendencies were there; Thatcher Forbes, himself, not the least of them; it was the express opinion that Laird stood a very good chance of victory.

“Unless they can definitely pin the Wall Street label on him,” suggested some one.

“That might beat him; it’s the only thing that could,” another opined.

Hugging his withering phrase to his heart, Banneker felt a growing exultation.

“Nobody but The Patriot—­” began Mrs. Forbes contemptuously, when she abruptly recalled who was at her table.  “The newspapers are doing their worst, but I think they won’t make people believe much of it,” she amended.

“Is Laird really the Wall Street candidate?” inquired Esther Forbes.

Parley Welland, Io’s cousin, himself an amateur politician, answered her:  “He is or he isn’t, according as you look at it.  Masters and his crowd are mildly for him, because they haven’t any objection to a decent, straight city government, at present.  Sometimes they have.”

“On that principle, Horace Vanney must have,” remarked Jim Maitland.  “He’s fighting Laird, tooth and nail, and certainly he represents one phase of Wall Street activity.”

“My revered uncle,” drawled Herbert Cressey, “considers that the present administration is too tender of the working-man—­or, rather, working-woman—­when she strikes.  Don’t let ’em strike; or, if they do strike, have the police bat ’em on the head.”

“What’s this administration got to do with Vanney’s mills?  I thought they were in Jersey,” another diner asked.

“So they are, the main ones.  But he’s backing some of the local clothing manufacturers, the sweat-shop lot.  They’ve been having strikes.  That interferes with profits.  Uncle wants the good old days of the night-stick and the hurry-up wagon back.  He’s even willing to spend a little money on the good cause.”

Io, seated on Banneker’s left, turned to him.  “Is that true, Ban?”

“I’ve heard rumors to that effect,” he replied evasively.

“Won’t it put The Patriot in a queer position, to be making common cause with an enemy of labor?”

“It isn’t a question of Horace Vanney, at all,” he declared.  “He’s just an incident.”

“When are you going to write your Laird editorial?”

“All written.  I’ve got a proof in my pocket.”

She made as if to hold out her hand; but withdrew it.  “After dinner,” she said.  “The little enclosed porch off the conservatory.”

Amused and confirmatory glances followed them as they withdrew together.  But there was no ill-natured commentary.  So habituated was their own special set to the status between them that it was accepted with tolerance, even with the good-humored approval with which human nature regards a logical inter-attraction.

“Are you sure that you want to plunge into politics, Io?” Banneker asked, looking down at her as she seated herself in the cushioned chaise longue.

Her mouth smiled assent, but her eyes were intent and serious.  He dropped the proof into her lap, bending over and kissing her lips as he did so.  For a moment her fingers interlaced over his neck.

“I’ll understand it,” she breathed, interpreting into his caress a quality of pleading.

Before she had read halfway down the column, she raised to him a startled face.  “Are you sure, Ban?” she interrogated.

“Read the rest,” he suggested.

She complied.  “What a terrible power little things have,” she sighed.  “That would make me despise Laird.”

“A million other people will feel the same way to-morrow.”

“To-morrow?  Is it to be published so soon?”

“In the morning’s issue.”

“Ban; is it true?  Did he say that?”

“I have it from a man I’ve known ever since I came to New York.  He’s reliable.”

“But it’s so unlike Bob Laird.”

“Why is it unlike him?” he challenged with a tinge of impatience.  “Hasn’t he been playing about lately with the Junior Masters?”

“Do you happen to know,” she replied quietly, “that Junior and Bob Laird were classmates and clubmates at college, and that they probably always have called each other by their first names?”

“No.  Have you ever heard them?” Angry regret beset him the instant the question had passed his lips.  If she replied in the affirmative—­

“No; I’ve never happened to hear them,” she admitted; and he breathed more freely.

“Then my evidence is certainly more direct than yours,” he pointed out.

“Ban; that charge once made public is going to be unanswerable, isn’t it?  Just because the thing itself is so cheap and petty?”

“Yes.  You’ve got the true journalistic sense, Io.”

“Then there’s the more reason why you shouldn’t print it unless you know it to be true.”

“But it is true.”  Almost he had persuaded himself that it was; that it must be.

“The Olneys are having the Junior Masters to dine this evening.  I know because I was asked; but of course I wanted to be here, where you are.  Let me call Junior on the ’phone and ask him.”

Banneker flushed.  “You can’t do that, Io.”

“Why not?”

“Why, it isn’t the sort of thing that one can very well do,” he said lamely.

“Not ask Junior if he and Bob Laird are old chums and call each other by their first names?”

“How silly it would sound!” He tried to laugh the proposal away.  “In any case, it wouldn’t be conclusive.  Besides, it’s too late by this time.”

“Too late?”

“Yes.  The forms are closed.”

“You couldn’t change it?”

“Why, I suppose I could, in an extreme emergency.  But, dearest, it’s all right.  Why be so difficult?”

“It isn’t playing the game, Ban.”

“Indeed, it is.  It’s playing the game as Laird has elected to play it.  Did he make inquiries before he attacked us on the Veridian strike?”

“That’s true,” she conceded.

“And my evidence for this is direct.  You’ll have to trust me and my professional judgment, Io.”

She sighed, but accepted this, saying, “If he is that kind of a snob it ought to be published.  Suppose he sues for libel?”

“He’d be laughed out of court.  Why, what is there libelous in saying that a man claims to have been called by his first name by another man?” Banneker chuckled.

“Well, it ought to be libelous if it isn’t true,” asserted Io warmly.  “It isn’t fair or decent that a newspaper can hold a man up as a boot-licker and toady, if he isn’t one, and yet not be held responsible for it.”

“Well, dearest, I didn’t make the libel laws.  They’re hard enough as it is.”  His thought turned momentarily to Ely Ives, the journalistic sandbag, and he felt a momentary qualm.  “I don’t pretend to like everything about my job.  One of these days I’ll have a newspaper of my own, and you shall censor every word that goes in it.”

“Help!  Help!” she laughed.  “I shouldn’t have the time for anything else; not even for being in love with the proprietor.  Ban,” she added wistfully, “does it cost a very great deal to start a new paper?”

“Yes.  Or to buy an old one.”

“I have money of my own, you know,” she ventured.

He fondled her hand.  “That isn’t even a temptation,” he replied.

But it was.  For a paper of his own was farther away from him than it had ever been.  That morning he had received his statement from his broker.  To date his losses on Union Thread were close to ninety thousand dollars.

Who shall measure the spreading and seeding potentialities of a thistle-down or a catchy phrase?  Within twenty-four hours after the appearance of Banneker’s editorial, the apocryphal boast of Mayor Laird to his wife had become current political history.  Current?  Rampant, rather.  Messenger boys greeted each other with “Dearie, Mr. Masters calls me Bob.”  Brokers on ’Change shouted across a slow day’s bidding, “What’s your cute little pet name?  Mine’s Bobbie.”  Huge buttons appeared with miraculous celerity in the hands of the street venders inscribed,

“Call me Bob but Vote for Marrineal”

Vainly did Judge Enderby come out with a statement to the press, declaring the whole matter a cheap and nasty fabrication, and challenging The Patriot to cite its authority.  The damage already done was irreparable.  Sighting Banneker at luncheon a few days later, Horace Vanney went so far as to cross the room to greet and congratulate him.

“A master-stroke,” he said, pressing Banneker’s hand with his soft palm.  “We’re glad to have you with us.  Won’t you call me up and lunch with me soon?”

At The Retreat, after polo, that Saturday, the senior Masters met Banneker face to face in a hallway, and held him up.

“Politics is politics.  Eh?” he grunted.

“It’s a great game,” returned the journalist.

“Think up that ‘call-me-Bob’ business yourself?”

“I got it from a reliable source.”

“Damn lie,” remarked Poultney Masters equably.  “Did the work, though.  Banneker, why didn’t you let me know you were in the market?”

“In the stock-market?  What has that—­”

“You know what market I mean,” retorted the great man with unconcealed contempt.  “What you don’t know is your own game.  Always seek the highest bidder before you sell, my boy.”

“I’ll take that from no man—­” began Banneker hotly.

Immediately he was sensible of a phenomenon.  His angry eyes, lifted to Poultney Masters’s glistening little beads, were unable to endure the vicious amusement which he read therein.  For the first time in his life he was stared down.  He passed on, followed by a low and scornful hoot.

Meeting Willis Enderby while charge and counter-charge still rilled the air, Io put the direct query to him: 

“Cousin Billy, what is the truth about the Laird-Masters story?”

“Made up out of whole cloth,” responded Enderby.

“Who made it up?”

Comprehension and pity were in his intonation as he replied:  “Not Banneker, I understand.  It was passed on to him.”

“Then you don’t think him to blame?” she cried eagerly.

“I can’t exculpate him as readily as that.  Such a story, considering its inevitable—­I may say its intended—­consequences, should never have been published without the fullest investigation.”

“Suppose”—­she hesitated—­“he had it on what he considered good authority?”

“He has never even cited his authority.”

“Couldn’t it have been confidential?” she pleaded.

“Io, do you know his authority?  Has he told you?”

“No.”

Enderby’s voice was very gentle as he put his next question.  “Do you trust Banneker, my dear?”

She met his regard, unflinchingly, but there was a piteous quiver about the lips which formed the answer.  “I have trusted him.  Absolutely.”

“Ah; well!  I’ve seen too much good and bad too inextricably mingled in human nature, to judge on part information.”

Election day came and passed.  On the evening of it the streets were ribald with crowds gleefully shrieking!  “Call me Dennis, wifie.  I’m stung!” Laird had been badly beaten, running far behind Marrineal.  Halloran, the ring candidate, was elected.  Banneker did it.

As he looked back on the incidents of the campaign and its culminating event with a sense of self-doubt poisoning his triumph, that which most sickened him of his own course was not the overt insult from the financial emperor, but the soft-palmed gratulation of Horace Vanney.