Success, A Novel

Among his various amiable capacities, Ely Ives included that of ceremonial arranger.  Festivities were his delight; he was ever on the lookout for occasions of celebration:  any excuse for a gratulatory function sufficed him.  Before leaving on his chase to Manzanita, he had conceived the festal notion of a dinner in honor of Banneker, not that he cherished any love for him since the episode of the bet with Delavan Eyre, but because his shrewd foresight perceived in it a closer binding of the editor to the wheels of the victorious Patriot.  Also it might indirectly redound to the political advantage of Marrineal.  Put thus to that astute and aspiring public servant, it enlisted his prompt support.  He himself would give the feast:  no, on better thought, The Patriot should give it.  It would be choice rather than large:  a hundred guests or so; mainly journalistic, the flower of Park Row, with a sprinkling of important politicians and financiers.  The occasion?  Why, the occasion was pat to hand!  The thousandth Banneker editorial to be published in The Patriot, the date of which came early in the following month.

Had Ives himself come to Banneker with any such project, it would have been curtly rejected.  Ives kept in the background.  The proposal came from Marrineal, and in such form that for the recipient of the honor to refuse it would have appeared impossibly churlish.  Little though he desired or liked such a function, Banneker accepted with a good grace, and set himself to write an editorial, special to the event.  Its title was, “What Does Your Newspaper Mean to You?” headed with the quotation from the Areopagitica:  and he compressed into a single column all his dreams and idealities of what a newspaper might be and mean to the public which it sincerely served.  Specially typed and embossed, it was arranged as the dinner souvenir.

As the day drew near, Banneker had less and less taste for the ovation.  Forebodings had laid hold on his mind.  Enderby had been back for five days, and had taken no part whatever in the current political activity.  Conflicting rumors were in the air.  The anti-Marrineal group was obviously in a state of confusion and doubt:  Marrineal’s friends were excited, uncertain, expectant.

For three days Banneker had had no letter from Io.

The first intimation of what had actually occurred came to him just before he left the office to dress for the dinner in his honor.  Willis Enderby had formally withdrawn from the governorship contest.  His statement given out for publication in next morning’s papers, was in the office.  Banneker sent for it.  The reason given was formal and brief; nervous breakdown; imperative orders from his physician.  The whole thing was grisly plain to Banneker, but he must have confirmation.  He went to the city editor.  Had any reporter been sent to see Judge Enderby?

Yes:  Dilson, one of the men frequently assigned to do Marrineal’s and Ives’s special work had been sent to Enderby’s on the previous day with specific instructions to ask a single question:  “When was the Judge going to issue his formal withdrawal”:  Yes:  that was the precise form of the question:  not, “Was he going to withdraw,” but “When was he,” and so on.

The Judge would not answer, except to say that he might have a statement to make within twenty-four hours.  This afternoon (continued the city editor) Enderby, it was understood, had telephoned to The Sphere and asked that Russell Edmonds come to his house between four and five.  No one else would do.  Edmonds had gone, had been closeted with Enderby for an hour, and had emerged with the brief typed statement for distribution to all the papers.  He would not say a word as to the interview.  Judge Enderby absolutely denied himself to all callers.  Physician’s orders again.

Banneker reflected that if the talk between Edmonds and Enderby had been what he could surmise, the veteran would hardly attend the dinner in his (Banneker’s) honor.  Honor and Banneker would be irreconcilable terms, to the stern judgment of Pop Edmonds.  Had they, indeed, become irreconcilable terms?  It was a question which Banneker, in the turmoil of his mind, could not face.  On his way along Park Row he stopped and had a drink.  It seemed to produce no effect, so presently he had another.  After the fourth, he clarified and enlarged his outlook upon the whole question, which he now saw in its entirety.  He perceived himself as the victim of unique circumstances, forced by the demands of honor into what might seem, to unenlightened minds, dubious if not dishonorable positions, each one of them in reality justified:  yes, necessitated!  Perhaps he was at fault in his very first judgment; perhaps, had he even then, in his inexperience, seen what he now saw so clearly in the light of experience, the deadly pitfalls into which journalism, undertaken with any other purpose than the simple setting forth of truth, beguiles its practitioners—­perhaps he might have drawn back from the first step of passive deception and have resigned rather than been a party to the suppression of the facts about the Veridian killings.  Resigned?  And forfeited all his force for education, for enlightenment, for progress of thought and belief, exerted upon millions of minds through The Patriot?...  Would that not have been the way of cowardice?...  He longed to be left to himself.  To think it all out.  What would Io say, if she knew everything?  Io whose silence was surrounding him with a cold terror….  He had to get home and dress for that cursed dinner!

Marrineal had done the thing quite royally.  The room was superb with flowers; the menu the best devisable; the wines not wide of range, but choice of vintage.  The music was by professionals of the first grade, willing to give their favors to these powerful men of the press.  The platform table was arranged for Marrineal in the presiding chair, flanked by Banneker and the mayor:  Horace Vanney, Gaines, a judge of the Supreme Court, two city commissioners, and an eminent political boss.  The Masters, senior and junior, had been invited, but declined, the latter politely, the former quite otherwise.  Below were the small group tables, to be occupied by Banneker’s friends and contemporaries of local newspaperdom, and a few outsiders, literary, theatrical, and political.  When Banneker appeared in the reception-room where the crowd awaited, smiling, graceful, vigorous, and splendid as a Greek athlete, the whole assemblage rose in acclaim—­all but one.  Russell Edmonds, somber and thoughtful, kept his seat.  His leonine head drooped over his broad shirt-bosom.

Said Mallory of The Ledger, bending over him: 

“Look at Ban, Pop!”

“I’m looking,” gloomed Edmonds.

“What’s behind that smile?  Something frozen.  What’s the matter with him?” queried the observant Mallory.

“Too much success.”

“It’ll be too much dinner if he doesn’t look out,” remarked the other.  “He’s trying to match cocktails with every one that comes up.”

“Won’t make a bit of difference,” muttered the veteran.  “He’s all steel.  Cold steel.  Can’t touch him.”

Marrineal led the way out of the ante-room to the banquet, escorting Banneker.  Never had the editor of The Patriot seemed to be more completely master of himself.  The drink had brightened his eyes, brought a warm flush to the sun-bronze of his cheek, lent swiftness to his tongue.  He was talking brilliantly, matching epigrams with the Great Gaines, shrewdly poking good-natured fun at the stolid and stupid mayor, holding his and the near-by tables in spell with reminiscences in which so many of them shared.  Some wondered how he would have anything left for his speech.

While the game course was being served, Ely Ives was summoned outside.  Banneker, whose faculties had taken on a preternatural acuteness, saw, when he returned, that his face had whitened and sharpened; watched him write a note which he folded and pinned before sending it to Marrineal.  In the midst of a story, which he carried without interruption, the guest of honor perceived a sort of glaze settle over his chief’s immobile visage; the next moment he had very slightly shaken his head at Ives.  Banneker concluded his story.  Marrineal capped it with another.  Ives, usually abstemious as befits one who practices sleight-of-hand and brain, poured his empty goblet full of champagne and emptied it in long, eager draughts.  The dinner went on.

The ices were being cleared away when a newspaper man, not in evening clothes, slipped in and talked for a moment with Mr. Gordon of The Ledger.  Presently another quietly appropriated a seat next to Van Cleve of The Sphere.  The tidings, whatever they were, spread.  Then, the important men of the different papers gathered about Russell Edmonds.  They seemed to be putting to him brief inquiries, to which he answered with set face and confirming nods.  With his quickened faculties, Banneker surmised one of those inside secrets of journalism so often sacredly kept, though a hundred men know them, of which the public reads only the obvious facts, the empty shell.  Now and again he caught a quick and veiled glance of incomprehension of doubt, of incredulity, cast at him.

He chattered on.  Never did he talk more brilliantly.

Coffee.  Presently there would be cigars.  Then Marrineal would introduce him, and he would say to these men, this high and inner circle of journalism, the things which he could not write for his public, which he could present to them alone, since they alone would understand.  It was to be his magnum opus, that speech.  For a moment he had lost physical visualization in mental vision.  When again he let his eyes rest on the scene before him, he perceived that a strange thing had happened.  The table at which Van Cleve had sat, with seven others, was empty.  In the same glance he saw Mr. Gordon rise and quietly walk out, followed by the other newspaper men in the group.  Two politicians were left.  They moved close to each other and spoke in whispers, looking curiously at Banneker.

What manner of news could that have been, brought in by the working newspaper man, thus to depopulate a late-hour dining-table?  Had the world turned upside down?

Below him, and but a few paces distant, Tommy Burt was seated.  When he, too, got slowly to his feet, Banneker leaned across the strewn, white napery toward him.

“What’s up, Tommy?”

For an instant the star reporter stopped, seemed to turn an answer over in his mind, then shook his head, and, with an unfathomable look of incredulity and shrinking, went his way.  Bunny Fitch followed; Fitch, the slave of his paper’s conventions, the man without standards other than those which were made for him by the terms of his employment, who would go only because his proprietors would have him go:  and the grin which he turned up to Banneker was malignant and scornful.  Already the circle about Ely Ives, who was still drinking eagerly, had melted away.  Glidden, Mallory, Gale, Andreas, and a dozen others of his oldest associates were at the door, not talking as they would have done had some “big story” broken at that hour, but moving in a chill silence and purposefully like men seeking relief from an unendurable atmosphere.  The deadly suspicion of the truth struck in upon the guest of honor; they, his friends, were going because they could no longer take part in honoring him.  His mind groped, terrified and blind, among black shadows.

Marrineal, for once allowing discomposure to ruffle his imperturbability, rose to check the exodus.

“Gentlemen!  One moment, if you please.  As soon as—­”

The rest was lost to Banneker as he beheld Edmonds rear his spare form up from his chair a few paces away.  Reckless of ceremony now, the central figure of the feast rose.

“Edmonds!  Pop!”

The veteran stopped, turning the slow, sad judgment of his eyes upon the other.

“What is it?” appealed Banneker.  “What’s happened?  Tell me.”

“Willis Enderby is dead.”

The query, which forced itself from Banneker’s lips, was a self-accusation.  “By his own hand?”

“By yours,” answered Edmonds, and strode from the place.

Groping, Banneker’s fingers encountered a bottle, closed about it, drew it in.  He poured and drank.  He thought it wine.  Not until the reeking stab of brandy struck to his brain did he realize the error….  All right.  Brandy.  He needed it.  He was going to make a speech.  What speech?  How did it begin….  What was this that Marrineal was saying?  “In view of the tragic news….  Call off the speech-making?” Not at all!  He, Banneker, must have his chance.  He could explain everything.

Brilliantly, convincingly to his own mind, he began.  It was all right; only the words in their eagerness to set forth the purity of his motives, the unimpeachable rectitude of his standards, became confused.  Somebody was plucking at his arm.  Ives?  All right?  Ives was a good fellow, after all….  Yes:  he’d go home—­with Ives.  Ives would understand.

All the way back to The House With Three Eyes he explained himself; any fair-minded man would see that he had done his best.  Ives was fair-minded; he saw it.  Ives was a man of judgment.  Therefore, when he suggested bed, he must be right.  Very weary, Banneker was.  He felt very, very wretched about Enderby.  He’d explain it all to Enderby in the morning—­no:  couldn’t do that, though.  Enderby was dead.  Queer idea, that!  What was it that violent-minded idiot, Pop Edmonds, had said?  He’d settle with Pop in the morning.  Now he’d go to sleep….

He woke to utter misery.  In the first mail came the letter, now expected, from Io.  It completed the catastrophe in which his every hope was swept away.

I have tried to make myself believe (she wrote) that you could not have Betrayed him; that you would not, at least, have let me, who loved you, be, unknowingly, the agent of his destruction.  But the black record comes back to me.  The Harvey Wheelwright editorial, which seemed so light a thing, then.  The lie that beat Robert Laird.  The editorial that you dared not print, after promising.  All of one piece.  How could I ever have trusted you!

Oh, Ban, Ban!  When I think of what we have been to each other; how gladly, how proudly, I gave myself to you, to find you unfaithful!  Is that the price of success?  And unfaithful in such a way!  If you had been untrue to me in the conventional sense, I think it would have been a small matter compared to this betrayal.  That would have been a thing of the senses, a wound to the lesser part of our love.  But this—­Couldn’t you see that our relation demanded more of faith, of fidelity, than marriage, to justify it and sustain it; more idealism, more truth, more loyalty to what we were to each other?  And now this!

If it were I alone that you have betrayed, I could bear my own remorse; perhaps even think it retribution for what I have done.  But how can I—­and how can you—­bear the remorse of the disaster that will fall upon Camilla Van Arsdale, your truest friend?  What is there left to her, now that the man she loves is to be hounded out of public life by blackmailers?  I have not told her.  I have not been able to tell her.  Perhaps he will write her, himself.  How can she bear it!  I am going away, leaving a companion in charge of her.

Camilla Van Arsdale!  One last drop of bitterness in the cup of suffering.  Neither she nor Io had, of course, learned of Enderby’s death, and could not for several days, until the newspapers reached them.  Banneker perceived clearly the thing that was laid upon him to do.  He must go out to Manzanita and take the news to her.  That was part of his punishment.  He sent a telegram to Mindle, his factotum on the ground.

Hold all newspapers from Miss C. until I get there, if you have to rob mails.  E.B.

Without packing his things, without closing his house, without resigning his editorship, he took the next train for Manzanita.  Io, coming East, and still unaware of the final tragedy, passed him, halfway.

While the choir was chanting, over the body of Willis Enderby, the solemn glory of Royce Melvin’s funeral hymn, the script of which had been found attached to his last statement, Banneker, speeding westward, was working out, in agony of soul, a great and patient penance, for his own long observance, planning the secret and tireless ritual through which Camilla Van Arsdale should keep intact her pure and long delayed happiness while her life endured.